THE HEART OF A WOMAN

CHAPTER 19

Guy graduated from high school and then took a knapsack and joined Egyptian friends for a trek in the Sahara. My friendship with Kebi and Banti became stronger. More women were hired in my office and some found my presence incongruous and unacceptable. I spoke halting Arabic, smoked cigarettes openly, was not a Muslim, and was an American on top of that. On the day when President Kennedy and Khrushchev had their confrontation over the independence of Cuba, in the hours when the next world war hung like an unpaid debt over our heads, no one spoke to me. The male employees ignored me; as if by a time warp we were all returned to my first day at the Arab Observer. The women were openly hostile. Papers which they needed to bring to my desk were handed over by the coffee server or the copy boy. Actions by people thousands of miles away, men who didn't know I was alive and whose sympathy I would never expect, influenced my peace, and rendered me odious. Kennedy was an American, and so was I. I didn't have the language to explain that being a black American was qualitatively different from being an American. I worried like everyone else, but made myself scarce in the office.

Vus was trying and so was I, but neither of us was able to infuse vitality into our wilting marriage. He steadily gained weight as I became thinner. Indifference became the mattress we lay on, so our sexual sharings disintegrated into unsatisfying periods of hasty and uncomfortable rubbings.

I had promised to stay for six months and we both felt the time was dragging.

Banti and Kebi found excuses to send their drivers to my house bearing food and crates of liquor. Accompanying notes stated that they had overordered or simply had no more storage room.

I became more dependent on our friendship. I spent nearly every evening in the company of one or the other or both of the sisterly women. When we talked, they told amusing tales of home, of their families, of the husbands they loved, of the children, of a merciful God and sometimes of their private fantasies. Vus was never mentioned.

After five months I began to think about my future and Guy's placement in an African school. Ghana's university was known to be the best institution of higher learning on the continent. I thought I'd be very lucky to enroll him there. I had no contacts in Ghana, but I did have Joe Williamson as a brother. I went to him.

"Joe, I'm leaving."

He showed no surprise.

"I want to go to West Africa. I want to place Guy in the University of Ghana and I need a job."

He nodded.

"And I need your help."

He nodded again and said he had been expecting my decision and had prepared for it. There was an offer of a job from the Liberian Department of Information, based on a white paper on Liberia which I had written for the United Arab Republic. He got up from his desk and hugged me.

"Sister, you will be an asset to Liberia."

Vus accepted my departure with undisguised relief. We had worn our marriage threadbare, and it was time to discard it. He would get tickets on United Arab Airlines. He had friends in Ghana we could stay with for a few days. If I got into trouble I could always count on him. I could have any of the furniture, which was now paid for, sent on to Liberia.

I thanked him for the plane arrangements and refused the furniture. I knew that other women would be in the house before the sheets lost my body's heat. He grinned and hugged me.

I had taken Guy into my confidence as far as was possible with a proud, distant seventeen-year-old boy. He knew that for the past year I had been unhappy. After the palaver, I had told him we would remain in Cairo for at least six more months, and he would have time to finish school.

He wanted to have a party. All his friends would come. Would Vus and I leave him the house for a few hours? Would Omanadia cook chicken and lamb and rice her special way? Maybe he could borrow records from the Williamsons and wouldn't it be all right if he served a little beer? His sudden jollity made me perceive how much he had been affected by our pleasureless home. I realized that it had been a long time since I had seen that wide innocent smile, or his fine dark eyes shine.

Banti and Joe gave us a farewell party. Kebi and Jarra prepared an authentic Ethiopian dinner for a merry crowd. David DuBois took us all out to an opulent restaurant near the pyramids. I had a goodbye lunch with Hanifa Fathy and her friends, and the day finally arrived to leave Cairo.

Guy held my hand on the plane. He leaned near and whispered, "It'll be O.K., Mom. Don't cry. I love you, Mom. Lots of people love you."

