The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou [49]
When he finished, he asked for questions and sat down, dabbing at his face with a cloud of white handkerchief.
My first reaction was to wish I could be the white cloth in his dark hand touching his forehead, digging softly in the corners of his lips. Intelligence always had a pornographic influence on me.
He asked for questions and was immediately satisfied.
“Which organization was the most popular in South Africa?” Was he really flirting with me?
“Did Luthuli and Sobukwe get along?” Did fat men make love like thin ones?
“When would the average South African become politically aware?” Was he married?
“What could we, as black Americans, do to speed along the struggle?” How long was he going to stay in New York?
Make and Tambo shared the questions, volleying answers back and forth with the ease of professional tennis players.
Make turned. “Doesn't Miss Angelou have a question?” Stage experience kept me from squirming. All attention shifted to me and I shoved my real questions to the back of my head and asked, “Mr. Make, would it be possible to solve the South African problem with an employment of nonviolence?”
He stood and walked to my corner. “That which works for your Reverend King cannot work in South Africa. Here, whether it is honored or not, there is a Constitution. You at least have laws which say, Liberty and justice for all. You can go to courts and exact an amount of success. Witness your Supreme Court ruling of 1954. In South Africa, we Africans are written out of all tenets dealing with justice. We are not considered in the written laws dealing with fair play. We are not only brutalized and oppressed, de facto, we are ignored de jure.”
He was standing over me, and I felt lucky. Fortunate to be a black American, and in comparison to him and his people, only slightly impaired by racism. But even more so fortunate. His eyes were on me and I would have had to be thicker than raw pigskin not to know that something about me hooked him.
I folded my arms and sat back as he used the time to develop his statement. He finished to standing applause, and was wrapped around in seconds by a group of excited people.
We caught sight of each other through the shifting bodies but he never returned to my corner. After another drink, I went to collect Guy; my days started early and Guy had his bakery job again.
At the door, Make stopped us.
“Miss Angelou, just a minute. Guy, I would be honored to see your mother home.”
Make knew that asking Guy's permission would please us both. My son smiled, loving the Old World formality, straight out of The Three Musketeers and The Corsican Brothers.
“Thank you, Mr. Make. I am seeing her home.”
I could have pinched him until he screamed.
Make said, “Of course, thank you anyway.” The big lunk almost bowed from the waist. “I hope we'll meet again, Miss Angelou. Good night. Good night, Guy.”
He walked away and we went out the door.
“He doesn't know that you're engaged, or he wouldn't have asked to take you home.” Guy chattered all the way. “But he's really smart. He's from the Xhosa tribe. You know, Miriam Makeba's click song; well, that's his language. He was a barrister, that's a lawyer, before he was placed in exile and escaped from South Africa.”
“When did he tell you all that?”
“He came into the kitchen and talked to Chuck and Barbara and me. He just walked in, introduced himself and sat down.”
Most politicians I had met, excluding Martin Luther King, thought talking to children a waste of their adult time. I was liking the African more and more. And obviously I'd never see him again, and if we did meet, Thomas and my looming marriage stood between us.
The next morning, Paule rang to say she was giving a little party that evening and I had to come. I had another late night at work and once I got to Brooklyn and changed, I really wouldn't be up to going back to Manhattan. She urged me to stop by after work, reassuring