Mom & Me & Mom Read online

  After an hour or so, we would make our selections. I would pay for the records and then we would go home. I would have just enough time to see him safely in the house before I had to report to my evening job at the Creole kitchen.

  One morning in the allergist office I picked up a slick women’s magazine and began reading an article titled “Is Your Child Really Allergic or Is It Possible She’s Not Getting Enough of Your Attention?”

  Guy was finished with the allergist before I was done reading the article. I asked the receptionist if I could take the magazine and told her I would bring it back at our next appointment. When she said yes, I put it in my bag and didn’t look at it until I finished my evening job. Back home I sat at the kitchen table and began to finish the article.

  The piece infuriated me. I was about to throw the magazine in the trash when my mother telephoned. I answered abruptly.

  She asked, “What is the matter?”

  I said, “I am sick of white women.”

  My mother asked, “What have they done to you now?”

  “It’s not just me. It’s just they think they know it all.”

  My mother said, “I’m on my way over there. Put some ice in a glass, please. I will bring my own Scotch.”

  I washed my face and brushed my hair and had the glass of ice ready when she rang the bell.

  When she stepped in the door I was ready for her to say, “Sit down, I have something to say.”

  Instead she asked to see the article I was reading. I gave her the magazine and poured myself a glass of wine. When she finished reading, she smiled and said, “What is it that made you so angry?”

  I said, “White women who have been white all their lives and are somewhat rich, have someone to pay all their bills, think that everybody is like them. I have to have two jobs and can hardly make it over and I am doing the best I can.”

  My mother said, “Sit down, I have something to say.”

  I had been expecting that and I sat down.

  She said, “I know you are too proud to borrow and you would never beg, but here is the truth: You have a child who is not well and you have a mother who loves you. I do not want to lend you any money but I do want to invest a thousand dollars in your future. This is not a loan, nor is it a gift. This is an investment.

  “I will expect you to start repaying me in three months. I expect you will be able to spend more time with your son. You must find another job that will pay well because I would like five percent interest on my money. I know you are fair and you know I am tough. Let’s forget about the white women and just think about ourselves.”

  I thanked her for her offer and the next morning, when I gave notice for the fry cook job, the owner of the second restaurant also gave me notice.

  Suddenly I had a large amount of money invested in me by my mother and no job. I walked Guy to school leisurely, rather than drop him off in a hurry as I did each morning. His happiness was contagious. I found myself giggling.

  He jumped, danced, and held my hand, tore away again, and ran to the corner and then back again. His cheer almost made me weep.

  When I picked him up at lunchtime, he insisted that I not walk on the cracks in the pavement. In fact, I had to jump as he jumped. I did so. His delight at seeing me jump made him giggle. His giggle tickled me and I jumped more and more.

  In two weeks, the allergies, which had caused him to itch so bad he would scratch his skin until it bled, ceased being an aggravation. In four weeks, the allergy sores healed.

  Fortune was smiling on me. I decided to help it along.

  I applied for a job at the Melrose Record Shop and was hired. The new job paid me a wondrous salary.

  My mother said her friends told her that I had once been seen jumping on the street with my son and playing as if I were a child. She said, “No, she was not playing. She was just being a good mother.”

  “Baby, I’ve been thinking and now I am sure. You are the greatest woman I’ve ever met.”

  16

  David Rubinstein was a Reform Jew. Louise Cox was a Christian Scientist and I was a CME and Baptist believer. Amazingly we not only got along very well, we liked each other. The record shop was the most complete music shop in the black neighborhood in the Fillmore District.

  Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis ruled the bebop roost. Count Basie, Joe Williams, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, and Sarah Vaughan starred in the popular rhythm-and-blues music. The old-timey blues singers managed their own section of the collection.

  I earned the title of knowing what musicians did what music and to what success, and as a result Dave and Louise gave me a raise before I expected it. I began paying Vivian Baxter back some of her money.

  Tosh Angelos was so handsome and dignified that he took my breath away. He wore crewneck sweaters, tweed pants, and buckskin shoes. Also, he knew as much about jazz and bebop as I. After he chose a stack of records, he casually asked me my name and I told him. He bought a few records, paid for them, and left the shop.

  Louise Cox said to me, “You really knocked his socks off.”

  I didn’t think that was funny because I didn’t think he had noticed me at all. Next week when he returned, he called me by my name and asked for more records. He played them, made his selection, paid for them, and left. On his third visit, Guy had been dropped off at the store. Tosh greeted me and asked if I was related to the five-year-old.

  I said, “He is my son.”

  Tosh asked, “Does he like music?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  He smiled and nodded and left the store.

  I asked Louise what she knew about him.

  “He is in the navy, of Greek descent, and is a graduate of the University of Oregon.”

  Weeks passed without any visit from Tosh. Louise said he might have gone out on the ship. I thought he might have found a better place to visit. After a few weeks, when I had given up on seeing him again, he entered the record shop in his naval uniform and asked if I would go out to dinner with him.

