prepared to go onstage, I thought about the haven Hawaii had been. I had arrived on the island in a fragile and unsteady condition. The shock of Malcolm’s murder had demoralized me. There seemed to be no center in the universe, and the known edges of the world had become dim and inscrutable.
Leaving Guy in Africa had become a hair shirt that I could not dislodge. I worried that his newly found and desperate hold on his mannishness might cause him to say or do something to irritate the Ghanaian authorities.
I had brought anxiety and guilt to Hawaii, but each month the worries had abated. Friends in New York informed me that Malcolm’s widow, Betty, had given birth to healthy twins, and although his dream of an organization of African-American unity would not be realized, his family was hale and his friends were true. The actors and writers Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, attorney Percy Sutton and Alex Haley, who had written Malcolm’s biography, were among the steady pillars holding the Shabazz family aloft.
I heard from friends in Ghana that Guy began behaving much better after I left. Often people in general, and young people in particular, need the responsibility of having to depend upon themselves for their own lives.
So I was leaving Hawaii a lighter and brighter person. I was going to Los Angeles, and although I did not know what I would do or whom I would find there, life was waiting on me and it wasn’t wise to test its patience.
For that last show on the last night, I decided not to sing but to dance.
I asked for the music, then invited it to enter my body and find the broken and sore places and restore them. That it would blow through my mind and dispel the fogs. I let the music move me around the dance floor.
I danced for the African I had loved and lost in Africa, I danced for bad judgments and good fortune. For moonlight lying like rich white silk on the sand before the great pyramids in Egypt and for the sound on ceremonial fonton-fron drums waking the morning air in Takoradi.
The dance was over, and the audience was standing and applauding. Even Aunt Leah finally looked up and smiled at me.
Bailey hugged me and gave me a wad of money.
“You’re good.” He pointed to my heart. “You’ll go far.” He said I had what I needed to face another unknown.
I was off to California.
Aloha.
Eight
There is about Los Angeles an air of expectation. Not on the surface, where the atmosphere is lazy, even somnolent, but below the city’s sleepy skin, there is a suggestion that something quite delightful might happen and happen soon.
This quiet hope might be the detritus of so many dreams entertained by so many hopefuls as they struggled and pinched and dieted and preened for Hollywood cameras. Possibly those aspirations never really die but linger in the air long after the dreamers have ceased dreaming.
The days in Los Angeles were beautiful. The soft, wavering sunlight gave a filtered golden tint to the streets.
The inhabitants of the working-class neighborhood were obviously house-proud. Little bungalows were cradled confidently on patches of carefully tended lawn, and wind chimes seemed to wait for the breeze on every porch.
I longed for one of those tidy and certain houses. If I could live in a house like that, its absolute rightness of place would spill over and the ragged edges of my life would become neat to match the house.
Frances Williams was the very person I needed. I had known her a decade earlier, and she knew everyone else very well. She was active in Actors’ Equity and had connections in both black and white churches.
Fran, as she was called, counseled on the mystery of the theater, on its power and beauty, and gave good advice to anyone smart enough to listen.
She was a large woman with a lusty voice not unlike a cello, and she had a great love of the theater. She and her brother, Bill, lived in a large house at the rear of a corner lot. The house and all the grounds were often pressed
Leaving Guy in Africa had become a hair shirt that I could not dislodge. I worried that his newly found and desperate hold on his mannishness might cause him to say or do something to irritate the Ghanaian authorities.
I had brought anxiety and guilt to Hawaii, but each month the worries had abated. Friends in New York informed me that Malcolm’s widow, Betty, had given birth to healthy twins, and although his dream of an organization of African-American unity would not be realized, his family was hale and his friends were true. The actors and writers Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, attorney Percy Sutton and Alex Haley, who had written Malcolm’s biography, were among the steady pillars holding the Shabazz family aloft.
I heard from friends in Ghana that Guy began behaving much better after I left. Often people in general, and young people in particular, need the responsibility of having to depend upon themselves for their own lives.
So I was leaving Hawaii a lighter and brighter person. I was going to Los Angeles, and although I did not know what I would do or whom I would find there, life was waiting on me and it wasn’t wise to test its patience.
For that last show on the last night, I decided not to sing but to dance.
I asked for the music, then invited it to enter my body and find the broken and sore places and restore them. That it would blow through my mind and dispel the fogs. I let the music move me around the dance floor.
I danced for the African I had loved and lost in Africa, I danced for bad judgments and good fortune. For moonlight lying like rich white silk on the sand before the great pyramids in Egypt and for the sound on ceremonial fonton-fron drums waking the morning air in Takoradi.
The dance was over, and the audience was standing and applauding. Even Aunt Leah finally looked up and smiled at me.
Bailey hugged me and gave me a wad of money.
“You’re good.” He pointed to my heart. “You’ll go far.” He said I had what I needed to face another unknown.
I was off to California.
Aloha.
Eight
There is about Los Angeles an air of expectation. Not on the surface, where the atmosphere is lazy, even somnolent, but below the city’s sleepy skin, there is a suggestion that something quite delightful might happen and happen soon.
This quiet hope might be the detritus of so many dreams entertained by so many hopefuls as they struggled and pinched and dieted and preened for Hollywood cameras. Possibly those aspirations never really die but linger in the air long after the dreamers have ceased dreaming.
The days in Los Angeles were beautiful. The soft, wavering sunlight gave a filtered golden tint to the streets.
The inhabitants of the working-class neighborhood were obviously house-proud. Little bungalows were cradled confidently on patches of carefully tended lawn, and wind chimes seemed to wait for the breeze on every porch.
I longed for one of those tidy and certain houses. If I could live in a house like that, its absolute rightness of place would spill over and the ragged edges of my life would become neat to match the house.
Frances Williams was the very person I needed. I had known her a decade earlier, and she knew everyone else very well. She was active in Actors’ Equity and had connections in both black and white churches.
Fran, as she was called, counseled on the mystery of the theater, on its power and beauty, and gave good advice to anyone smart enough to listen.
She was a large woman with a lusty voice not unlike a cello, and she had a great love of the theater. She and her brother, Bill, lived in a large house at the rear of a corner lot. The house and all the grounds were often pressed
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