Oct 28, 2011
On a recent weekend I tackled the clutter in my office. My office consists of a small bedroom, with a big desk, lots of books, and a bed, and a large former closet. The closet is my computer and file room.
We have four file drawers to hide the business of life, but my personal files were on two small shelves behind me in the computer room – files about Amanda, and writing, and recipes. To Do’s were piled in no order on a three tier plastic tray next to the computer, and the rest of the computer desk had lists and works in progress and books to return to the library and dirty socks. The big desk was covered with stuff from our Africa trip: souvenirs, gifts, postcards, camera equipment. A jumble drawer in each room held…jumble.
CLUTTER
I spent the better part of three days organizing, cleaning, and culling. I enlisted Joe to help with the Africa stuff, since a lot of it was his. Then I went through all the papers littering the computer desk and the To Do tray, all the folders on the shelves. I took down a storage box, threw out a bunch of files from ancient matters, and replaced them with files from middle-aged matters. With glee I discarded many papers from our two years as foster parents, and consolidated the adoption papers into one accordian file.
I went through the drawers and equipped each with plenty of pens, pencils, markers. I hid the scissors way at the back where I hoped only I would find them. (Amanda and Joe have their own, but you know how scissors go wandering.)
Now the computer desk has only the computer, the printer, and a paper tray. The shelves behind me have writing books, stationery and computer supplies. Active files are tidy on the big desk.
TIDY ME
I am blissful in my new space. The trouble is that I believe the order will last, and I’m really too experienced for such delusions. It’s like giving up smoking. You do it over and over, always hoping, and always relapsing. Or like love when you’re young. First you say, “This is The One.” Then, after several, you say “Is this The One?” After many more, you’re likely to say, “Fuck it, there ISN'T One.”
Still, I did give up smoking on the fifth try, when I was 36. I did find The One – I won’t say how many tries – when I was 48 (even if he does leave his stuff on my desk). Is it possible that at 64 I have finally conquered clutter?
NEXT WEEK: Finding My Better Self at a Writers' Retreat
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Oct 21, 2011
I grew up in houses full of books. Book shelves are as fundamental to my sense of home as pictures on the walls. When I visit a friend, I head to the bookcase, and imagine moving in for a weekend so I can read her books. When Iris and I, both single mothers, decided to share a house, I was thrilled to see that she had an almost empty bookcase, then dismayed to discover that she considered books clutter, and used the shelves for ornaments and organizing.
My husband is resigned to my clutter, and he himself has shelves of natural history books, but he was pleased when I spent the first week of my retirement reducing the collection by a third. (Thus making room for more books.) With less money, I did resolve to rely more on the library, but I still have little bursts of book-buying, and my family gives me books for Christmas. I try to keep the collection culled by giving away anything that isn’t a keeper.
I always pack books when I travel. I like to take books about the place I’m going, and a fat Victorian novel for a vacation from the vacation. One is not enough. Suppose I don’t like it, or worse, suppose I finish it. Once, alone in Nova Scotia, I found myself on a Sunday with nothing to read. The only store open in Cheticamp was a drugstore, with a tiny book rack of mostly junk. I found an Agatha Christie, but it was a quick read, not nearly enough to fill the tired hours after morning hikes, and the long nightly stretches of insomnia.
MY B&B IN BADDECK, NOVA SCOTIA HAD A BOOKCASE
L'ACADIEN TRAIL NEAR CHETICAMP: GREAT VIEWS AND MOOSE TURDS, BUT NO BOOKS
When I travel by car, books are no problem – even for a weekend I have two or three in my tote bag. By air, with a small suitcase, it’s more of a challenge. In France I had a used paperback of Les Miserables, torn into five sections for easy portability in my purse, though I had to overcome a lifetime of training to mutilate a book.
An e-reader is the obvious solution, but I am a technophobe. I hate new gizmos. I grumbled when I had to learn to use a computer for work. Answering machine, cell phone, digital camera – I could write an essay about my long resistance and eventual submission to each of them.
So I bought a Kindle before our trip to South Africa with great reluctance. First I borrowed my stepdaughter Leah’s for a couple of days, to see how I liked it. I was amused to see what an ambitious and improbable collection of free books she had downloaded, including War and Peace, and the complete works of Shakespeare and Dickens. I read a few pages of the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I didn’t know whether it was the Autobiography or the Kindle that I liked, but I went ahead and bought one anyway. And I discovered the appeal and peril of the Kindle.
