A Song Flung Up to Heaven Page 7

  No, I didn’t ask, but I was extremely glad they had come.

  Fourteen

  Despite acres of ravaged city blocks and hulks of burned-out cars, Los Angeles seemed to have settled back into a satisfied-with-itself air. The cauldron still simmered in a few quarters, but the energy was spent and it would not boil over again anytime soon.

  I had finished writing my play, and I asked Frank Silvera for advice. “Find a producer and give it to him. It will be his job to find the money, the theater, a director and a cast.”

  I said to him that he had not had to use those tactics; he had done everything himself.

  He reminded me that he was the owner, producer and director of Tee Oh Bee.

  I searched diligently for a producer, but there was a dearth of them interested in a new play by an unknown playwright who also happened to be black and female. Few would even read the manuscript. Coming out of the shadow of the Watts revolt, they thought the plot would lean heavily on racial unrest.

  My plot in “All Day Long,” admittedly slight, was based on one day in the life of a poor thirteen-year-old black boy who was relocated to the North. Among his many travails were the difficulty of understanding the Northern accent and comprehending how a sofa could secretly contain a bed larger than any he had ever seen.

  In my play, the boy worked through his befuddlement at flushing toilets (where did it all go?), the mystery of a refrigerator that stayed cold without a block of ice in it and the gift of fresh water that came through hardened silver tubes. A slim idea, but I remembered my own stupefaction when Bailey and I returned to California as teenagers after ten years in the rural South. In Arkansas we had drawn water from a well, and for baths we had heated it on a wood-burning stove. We slept on mattresses stuffed with feathers from chickens we raised and killed and ate, and used a shack away from the house as a toilet.

  So a foldout sofa and an indoor toilet had been miracles of modernity to me. I found no one interested enough to produce “All Day Long.”

  Back to the library. I had to learn how to produce. All I discovered there was that producing meant having money, and most of the people I knew had very little; the few who were well-off weren’t interested in my play.

  Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana, was deposed while on a visit to China. It appeared that the time was out of joint, which meant that even if I wanted to return to Africa, Ghana was out of the question for me. I had been a devout Nkrumaist.

  In just two years, Malcolm had been murdered and the Watts conflagration had left a roster of arrestees, hundreds homeless and many hurt. My once great love affair hadn’t worked out the second time, and now a person I had supported and admired was in exile from his country. I knew how Africans build their lives around their land, their families and friends. I wept for Kwame Nkrumah, for Ghana, for Africa, and some tears were for me.

  Fifteen

  I sensed my friend Nichelle pulling away from me. I knew I was tenderhearted and a little paranoid, but I felt that she disapproved of me for sending the African away. I thought that she believed I was too hasty in letting go of the man who seemed to her to have been so desirable for me. He had status, intelligence, money and charisma. I might not do better than that anywhere.

  Beah Richards was my neighbor, and we were friendly but never close friends. Professor M. J. Hewitt, a beautiful green-eyed friend with whom I was close, had found a great love and gone off to South America with him.

  I noted the signs and determined that the time had come for me to be moving on.

  My deliberations were focused on where to go. San Francisco didn’t beckon, Hawaii held nothing for me. I began to look at New York.

  I telephoned Bailey, who had moved back from Hawaii to San Francisco. “Of course, go to New York. As long as you don’t get involved in the politics.”

  Mother came to the phone and said, “That’s all right. But don’t forget you can always come home.”

  A letter from the African’s elderly lady friend in New York helped me decide definitely that I should head back East. Dolly McPherson wrote:

  Dear Miss Angelou,

  I am going into the hospital for surgery. I’ll probably take a month to completely recover, but if you want to come to New York, I’ll try to help you get settled. Possibly I can help you find employment if you need it.

  Our African friend told me so much about you I can hardly wait to get to know you. If you’d like to send me your resume, I’ll be glad to look it over and see how I might be of help.

  Yours,

  Dolly McPherson

  The friendliness in the letter made me bless the sweetness of old black women. I began to look forward to meeting her. I was sure she would invite me to her church. And of course I’d be glad to go.

  I had started packing and deciding to whom I would give away household goods when Rosa Guy telephoned me from New York. She was my friend from the Harlem Writers Guild, and she had finished her book Bird at My Window. She wanted to come to California and promote it. I told her that if she could come soon, I would arrange a book signing and introduce her to bookstore owners. One week later Rosa arrived in Los Angeles wearing her New York air as casually as a well-worn cape that fitted her perfectly. She told me how all our New York City friends were faring, and the conversation made me think more about that hard and demanding and most glamorous city in the world.

  Her novel of a dysfunctional relationship between a mother and son was gripping and sold well at the black-owned Aquarian bookstore. She could take a California success story back to New York.

  Rosa was delighted when I told her that I was planning to return to New York. “Certainly, come to New York, you can stay with me. I have a big apartment uptown.”

  Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach had moved from Columbus Avenue to Central Park West. Their new apartment had an extra room. Abbey offered it to me over the telephone. Now I had two places I could stay.

