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When I finished, the first applause came from the pianist. She was smiling and clapping so energetically that I surmised that I had rescued her recently endangered belief in the human voice. There was more applause from the audience, and this time it sounded fresh and sincere. I did not know what I was expected to do next. I stood still for a moment, then bowed and rather stiffly turned away.

“Will you wait backstage, Miss Angelou?” Tom's voice sprang through the void.

“Yes, thank you.”

Whenever I was embarrassed or felt myself endangered, I relied on my body's training to deliver me. Grandmother Henderson and Grandmother Baxter had drilled my brother and me in the posture of “shoulders back, head up, look the future in the eye,” and years of dance classes had compounded the education. I turned and walked to the wings like Cleopatra walking to the throne room (meanwhile clasping the asp in her bodice).

Backstage a few of the hopeful contenders tapped their hands together or snapped their fingers when they saw me. They grinned saucy compliments to me, probably as much for my own sassiness in standing up and talking back as for what they heard of my second song.

Saint Subber, Tom and Truman Capote came backstage and walked over to me.

Saint Subber said, “You've got a certain quality.”

Tom's praise was as generous as his manner.

Truman Capote spoke, and I thought for a desperate moment that he was pulling my leg. He said in a faint falsetto, “Miss Angelou, honey, ah love yoah work.” He sounded just like a rich old Southern white woman. He reminded me of a Countee Cullen poem:

She even thinks that up in heaven

Her class lies late and snores

While poor Black cherubs rise at seven

To do celestial chores.

Yet I could not detect a shred of superciliousness on his face or in his soft yielding manner. I thanked him. Tom said he would be in touch with me and I shook hands with the men and left the theater.

Outside I passed the line of people still waiting. They scanned my features intently trying to read the outcome of my ordeal and thereby prophesy their own. If I was triumphant it meant that success was in the air and might come to them. On the other hand, it could mean that I had just filled the vacancy that they themselves might have taken.

Theirs was a grievous lot. Ten or twenty jobs for two thousand or more trained, talented and anxious aspirants. Another Countee Cullen poem stated that God, should he choose, could explain why he gave the turtle such a strange yet lovely shell, why the spring follows winter, why the snake doffs its skin, “yet,” said the poet, “do I marvel at this curious thing, to make a poet Black and bid him sing.” And of all things, to bid him sing in New York City.

I thought of Porgy and Bess. Of the sixty people who sang and laughed and lived together, the camaraderie and the pride they had in one another's genius. Although I had not heard from the company administrators for three months, I had received cards from Martha Flowers and from Ned Wright. I waited around in my small hotel room and prowled my dingy lobby. I called Mother, who ordered me to keep my chin up, and Clyde, who missed me and gave me news of Fluke's latest adventures. Wilkie reminded me that “In God I live and have my being.”

On a Thursday morning I received a note which read: “Miss Angelou, the House of Flowers company is happy to inform you that you have been chosen for the part in our production. Please come to the office Thursday afternoon at three to sign your contract.”

I shared the news with my family immediately and when I hung up, the telephone rang again. I thought it was probably Saint Subber calling to congratulate me.

It was Breen's Everyman's Opera Company. Bob Dustin said, “Maya Angelou?”

“Yes.”

“This is Porgy and Bess. We called your San Francisco number and were told you were in New York.”

“Yes.”

“We want you for the role of Ruby.”

How could there be so much of a good thing?

“But I've just got a part in a