First, I downloaded a list of free books for Kindle, and a list of free children’s books. Then I went shopping. I’d never read any Wilkie Collins – I downloaded the The Woman in White and the Moonstone. Willa Cather’s My Antonia. Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities. To my shame, Virginia Woolf’s fiction has always been beyond me. I decided to give her another try, and downloaded Night and Day. For Amanda’s bedtime story I found Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, E. Nesbit, L. Frank Baum, and Hans Christian Andersen.
A character in The Moonstone uses The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe as his guide in all situations; it’s free on Kindle. The Moonstone plot turns on opium, so I found Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. I’d always heard Edward Gibbon was the great prose stylist of the 18th century, so I got all six volumes of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Now I understood Leah’s collection.
Everything had been free so far, and though I may never read the Gibbon, no harm done. Then I went on a spree. I had already read a lot of non-fiction about South Africa, but fiction illuminates a place in a way non-fiction can’t. I bought thirteen contemporary South African novels. Amanda is a reluctant reader, but loves anything with a screen. Ten easy-reading children’s books. I flew off to Johannesberg with nineteen novels and fifteen children’s books in my purse (not to mention Gibbon).
I loved the Kindle, and delighted in its special features. With one click I can look up almost any word in the New Oxford Dictionary. I can highlight and store passages that appeal to me. I can search a word, which helps when a minor character whom I’ve forgotten reappears. I often mis-lay a book when I’m in the middle of it, and wander the house trying to find it. If I remember to put my Kindle back in its garish neoprene cover, it stands out wherever I leave it.
MY HIGHLY VISIBLE KINDLE
Buying books on Kindle is easier than ordinary internet shopping. It may be too easy. When I hear of a book on NPR, or read a review in the New Yorker, I am much more likely to buy it. Most of these are happy impulses. I’ve read a fascinating account of two teachers in Colorado at the beginning of the twentieth century, and a warm and witty novel about a widowed British colonel and an Indian shop-keeper in Sussex. click click Nothing I buy is very expensive, but even in 2011 ten bucks is ten bucks, and though I never finished the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, I still believe a penny saved is a penny earned..
So I traveled around in South Africa and Swaziland, with a book always available for me and for Amanda, and thought I would write an essay in praise of my Kindle. And then we came home. Blissfully I sat in my ancient La-Z-Boy, early in the morning, lamp over my left shoulder, coffee beside me. Home at last. I reveled in the familiar sights, sounds and smells (we DO have a dog), and I looked over at the bookcase.
Every book I saw called up memories – not only of its contents, but of where and who I was when I read it. Books are the most reliable companions, more constant than a lover, less trouble than a dog. But my memories of books are inseparable from their physical presence. The cover entices me, and the book designer’s choices about typography and placement and proportion become part of the reading. click
When I read a book on Kindle, the design disappears. All the technical challenges and choices that permit a book to fly through space and arrive on my Kindle within moments of my request are invisible. The author’s words come to me unmediated, and there’s something exciting about that. But a book on Kindle is like a phone conversation instead of a visit.
I wouldn’t give up my Kindle; there’s nothing like it for travel. Still, when I’m home, I’ll choose the serendipity of a trip to the library or book store, or the familiar volumes that have comforted and nourished me all my life.
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NEXT WEEK: Tidy Me
Oct 14, 2011
MIAMI AT NIGHT BABOON FAMILY, SOUTH AFRICA photobucket.com wisin_23 copyright 2011 Joseph S. Jackson, by permission
We are going to South Florida one weekend, South Africa the next. I sit with my coffee and make yet another list. It takes about ten minutes to assign the remaining To Do’s to the remaining days.
In the middle of writing a task for Wednesday I glance up at Tuesday. “Check boxes.” What boxes? I need cartons to tote canned goods for the HOME Van, but that’s not what I meant. What I meant has fallen into the void that follows behind me, swallowing thoughts a minute after I think them. It is gone, like a twig sucked down in the current, and like the twig it will bob up again somewhere down stream. I know there’s no use trying to find it now. I return to Wednesday. There, right next to “load flash drive,” is half a word: “Dil.” Shit. That’s gone too.
My mother-in-law, Naomi, lives in Deerfield Beach, in a second-floor condo overlooking a canal. We stop for lunch and a swim on our way home from Miami Beach. She makes us coffee for the road, and I go down to the car to get my travel mug, grabbing a couple of satchels to carry down. Unlock the trunk, put them in, go back upstairs. “Where’s your mug?” Joe asks. Oh.
