Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [39]
Popularity was an intoxicant and I swayed drunkenly for months. Newspaper reporters began to ask for interviews and I gave them in an ersatz accent, which was a mélange of the speech of Ricardo Montalban, Jorie Remus and Akim Tamiroff. I was invited to talk on radio and sing on television. Fans began to recognize me in the street and one well-to-do woman organized a ten-member Maya Angelou fan club.
Later I met people who said, “I saw you dance at the Purple Onion.” I graciously withheld the information that in fact I was hired at the club as a singer, but the songs had many refrains and such complex rhythms that often I got lost in the plot and forgot the lyrics. So, when the words eluded me, I would admit my poor memory and add that if the audience would bear with me I would dance. The first few times I owned up to a weak memory, Lloyd Clark and Barry Drew frowned disapprovingly, but after the audiences applauded loudly Barry accepted it and Lloyd said, “Wonderful, dear, wonderful. Keep it in. In fact, you should dance more.”
I shared the bill with a strange and talented couple. Jane Connell sang scatterbrained ditties, while her sober-side husband Gordon dryly played piano. Their patter was sharp and displayed their Berkeley university background. When they left to join Jorie in New York's Blue Angel, a frowzy blond housewife from Alameda auditioned and was accepted at the club. She brought a wardrobe of silly flowered hats and moth-eaten boas which she flung around her thin neck. Her laugh, which she shared often, was a cross between a donkey's braying and a foghorn. She said she would not change her name because when she became successful she wanted everyone to know it was, indeed, her herself. The name was painted in large white letters outside the club: Phyllis Diller.
CHAPTER 11
Without a father in the house and no other male authority figure in his world, Clyde fell under the spell of uniforms. He began to adore policemen and daydream about becoming a bomber pilot.
“I'll zoom down like this, Mom, brrr and blow their heads off. Boom, boom, boom.” He marched and clumped around the house in a poor parody of Gestapo goose-stepping He saluted walls and chairs and ordered doors to be “at rest, Sergeant Door.” He had become enamored of the Air Force and every evening at bedtime he waited in his room for me to hear his prayers and then to sing (he would join in):
“Off we go into the wild blue yonder
Singing songs into the blue …”
Each evening as I left for work, the baby-sitter would say, “Our little soldier is bedded down in his bunk, huh?” I wished I could have cashiered her out of my service with dishonorable discharge.
I was dismayed, but I left him alone until I could decide on the best way to counter his sudden affection for violence. I hoped for divine intercession and bided my time. As his birthday approached he began spending time after school in the local five-and-dime store. He wanted a machine gun or a tank or a pistol that shot real plastic bullets or a BB gun. I took him to the local S.P.C.A. pound and told him he could have an animal. A small dog or any cat he wanted. He wandered around the cages, choosing one dog and then rejecting it when he saw a lonelier-looking cat. He finally settled on a small black kitten with rheumy eyes and a dull, dusty coat. I asked the attendant if the cat was healthy. He said it was, but that it had been taken from its mother too early and abandoned. It needed personal care or the pound would have to destroy it. Clyde was shocked. I could barely get him and