  Couples rarely know how much their togetherness shuts others out, and even if they did, there would be nothing they could do, save make everyone painfully self-conscious.

  Rosa always had a string of devoted gentlemen friends, but since I had known her, she had not been the other half in a double arrangement—which seemed to say “We are together and you, third person, are invisible most of the time.”

  I accepted Rosa’s offer and continued packing.

  Everything said about the capricious nature of life and the best-laid plans is patently true. Just as I chose a departure date, my doorbell rang. When I opened the door, Bailey stood on the landing, his face grave.

  “Baby, Guy returned to San Francisco three days ago, and I’ve come for you. He’s in the hospital. He is in serious condition but not a life-threatening one. Get what you need.” Surprise, whether good or bad, can have a profound effect on the body. Some people faint, some cry aloud. Bailey caught me as my knees buckled. He helped me back in the room to a chair.

  Rosa asked what happened.

  Bailey said, “Guy was sitting in a parked car that was hit by an out-of-control truck. Mother wanted to telephone you and tell you to fly up to San Francisco. I said no, that I would drive down and get you.” He turned to Rosa. “Do you want to come with us, or will you wait till Maya gets back?”

  Rosa said she was already packed and could fly home out of San Francisco as easily as out of Los Angeles. She would come with us.

  In a few ragged minutes we were walking to Bailey’s car. He handed me his car keys. “You drive.”

  “No, you know me. I might fall asleep.”

  “I drove all night to get here. Take the keys. You have me and your good friend in the car and you are trying to get to your son. Just remember.”

  I took the keys.

  My passengers never awakened even when I stopped for gas.

  Seven hours later I parked in front of Mother’s house in San Francisco, and they woke up as if by plan.

  Mother was waiting.

  “He is stable. I’ve been t
alking to the doctors.” She showed Rosa to a guest room and encouraged her to get some rest, adding that we would return soon. Mother drove her large car to the hospital.

  Guy was ashen and looked like a grown man in the hospital bed. He was awake.

  “Hello, my son.”

  “Hello, Mom.”

  He was stiff in our embrace. “I can’t move much. My neck. It’s broken again.”

  Suddenly I felt guilty. I had not been in the truck that hit him. In fact, I was not even in the same city where the accident occurred, and yet I felt guilty.

  When something goes wrong with offspring, inevitably the parent feels guilty. As if some stone that needed turning had been left unturned. In the case of a physical handicap, the mother feels that when her body was building the infant, it shirked its responsibility somewhere.

  I stood looking at my son, wondering where I had failed. I knew I would stay near until he recovered. I also knew that staying around Vivian Baxter would be strengthening.

  She had a litany of morale-building sayings. “Keep your eyes on the road, your hand on the plow, your finger in the dike, your shoulder to the wheel, and push like hell.” My mother would issue the statements as if from the godhead, and it was up to the hearer to fathom the meaning.

  After a few days, Rosa left San Francisco for New York.

  I visited Guy every day and watched as he slowly revived. I was right in my earlier observation. He was a grown-up stranger who reminded me of my son.

  He said the University of Ghana had given him all it had to give. No, he wasn’t sorry to leave Ghana, and although he had made some enemies, he had also made some friends he would keep for his lifetime.

  As soon as he was well, he’d find work. Of course he would. He had had his first job at thirteen as a stacking boy in a Brooklyn bakery.

  He would stay with his grandmother when he was released from the hospital. She would give him a roomful of her aphorisms. “Take care of your own business. Everybody else’s business will not be your business.” “Look to the hills from whence cometh your help.” “You can tell a person by the company he keeps.” “Never let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” Always adding that “each tub must sit on its own bottom.”

  I left San Francisco when I saw Guy sitting up like a golden prince and being served like a king in my mother’s house.

  Sixteen

  Leaving Los Angeles was harder than I expected.

  Human beings are like some plants. If we pause a few seconds in our journey, we begin setting down roots, tendrils that entangle other people as we ourselves are entangled.

  Don Martin and Jimmy Truitt of the Lester Horton Dance School had been especially kind to me. When I took classes with them, they were careful not to let me appear ungainly, although I was fifteen years older than the other students. They deserved the courtesy of a farewell.

  I was indebted to the Tee Oh Bee people as well as to Seymour Lazar, a Hollywood lawyer who had been generous with his advice and who gave me a nearly new car when mine refused to run another mile.

  M. J. Hewitt had returned copper-colored from her South American trip and was full of stories I longed to hear. My friend Ketty Lester, a nightclub entertainer who sang as if she had a wind chime in her mouth, had to receive a good-bye.

  I asked the help of Frances, Nichelle and Beah, and together we gave me a going-away party that spilled out of my house into Beah’s, then into the big backyard where ripe figs from a huge tree made walking messy.

