Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou

Author:Maya Angelou
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: American, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General, Literary, Family & Relationships, Personal Memoirs, Literary Criticism, Biography & Autobiography, Family Relationships, African American, Cultural Heritage
ISBN: 9781400066117
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-04-02T04:00:00+00:00

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.

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