The Heart of a Woman Read online

  I said good morning and introduced myself.

  "Really, Miss Angelou, the situation did not warrant your mak­ing a trip to the school."

  The puny-looking man extended his hand. "I'm Mr. Baker, Guy's counselor, and I know he is not a bad boy. Not really."

  I looked at the woman who had not spoken. It would be better to let them all have their say.

  One woman said, "I teach English, and one of my students reported the incident to me this morning."

  "I'd like to know what happened."

  The English teacher spoke with deliberation, as if she were testing the taste of the words.

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  "As I understand it, a conversation had been going on, on a particular topic. When the bus stopped at your corner, Guy boarded it and joined the conversation. He then gave explicit details on that particular subject. When the bus arrived at school, a couple of the girls were crying and they came to me and re­ported Guy's behavior."

  "And what did Guy say? What was his excuse?"

  The second woman broke her silence."We have not spoken to Guy. We thought there was no reason to embarrass him."

  "You mean to say you have simply assumed that to be accused is to be guilty. And so you are ready to deny him the right of using the school bus, which is paid for with my taxes, without hearing his side? I want to see Guy. And I want to see him now. I don't know why I thought white teachers would be fair to a Negro child. I want to hear what Guy has to say. And now."

  The moment of confrontation brought about an unexpected metamorphosis. The three teachers who had seemed individually small and weak, shifted and swam together coalescing into one unit, three bodies with one brain. Their faces hardened, their eyes hardened.

  "We do not interrupt students during class, for anyone. And we do not make a student a special case, just because he happens to be Negro. And we do not allow Negro boys to use foul language in front of our girls."

  The two women stood silent and approving.

  Mr. Baker spoke for them, as well as for white people every­where.

  The impossibility of the situation filled my mouth with bitter saliva. How could I explain a young black boy to a grown man who had been born white? How could the two women understand a black mother who had nothing to give her son except a contrived arrogance? If I had an eternity and the poetry of old spirituals, I could not make them live with me the painful moments when I tried to prove to Guy that his color was not a cruel joke, but a healthful design. If they knew that I described God to my son as looking very much like John Henry, wouldn't they think me

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  blasphemous? If he was headstrong, I had made him so. If, in his adolescent opinion, he was the best representative of the human race, it was my doing and I had no apology to make. The radio and posters, newspapers and teachers, bus drivers and salespersons told him every day in thousands of ways that he had come from nothing and was going nowhere.

  "Mr. Baker, 1 understand you. Now, I'd like to see Guy." I kept my voice low and under control.

  "If we take him out of class, you'll have to take him home. We do not interrupt classes. That is our policy."

  "Yes. I'll take him home."

  "He'll be marked absent for the day. But I guess that doesn't matter."

  "Mr. Baker, I'll take my son home." I had to see Guy, to hear him speak. Nothing would be gained by further conversation. He would have to return to the school, but for the moment, I wanted to know that he was not broken or even bruised.

  "I'll wait for him outside. Thank you."

  Guy jumped into the car, his face active with concern. "What's the matter, Mom?"

  I told him about the meeting with the teachers.

  He relaxed. "Aw, gee, Mom, and you came to school for that? It was nothing. Some of those kids are so stupid. They were talking about where babies come from. They said some of the funniest things and they should know better. So I told them about the penis, and the vagina and the womb. You know, all that stuff in my book on the beginnings of life? Well, some of the crazy girls started crying when I said their fathers had done it to their mothers." He began to laugh, enjoying the memory of the girls' tears. "That's all I said. I was right, wasn't I?"

  "Sometimes it's wiser to be right in silence, you know?"

  He looked at me with the suspicion of youth. "But you always say, 'Speak up. Tell the truth, no matter what the situation.' I just told the truth."

  "Yes, honey. You just told the truth."

  _ 2/ —

  Two days later, Guy brought home a message which infuriated me. My son was reasonably bright, but he had never been more than a competent student. The letter he brought home, however, stated that due to his wonderful grades, he had been advanced and would be attending another school at the end of the term.

  The obvious lie insulted both my son and me, but I thought it wise to remove Guy from the school as soon as possible. I didn't want an already prejudiced faculty and administration to use him as their whipping boy.

  I began searching for another school and another house. We needed an area where black skin was not regarded as one of nature's more unsightly mistakes.

  The Westlake district was ideal. Mexican, black American, Asian and white families lived side by side in old rambling houses. Neighbors spoke to each other as they mowed their lawns or shopped in the long-established local grocery stores.

  I rented the second floor of a two-story Victorian, and when Guy saw the black children playing on our new street, he was giddy with excitement. His reaction made me see how much he had missed the close contact with black people.