I go downstairs again. I take the plastic bag with our wet bathing suits, and the gift bag Naomi gave Amanda to celebrate the adoption. I unlock the car, put them inside, and go back upstairs. Open the door, and stop still, my mouth gaping. Joe laughs. I turn around without a word, and head back down one more time, thinking, “coffee mug, coffee mug.” This time I succeed, and head back up the stairs for the third time. My mind may be slipping, but my legs are growing stronger.
Finally, after bouncing from bed to bed in Johannesburg, Kruger, and Swaziland, we are in our own house in Capetown, and I am cooking our first meal. Very simple: burgers with no buns, salad, potato chips from the plane. The burger meat is too lean, and the stove puzzling – I’m accustomed to gas. But as the burgers cook, I prepare the salad.
OUR CAPETOWN KITCHEN
The kitchen is well-equipped, and I pull out a blue plastic colander to wash the greens. I tear up the iceberg, arugula, spinach and watercress. Get the oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. The kosher salt is damp in the grinder, and comes out in clumps. Oh well. Plenty of pepper, and then oil. Toss well, add the vinegar.
Joe sets the table, Amanda gets the burgers, I bring the salad. I return for the salt and pepper and am puzzled by the puddle of oil on the counter. I examine the bottle – no cracks, no oil down the side to show I spilled it. I wipe it up and we begin dinner. Joe serves himself salad and says, “Liz, this is a colander not a bowl.” He shows Amanda the holes – in my defense, they are inconspicuous in the dark blue plastic. But it all comes back to me – I forgot to wash the greens, and dressed the salad in the colander.
I used to ask my law students not to come into class late, or talk during my lectures. “I lose my train of thought, and there’s no telling when another one will come down the track.” I don’t believe this is Alzheimers or dementia, just late middle age. Although it is a nuisance, I find it amusing, I suppose because my friends are in the same boat. But writing entails catching thoughts on the run, then tidying them up. How can I do it when my thoughts disappear?
I could carry a little notebook, but I fear it would be one more thing to lose, like keys and glasses. I’m sure there are plenty of memory tricks on the Internet – aging boomers are a booming business. I will probably let it be. None of my thoughts are so valuable that I can’t afford to lose them. And another train always comes along eventually.
. 
WHEN'S THE NEXT TRAIN?
Photobucket.com: Tracks. by ILYB2014
NEXT WEEK: Why I Love Like My Kindle
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Oct 7, 2011
(Warning: This story is not for the faint of gut.)
The HOME Van is a gang of volunteers who go out twice a week to campsites and parks, delivering food and miscellaneous items to homeless people. The food includes a supper bag with a sandwich, hard-boiled egg, granola bar, fruit and water, a cup of iced tea or hot cocoa, and homemade cornbread and soup.
HOME Van soup is really good. It's thick with vegetables, beans, potatoes, rice or pasta, and meat (or meat substitute if made by a vegetarian). The people who live in the woods love it, and often take seconds and thirds if there’s enough. A cup of soup is my supper on Thursdays, when I ride the van. It’s more fun to share a meal than to stand by while others eat.
I coordinate the soup rota, and when no one else can, I make the soup. Though I love to make soup for my family, five gallons is a challenge. Browning five pounds of meat, chopping all those vegetables, sauteeing the onions and celery – it’s too much, and becomes slightly disgusting. It also takes a good part of the day, and transferring the boiling hot soup into the thermos, then lugging it to the car, is a pain in the neck.
A couple of times I went all out, but now, on the rare occasions when we don’t have anyone to make soup, I make beanie wienies: ten pounds of chopped hotdogs and six giant cans of pork and beans.
5 GALLONS OF BEANIE WIENIES (AND 10 DOZEN EGGS)
This should be easy. What could go wrong? Usually, nothing, and most of our homeless friends love beanie wienies. But there was a day…
It was late November, a chilly day by Florida standards, and a good day for eating beans and hot dogs. After a morning making sandwiches at HOME Van Central (Arupa and Bob’s house), I brought the five-gallon pot and thermos home. I chopped the dogs and opened the cans, stirred it all up and put the pot on a low flame. Then I relaxed with a book, popping up every twenty minutes to stir.