I made no attempt to explain that I was not crying because of a lack of love, or certainly not the loss of Vus's affection. I was mourning all my ancestors. I had never felt that Egypt was really Africa, but now that our route had taken us across the Sahara, I could look down from my window seat and see trees, and bushes, rivers and dense forest. It all began here. The jumble of poverty-stricken children sleeping in rat-infested tenements or abandoned cars. The terrifying moan of my grandmother, "Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more." The drugged days and alcoholic nights of men for whom hope had not been born. The loneliness of women who would never know appreciation or a mite's share of honor. Here, there, along the banks of that river, someone was taken, tied with ropes, shackled with chains, forced to march for weeks carrying the double burden of neck irons and abysmal fear. In that large clump of trees, looking like wood moss from the plane's great height, boys and girls had been hunted like beasts, caught and tethered together. Sacrificial lambs on the altar of greed. America's period of orgiastic lynchings had begun on yonder broad savannah.

Every ill I knew at home, each hateful look on a white face, each odious rejection based on skin color, the mockery, the disenfranchisement, the lamentations and loud wailing for a lost world, irreclaimable security, all that long-onerous journey to misery, which had not ended yet, had begun just below our plane. I wept. Guy rose from time to time to bring fresh Kleenex, and I didn't dare speak to him of my thoughts. I would not make a sound. If I opened my mouth, I might not be able to close it again. Screams would pierce the air and I would race the aisles like a mad thing.

I cramped my lips together until the seam between them meshed, and allowed, as my only expression, the warm tears gliding like honey down my face.

The airport at Accra sounded like an adult playground and looked like a festival. Single travelers, wearing Western suits or dresses which would be deemed fashionable in New York, were surrounded by hordes of well-wishers, swathed in floral prints or the rich plaid silk of Kente cloth. Languages turned the air into clouds of lusty sound. The sight of so many black people stirred my deepest emotions. I had been away from the colors too long. Guy and I grinned at each other and turned to see a sight which wiped our faces clean. Three black men walked past us wearing airline uniforms, visored caps, white pants and jackets whose shoulders bristled with epaulettes. Black pilots? Black captains? It was 1962. In our country, the cradle of democracy, whose anthem boasted "the land of the free, the home of the brave," the only black men in our airports fueled planes, cleaned cabins, loaded food or were skycaps, racing the pavement for tips. Guy nudged me and I turned to see another group of African officers walking unconcerned toward the gate which opened out on the tarmac.

Ghana was the place for my son to go to college. My toby (the Southern black word for a lucky talisman), had "hunched me right." Guy would be able to weigh his intelligence and test his skills without being influenced by racial discrimination.

We passed through customs, delighted to have our bags examined by black people. Our taxi driver was black. The dark night seemed friendly to me, and when the cab's lights illuminated a pedestrian, I saw a black face. By the time we reached the address Vus had given me, a knot in my stomach, which had bunched all my remembered life, had unfurled. I realized I hadn't seen a white face for over an hour. The feeling was light and extremely strange.

We stopped in front of a rambling white bungalow, which looked eerily fluorescent in the black night. A short reserved man answered Guy's knock. He welcomed us in and told us that he was Walter Nthia, and after embracing us both, showed us to rooms in the rear of the house. I joined him quickly in the living room to assure him that we didn't plan to stay long. I needed no more than a week to get my son's schooling arranged and get him a place to stay on campus, and I had to hurry on to Liberia, where I had a job waiting in the Department of Information.

Walter said Bro Vus was the pride of the PAC, and that my reputation had preceded me. We could stay as long as necessary. He was an economist, working for the Ghanaian government, was divorced and lived alone. He didn't entertain much, but he had asked a few South Africans and black Americans resident in Ghana to come that evening to greet us.

The visitors came together. There was a tall thin Yoruba man and his Canadian wife, who were introduced as Richard and Ellen, a South African man, whose name I could not decipher, and three black Americans. Frank, with his coppertone skin, smile of spaced teeth and merry eyes, hugged us as if we were cousins. Vickie Garvey was short, pretty. Her black hair lay in soft curls and she shook hands firmly, and spoke directly. Alice Windom took my heart the moment I saw her. She spoke in a Midwestern accent, and laughed as if she had a small cough. Her skin was dark-brown dusted black and her black eyes looked bluntly, unblinking. She had the prettiest legs I've ever seen.

We drank the brought gin, and I told them what I knew about Egypt. When I started talking I noticed that because of my friends and my husband, I knew more about Liberia, Ethiopia, South Africa and Tanzania than I knew of Cairo. They were all interested in politics and when they began speaking of Kwame Nkrumah, the President of Ghana, the Osagyefo, their eyes glistened and their speech was filled with glowing compliments.