  I looked at Los Angeles anew and saw the fun I was having. I thought that leaving the town just as I was beginning to appreciate it might not be the best idea I had ever had. Then I remembered another of Vivian Baxter’s truisms: “Take as much time as you need to make up your mind, but once it is made up, step out on your decision like it’s something you want.”

  After I had survived the ugly rebellious years of “What can she possibly know that I don’t?” I had followed my mother’s advice to the letter and had not found her in error even once. I telephoned Guy to ask, “Are you going to be all right?” His tone was sincerely tender. “Mom, stop worrying. I’m your son and I’m a man.”

  When I pulled together the money I had been saving, it proved enough to get me to New York and keep me for at least two months. I’d have a job by that time.

  Seventeen

  Rosa’s Upper West Side apartment was luxurious. The rooms were large and the ceilings so high that the place reminded me of the Victorian houses of San Francisco. The furniture was comfortable and the kitchen extraordinary, with the huge pots and outsize pans of a serious cook who was also a dedicated party giver.

  People loved Rosa’s parties for the food and her ability to make each person feel that with her or his arrival, the party could begin.

  We quickly agreed that I would share expenses and cooking as long as I was there but that I would be looking with focused attention for my own apartment.

  I had been in New York less than a week when Rosa decided to give a party. I asked if I could invite Dolly McPherson. Since she was an elderly woman, I wanted to ask her for around seven-thirty.

  “Your friends won’t be coming till around nine or ten. We’ll have a drink and then she can get home before it’s too late.”

  Rosa said that was all right with her.

  African friends from the United Nations kept Rosa’s liquor cabinet filled with a full complement of the most desired spirits, but she always insisted on buying her own wines. I was assisting with the cooking of banquet dishes when the doorbell rang.

  I said to Rosa, “That must be Miss McPherson.”

  I had only to open the door to see how wrong I was. A beautiful young dark-brown-skinned woman wearing a lime-green dress stood before me.

  Maybe one of Rosa’s early guests. I said, “Good evening.”

  She said, “I am here to see Miss Angelou.”

  I said, “I am Miss Angelou.”

  She said, “You can’t be. I mean, I am here to see the older Miss Angelou, maybe your mother.”

  I said, “I am the only Miss Angelou here.”

  We stared at each other for a few seconds.

  I asked, “Are you Miss McPherson?”

  She nodded, and we started to laugh at the same time.

  She said, “The old goat.”

  We were still laughing when we sat down in the living room.

  She asked, “What did he tell you about me?” I told her that the African had said she was an old but very intelligent woman who had been helpful to him.

  “He could rightly say that. He courted me seriously and spent quite a few nights at my apartment.”

  It was my turn to say, “The old goat. And what did he tell you about me?”

  “That you were very old and that you owned a house where you let rooms. He said you were one of those African-Americans who felt they had found something in Ghana, and you always had a soft spot for Africans in general and Ghanaians in particular.”

  Now I wanted to use a word more descriptive of the African than “goat,” but the situation seemed so funny to me, and to Dolly as well, that even over drinks and throughout the party, whenever I caught her eye, we were both rendered speechless by laughter. We were both intelligent women who had been had by the same man. In more ways than one.

  Eighteen

  I knew there would be no peace for me until I visited the Audubon Ballroom. Until I let the grisly scene play out in front of me.

  The dance hall and theater had been famous for decades. When I had gone visiting in the fifties, I often imagined Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps and Zora Neale Hurston dancing the Charleston to the big-band music of Jimmy Lunceford, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.

  Time passed and took away the popularity of orchestra music, the big bands and public dancing. When I went on my nostalgic walk to the ballroom in 1967, New York City had begun the process of condemning the Audubon. Its meager reserve was realized from renting the premises to organi
zations, conventions, councils and committees.

  On February 21, 1965, the Organization of African-American Unity had rented the ballroom for a fund-raiser. Malcolm X had been the speaker.

  I approached the building slowly. The windows were dusty and the doors barred. As I tried to peer into the vast emptiness, the questions that crouched just beyond my conscious mind came full force.

  Had I stayed in New York when I returned from Ghana, would I have been sitting with Betty Shabazz and her children?

  Would I have heard the final words of Malcolm X?

  Would I have heard the shots puncture the air?

  Would I have seen the killers’ faces and had them etched in my mind eternally?

  I could see no shadow inside; no chimera arose and danced.

  I walked away.

  Nineteen

  I had sung in Jerry Purcell’s swank supper club once, and although I was not looking for nightclub work, I telephoned him. He invited me for dinner. We had been good friends, and I thought he might have some idea where I could find work. We met at his Italian restaurant, the Paparazzi.

  He was still a big, movie-star-handsome man who walked as if he were heavier from his waist down than from his waist up. We greeted each other as old friends. I told him I was staying with a friend and that I was still writing poetry, but I longed to write plays and my money was disappearing faster than I had expected.

  At that moment Jerry began to grow angel’s wings. He said, “I’m in management now, and I am doing well.”

  He rose often from the table to greet customers and to speak to his staff, but he always returned, smiling. He was more affable than I remembered.