A Song Flung Up to Heaven Read Free Page B

to do.”
    She said, “These Negroes are crazy here. I mean, really crazy. Otherwise, why would they have just killed that man in New York?”
    I took the phone away from my ear and looked at it. I cradled it in my hands, looking at its dull black surface; then I laid it down on the hall table. Instead of returning to the dining room, I walked into a bedroom and locked the door.
    I didn’t have to ask. I knew “that man in New York” was Malcolm X and that someone had just killed him.

Four
    Bailey’s anxious voice awakened me.
    “My. My. Open this door. Open it now.”
    At times when my life has been ripped apart, when my feet forget their purpose and my tongue is no longer familiar with the inside of my mouth, a touch of narcolepsy has befriended me. I have fallen asleep as an adored lover told me that his fancy had flown. When my son was severely injured in the automobile crash, I couldn’t eat and could barely talk, but I could fall asleep sitting on the straight-back metal hospital chairs beside his door.
    This time I woke up in a strange room knowing everything. I was still in Aunt Lottie’s house, and Malcolm was dead. I had returned from Africa to give my energies and wit to the OAAU, and Malcolm was dead.
    “Open this door, My. Wake up and open the damn door or I’ll break it down.”
    He would. I turned the lock.
    He looked at my face. “I’m sorry, baby. Go in the bathroom and wash up. I’m taking you somewhere. Somewhere important. Go on.”
    My bloated face and swollen eyes told me I had cried, but I didn’t remember and didn’t want to remember.
    Bailey waited in the hall, holding my purse and jacket.
    “Here, take this. Put this on. Say good-bye to Aunt Lottie.”
    She took me in her arms. “So sorry, baby. So sorry.”
    My eyesight and my equilibrium failed me, so Bailey guided me down the hills. He always knew when and when not to talk. He remained silent as we walked out of the residential district and on to the Fillmore area. There, all the people who had been absent from the streets earlier were now very much present, but in ordinary ways. Shouts, conversation and laughter seemed to cascade out of every door. Customers left and entered grocery stores, absorbed in conversation. Men stood in front of saloons engaged in dialogue so private it needed to be whispered. I was shocked to see life going on as usual.
    I said to Bailey, “They don’t know.”
    Bailey grunted. “They know. They don’t care.”
    “What do you mean they don’t care? I can’t accept that. When they know that Malcolm has been killed, the people will riot. They’ll explode.”
    Bailey deftly steered me through the open door of the smoky Havana Bar, where the jukebox music vied with customers’ voices.
    I looked into the grinning faces and was stumped. In Ghana, I had read that the mood of unrest here was so great that the black community was like a powder keg that would take very little to detonate. But only hours after their champion had been killed, black men and women were flirting and drinking and reveling as if nothing had happened. Bailey ordered two drinks, and when the bartender slid them in front of us, my brother touched me with his elbow and asked the bartender, “Hey, man, you hear what happened to Malcolm X?”
    The bartender made a swiping gesture with the bill Bailey had laid down.
    “Well, hell, man. They shot him. You know they say, you live by the sword, you die by the sword.”
    He added ignorance to ignorance by pronouncing the “sw” in sword like the “sw” in the word “swear.”
    “How dare you...don’t you know what Malcolm X has done?”
    Bailey took my arm. “Thanks, man. Keep the change.”
    In seconds I was outside in the clear air, and Bailey was propelling me along Fillmore Street.
    “Come on. We’re going to Jack’s Tavern.”
    That historic saloon had been my mother’s hangout for years. The clientele tended to be older, more established, more professional. They would