  "Boy!" He jumped and wriggled "Boy! Now, I'm going to make some friends!"

  For the next year and a half, save for my short out-of-town singing engagements, we lived in the area. Guy became a part of a group of teenagers whose antics were rambunctious enough to satisfy their need to rebel, yet were acceptable to the tolerant neighbor­hood.

  I began to write. At first I limited myself to short sketches, then to song lyrics, then I dared short stories. When I met John Killens he had just come to Hollywood to write the screenplay for his

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  novel Youngblood, and he agreed to read some of what he called my "work in progress." I had written and recorded six songs for Liberty Records, but I didn't seriously think of writing until John gave me his critique. After that I thought of little else. John was the first published black author I had really talked with. (I'd met James Baldwin in Paris in the early fifties, but I didn't really know him.) John said, "Most of your work needs polishing. In fact, most of everybody's work could stand rewriting. But you have undenia­ble talent." He added, "You ought to come to New York. You need to be in the Harlem Writers Guild." The invitation was oblique but definitely alluring.

  I had met the singer Abbey Lincoln. We met years earlier and we became friends during the time I stayed in the Westlake district. But she had moved to New York City. Whenever I spoke to her on the telephone, after she stopped praising Max Roach, her love and romantic ideal, she lauded New York City. It was the hub, the absolute middle of the world. The only place for an intelligent person to be, and to grow.

  Just possibly if I went to New York, I thought, I could find my own niche, settle down in it and become a success.

  There was another reason for wanting to leave Los Angeles. Guy, once so amusing, was growing into a tall aloof stranger. Our warm evenings of Scrabble and charades were, for him, a part of the long ago. He said the childhood games simply did not hold his attention. When he obeyed my house rules, he did so with the attitude that he was just too bored to contest them.

  I didn't understand, at the time, that adolescence had invaded him and deposited its usual hefty burden of insecurity and appre­hension. My wispy sometimes-lover, who lived nearby, was too tediously pious to help me comprehend what was happening to my son. Indeed, his reverence for Eastern religions, a vegetarian diet and sexual abstinence rendered him almost, but not quite, incapable of e
verything except deep conversations on the mean­ing of life.

  I called my mother and she answered after the first ring.

  "Hello?"

  "Lady?"

  "Oh hello, baby." She spoke as crisply as a white woman.

  I said, "I'd like to see you. I'm going to move to New York and I don't know when I'll come back to California. Maybe we could meet somewhere and spend a couple of days together. I could drive north, part of the way—"

  She didn't pause. "Of course, we can meet, of course, I want to see you, baby." Six feet tall, with a fourteen-year-old son, and I was still called baby. "How about Fresno? That's halfway. We could stay at that hotel. I know you read about it."

  "Yes. But not if there's going to be trouble. I just want to be with you."

  "Trouble? Trouble?" The familiar knife edge had slipped into her voice. "But, baby, you know that's my middle name. Anyway, the law says that hotel has to accept Negro guests. I'll swear before God and five other responsible men that my daughter and I are Negroes. After that, if they refuse us, well . . ."—she laughed hopefully and high-pitched—"well, we'll have a board to fit their butts."

  That part of the conversation was finished. Vivian Baxter sensed the possibility of confrontation and there would be no chance of talking her out of it. I realized too late that I should simply have taken the Southern Pacific train from Los Angeles to San Francisco and spent the two days in her Fulton Street house, then returned to pack for my continental move.

  Her voice softened again as she relayed family gossip and set a date for our meeting in the middle of the state.

  In 1959, Fresno was a middling town with palm trees and a decidedly Southern accent. Most of its white inhabitants seemed to be descendants of Steinbeck's Joads, and its black citizens were farm hands who had simply exchanged the dirt roads of Arkansas and Mississippi for the dusty streets of central California.

  I parked my old Chrysler on a side street, and taking my

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  overnight case, walked around the corner to the Desert Hotel. My mother had suggested that we meet at three, which meant that she planned to arrive at two.

  The hotel lobby had been decorated with welcome banners for a visiting sales convention. Large florid men mingled and laughed with portly women under low-hanging chandeliers.

  My entrance stopped all action. Every head turned to see, every eye blazed, first with doubt, then fury. I wanted to run back to my car, race to Los Angeles, back to the postered walls of my house. I straightened my back and forced my face into indiffer­ence and walked to the registration desk. The clock above said two forty-five. "Good afternoon. Where is the bar?" A round-faced young man dropped his eyes and pointed behind me.

  "Thank you."

  The crowd made an aisle and I walked through the silence, knowing that before I reached the lounge door, a knife could be slipped in my back or a rope lassoed around my neck.

  My mother sat at the bar wearing her Dobbs hat and tan suede suit. I set my case down inside the door and joined her.

