Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

There is a shock that comes so quickly and strikes so deep that the blow is internalized even before then skin feels it. The strike must first reach bone marrow, then ascend slowly to the brain where the slowpoke intellect records the deed.

Ah, Momma. I had never looked at death before, peered into its yawning chasm for the face of a beloved. For days my mind staggered out of balance. I reeled on a precipice of knowledge that even if I were rich enough to travel all over the world, I would never find Momma. If I were as good as God’s angels and as pure as the Mother of Christ, I could never have Momma’s rough slow hands pat my cheek or braid my hair. Death to the young is more than that undiscovered country; despite its inevitability, it is a place having reality only in song or in other people's grief.

Why do you dislike people?" "I didn't say I disliked people. Not to like people isn't the same as to dislike them." He sounded profound and I needed time to mull over that idea.

Death to the young is more than that undiscovered country; despite its inevitability, it is a place having reality only in song or in other people's grief.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications.

Black people rarely forgave whites for being ragged, unkempt and uncaring. There was a saying which explained the disapproval: 'You been white all your life. Ain't got no further along than this? What ails you?

I was really in Italy. Not Maya Angelou, the person of pretensions and ambitions, but me, Marguerite Johnson, who had read about Verona and the sad lovers while growing up in a dusty Southern village poorer and more tragic than the historic town in which I now stood. I was so excited at the incredible turn of events which had brought me from a past of rejection, of slammed doors and blind alleys, of dead-end streets and culs-de-sac, into the bright sun of Italy, into a town made famous by one of the world’s greatest writers. I

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. In my rented room (cooking privileges down the hall), I would play a record, then put my arms around the shoulder of the song. As we danced, glued together, I would nuzzle into its neck, kissing the skin, and rubbing its cheek with my own.

There were glamorous young men with dyed hair who rustled like old cellophane. Older men had airs of sophistication and cold grace, giving the impression that if they were not so terribly tired they would go to places (known only to a select few) where the conversation was more scintillating and the congregation more interesting. There were young women who had the exotic sheen of recently fed forest animals. Although they moved their fine heads languorously this way and that, nothing in the room excited their appetites. Unfashionable red lips cut across their white faces, and the crimson fingernails, as pointed as surgical instruments, heightened the predatory effect. Older, sadder women were more interesting to me. Voluminous skirts and imported shawls did not hide their heavy bodies, nor was their unattractiveness shielded by the clanks of chains and ribbons of beads, or by pale pink lips and heavily drawn doe eyes. Their presence among the pretty people enchanted me. It was like seeing frogs buzzed by iridescent dragonflies.

A smart man only tells half of what he thinks.

I made no attempt to wipe away the tears. I could not claim a forefather who came to America on the Mayflower. Nor did any ancestor of mine amass riches to leave me free from toil. My great-grandparents were illiterate when their fellow men were signing the Declaration of Independence, and the first families of my people were bought separately and sold apart, nameless and without traces – yet there was this: ‘Deep River My home is over Jordan.

The God of my childhood was an old, white, Vandyck-bearded Father Time, who roared up thunder, then puffed out His cheeks and blew down hurricanes on His errant children. He could be placated only if one fell prostrate, groveled and begged for mercy. I didn’t like that God, but He did seem more real than a Maker who was just thought and spirit. I wished for a Someone in between.

Early mornings were given over to Bartok and Schoenberg. Midmorning I treated myself to the vocals of Billy Eckstine, Billie Holiday, Nat Cole, Louis Jordan and Bull Moose Jackson. A piroshki from the Russian delicatessen next door was lunch and then the giants of bebop flipped through the air. Charlie Parker and Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Al Haig and Howard McGhee. Blues belonged to late afternoons and the singers’ lyrics of lost love spoke to my solitude.

The laughter was sour and not really directed at white women. It was a traditional ruse that was used to shield the black vulnerability; we laughed to keep from crying.

For all his theatrics, or maybe because of them, I knew he was a strong man. I had always been more comfortable around strong people.

The images had been provided by movies, books and Pathe News, and none included a six-foot tall Black woman hovering either in the back or in the foreground.

Usually when one throw's oneself at another's feet, one should be prepared to do a fast roll to avoid being stepped on.

They were using her feinting body to erase their present and catapult themselves into a fantasy where sex-starved women lay submissive and split open like red, ripe watermelons.

But, don't let anybody make you do something you don't think is right. Your mother already raised you. Stay steady. And if that makes somebody mad, they can scratch their mad place and get glad.

We laughed together. Our friendship was possible because Ivonne was wise without glitter, while I, too often, glittered without wisdom.

Don’t run yourself down, darling, there are plenty of people in the world who will do that for you.

My mind, it was certain, was a well-oiled mechanism which worked swiftly and seminoiselessly. I often competed with radio contestants on quiz programs and usually won hands down in my living room. Oh, my mental machine could have excited anyone. I meant anyone interested in a person who had memorized the Presidents of the United States in chronological order, the capitals of the world, the minerals of the earth and the generic names of various species. There weren't too many callers for those qualifications and I had to admit that I was greatly lacking in the popular attractions of physical beauty and womanly wiles.

It wasn't wise to reveal one's real feelings to strangers. And nothing on earth was stranger to me than a friendly white woman.

She was white, wore perfume and smiled openly with the Negro customers, so I knew she was sophisticated. Other people's sophistication tended to make me nervous and I stayed shy of Louise.

My dear, I have known since I was a small boy on a hill in Greece that when I met you, you’d never tell me who you were, you would give another name. Equally beautiful and equally mystical. But I would know you by the music in your voice and the shadow of the forest on your beautiful face.

then go to my room where solitude gaped whale-jawed wide to swallow me entire.

My audience listened, mouths agape, as I reeled my story before them. Their imaginations had been good, but mine was better. They had been amusing themselves, but I was motivated by the desire to escape.

I left Sonny and walked around, rustling myself in the sounds and feasting my eyes on the tasty colors of my people.

But the true nature of the human heart is as whimsical as spring weather. All signals may aim toward a fall of rain when suddenly the skies will clear.

Yanko allowed me to enter a world strange and fanciful. Although I had to cope daily with real and mundane matters, I found that some of the magic of his world stayed around my shoulders.