A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou [14]
He told us about an older black woman who had worked for a white woman in Alabama, first as her laundress, then as her maid, then as her cook and finally as her housekeeper. After forty years, the black woman retired, but she would go to visit her former employer occasionally.
On one visit, her employer had friends over for lunch. When the employer was told that Lillian Taylor was in the kitchen, she sent for her. Lillian went into the living room and greeted all the women, some of whom she had known since their childhoods.
The white woman said, “Lillian, I know you’ve heard of the bus boycott.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ve heard of it.”
“Well, I want to know, what do you think of it? Are you supporting it?”
“No, ma’am. Not one bit. Not one little iota. And I won’t let none of mine support it, either.”
“I knew you’d be sensible, Lillian, I just knew it in my bones.”
“Yes, ma’am, I won’t touch that bus boycott. You know my son took me to live with him and his family (he won’t let me even lift a finger), and he works for the power company way ’cross town from our house. I told him, ‘Charles, don’t you have anything to do with that bus boycott. You walk to work. Stay all the way out of that bus boycott.’ And my grandchildren, they go to school way over on the east side, I told them the same thing: ‘Don’t have anything to do with that boycott. You walk to school.’ And even today, when I wanted to come over and visit you, I got a lady from my church to bring me. I wasn’t going to touch that boycott. Sure wasn’t.”
The room had become quiet, and Lillian Taylor said, “I know you have plenty help now, but do you want me to bring you all more coffee?”
She went to the kitchen and was followed by the white woman’s daughter.
“Lillian, why do you treat my mother like that? Why not just come out and say you support the boycott?”
Lillian said, “Honey, when you have your head in a lion’s mouth, you don’t snatch it out. You reach up and tickle him behind his ears and you draw your head out gradually. Every black woman in this country has her head in a lion’s mouth.”
I knew that a straight back and straight talk would get the black woman’s attention every time.
“Good morning. I have a job asking questions.”
At first there would be wariness. “What questions? Why me?”
“There are some companies that want to know which products are popular in the black community and which are not.”
“Why do they care?”
“They care because if you don’t like what they are selling, you won’t buy, and they want to fix it so you will.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. Come on in.”
I was never turned away, although most times the women were abstracted. Few gave me their total attention. Some complained that their husbands were around all day.
“I work nights, and usually I come home and sleep a few hours, then get up and have time to fix up my house. But with him not working, he’s home all day, bringing his friends in and all that.”
Or they complained that the men weren’t around.
“I don’t know where he’s spending his time. He’s not working, he’s not at the job and he’s not at home...makes me a little suspicious.”
Listening to the women brought me more squarely back to the U.S.A. The lilt of the language was so beautiful, and I was heartened that being away from the melody for a few years had not made one note foreign to me.
The women ranged from college graduates to those who would find it challenging to read the daily newspaper, yet the burdens of their conversations were the same.
Those who worked or needed medical attention or collected supplemental food stamps were dependent on private cars. Public transportation was so poor that if a woman had to use it in order to be at work by eight-thirty A.M., she would have to leave home at five A.M.
Those who worked as housekeepers, maids and cooks shopped on their way home from their jobs in the stores used by their employers. The goods were