Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (32 page)
Read Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas Online
Authors: Maya Angelou
“But I did.”
“The waiter said you hadn't been in this morning.”
“I didn't eat here. I ate at the Queen's Surf.”
“But you didn't have any money. Who paid?”
“No one. I signed my name.”
I was flabbergasted.
“But they didn't know you. I mean, they just accepted your signature?” That was incredible.
He looked at me as if I wasn't quite as bright as he would have liked.
“Mom, you know your name is up on that thing outside?”
I had noticed when we arrived that a large sign proclaimed
MAYA ANGELOU.
I said, “Yes. I saw it.”
“Well, after I finished breakfast I pointed to it and said I would like to sign the check and that Maya Angelou is a great singer and she is my mother.”
I nodded.
He was partially right. Although I was not a great singer I was his mother, and he was my wonderful, dependently independent son.
Poet, writer, performer, teacher, and director
MAYA ANGELOU
was raised in Stamps, Arkansas, and then moved to San Francisco. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, beginning with
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
, she has also written a cookbook,
Hallelujah! The Welcome Table
, and five poetry collections, including
I Shall Not Be Moved
and
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?
2009 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 1976 by Maya Angelou
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
T
RADE
P
APERBACKS
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1976.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Chappell
&
Co., Inc.: For eight lines of lyrics from the song “Street Song,” by George Gershwin (pp. 202
&
203), and three lines of lyrics from “There's a Boat That's Leavin' Soon for New York,” by George Gershwin (p. 166). Copyright © 1935 by Gershwin Publishing Corp. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
Harper
&
Row Publishers, Inc.: For lines from the poem “For a Lady
I
Know” from
On These I Stand
by Countee Cullen (p. 160). Copyright 1925 by Harper
&
Row Publishers, Inc.: renewed 1953 by Ida
M
. Cullen.
Northern Music Company: For four lines of lyrics from the song “Stone Cold Dead in the Market (He Had It Coming),” words and music by Wilmoth Houdini (pg. 101). Copyright © 1945, 1946 by Northern Music Company. All rights reserved.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-926-0
v3.0