"Why are you going to Liberia? It's backward. Stay in Ghana." Alice's question and invitation were seconded.

"Yes. Ghana is the place."

"Kwame Nkrumah is man pass man. Iron cut iron."

Guy caught on and explained, "He is a man who surpasses other men. An iron so strong that it cuts iron."

Frank clapped Guy on the shoulder. "You're smart, little brother. I'm glad you're going to stay, at least."

Vickie asked if I knew Julian Mayfield and if I knew that he and his wife lived in Accra. Julian, James Baldwin, Rosa Guy, John Killens and I had spent many nights until dawn, arguing, drinking, explaining and complaining in Paule Marshall's apartment.

Alice said I had been invited to Julian's house the next evening.

Richard and Ellen added little to the general conversation except to invite me and Guy to a picnic, two days later. They said everyone would be there. The man hadn't charmed me and his wife was dry as old bread. I declined their offer saying we were too tired. But Guy spoke up. "Mother has spoken for herself. I'll be happy to go."

Everyone in the room, including me, knew that I had been out of line. My son was bigger than anyone there, and nearly grown, and I had acted as if he were still a little boy. In the silence in which I left them, Richard, Ellen and Guy made their arrangements. They could come by early in the morning of the picnic. He didn't need to bring anything. All he had to do was be ready.

Frank promised to come and take me and Guy to Julian's house the next day. When they all left I was a little envious. They were in an exciting country at an exciting time. Kwarne Nkrumah was the African hero. He had wedded Marxism to the innate African socialism, and was as loved by black people all over the world as he was hated and feared by whites in power. But Joe Williamson had called in debts to get me a job in Monrovia, and I had given my word that I would go there and make him proud. I couldn't change my fate.

Julian Mayfield had the looks to flutter a young girl's heart. He was tall, broad, black, witty, handsome and was married. Anna Livia Cordero Mayfield was a small dark-eyed beautiful Puerto Rican medical doctor, who was as opinionated as a runaway train on a downhill slope.

Our reunion was feverish with greetings and news. We retold old stories and exchanged new tales. Anna Livia gave me the names of people to see at the university. Julian promised to accompany me to the offices. We ended the evening howling at Julian's outguessing the American vigilantes, and making his circuitous way to African asylum. The crowd found Guy's importuning intelligence amusing, although I did not, and Julian said I could go to Liberia with a free mind. He would keep an eye on my son. He added, "Now, listen, boy, Ghanaian young folks call everybody six months older than themselves auntie or uncle. I'll look after you, but big and rusty as you are, don't you ever make the mistake of calling me 'Uncle Julian.' I'll be your big brother, and that's all." We all laughed and hugged and chose hours and dates to meet again.

Frank deposited us at Walter's. Guy and I said curt good nights. I had been less than pleased at his arrogant insistence into the adult conversation. He was displeased at my displeasure.

When I awakened the next morning, his bedroom was empty. Richard and Ellen had gathered him for their picnic, and Walter had left the house.

I spent the day examining Guy's clothes. Separating the things which could be mended, setting aside the jeans which were only good for dust cloths. I hung up his two good suits, in preparation for our trip to the university. I only unpacked two dresses and my underclothes. I would be leaving in such a short time, I would save the African three-piece outfits Banti had given me. She had vouched that by wearing them, I would travel through Liberian society as a Liberian.

I cooked, ate, folded clothes, read the titles in Walter's bookcase until dark.

At about six o'clock, I began to feel uncomfortable, edgy. I felt as if I had forgotten a commitment or stepped on and crushed some precious thing. I went into the kitchen and found Walter's bottle of gin. I was accustomed to drinking in company, but drinking alone had never appealed to me. I poured a small jelly glass to the rim with gin.

I was sipping the strong liquor when the doorbell rang. Alice Windom stood on the steps, with Frank standing behind her.

"Hey, Maya. I guess we're first. The rest will be here in a little while." I admitted them into the house and poured glasses of fruit juice, since neither of the two drank alcohol. I saw my gin glass was empty and refilled it.

We sat relaxed in the living room. Frank, unable to keep his eyes from Alice's face, or body or legs, talked about the picnic in episodes.

"Plenty food. Lots of good food. Right, Alice!"

