Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [59]
“Where do you want to go?” His question popped like a whip.
“To pick up the baby.”
The steering wheel almost came off in his hand.
When he parked the car, he made no move toward getting out, so I opened my door and had to ask, “Will you take us for a ride?”
“Close the door, Rita. I better talk to you.”
Now it would come. The bad words, the insults, and all rightly placed. I closed the door.
“I talked to Clara. And there wasn't hardly any money at all. I don't think you tried.”
“L.D., I did. I tried with all my heart.” Relief flooded my brain. If that was all he worried about.
“Clara says you sit around like a judge, never saying anything to them. And that you talk to the tricks in Spanish like a goddam schoolteacher.”
“L.D., I'm sorry. I just don't know what to do. But I promise, I'll try harder. Don't be angry, Lou.”
“Another thing, you haven't called me Daddy. All the—I'm supposed to be your daddy.” He was fierce suddenly. “Remember that.”
I said, “Yes, Daddy,” and hated it. Later on I'd be able to tell him the Electra story and explain why I hated my own father, and expand my theory about prostitutes and their men. I knew he wouldn't appreciate being thought a pimp and we'd be able to lose “Daddy” from our vocabulary, unless he allowed my son the right to so address him.
“I can't take you all out today, but here, pay the woman, and here's ten dollars. You all go to a picture show, but don't keep him all night. Take him back to her and I'll come over to your place this evening.”
“Yes, Lou.” He wasn't angry any longer.
“Daddy?” he prompted.
“Daddy.” I smiled and bided my time.
CHAPTER 28
My baby's joy at seeing me instantly erased the odor of disinfectant that had clung to the lining of my nostrils. Clara's house and its inhabitants and its visitors were a puff of smoke sliding behind the farthest hill. I paid Big Mary and gave no answers to her blunt questions about my new job.
I gathered my son in my arms, and told Mary I'd bring him back in the early evening.
“Ain't you got time for him to spend one night with you? How come you all of a sudden so busy?”
I couldn't explain the tenderness of a great love. And under no pressures could I confide to her the month I planned to spend at Clara's. She'd simply make the common moral judgment, totally missing the finer point of sacrifice and purpose.
The baby, beautiful as a China doll, chattered all the way to the movie, in the movie house and all the way back to my room. He had picked up Big Mary's run-over-shoes accent. I kept repeating the proper pronunciations as he dropped past tenses and plurals. L.D. was right. I had to try harder. My son needed to be with me. I would read to him every day and get the long-playing albums for children of “The Little Prince” and “The Ugly Duckling.”
I turned down the path leading to my house, my arms numb to aching with the weight of my son.
“Home, James.”
“My name ain't no James.”
“My name isn't James.”
“No. Yo' name Mother.”
“Your name is Mother.”
“No, my name ain't no Mother.”
When I tried to put him down he folded his legs up under his body and held on to my neck.
“I'm not going to leave you.” His heart was thudding on my shoulder, so I carried him into the house.
“Rita.” The landlord met me in the hall. “You got lots of long-distance phone calls. From San Francisco. You better call home.”
I forced the baby's legs and arms from my side and put him on the floor. He set up an alarm of screaming and I stood at the pay phone waiting for someone to answer.
Papa Ford accepted my collect call. “Girl, I been trying to get you.”
Maybe Mother's aim had been good to the extreme and the bail bondsman's magic wouldn't work. I would be very little help, with my own man in trouble at the same time. Of course, there was no contest. Mother came first.
“Your