Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [90]
“Mrs. Angelos.”
I turned and was face-to-face with the doctor.
“Mrs. Angelos, what are your first impressions of your native continent?”
I retrieved my thoughts and longings and made a snappy remark. “It is colorful. And noisy. And the sun shines on Africa.”
He fished two cigarettes from a package and lighted them simultaneously (he had seen Now Voyager too, and I wondered how often he had imitated Paul Henreid). He put one between my lips.
“Where are you staying in Alexandria?”
I told him the company was booked at the Savoy.
“Will you honor me with dinner? They have a decent dining room and you won't have to leave your hotel.”
I quickly weighed his lips, shoulders, hips and eyes against the chances of finding an interested Egyptian man on the first day. The sea had been smooth for nearly twenty-four hours, which meant that the huntresses were feeling well and would be back in the chase and any available men would be at a premium. “I'd be delighted,” I said.
His eyes smoldered wonderful promises; then he tried a smile that was incongruous on the lascivious face. “My name is Geracimos Vlachos. I am called Maki. Expect me at eight o'clock. Until then.” He bowed and kissed my hand.
Martha said, “You got him, you fast thing, you. Took advantage of all your sick sisters and snatched that man while everybody was flat on their backs. Dying in the hold.”
We were lined up at the rails, ready to disembark.
Lillian nudged us. “Look at the people, will you? Africans. My God. Now I have lived. Real Africans.”
Ethel and Barbara were a little more reserved, but just as excited. Our voices nearly equaled in volume the shouts and yells of the dock workers.
I saw that the older singers were as fascinated as we. Katherine Ayres, Georgia Burke, Eloise Uggams, Annabelle Ross and Rhoda Boggs stood facing Bob Dustin, but their eyes continued to steal away to the dock and to the people who were unloading the vessel. When they walked between the gowned stevedores on the way to the buses, their usually reserved smiles broadened into happy grins, and they doled out money, whose value they had not really considered, to the beggars who stretched out their hands.
In the hotel we deposited our hand luggage then raced back to the lobby to look at the Africans. It took less than five minutes to discover that the bellhops, porters, doormen and busboys were black and brown and beige, and that the desk clerk, head waiters, bartenders and hotel manager were white. As far as we knew, they might have all been African, but the distribution of jobs by skin color was not lost on us. The sweetness of our arrival in Africa was diluted, but not totally spoiled.
After all, Gamal Abdel Nasser was the President and every photograph showed him to be brown-skinned. Darker than Lena Horne, Billy Daniels and Dorothy Dandridge. Without a doubt, he was one of us.
We sat in the lounge and ordered drinks. Ned had thrown his cape rakishly across his shoulders and Joe Attles had donned a new and colorful ascot to protect his throat.
Ned asked, “Does anyone want to go with us? We're going to look at The Dark Continent and bring back a sphinx.”
We all laughed and clapped our hands. Servants ran out into the lounge and bowed, waiting. We looked at them and each other. If we wore the same clothing no one would be able to say we were not members of the same family, yet we couldn't hold a conversation. (Europeans and white Americans are not surprised to see their look-alikes speaking foreign languages; but except for meeting a few African students in Europe, we had never seen a large group of Black people whose culture, language and life styles were different from our own.)
Martha asked in French if they wanted something. One man answered in French that when he heard us clap our hands, he thought we wanted something. We learned that day, although we slipped up now and then, not to clap our hands at a joke, and that if we wanted