  "Hi, baby," her smile was a crescent of white. "You're a little early." She knew I would be. "Jim?" And I knew she'd already have the bartender's name and his attention. The man grinned for her.

  "Jim, this is my baby. She's pretty, isn't she?"

  Jim nodded, never taking his eyes away from Mother. She leaned over and kissed me on the lips.

  "Give her a Scotch and water and another little taste for your­self."

  She caught him as he started to hesitate. "Don't refuse, Jim. No man can walk on one leg." She smiled, and he turned to prepare the drinks.

  "Baby, you're looking good. How was the drive? Still got that old Chrysler? Did you see those people in the lobby? They're so ugly they make you stop and think. How's Guy? Why are you going to New York? Is he happy about the move?

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  Jim set my drink down and lifted his in a toast.

  Mother picked up her drink. "Here's looking at you, Jim." And to me. "Here's a go, baby." She smiled and I saw again that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

  "Thanks, Mother."

  She took my hands, put them together and rubbed them.

  "You are cold. Hot as it is, your hands are freezing. Are you all right?"

  Nothing frightened my mother except thunder and lightning. I couldn't tell her that at thirty-one years old, the whites in the lobby had scared me silly.

  "Just fine, Mother. I guess it's the air conditioning."

  She accepted the lie.

  "Well, let's drink up and go to our room. I've got some talk for you."

  She picked up the bills from the bar, counted them and pulled out two singles.

  "What time do you come on, Jim?"

  The bartender turned and grinned. "I open up. At eleven every morning."

  "Then, I'll break your luck for you. Scotch and water, remem­ber. At eleven. This is for you."

  "Oh, you don't have to do that."

  Mother was off the stool. "I know. That's why it's easy. See you in the morning."

  I picked up my suitcase, followed her out of the dark bar into the noisy lobby. Again, the buzz of conversation diminished, but Mother never noticed. She switched through the crowd, up to the desk.

  "Mrs. Vivian Baxter Jackson and daughter. You have our reser­vation." My mother had married a few times, but she loved her maiden name. Married or not, she often identified herself as Vivian Baxter.

  It was a statement. "And please call the bellboy. My bag is in my car. Here are the keys. Set your bag down here, baby." Back

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  to the registration clerk. "And tell him to bring my daughter's case to our room." The clerk slowly pushed a form across the counter. Mother opened her purse, took out her gold Sheaffer and signed us in.

  "The key, please." Again using slow motion, the clerk slid the key to Mother.

  "Two ten. Second floor. Thank you. Come on, baby." The hotel's color bar had been lifted only a month earlier, yet she acted as if she had been a guest there for years. There was a winding staircase to the right of the desk and a small group of open-mouthed conventioneers standing by the elevator.

  I said, "Let's take the stairs, Mother."

  She said, "We're taking the elevator," and pushed the "up" button. The waiting people looked at us as if our very presence had stripped everything of value from their lives.

  When we got out of the elevator, mother took a moment, then turned and walked left to 210. She unlocked the door and when we entered, she threw her purse on the bed and walked to the window.

  "Sit down, baby. I'm going to tell you something you must never forget."

  I sat on the first chair as she opened the drapes. The sunlight framed her figure, and her face was indistinct.

  "Animals can sense fear. They feel it. Well, you know that human beings are animals, too. Never, never let a person know you're frightened. And a group of them ... absolutely never. Fear brings out the worst thing in everybody. Now, in that lobby you were as scared as a rabbit. I knew it and all those white folks knew it. If I hadn't been there; they might have turned into a mob. But something about me told them, if they mess with either of us, they'd better start looking for some new asses, 'cause I'd blow away what their mammas gave them."

  She laughed like a young girl. "Look in my purse." I opened her purse.

  "The Desert Hotel better be ready for integration, 'cause if it's not, I'm ready for the Desert Hotel."

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  Under her wallet, half hidden by her cosmetic case, lay a dark-blue German Luger.

  "Room service? This is two ten. I'd like a pitcher of ice, two glasses, and a bottle of Teachers Scotch. Thank you."

  The bellboy had brought our bags, and we had showered and changed.

  "We'll have a cocktail and go down for dinner. But now, let's talk. Why New York? You were there in '52 and had to be sent home. What makes you think it has changed?"

  "I met a writer, John Killens. I told him I wanted to
write and he invited me to New York."

  "He's colored, isn't he?" Since my first marriage to a Greek had dissolved, Mother had been hoping for a black son-in-law.

  "He's married, Mother. It's not like that."

  "That's terrible. First ninety-nine married men out of a hun­dred never divorce their wives for their girl friends, and the one that does will probably divorce the new wife for a newer girl friend."