Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas by Maya Angelou

Author:Maya Angelou [Angelou, Maya]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Cultural Heritage
ISBN: 9780553251999
Google: NFSqWISOKhYC
Amazon: B0026LTNC2
Publisher: Random House LLC
Published: 1977-02-15T00:55:47+00:00

Yet I could not detect a shred of superciliousness on his face or in his soft yielding manner. I thanked him. Tom said he would be in touch with me and I shook hands with the men and left the theater.

Outside I passed the line of people still waiting. They scanned my features intently trying to read the outcome of my ordeal and thereby prophesy their own. If I was triumphant it meant that success was in the air and might come to them. On the other hand, it could mean that I had just filled the vacancy that they themselves might have taken.

Theirs was a grievous lot. Ten or twenty jobs for two thousand or more trained, talented and anxious aspirants. Another Countee Cullen poem stated that God, should he choose, could explain why he gave the turtle such a strange yet lovely shell, why the spring follows winter, why the snake doffs its skin, “yet,” said the poet, “do I marvel at this curious thing, to make a poet Black and bid him sing.” And of all things, to bid him sing in New York City.

I thought of Porgy and Bess. Of the sixty people who sang and laughed and lived together, the camaraderie and the pride they had in one another's genius. Although I had not heard from the company administrators for three months, I had received cards from Martha Flowers and from Ned Wright. I waited around in my small hotel room and prowled my dingy lobby. I called Mother, who ordered me to keep my chin up, and Clyde, who missed me and gave me news of Fluke's latest adventures. Wilkie reminded me that “In God I live and have my being.”

On a Thursday morning I received a note which read: “Miss Angelou, the House of Flowers company is happy to inform you that you have been chosen for the part in our production. Please come to the office Thursday afternoon at three to sign your contract.”

I shared the news with my family immediately and when I hung up, the telephone rang again. I thought it was probably Saint Subber calling to congratulate me.

It was Breen's Everyman's Opera Company. Bob Dustin said, “Maya Angelou?”

“Yes.”

“This is Porgy and Bess. We called your San Francisco number and were told you were in New York.”

“Yes.”

“We want you for the role of Ruby.”

How could there be so much of a good thing?

“But I've just got a part in a new show opening on Broadway.”

“Really? Oh, that's too bad. The company is in Montreal now and we leave for Italy in four days.”

There really was no contest. I wanted to travel, to try to speak other languages, to see the cities I had read about all my life, but most important, I wanted to be with a large, friendly group of Black people who sang so gloriously and lived with such passion.

“I don't have a passport.”

“We are being sponsored by the State Department.”

I thought about the school I had attended which was on the House Un-American Activities Committee list.

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