Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [45]
She bounced out of her chair. “Only takes a minute. How about some breakfast?”
I knew the idea of her daughter going into the then swankiest Negro hotel in town, escorted by a raggedy-looking white man would cause hospitality to flow like water.
She invited us into the kitchen.
“What about a little omelette and some bacon?” She turned on the oven and I held out my hand. Whenever she baked biscuits she removed her large diamond rings and put them on my fingers. “And just a few hot biscuits?”
She began the arrangement of bowls and pans and I excused myself and left George to his fate.
When I returned, changed out of evening clothes, the meal was nearly ready and she ordered me to set the table for two, and asked, “So, did you know that George makes a living as a gardener?”
“No, how do you know? Did George tell you that?”
George said, “Yes.”
Mom was moving round the kitchen talking, cooking, singing little wisps of songs, the diamond earrings twinkling.
He was hypnotized.
“Put some butter on the table, Maya, please, and did you know he's unmarried and not thinking about getting married in the foreseeable future? Will the strawberry preserves be all right? Get that platter out of the cupboard, will you? Hum, hum …” She whipped up the eggs with a whisk.
“George, how did you come to tell my mother so much of your business?”
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “She asked me.”
Mother said later that since he was white that was enough to make him unsuitable, but he was also much too old for me. Still I found his company easy and his intelligence exciting. He understood loving poetry, and although I would not show him my own poems, I recited Shakespearean sonnets and Paul Laurence Dunbar late at night in his house in Sausalito.
We shared long walks in Golden Gate Park and picnicked in John Muir woods. His mother was a well-known San Francisco journalist and he told me endless stories of the area and its colorful characters.
A gentle affection, devoid of romance, grew up between us and I enjoyed watching from his window as night faded over the Golden Gate Bridge. I was always back home before daybreak because Clyde expected me at the breakfast table while he chatted about his dreams or Fluke's misdoings.
I answered the telephone.
“Meez Angeloo?”
“Yes.”
The voice was male and rich and the accent thick and poetic.
“My name is Yanko Varda. I am a painter.” He was a well-known figure in San Francisco art circles.
“Yes, Mr. Varda.” Why was he calling me?
“No, pleez—Yanko. Just Yanko.”
“Yes, Yanko?” Yes, but why was he calling me?
“Meez Angeloo, I have heard so much about you, about your beauty and your talent and your grace. I have decided I must meet this wonderful woman with whom all the men are in love.”
I could not think of a soul who was in love with me, but who can resist the suggestion that one has secret admirers?
“How nice of you to say that.”
“Not atall. No, not atall. I have decided that I must give a dinner for you so that I myself may see this phenomenon: a beautiful woman with a great mind.”
I knew I did not fit his description, but I would have torn my tongue out before I would have denied it.
He set Monday night for dinner and said he lived on a houseboat in Sausalito.
“George Hitchcock will bring you to my boat, which is called the Valhjo. I shall prepare, as only I can prepare, an ambrosia fit for a princess, but if you are in fact a queen, as I suspect, I hope you will condescend to take a sip from these humble hands. George will bring you to me. Au revoir.”
He sounded like a character in a Russian novel. The embroidery of his language, complex and passionate, en chanted me.
What did one wear to an ambrosial dinner on a houseboat? I selected and rejected every outfit in my closet and finally settled on a flowered dress that belonged to my mother. It was gay but not frivolous, chic