She didn't quite smile, just adjusted her jaw muscles and showed a little teeth.

"Folk enjoyed themselves, had a good time. Right, Alice?"

She offered another friendly grimace to the room.

I asked, "What time do you think Guy will come home?"

Alice answered. "We passed them at Winneba. Richard got drunk at the picnic, so Guy was driving. They should be here in the next few minutes."

My mind adapted to her statement. If Guy was driving, everything was all right. His first driving lessons had been taken in a tired Citroen, along the crowded streets of Cairo. There was no question that he could handle a car.

Tires gusted on the driveway.

Alice said, "Here they are. They've arrived."

The old Arkansas toby, unimpressed by spanned oceans, quivered under my skin. I rose immediately and went to Guy's room and collected his passport. Across the tiny hall I found my passport and money and waited while Alice opened the door.

A short exchange of mumbles wavered down the passageway. Suddenly a voice cut through.

"Where is his mother? Isn't his mother here!"

I slid our passports and the English pounds I had collected into my bra and stepped out into the hall. Ellen was in the living room, tousled and covered with blood. When she saw me she screamed.

"Maya, it wasn't our fault. Nobody else was hurt, and anyway he's still alive." I understood every word and intent of her hysteric speech, and continued walking until I stood close to her red-spotted face. I came from a race used to violence and habituated to loss.

"Where is my son, Ellen? I need to go there now." I used the control I remembered in my grandmother's voice when she heard of a lynching.

Ellen was sobbing on Alice's shoulder. "He's in Karle Bu Hospital. But I swear, he was still breathing."

When we got into the car I asked Ellen to stop whimpering. It was neither her life nor her son. We rode to the hospital quickly, and in a quiet broken only by Ellen's intermittent snuffles and snorts.

Karle Bu's emergency ward was painfully bright. I started down the corridor and found myself in a white tunnel, interrupted by a single loaded gurney, resting against a distant wall. I walked up to the movable table and saw my son, stretched his full length under white sheets. His rich golden skin paled to ash-grey. His eyes closed and his head at an unusual angle.

I took my arm away from Alice's grasp and told Katie to stop her stupid snuffling. When they backed away, I looked at my son, my real life. He was born to me when I was seventeen. I had taken him away from my mother's house when he was two months old, and except for a year I spent in Europe without him, and a month when he was stolen by a deranged woman, we had spent our lives together. My grown life lay stretched before me, stiff as a pine board, in a strange country, blood caked on his face and clotted on his clothes.

Richard came up behind me and grabbed my shoulders. I turned and nearly suffocated in the breath of old whiskey and rotten teeth.

"Maya, it was not my fault."

He slurred the words out of wet dripping lips. My control fled. I reached for him, for his throat, his eyes, his nose, but before I could get my hands on him, I felt hands stroking my back, holding my waist.

"Sister, please. Please. Exercise patience."

I turned to see a strange couple, old and sweet-faced with wisdom.

They continued. "This is your son?" I nodded. "Sister, we found him on the side of the road. We brought him to Karle Bu."

Their kindness cracked my armor. I screamed and they gathered me in their arms. "Sister, look at him. He's still breathing."

They forced me to face the long body and I saw the chest rising and falling in calm rhythm.

"Sister, please say thanks to God." The woman still held my waist and the man held my hands.

"He was hit by a truck. His car was stopped, the motor was off. If he had been moving, your son would be dead."

"We arrived and the folks in the car had pulled him out and laid him beside the road."

"We saw the wreck and picked him up and brought him to Karle Bu."

"Now thank God that he's alive."

I looked over at my unconscious son and said, "I thank God. And I thank you."

The couple embraced me, and walked over to my baby. A nurse appeared. "Who is responsible here?"

I said, "I am responsible. I am his mother."

She was efficient and without tenderness. "You both are black American l " I nodded, wondering if our place of birth would have as negative an impact in Ghana as our color had in our homeland. She rattled her spiel, "He must have X-rays. One of our X-ray technicians is also a black American. 1 will call him, but you must register down the hall and make payments at the cashier's desk."

1 didn't want to leave Guy unattended in the hall. 1 looked for the Ghanaian couple but they had disappeared.

"I'll stay with him, Maya." Alice put her hand on my arm. Her face was just solemn enough to let me know she was serious, but not so gloomy as to add to my building hysteria.