Finally the stew was simmering. I ladled it into the thermos with a two-cup Pyrex measure. This is a hot and gloppy job. Blobs of bean landed all over me, the stove, and the floor. When the thermos was full to the brim, I screwed on the top, wiped off the sides, and cleaned up the floor, the stove, and me. I put the scorched pot to soak with a layer of baking soda and an inch of water at the bottom.
All set to go. Ten dozen eggs in the front seat, two big pans of cornbread in the back. I had worn-out knees back then, instead of my blessed bionics, and toting the thermos to the car was a struggle, but I got it up on the back seat, and headed out.
I was turning onto Main Street when the thermos fell over and the top popped off. Five gallons of beanie wienies at flood stage covers a lot of territory. They flowed over the back seat and the floor, drowning the cornbread.
I had no cell phone to call Arupa, and anyway, the van was going out in ten minutes; there was nothing she could do. The people who live in the woods would have to make do with bag suppers and hot chocolate.
At HOME Van Central Arupa opened the door to help me unload. Quicker than a flash mob, every fly in Gainesville arrived for the feast. Where had they been, and how did they know? We put the eggs in the van, marveling at the mess. I skipped the Thursday night run, and went home to clean up.
I ladled and scooped and wiped, but it was way beyond me. Fortunately, Steve, Amanda’s aunt’s boyfriend, had worked as a car detailer. He came over the next morning, and in an hour or two the car looked as good as a six-year-old Corolla owned by a slovenly grandmother ever will. The smell persisted, but we thought it would dissipate over time.
It didn’t dissipate. It got worse. Steve came back to try again. This time he removed the back seat, and found that the flies had done their job. There were maggots everywhere.
Who isn’t disgusted by maggots? Only a mother fly. I excused myself, and Steve cleaned them all up, then sprayed the car again with a nasty floral deodorant. For months I drove around town with memories of maggots, breathing air scented with beanie wienies and chemical flowers.
We bought a new thermos for the Van. Now when I bring soup, I strap the thermos into the front passenger seat, and put out a mother’s restraining hand when I turn or stop. The Great Beanie Wienie Disaster became one of our many stories, which I share with you in honor of the ninth anniversary of the HOME Van. click
ARUPA AND THE HOME VAN
NEXT WEEK: This Short-Term Memory Thing
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Sep 23, 2011
Here are two poems and a mini-essay on the subject of getting older. I wrote the essay in July. It’s now sufficiently aged, like the finest wines, cheeses, meats and me.
Nursery Rhyme: Numbers
by Lola Haskins
Seven old ladies crochet for the boys,
Six old ladies hear thunder.
Five old ladies afraid of the noise,
Four old ladies go under.
One old lady to pick up the lace,
One old lady is crying.
How cruel to be born with only one face
And to see in the mirror its dying.
in Desire Lines, New and Selected Poems. copyright 2004 Lola Haskins. used by permission
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I’m turning 64 tomorrow and I’m depressed. Oh, not really depressed. Maybe it’s wrong to use the word for my condition, when people I know and love are stalked by clinical depression. But you know how certain birthdays just feel really old? For me it was 8 and 13, 43 and 51. The first two thrilled me. The second two not so much. This one doesn’t thrill me at all. I feel as though I’m running out of time. I feel as though there are a thousand things I once wanted to do, and now I don’t want to, or can’t.
My life is a boring succession of minor aches and pains – ankle, groin, foot, hand. This month my shoulder is unhappy about the way I was sitting at the computer. I’ve been using my husband’s laptop and the chair is too low. Now I’m in for six weeks or so of minor disability, ice, and possibly physical therapy. When did my body get so damn sensitive? It used to do whatever I want; now it complains when I ask it to get up in the morning and make me some coffee.
A friend sent an email of three photos, called Time Passes. Five little girls, six young women, five old women all lined up looking out at the ocean, all shot from behind. The little girls hold hands, wear baggy shorts to their knees, stand so sturdy in the sand. The young women lean over a boardwalk railing, frayed shorts above their buttocks, muscles smooth and luscious. The old women are in bathing suits, bending over, showing six variations of ancient thighs. I never see my legs from behind – it’s quite enough to see them from above, with the six inch scars where my wonderful knee replacements reside.
I’d like to give credit but I can’t find the source
I like the way I look, if I don’t look too close. I like having fluffy white hair. I like the way people in South Africa call me Mama and hurry to help me. At the Origins Museum in Johannesberg I told the young man behind the desk that I had no cell phone to call a taxi. He called his supervisor. After buttering her up with a discussion of some problem he had solved, he asked if she could help him. “I have an elderly lady here with no cell phone and she needs to call a taxi.”
