The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou [100]
Conversely, when he had traveled into southern Africa, with out passports or documents, when he doffed the tailored suits and handmade shoes, and wore the open sandals and blankets of tribesmen in order to reach a stranded party of escapees, he returned to Cairo quickened, tense with wakefulness. The whites of his eyes were always shot with red lines, and his attention was abstracted with what he had seen, and where he had been.
He was hardly in the house before he would pick up the telephone.
“Are you free this evening? Come over. My wife will cook her famous Afro-American food. We'll drink and eat. Come.”
The invitation would be repeated several times before he would ask if I had something I could prepare in a hurry. Invitees would troop into the apartment, eat and drink copiously talk loudly with each other and leave. Occasionally during the gatherings, David DuBois and I would find a quiet corner and talk about our folks back home.
David's journalistic assignments involved all of Europe, Africa and Asia, and marriage had broadened my interests to include the mercurial politics of those areas as well. However, while the conversations around us swelled with concern over Goa and India, Tshombe and the Belgian-owned Union Minière, the Lebanon and Middle East crisis, we wondered how the black parents in America could let their little children walk between rows of cursing, spitting white women and men, en route to school? What would happen to the children's minds when uninformed police sicked dogs on them just because they wanted to get to class?
At a certain point, we always stopped the self-pitying and reassured ourselves that our people would survive. Look what we had done already.
David and I would begin to hum softly, one of the old spirituals. (He always insisted on starting with his favorite, “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, When I Lay My Burden Down.”)
Surely exhibitionism was a part of our decision to sing in a room of talkers, but a deeper motivation was also present. The lyrics and melody had the power to transport us back into a womblike familiarity. Admittedly, Africa was our place of genesis, long, long ago, but more recent, and more dearly known were the sounds of black America. When David and I lifted the song, diplomats and politicians, women on the make, and men on the run, freeloaders and revolutionaries, stopped haranguing, flirting, jibing, imploring, pontificating, explaining, and turned to listen. First halfheartedly, informed by the knowledge that we were airing melodies written by the last large group of people enslaved on the planet, courtesy forced them to attend. After a few verses, the music made its own demands. They could not remain ignorant of its remarkable humanity. I could not read their minds, but their faces were wide open with allegiance to our songs. Vus, conscious of their attentiveness, paid tribute to our survival and by joining in helped David and me to reestablish for ourselves a connection to a bitter, beautiful past.
CHAPTER 16
Omanadia came to the balcony on a lovely summer afternoon.
“Madame?”
I had arisen from a nap in the cool bedroom. I felt refreshed and indulgent. “Yes, Omanadia?” She could not have the rest of the day off, if that was what she wanted. I needed a little more pampering.
“Madame, I stopped the rug man again. You were sleeping.”
“What rug man?” I was awake, but slow.
“The man collecting for the rugs. He hasn't been paid for two months. And the two furniture collectors.” She laughed roguishly. “The other maids down the street tell me when they're on Ahmet Hishmat, so I don't open the door.”
Because of her age and sharp tongue, Omanadia was the bane and the pet of shopkeepers, younger servants and doormen. She knew all the gossip and most of the facts concerning people in our neighborhood.
“Omanadia, how much do we