Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (7 page)

Terry's Pub was my pub, and it was the place to be if you were black and hip and in New York City. The bartenders were paragons of urban elegance, mixing and serving drinks smoothly and participating in conversations which ranged in subject matter from whether China should be allowed in the UN to the proper length of a micromini skirt.

The regulars were writers, models, high school principals, actors, journalists, movie actors, musicians, and college professors.

One afternoon I entered Terry's to find myself surrounded by well-wishers with wide smiles and loud congratulations.

The bartender showed me the
New York Post
and then presented me with a huge martini. I was featured as
the newspaper's “Person of the Week.” The regulars suspended their usual world-weary demeanor, giving hearty compliments, which I accepted heartily.

Eventually the toasters returned to their tables and I was left to grow gloomy in silence. Moodiness and a creeping drunkenness from too many martinis dimmed the room and my spirits.

Here, in my finest hour, I was alone. What had I done to any man to make him want to leave me and, even worse, not to win me to his side in the first place?

The questions came in the order of a military phalanx. Each marched into my consciousness, was recognized, and proceeded to make way for the next. I ordered another martini and resolved to soberly answer the inquiries. I was forty-one years old, slender, tall, and was often thought to be around thirty. No one had ever called me beautiful, save the odd Africanist who told me I looked like an African statue. Having seen many Yoruba and Fon wooden sculptures, I was not lured into believing myself anything but rather plain. I did dress strikingly and walked straight, my head evenly upon my shoulders, so kind people often said of me, “That's a handsome woman.”

But here I was between affairs and alone. Like many women, I did regard the absence of a romantic liaison as a stigma which showed me unlovable.

I sat at the bar, mumbling over my inadequacies and drinking at least the fifth martini, when my roving eye fell on a table. Near the window sat five young, smart, black male journalists enjoying each other's company. They had been among the people who crowded around me earlier when the day had been bright, my present glorious, and my future assured. But they also had retreated, gone back to the comfort of their own table.

A tear slipped down my cheek. I called the bartender to settle my bill, but he informed me that all had been taken care of, anonymously. With that pronouncement of kindness before me and the self-pitying thoughts behind me, I gathered my purse and, removing myself from the stool, gingerly pointed myself in the direction of the journalists' table. The men looked up, saw my drunkenness, and became alarmed and guarded.

I pulled a chair from another table and asked, “Do you mind if I join you?”

I sat and looked at each man for a long time, and then I began a performance which now, more than twenty years later, can still cause me to seriously consider changing my name and my country of residence.

I asked of the table at large, “What is wrong with me? I know I'm not pretty, but I'm not the ugliest woman in the world. And if I was, I'd still deserve having a man of my own.”

I began to list my virtues.

“I keep a beautiful house, tables polished, fresh flowers, even if daisies, at least once a week.

“I'm an excellent cook.

“I can manage my house and an outside job without keeling over in a dead faint.

“I enjoy sex and have what I hope is a normal appetite.

“I can speak French and Spanish, some Arabic and Fanti, and I read all the papers and journals and a book a week so that I can share an intelligent conversation with you.

“And none of all that appeals to you?”

I raised my voice. “Do you mean to tell me that that's not enough for you?”

The men were embarrassed and angry with themselves at being embarrassed. Angry with me for having brought such unwieldy, drunken, awkward questions to their table.

In one second I realized that I had done just what they feared of me. That I had overstepped the unwritten rules which I knew I should have respected. Instead, I had brazenly and boldly come to their table and spoken out on, of all things, loneliness.

When I realized my intoxication, I started to cry. An acquaintance at the bar walked over to our silent table. He greeted the men and asked, “Maya, sister, can I walk
you home?” I looked up into his dark brown face and began to recover. His presence seemed to sober me a little. I found a handkerchief in my purse, and without rushing, I dabbed my face. I stood up and away from the table. I said, “Good-bye, gentlemen,” and took my rescuer's hand. We walked out of the bar.

The long block to home was made longer by my companion's disapproving sounds. He clucked his tongue and muttered. “You shouldn't be drinking martinis. Especially by yourself.” I didn't have the will to remind him that I thought I had been with friends.

He continued.… “You draw people to you; then you push them away.”

I sure didn't have to push the journalists away.

“You give that big smile and act like you're just waiting for a man to take you in his arms, but then you freeze up like an iceberg.… People don't know how to take you.” Well, they must not. I hadn't been taken.

We arrived at my apartment, and I gave my attendant the sweetest, briefest smile I had in me and stepped inside and closed the door.

I entered into a long concentration which lasted until and even after I sobered myself.

At the end of my meditation I came to understand that I had been looking for love, but only under specific conditions. I was looking for a mate, but he had to be a
certain color, he had to have a certain intellect. I had standards. It was just likely that my standards eliminated a number of possibilities.

I had married a Greek in my green youth, and the marriage had ended poorly, so I had not consciously thought of accepting any more advances from outside my own race. The real reason, or I think another reason, for not including non—African Americans in my target area was that I knew that if it was difficult to sustain a love affair between people who had grown up next door and who looked alike and whose parents had attended church together, how much more so between people from different races who had so few things in common.

However, during that afternoon and evening I arrived at the conclusion that if a man came along who seemed to me to be honest and sincere, who wanted to make me laugh and succeeded in doing so, a man who had a lilting spirit—if such a man came along who had a respect for other human beings, then if he was Swedish, African, or a Japanese sumo wrestler, I would certainly give him my attention, and I would not struggle too hard if he caught me in a web of charm.

Brutality Is Definitely Not Acceptable

Certain phrases excite and alarm me. That is, when I hear them, I respond as if I have smelled gas escaping in a closed room. Without having to think of my next move, if I am not hemmed in, I make my way toward the handiest exit. If I cannot escape, however, I react defensively.

“Don't mind me, I'm brutally frank.” That is always a summons to arms.

I recognize the timid sadist who would like to throw a stone and hide her hand or, better, who would like not only to wound but to be forgiven by the soon-to-be-injured even before the injury.

Well, I do mind brutality in any of its guises, and I will not be lured into accepting it merely because the brute asks me to do so.

“I hope you won't take this the wrong way …” is another bell ringer for me.

I sense the mealymouthed attacker approaching so if I cannot flee, I explain in no uncertain voice if there is even the slightest chance that I might take a statement the wrong way, be assured that I will do so. I advise the speaker that it would be better to remain silent than to try to collect the speaker's bruised feelings, which I intend to leave in pieces scattered on the floor.

I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves to be ready and able to come to our own self-defense.

Our Boys

The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.

Here is a dark little tale which exposes the general pain of racism. I wrote ten one-hour television programs called
Blacks, Blues, Blacks
, which highlighted Africanisms still current in American life. The work was produced in San Francisco at KQED.

The program “African Art's Impact in Western Art” was fourth in the series. In it I planned to show the impact African sculpture had on the art of Picasso, Modigliani, Paul Klee, and Rouault. I learned that a Berkeley collector owned many pieces of East African Makonde
sculpture. I contacted the collector, who allowed me to select thirty pieces of art. When they were arranged on lighted plinths, the shadows fell from the sculptures onto the floor, and we photographed them in dramatic sequence. The collector and his wife were so pleased with the outcome that at my farewell dinner they presented me with a piece of sculpture as a memento. They were white, older, amused and amusing. I knew that if I lived in their area, we would become social friends.