Letter to My Daughter - Maya Angelou [18]
I asked her to tell me how she was spoken to. She said, “They say, ‘Hey y’all, how y’all doin’? Y’all okay?’” She spoke with such an extreme exaggerated southern accent that everyone laughed.
I said, “They are right there, why don’t you ask them?” As they began talking to one another, I realized that I was being used as a bridge. The parents of those students had never had a language, which allowed them to speak to one another as equals, and now their children were creating a way which would allow them to have a dialogue. I sat with them until midnight, encouraging, abetting, and urging them to speak.
When I stood, exhausted, Tom Mullin, the Dean of Wake Forest College came to me with an offer, “Dr. Angelou, if ever you want to retire, we welcome you to Wake Forest University. We will gladly make a place for you.” I thanked him politely knowing that I would never come to the South to live.
The next morning, Dolly and I were taken to the airport early enough to have breakfast in the cafe. We were given a table and ordered breakfast. We sat unserved for more than thirty minutes. I noticed that she and I were the only black customers in the restaurant.
I told Dolly, “Sister, prepare to go to jail, because if these people don’t want to serve us I am going to turn the place out.”
She said calmly, “All right, Sis.”
I called the waitress over, a white lanky young woman. I said, “My sister ordered a cheese omelet and I ordered bacon and eggs, thirty minutes ago. If you don’t want to serve us, I advise you to tell me so, and then call the police.”
The young woman was immediately solicitous. Speaking in her soft North Carolina accent, she said, “No ma’am, it’s not that, it’s just that the chef run out of grits. He can’t serve breakfast without grits. See, half of the people on this side are not eating. The grits will be ready in about ten minutes and then I will serve you.” She pronounced the word “grits” as if it had two syllables—“gri-its.”
I felt the ninny of all times. My face became hot and my neck burned. I apologized to the waitress somehow, and Dolly McPherson controlled herself, and did not mention my stupidity. When I returned to my sturdy home and steady husband, I told everyone about the school, the students and the offer. I did not mention the airport drama.
I was married to Paul DuFeu, a master builder, a writer, and a popular cartoonist in England. Within two days of our meeting we knew we were in love together and had to be in life together.
For ten years we surprised, amused, angered, and supported each other. Unexpectedly a storm cloud roared into that sunny climate of love. My queries annoyed him, my husband admitted that he had grown weary of monogamy and needed more provocation in his life.
We separated just as I was to begin a national lecture tour. Since my husband was a builder and his business was based in northern California, I decided to make him a gift of San Francisco and the bridges and the hills, and the gourmet restaurants and the beautiful bay view.
Divorce like every other rite of passage introduces new landscapes, new rhythms, new faces and places, and sometimes races.
I fulfilled my lecture engagements around the country, meanwhile looking for a safe and soft place to fall. As a writer I should be able to pick up my yellow pads, ballpoint pens, Random House dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, King James Bible, a deck of playing cards, and a bottle of good sherry and write anywhere. Denver, Colorado, was beautiful, but its air too raw, and while there were some black people, Latinos, and Native Americans, the city itself was not integrated. I looked at Chattanooga, Tennessee, but a large portion of its population was still actively arrayed on the Confederate side in the ongoing Civil War.
Other cities I visited were either too large and/or too small and insular. Cambridge, Massachusetts, seemed to have all I wanted, history, universities, a mixture of races, great