1 finished the registration and hastened after a line of people who paraded behind my son's gurney. The X-ray technician and 1 exchanged names. He pointed the cart on which Guy lay toward a door.

We entered. The drunken Richard, his apologetic mousy wife, Alice and a few whose faces 1 didn't know, lounged against the wall. The technician dismissed all the visitors except Alice and me.

"I'll need someone to hold him and to position him. He's unconscious, but I've got to X-ray his whole body."

Alice and 1 slid Guy's heavy body onto a new table. We shifted him, turned him, placed his arms neatly at his sides, arranged his legs, positioned his head until every inch of his body had been exposed to the baleful eye of the X-ray machine. We pushed him back onto the rolling tray, and 1 asked the technician to step aside.

"How long will he be unconscious?"

"1 can't tell you. 1 think he's in shock. But he may be in a coma. The picture will be back tomorrow. Come back in the morning. Maybe there'll be some news." Two nurses met us at the door and wheeled Guy quickly down the hall. 1 started to follow, but Alice touched my arm.

"Let them have him. They'll make him comfortable. That's their business."

I watched the gurney disappear, carrying away the closest person in the world to me.

I went back to Walter's house and made a pot of coffee. I drank cup after cup, cooling the boiling liquid with gin. Alice went home, Walter went to bed, but at dawn I found a phone directory and called a taxi.

In the clear day, the hospital looked like a normal hospital. I was shown to Guy's room, he recognized me and my spirits soared.

"Hi, Mom, what happened?"

His voice was faint and his skin color of a hot-house lemon.

I told him about the accident, but before I could finish the story, he had drifted back into unconsciousness. I sat for an hour, willing him to awareness, wiping his face with the edge of his pillow case. Worrying if he was going to die, and wondering how I could go on, where I could go, what I would have to live for if he died.

A doctor met me outside the room.

"You are Mrs. Angelou?" (I had written my old name on the admission form.)

'Yes, Doctor, how is he l Will he live?"

"He has a broken arm, broken leg and possible internal injuries. But he is young. I think he will come through."

I spent the day in Guy's room, watching him slide in and out of consciousness. When I took a taxi to Julian's house, it was because the nurses had pointedly asked me to leave. Visiting hours were posted and everyone had to observe them.

Anna Livia opened the door, and I collapsed in her arms. She had heard about the accident and when the hysteria dissipated, she said that although she was not assigned to Korle Bu Hospital, she would make a visit to Guy that evening. I should go get a night's sleep. She dropped me at Walter's house. The door leading to Guy's room looked ominous, still I knocked, hoping to hear him say, "Yes, Mom. I'm busy. I'll be out in a minute."

I turned and sat down on my borrowed bed. The next thing I knew, Walter was shaking my shoulder. "Sister Maya. Sister. Dr. Codero is on the telephone."

I followed him, fumbling my way down the hall. I didn't know any Dr. Codero, nor did I recognize the man who awakened me or even the house I was reeling through.

"Hello. Maya Angelou here." That was the way Vus answered the phone, with his full name.

"Maya, it's Anna Livia. I had some new X-rays done. They've been developed. I'm at Korle Bu now. The accident was more serious than the other doctors thought. Guy's neck is broken."

The crash, my pale son, his awful clammy skin, my love for him, all rushed into my brain at once.

"In three places. I have ordered him moved. He is going to be put in a body, arm and leg cast. Are you there, Maya?"

I was nowhere. Certainly nowhere I had ever been before. I said, "Yes, of course."

She explained that she had contacts at a military hospital and when the plaster hardened he would be taken there. He was quite tense, so it was better that I held off my visit until he calmed down.

I said, "I'm on my way."

She meant well, but she didn't know my son. She didn't know the cocky boy who had to live daily with his father's rejection, or the young man who had lived with the certainty of white insolence and the unsureness of moving from school to school, coast to coast, and was made to find his way through another continent and new cultures. A person whose only certitude lay in the knowledge that Mom, effective or not, was never too far away.

"I'm on my way."

I waited in the halls and yard and canteen of the hospital while the plaster hardened, then joined my son in the ambulance for his transfer. The still-damp cast emitted a sour odor but my sedated son looked like a pale-yellow angel in a long white gown.

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