My parents used to call me from their New Jersey home every Sunday morning. Just to check in. One Sunday, toward the end of my mother’s life, I wasn’t at home for her call. And I had forgotten that my outgoing answering machine message was my own impression of Maya Angelou reciting William Waring Cuney’s poem, “No Images.” My mother’s understanding of even the most basic technology (like an answering machine) was, to be generous, almost non-existent. So when she heard my performance (“...If she could dance naked under palm trees and see her image in the river,” etc.), she didn’t know what to make of it, and unbeknownst to her, her astonishment was recorded as a message on my machine: “It’s not Sandy,” you hear her say. “It’s some colored woman talking about palm trees.” As things turned out, that was the last time she would hear my voice. And the last time I would hear hers.
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