  I said yes and that I would ask my aunt to look after Guy. He said that the next time we went out we would take Guy, but the first time he wanted me to himself.

  On the first date Tosh blinded me with his brilliant wit and won my heart with his stories. The next four months the three of us or just Tosh and I visited every restaurant in the neighborhood and dined together. We played chess together, twenty questions, and parlor games.

  We found we liked each other and because he made me and Guy laugh, I felt myself looking anxiously forward to his arrival. One evening after dinner and a humorous game of twenty questions, Guy went to bed. Tosh and I were sitting drinking wine. I invited him to stay over. He was as gentle and passionate as I could have hoped. Our relationship became more intense. I was delighted, but not surprised.

  After a few weeks, he asked if I would marry him. I said I wanted to, but first I should speak to my mother. Mother had met Tosh on one of our evenings of parlor games and she had liked him, so when I told her I had something to say, she agreed to come to my house.

  After Guy had gone to bed I told her of Tosh’s proposal and that I had said yes. She was furious.

  “How can you talk about marrying a white man?” she asked.

  I said to her, “I thought you had no prejudices.”

  She said, “I don’t, but if you are going to marry a white man, it is just as easy to fall in love with a rich one as it is with a poor ass.”

  I said, “I didn’t ask how much money he had. I asked if he would love me, protect me, and help me raise my son.”

  She asked, “What did he say?”

  I said, “He said yes!”

  Vivian Baxter asked me, “And you believed him?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  She asked, “What’s going to happen to you? What the hell is he bringing you—the contempt of his people and the distrust of yours? That’s a helluva wedding gift.”

  Of cours
e, I was bringing him a mind crammed with a volatile mixture of insecurities and stubbornness, and a five-year-old son who had never known a father’s discipline.

  She asked me, “Do you love him?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Then tell me why you are going to marry him,” she said.

  Vivian Baxter appreciated honesty above all virtues.

  I told her, “Because he asked me, Mother.”

  She nodded, said, “All right, all right,” turned on her high heels, and strutted to the door. “Good luck.”

  The following week she called to tell me she was moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I asked Bailey to come over. I told him that Mother had broken my heart.

  He said, “You have broken her heart. She thought you knew enough to stay alone or marry a rich man.”

  I said, “None came calling.”

  He said, “Well, she’s going to move, but you have a brother and I will support you and I will call Tosh my brother.”

  17

  Tosh and I did get married. My mother did move to Los Angeles. Tosh found a commodious house with three bedrooms, a formal dining room and living room, and a large kitchen. The three of us were very comfortable in the semi-furnished house. We shopped for a kitchen stove, a refrigerator, and sofas for the living room. While I loved being a housewife, my heart ached for my mother’s presence.

  Bailey gave me her phone number and I telephoned her once. She said, “You know that I love you and that I hope you will be happy. You also know that I am not a liar, so I would not tell you that I expect you to be happy with the husband you have chosen. But I do hope that you will not be totally miserable.”

  For the most part, I fitted into married life as a foot fits into a well-worn shoe. Tosh asked me to leave the job at the record store. He said too many men were flirting with me and he was jealous. I had no inkling that his jealousy would grow dangerous. In fact, since no one had ever shown me such desire, I was flattered. So, at his suggestion, I applied for a job at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. I was hired as a file clerk. I took a dance class twice a month and shopped Saturdays in the large supermarket aisles. I cooked dinner every day with my new pots and my brand-new stove.

  We met some racially mixed couples and on Saturday nights, we sat in our living room playing twenty questions, charades, and drinking cheap wine. Tosh recognized that I missed my mother. He said, “I understand her. She doesn’t like whites.”

  I swore that was not the truth.

  He said, “She likes whites. She just doesn’t want her daughter married to one.”

  Guy and Tosh made good friends. He taught Guy chess and I bought new cookbooks and began to experiment on fancy dishes. Bailey and his live-in love, Yvonne, came at least once a week. My marriage left me wanting only for two things: my relationship with my mother and my relationship with my God.

  Tosh was an atheist. He had told me so while we were courting, but I was sure the Lord would help me change his mind. I was wrong. He said there was no God and that I was foolish to go to church. I was afraid that he would woo my son away from his religious teaching, and so whenever we were alone, I would tell Guy stories about Jesus and the miracles He had done. I taught him the beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Twenty-Third Psalm. When we were alone, I would test him on his memory. We would sing, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” I began an action which would become routine.

  Then I decided to be unfaithful to Tosh by going to a nearby church. One Sunday after I had made breakfast I put on my exercise sweat suit and said I was going for a walk. I went to Bailey and Yvonne’s house, where I had stashed Sunday clothes and shoes. At church the minister shouted and the people sang and I felt better having been in the house of the Lord. I returned to Yvonne and Bailey’s house and changed back into my sweats and walked home. The fact that I had lied in no way diminished my sense of righteousness.

