Mom & Me & Mom – Maya Angelou (2013)

Mom & Me & Mom is the seventh and final book in the sequence of autobiographies by Maya Angelou which begin with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It was back in April last year that I started by reading (actually rereading) that first volume, and a mini reading project with two good friends Liz and Meg was born. Having now completed the seven volumes of autobiography I may go on to read some of the essays – as I know Liz is planning on doing. This final volume is a little different to the previous six – published only a year before Maya died at the age of eighty six.

The previous volume A Song Flung up to Heaven finishes when Maya is a little over forty, and in a sense that’s where these autobiographies leave her – as this volume never really takes us beyond that point, at least not in any great detail. However, this volume is still a satisfying conclusion to the series of autobiographies – for this book is about Maya’s mother, and Maya’s relationship with her mother. So, while this volume is still about Maya Angelou, it is mostly about a tiny, fierce little woman called Vivian Baxter.

“Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word love, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.”

It’s well known that Maya and her brother were sent to their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas to live when Maya was three. A short visit to her mother when she was eight ended in Maya’s rape by her mother’s partner, and a trauma that took years to undo. It wasn’t until Maya was thirteen that she went to California to live permanently with her mother – who was at that time little more than a stranger. Maya remembers her nervousness that she wouldn’t be good enough for this beautiful little mother.

“She looked around and saw me. I wanted to sink into the ground. I wasn’t pretty or even cute. That woman who looked like a movie star deserved a better looking daughter than me. I knew it and was sure she would know it as soon as she saw me.

‘Maya, Marguerite, my baby.’ Suddenly I was wrapped in her arms and in her perfume. She pushed away and looked at me. ‘Oh baby, you’re so beautiful and so tall. You look like your daddy and me. I’m so glad to see you.’”

Vivian Baxter Johnson, Maya’s mother had been born into a tough family, her brothers would beat you up soon as look at you, and Vivian had learned to fight even as a child. Vivian had grown up beautiful, met and fallen in love with Maya’s father and moved to California. When her marriage ended she sent the children away, and when they came back to her a decade of growing up apart meant that a lot of healing still had to take place, a lot of trust and acceptance be earned. Vivian Baxter was an extraordinary woman, a tiny, fierce little woman with a lot of influence, a trained nurse, she had also spent time in the Merchant Marines and as a businesswoman ran casinos in Alaska. She seems to have known, maybe instinctively that she had to give Maya time, that their mother daughter relationship was a fragile thing that would need time to grow, Vivian gave Maya the time and space she needed, yet she also gave her love – as it is above all love that oozes from these pages, love, and unquestioning support. Vivian Baxter Johnson, surely more than anyone else, helped shape the woman that Maya Angelou became.

“I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.”

When Maya first came to live with her mother, she was unable to call her that – she searched around for a suitable title, and came up with Lady – it stuck, and for years she continued to call her mother Lady. Some years later, she was able finally to begin to call Vivian mother. By then an incredible bond had formed between them, for she had been supported and encouraged in everything. Whether it was in her desire to become the first black, female trolly bus conductress, becoming a mother herself at just seventeen, or travelling the world in Porgy and Bess, at every stage, at every moment Vivian had her back.

When Maya married Tosh, Vivian knew it was a bad idea, when Tosh tried his best to push Vivian out of their lives Vivian kept coming back. When the marriage ended she was there to support her daughter without saying I told you so. She helped Maya with her dance costumes, and took care of her son Guy when Maya was travelling. When Maya is horrifically beaten by a boyfriend, locked in his rented room, unable to summon help, it is Vivian who tracks her down and saves her.

“She felt guilty like all mothers who blame themselves when terrible events happen to their children.

I could not speak or even touch her but I have never loved her more than at that moment, in that suffocating, stinking room.”

Later when Maya was working on a screenplay in Sweden, feeling ostracized by the actors with whom she was working, Maya called her mother, and Vivian knowing her daughter needed her, dropped everything, and got on the next plane.

Inevitably, Vivian, gets old, and sick and Maya tells that story movingly too. Showing as much understanding to the needs of her ageing mother, as the younger Vivian had shown to the teenage Maya who had just arrived in California. Later, after her death a park in Stockton, California was named Vivian ‘Lady B’ Baxter park in her honour.

Mom & Me & Mom is an incredibly affectionate portrait of a mother daughter relationship, it is written with a lot of love and great honesty.