Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [34]
My new friends countered, “Why should he care? If he did find out and mentioned it, San Franciscans would be amused.” People would laugh with me, rather than at me. After all, the city had more eccentrics than lights on the Golden Gate Bridge.
I not only agreed to the charade but began adding my own touches. My father, the Watusi chieftain, had not been a slave (ah, to rid myself of that stigma) but was the son of a chief who had sailed to Cuba to retrieve his sister, who had been stolen from Africa. Once there, he had fallen in love with a dark-eyed Spanish girl. He had won her after a bloody duel, married her and she had given birth to my father. They, my very well-to-do parents, had sent me to the United States so that I could see some of the world before I married and settled down in my own well-staffed hacienda.
My audience listened, mouths agape, as I reeled my story before them. Their imaginations had been good, but mine was better. They had been amusing themselves, but I was motivated by the desire to escape.
Ivonne sat watching me as I talked. She nodded to indicate not so much that she agreed with me but, rather, that she comprehended what I was saying.
“So I'm going to sing at the Purple Onion. I'll sing calypso songs. Jorie Remus, who is the star there now, and the manager and bartenders are fixing it all up.” I sipped the beer I had brought for a celebration. “They're all white, but they're nice. Sort of like foreigners.”
She inclined her head.
“I mean they are Americans, but Jorie has lived in Paris. In France. And I guess that's why she's kind of different.”
Ivonne drank beer and waited. Our friendship had brought us so close, she sensed that I had something more to say and that what I was saving until last was the most pertinent of my news.
“They remind me of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and that group that lived in France, you know?”
Because she had not read the books I had read, the names I mentioned did not bring to her visions of the Left Bank and Montmartre. She made no connections with a gay time when America's good white writers sat in places like the Deux Magots dreaming up a literature which would enthrall the world for decades.
My friend was at ease in her silence.
“So they suggested I change my name and …” What had been easy to accept in the company of strangers was almost unspeakable now in Ivonne's familiar living room.
I had thought only that an attempt to pass was an acceptance of that which was not true. As I searched for words, it occurred to me that what I was about to do was to deny that which was true.
“They suggested that I say I came from Cuba.”
Her black eyes and voice were equally cold and hard.
“Oh, Ivonne. For the romance. Just because it'll make me more exotic.”
“They want you to stop being Negro …”
“Oh no, come on.”
“And you say these people are free? Free of what? And free for what?”
“You don't understand.” I was exasperated with her. She and my mother had more in common than I had with either of them. “And I'm going to sing. I'm going to have a new career.”
“You're going to sing Cuban songs? Like Carmen Miranda? With bananas on your head going ‘Chi chi boom boom’?” Sarcasm syruped in her voice.
“Listen, Vonne, I'm going to sing calypsos. And I'm going to be very good.” I didn't relish having to defend myself. She was my friend. We shared secrets and woes and each other's money. We had keys to each other's houses and together watched our children grow.
“Just listen to this.” I got up and took a place in front of the coffee table.
“He's stone cold dead in de market
Stone cold dead in de market
Stone cold dead in de market
I kill nobody but me husband.”
My voice faltered and fell. I lifted it into a shout. When it sharpened into a screech I softened it. I fled between