Elderly – that was me. Why does it sound so much older than old? I see a little, trembling, bird-like woman, leaning on a cane. No one could mistake me for a bird, nor do I usually tremble, though I’ve certainly had months with a cane, which I came to love for the stability it gave me after knee surgery, and the candy cane stripes that made children smile.
I was lying in bed, sad and stewing, and finally got up to write this. Of course I felt better after I did. Now it’s morning. I suppose I’m 64 by now, though it’s six hours earlier in Florida, and I was born at 2PM in Argentina – I have no idea what time it is there. I believe in China I would be 65, because they count the time in the womb – or that’s what my father always told us. I will choose to believe it’s already happened, so I can stop dreading it and start getting over it. I’m 64, and Joe is taking me out for a fancy lunch. I can’t possibly count my blessings because I have too many, and I’d probably lose track. Anyway, there’s no time to waste.
I Ran Out Naked in the Sun
by Jane Hirshfield
I ran out naked
in the sun
and who could blame me
who could blame
the day was warm
I ran out naked
in the rain
and who could blame me
who could blame
the storm
I leaned toward sixty
that day almost done
it thundered
then
I wanted more I
shouted More
and who could blame me
who could blame
had been before
could blame me
that I wanted more
in Come,Thief copyright 2011 Jane Hirshfield. used by permission
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Sep 16, 2011
I hadn’t planned to see The Help. Another noble white savior of black victims? No thanks. I’d read two books on the subject of black maids in the South and thought I’d spent enough time on the subject. David Denby’s review in The New Yorker changed my mind. Apparently the film put the black maids front and center, and the acting was terrific.
I heard a professor from the Association of Black Women Historians on NPR, who said that the maids need to tell their own story, and people should read the historical and fictional accounts of domestic workers by black authors. And then a black caller said that she loved the movie This caller said that as they exited the theater, the white audience was crying and the black audience was smiling.
I didn’t grow up in the south, nor with black servants. But I have my own story, about life with our Argentine cook, Elisa. Memory is fiction; fiction can be truth. Much of my memory comes from my parents’ conversations about Elisa, conversations infused with affection and condescension.
My sister Luli and I were born in Argentina, where my father was lawyer for an American communications company whose tentacles reached around the world, fomenting or preventing revolution as its bottom line required. My brothers spent their childhoods in Buenos Aires, but we returned home when I was a baby and Luli a toddler. And my parents, who had not lived in the States for many years, brought with them not one, not two, but THREE servants: Jackie, to nurse my brother who had polio, Theresa the maid, and Elisa the cook.
CHRISTMAS IN LONG ISLAND, 1948. ELISA (THE TALL ONE) AND THERESA, IDENTIFIED ONLY AS “SPANISH MAIDS”
Life in Long Island was dramatically different from life in Argentina. No more hobnobbing with diplomats and government officials in Belgrano, parties at the polo club, weekends in the country. Many of the neighbors had a weekly maid, but no one had live-in servants. Jackie went home to Argentina. After a couple of years Theresa moved to Queens and joined the other South American women who worked as housemaids. But Elisa stayed.
She stayed for 18 years. I grew up in Long Island, Cambridge, and Ann Arbor with my sister, my mother, and Elisa. My father traveled a lot. When he was there he seemed distant and imposing. He looked like Eisenhower, and until I was five I thought he was The President.
I adored my mother, and trailed around after her like a puppy. But Elisa was a close second in my affection. She cuddled and fed me, welcomed me in the kitchen, let me visit in her room in the afternoon, took me with her to Catholic church. My mother was small and thin; my father said with pride, “I always told Marcy I would divorce her if she became fat.” Elisa was tall, stout and solid, with big strong arms.
When I was little I called her Lili, but graduated to Elisa. My parents called her Elisa, and she called them Senora and Senor. She refused to learn English, though I’m certain that she understood every word of it. She was proud, and I think she didn’t want to feel stupid, the way you do when you are learning a language. My parents offered her classes, but she considered herself, as an Argentinian, superior to the other new immigrants.
She was an exceptional cook. I remember her chicken fricasee, her deep dish apple pie. I watched her roll out the ravioli dough and put down spoonfuls of filling made with beef and pork, cover it with a second sheet and press it into squares with a rolling wheel. She stuffed the homemade canneloni with calves brains, prosciutto, and spinach. When I had my first apartment, I asked her how to make meat loaf, and she gave me a stalk of celery, an onion, a green pepper and a few pinches of sage.
