to Marguerite’s pique. But he still often joined in games with the other children from school, especially since the store was a central meeting place for such activity.
Even then, however, Ritzie was not speaking. She had discovered a source of pleasure within herself that she did not feel the need to explain. On the one hand, her muteness kept her away from quarrels or controversy. On the other, she was allowing herself to respond to those confused memories that stayed with her from the horrible time in St. Louis. She later described her state of mind after she was back home in Stamps:
Sounds came to me dully, as if people were speaking through their handkerchief or with their hands over their mouths. Colors weren’t true either, but, rather, a vague assortment of shaded pastels that indicated not so much color as faded familiarities. People’s names escaped me and I began to worry over my sanity. After all, we had been away less than a year, and customers whose accounts I had formerly remembered without consulting the ledger were now complete strangers.2
No one knew how desperate Marguerite was in this post-traumatic condition. As her description of aphasia and clouded hearing suggest, her body knew what trauma could do, and had done. Even as Annie and Uncle Willie understood that the child needed to be silent, needed to live as she thought best, they were so quietly placid that their intentional lack of emotion was little help. Shut away from most media, unable to find information that might prove useful on the radio, Marguerite faced a daily existence in Stamps that was non-threatening. But it was also unstable. Decades later, when Angelou was asked about those years of her voluntary muteness, she replied, “From the age of seven-and-a-half till twelve, my whole body became one big ear.”
Momma had increased the time she spent with Ritzie. She taught her granddaughter how to do hand laundry carefully, how to rake the dirt yard into designs, and how to keep the fallen leaves in tidy piles. She kept the back yard mowed so that everyone could use the new croquet set, though even that did not seem to attract Marguerite. She slipped the child buttered bread sprinkled with white sugar if there was a moment that seemed appropriate; she kept herself open should Ritzie want to talk about school, or about St. Louis. In the words of psychiatrist Alice Miller, Marguerite was allowed to be herself, not just an extension of Annie Henderson. She was allowed to mourn, to express herself – or avoid expressing herself – but she was not repressed. She never thought of herself as a reflection of Annie’s care – she did not need to be the happy girl, the successful girl, if she preferred to be silent or even morose.
What Momma began to do, after the children had come back from St. Louis, was to call Marguerite her “little professor.” When friends were at the store, she would have Uncle Willie call out three-digit numbers for Ritzie to add. At other times, she would stretch out the girl’s arms and comment on both their strength and the color of their skin. Rather than allowing Marguerite to remain in the shadow of the activity, she brought the activity to the girl. Praising her mind and her skin was a simpler kind of attention than would have been praising her facial features, which were less attractive while she was in middle school than they would eventually be. She added to her order for store-bought clothing for Uncle Willie (who always wore starched white shirts and tailored trousers) some garments for Marguerite that the girl would not previously have had. She also tried to bring both the grandchildren lessons of life within the context of their working in the store. If a customer was a complainer, Annie said nothing until he or she had left: then she called the children to her and explained what was wrong with pettiness. People were blessed to be alive; they needed to be thankful for their lives. In her mind, Ritzie thought of Annie’s comments as “lessons.” She was able to understand the import of Annie’s sometimes limited uses of language. Fluency was less significant than the morality Annie saw in everything.
Both Annie and Willie, now resuming their roles as surrogate parents, never forgot that Bailey, Jr. and Marguerite were a pair of children. Young children when they had come to Stamps originally, they were still children – though growing taller than one might have expected, especially in Marguerite’s case. They both were generous and talented people; they both followed the rules of the Henderson house. They gave nobody any trouble. But Annie in particular knew that to separate them, with even the best intentions, was to do their great love for each other a disservice: they were the Johnson children, as they had always been.
Marguerite and Bailey were both the center and the periphery of the Henderson house. They had a snack before bedtime. They were allowed to wear what seemed suitable to them, even for church. They were treated together, as the same child, which reinforced their unity, a unity that was not wavering even as Bailey matured and spent great amounts of time with his “girlfriends.”
Perhaps as a compensatory move, Marguerite burrowed further and further into language. Not only reading but writing, composing songs, working out new stanzas of existing songs for the games the children played – Marguerite was finding her prowess with words to be a trait to cherish. In some ways, her return to silence was a kind of reflection of the life she had previously lived with Momma and Uncle Willie – the store was usually quiet, especially with Willie’s avoidance of talking. The church was interrupted by music but words were sometimes scarce, even if a minister was in charge of the service. Annie Henderson’s house was as quiet as she could make it, seeing her cooking and cleaning and serving as her way of maintaining order. Enforced silence was never, in Ritzie’s view, punishing.
Her choice to live in silence was more than self-soothing. It had little in common with self-protection (living with Momma and Uncle Willie, she did not need to protect herself from anyone or anything). Her behavior seemed to be a willing gravitation back to Annie’s careful, enclosed life. Living with Annie was safe. There was no question that returning to that life made Marguerite feel safe. No one had to reassure her. It enclosed her, the safeness. She slept well at night; she never woke. She never had nightmares.
For over a year, Marguerite lived with the calm of quiet and safety.
Then, perhaps at the request of Annie Henderson, the beautifully groomed and dressed Bertha Flowers appeared, as if casually, in Ritzie’s peaceful life. Mrs. Flowers provided what psychiatrist Judith Herman called “a lifeline.” This is Herman, saying that recovery might not occur if the trauma victim is – and remains – isolated. She points out, however, that “a single, caring, comforting person may be a lifeline… The reward of mourning is realized as the survivor sheds her or his stigmatized … identity.” Survivors need whatever help they can find.
Gently compelling, Mrs. Flowers came to visit Marguerite, and invited her to become a special child, a special sister, in her household. She had new and different books, she too loved poetry and poets, and she had strong beliefs that language should be heard as well as read silently. As a friend – not a teacher per se, or a tutor or any person with authority – Mrs. Flowers wanted to spend time with Ritzie, whose mind, and ability with language, interested her.
Being singled out was a new experience for Marguerite, who thought of herself – reasonably – as Momma’s child. She and Bailey, Jr. felt that their place in the Henderson/Johnson household was a gift, not a sinecure. They were respectful of the rules that governed the house; they also respected the place both Momma and Uncle Willie held in the black community. But they had had few experiences that identified them as Bailey Johnson, Jr. or Marguerite Annie Johnson. Given that Mrs. Flowers did not go to their church, that she was as mysterious as if she had been a white-skinned resident of Stamps, her attention was not only unexpected; it was a rare gift.
On the first day of their “talk,” Mrs. Flowers had made tea cookies and lemonade for Marguerite. She had chosen to read to her the opening scenes of A Tale of Two Cities. She had laid out a volume of poems that, with the Mark Twain book, was to be taken back to the store with Marguerite. Most exciting of all, another day of “talk” lay ahead. This was to be a regular event, then, a time of reading and listening, a time of sharing language. And, as Mrs. Flowers had pointed out, language only improved when it was heard