  The marriage carriage was wheeling along. The bumps it encountered were caused by the facts that my mother never telephoned me and that twice a month I would steal off and go to church and lie about it.

  One morning Bailey telephoned me to say that our mother was coming home and she would like to see me. At first I said no. I wanted to show her I could be as tough as she was, but the hope, the desire to see her beautiful face and hear her laughter was too great for me to refuse her a visit.

  I asked Bailey if she would telephone me. The phone rang and she asked, “Baby, may I come to your house?”

  I said, “Please do. Come to dinner on Sunday.”

  She asked, “Shall I come after church?”

  I answered, “Yes.”

  I literally trembled with excitement. I knew she loved roast chicken with cornbread dressing and giblet gravy. I told Tosh and Guy that my mother was coming. Guy was happily excited.

  Tosh asked, “Has she forgiven me for being white?”

  I couldn’t answer.

  I bought a small bottle of Scotch and set the table. My mother arrived dressed elegantly as usual and she was accompanied by a nice-looking lady whom she introduced as Lottie Wells. She said Miss Wells was her close friend and a nurse and she would like me to think of her as my auntie.

  My mother’s smile was beautiful and so welcoming to my eyes that I forgot that she had abandoned me again. She held me for a long hug and when we broke our embrace her face was wet with tears.

  She said, “Baby, please forgive me. I don’t care if you marry a donkey; I will never walk off and leave you alone again. I have brought Lottie to meet you. I have told her so much about you and Guy and I want you all to get to know each other. You are both going to love her, I’m sure.”

  I was pleased to see Lottie’s face and see her tears of joy.

  I cried and the three of us embraced.

  Guy came running down the hallway. “Grama, Grama!”

  She kissed him and said, “My, how you have grown.”

  Tosh appeared. “Welcome,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”

  I know she could have said something sharp but I was very glad she didn’t. We went into the living room and she sat looking around, appraising the room, the furniture, the décor.

  I brought her and Aunt Lottie a Scotch and water; Tosh and I joined with wine. Guy had a glass of orange juice. We lifted the glasses to say skoal.

  She said, “I have something to say. Ignorance is a terrible thing. It causes families to lose their center and causes people to lose their control. Ignorance knows no binds. Old people, young people, middle-aged, black, white, can all be ignorant. I thought my daughter was throwing herself away. She has already had a rough life and I thought she was willingly being stupid. Now I hear her beautiful voice and I see how happy Guy is and I appreciate your beautiful home. Please accept my apologies and my thanks to you, Tosh Angelos. I admire you for loving my darling daughter.”

  Dinner was a knockout.

  “Dancing liberated me and even made me feel as if my body had a reason to be.”

  (Maya Angelou, George Faison [of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater], and Vivian Baxter at Maya Angelou’s Valley Road home, circa 1986)

  18

  When I was fifteen years old, I received a scholarship to attend the California Labor School. I studied dance there and it gave me a pleasure I had never known. Music urged my body to move and glide and lift and I followed its persuasion without resistance. I took free lessons as often as I could and when it was deemed that I had grown to an age where lessons had a price, I saved money stingily to afford rent, babysitter, food, records, and dance class. Sometimes I had enough money to take two classes in a month, and at other times, squeezing the eagle until it squawked, I managed to take one class a week.

  I stopped dance class for the first few months of married life. My time was filled with learning the ways of my husband and watching the relationship that was developing between him and my son.

  I returned to dance, spending on
ly one evening per month. Tosh asked if he could visit the class. I welcomed him and he brought Guy along. I changed into a leotard and entered the classroom to see them sitting on folding chairs along the wall.

  They waited until the class finished. We rode home together. Tosh said, “Obviously you are the best in the class—better than the teacher.”

  I was so pleased with the compliment.

  For a few months, Tosh accepted the fact that I enjoyed dance. But I found he was less than happy one day when he said he wanted us to go to an Italian restaurant for dinner.

  He was surprised when I told him I would not be free for dinner because I had signed up for a dance class. He asked if I was planning a career as a dancer. I said no, but told him the dancing liberated me and even made me feel as if my body had a reason to be. He assured me that that should never be my question. We both laughed at his insinuation and spoke no more about dance class.

  Later, Tosh came out of the bathroom slamming the door behind him. I asked what was wrong. We had had no real arguments before. He said the towels were damp and there was no pleasure in trying to dry oneself with a damp towel. I told him we had dry towels and I would have brought him one if he had let me know. He said none of the towels were really dry because I didn’t take the time to dry them properly.

  I said nothing but went to the linen closet and was shocked to find all the towels damp and on the floor.

  I asked, “How did the towels get on the floor?”

  He answered, “I put them there because they were not dry.”

  I said, “I had dried them myself.”

  He said, “You never had the time to be a proper housewife because you spent too much time in the dance studio.”

  I asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  He was zipping his pants and buttoning his shirt. He said, “You are never going to be a professional dancer, so I don’t understand why you’re playing with dance. Guy and I need your attention and we deserve it.”