My sister and mother were often at odds, and Luli spent a lot of time in the kitchen with Elisa. She herself became a professional cook, but even Luli can’t duplicate the rich, sweet crust on the deep dish apple pie, or the fricasee gravy.
Elisa cooked delicious meals, served them to us at the table, and ate alone in the kitchen. But when my parents went out, we’d have a special treat: frozen pot pies or TV dinners with Elisa. For dessert, we made banana splits.
ELISA JOINED US AT THE TABLE FOR LULI’S WEDDING CAKE.
When I was eighteen, Elisa went back to Argentina. I remember her in a grey suit, with a purple orchid on the lapel, when we took her to the airport to fly to Buenos Aires. She was eligible for Social Security, but there was some rule against non-citizens collecting if they lived abroad. I don’t know how he did it, but Dad spent years in bureaucratic wrangling to get it paid to her. The income made her relatively rich, and she lived comfortably with her niece’s family.
ELISA GOES HOME
When I was twenty, my mother’s breast cancer spread to her bones. Elisa agreed to come back to help. They were living in a three-bedroom apartment in Silver Springs, Maryland. I visited them there, and found a very unhappy trio.
Elisa cooked in the little kitchen, and tended my mother in the bedroom. My father told me with amusement that she strenuously objected to wearing her old uniforms but, “Of course I insisted.” Elisa had left her life in Argentina, where she was an honored matriarch, to help my parents, who had always claimed she was part of our family. She returned as a friend, and they insisted she was a servant. She left after a few months.
I was furious. A child accepts whatever she sees; a teenager sees no one but herself. Now I was old enough to begin trying to imagine Elisa’s life.
She was in her early forties when she came to the States in 1948. In 1957 she went back to Argentina for a year while our family lived in Bolivia. Except for that year, she had no contact with her family except letters.
She had a day off every week, but only occasionally took the train to Queens to visit with friends. Her friends never came to the house. I think she had no lovers. Sometimes she went to church.
In every house we lived in, she had her bedroom, and sometimes a bathroom of her own. She spent her days in the kitchen, and afternoons in her bedroom, listening to the Spanish-language radio and reading “La Prensa.” She watched television with us in the living room; Perry Como was her favorite. My parents bought her a television so she could watch in her room, but she never used it. Occasionally she went to the movies with Luli and me.
She opened presents under the tree with us on Christmas mornings in her maid’s uniform, then made Christmas dinner for a big group of friends and family. After my father carved the turkey, she fixed herself a plate, and ate dinner in the kitchen. She attended family weddings in her Sunday best.
Elisa’s story echoes that of southern black maids in so many ways. She was a wonderful cook and caregiver. She was called one of the family, and reminded of her second-class role at every turn. She demonstrated exceptional loyalty. She knew every family secret, and we never knew hers.
I failed when I was twenty, and I fail now, to understand what it was like for her. I could create a fictional character out of these sparse facts, but I have no confidence it would contain Elisa. My character would enjoy her work and be proud of her skill, but she would be lonely, angry, resentful. If that was Elisa, she hid it remarkably well for the eighteen years I knew her.
LIZ, ELISA, LULI
My stepdaughter, majoring in African American studies at Oberlin, denied that Elisa could have loved me. But Elisa was cut off from her family, had no children of her own, never married. She was not like the black maids who “lived out.” She had no children whom she must neglect to take care of us, no home other than the one we shared. Not just because she was so important in my life, but for her sake, I hope she did love me and my sister.
My mother died when I was 24; Elisa died two years later. She would have been in her 70’s. After long neglect, I was just getting ready to send her a picture of me and my son. Her death left me with grief and guilt.
So what did I think of the movie? The two black maids, Minnie and Abilene, were full, breathing women, with a chorus behind them of sympathetic victims. Their white employers, Hilly and Celia, were respectively bully and bullied, with a chorus behind them of paper doll Barbies. Abilene’s crude revenge was perilous and implausible, and diminished her. The movie was like a full painting and a pencil sketch glued together. If you’re looking for insight as well as entertainment, I’d recommend the books listed by the African American history professors, or one of those below.
New Yorker review
ABWH Open Statement
Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow (book)
Telling Memories Among Southern Women (book)
