Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [55]
She stroked out the first notes of my song and I began.
“Love for sale, appetizing young love—”
She stopped.
“Uh, no, uh, I'm playing the verse. If you don't want the verse I'll go right to the refrain.”
I had read the verse when I bought the music, but I had never heard it sung.
“Just the love for sale' part, please.” I thought I heard a titter from backstage, but I could not be sure. She played the first three notes and I began to sing. “Love for sale, appetizing young love for sale.” I imagined I was a girl in a trench coat and a beret, standing under a streetlight in old Chinatown in a light rain. Men passed me by after looking me over and I continued my plaintive offer.
I was so engrossed in telling the story that I did not know when the music and I had parted company or quite how we could get back together. I only knew I was in one key and the piano in another. I looked at the pianist. She began to strike the keys harder, and in a vain attempt to settle correctly I began to sing louder. She lifted her hands and pounded on the piano. I raised my voice and screamed, “If you want to buy my wares” a mile away from what she was playing.
She half rose, crouched over the keyboard. There was a frantic determination in the position of her body, in the bend of her neck. She would get me back on pitch or there would just be splinters left on the piano.
Plunk plunk—she was as loud as I—and I heard a low vocal grumble as she sought to overwhelm my voice into submission. I shouted, “Follow me and climb the stairs.” A thin but definite screech slid through my nose. I dropped my jaw to try to force the sound down into the back of my mouth where I could control it. The pianist was standing. Her brow was knit and her teeth bared. She was about to attack the piano for the final chord. I barged in, overtook her and in a second outdistanced her as I yelled “Love for sale.”
She flopped on the piano stool exhausted and in defeat.
I was just a little proud that I had gotten all the way through the song. Then I heard the sounds. There were gurgles and giggles from the theater and the muffled bubbling of outright disorderly laughter from backstage.
The flush of heat crawled up my face and spread through my body the instant I realized that I was the object of derision. But I was, I told myself, the person who'd had flowers put at her feet. And I was the entertainer asked to take Eartha Kitt's role in New Faces. I was the dancer Porgy and Bess wanted to follow the fabulous Lizabeth Foster. And I was being laughed away just because I could not sing “Love for Sale.” Well, they need not.
“Excuse me,” I said, and looked over the rows of seats toward the indistinct shadows. “I understand that Mr. Capote doesn't like special material. And you've asked me to come out here to show you what I do. I am willing to sing calypso for you or I'd be just as happy to go home.”
Indeed, it would be nicer to go back to California. To my mother's big house and good food. To my son, who needed me, and Aunt Lottie, who loved me. Back to the wonderful Purple Onion where my friends would welcome me. The period between becoming a great Broadway star setting New York on its ear and returning to the family's bosom was shorter than the first intervals between the overheard laughter.
There was little sound from the audience. They clapped as if they were wearing furry gloves.
“Yes, Miss Angelou, sing whatever you like.”
I said, “I'm going to sing ‘Run Joe,’ and since I was discouraged from bringing my sheet music, I'll have to sing it a cappella.” Wilkie had told me that music sung without accompaniment was called “a cappella.”
If I was going home, I had to show them what they were missing, and that I had some place to go.
I gave them the special Saturday-night standing-room-only encore version. The one where I spun around, my