quite so hearty as Bailey, Jr. She could scrape dishes into the slop bucket and some nights she could feed the pigs, but only if someone went with her. And she could regularly feed the chickens though their scurrying flapping was not her favorite part of the back yard. And she was a very good girl when she washed, remembering Annie’s joke that “first you wash as far as possible and then you wash possible.”
Obedience was nothing to challenge. She loved to do whatever “work” was assigned to her – by either Momma or Uncle Willie. She behaved like Momma, too, in a decorous, stately way – bordering on the solemn. Her slim, tall body swayed like Momma’s did when she sang the hymns joyfully: she displayed her grandmother’s joyous state of both singing and listening to the Word of God. Even when her feet could barely reach the church floor, she sat upright and paid attention to whatever words were being spoken. (She frowned at babies who cried, at younger children who fidgeted.) Marguerite delighted in being Annie’s shadow in every possible way.
Watching Bailey cross the road to the pathway to school, watching him climb the slight elevation, was one of Ritzie’s moments of pride mingled with sorrow. She wanted to go where Bailey went: she did not believe that her comforting brother was any smarter than she was, or any better at following directions. And she missed him to an almost intolerable degree until he returned home again. From the front door of the store, she could watch for him at the close of school. Watching for Bailey became one of those daily rituals that Ritzie liked to create for herself.
Although it didn’t happen every day, Annie tried to find some time during the school day to make Ritzie feel special. The most common ploy was to help her young granddaughter make something for supper, all by herself. It might be washing off some good fresh fruit and fixing a sugar sauce to dip it in; it might be washing greens and showing her how to boil the vinegar water in the skillet. It might be a much more elaborate time, of creating the black strap sauce that would dress up the date cake Annie had already made. Marguerite learned that she was also able to learn new things. She did not miss playing with little girls her own age when she had the comfort of being Annie’s chosen helper.
Centrally located as Annie Henderson’s store was, with the dirt road to one side leading to “the town,” which identified white Stamps, and on the other side, leading to the best of the African American houses, there was little need to ever leave the store’s front yard. As Marguerite grew taller, she became the person who swept that yard, carefully making the scrolls in the dirt to pretty it up. The Johnson-Henderson lives were led in the back yard, but the public face of the expanded family became the front yard. Somewhere in the distance, people explained that she could hear the Red River, but Ritzie had not yet seen that important-sounding place. (Was it really red, she sometimes wondered.) She heard grown-ups talk about the river, the mountains (and in her mind, Bailey walked up the mountain to get to school, though the incline was very slight in fact). She had never paid attention to the land in St. Louis or in Long Beach, not in the way Momma paid attention to it. Don’t pour that grease into the grass, Ritzie. Pick those leaves carefully. (Don’t just pull up the potatoes.) Momma was a kind of natural force in herself, and she respected the nature that surrounded her and her family.
She talked often about planting more grass seed in the back, so as to protect the yard and also to make that area more pleasant for the Saturday gatherings. She thought about what she might trade the seed store for the grass seed. Annie did not move as swiftly as some people thought she should but she planned much about her life – what she could plan. The rest she accepted.
She also was a saver. Even as she always made sure that Bailey and Marguerite had pennies and nickels for the church offering, she kept a penny jar inside the kitchen cupboard for the unexpected. Sometimes Bailey reminded her late that he needed a dime for this or that at school. Then Annie would go to the jar. Her natural tendency was to barter but she would never embarrass her grandchildren – never. Occasionally she put a folding bill into the church offering plate, but not every week. Sensitive to the way the plants in their garden are growing, pausing to enjoy the bright blue skies of the Arkansas world, Annie is also the epitome of what nature itself demands: she has never questioned that she must care for Uncle Willie. She has never considered placing him in a care facility. Even in the years when it seemed as if he might never learn to read, she knew that her own calm acceptance of whatever injuries God had allowed him to experience would provide a buffer for him and his life.
Similarly, she did not expect her handsome and talented second son, Bailey, to stay in Stamps. When he insisted he wanted to join the Navy, she outfitted him as best she could and sent him off. When he brought Vivian home, carrying Bailey, Jr., she smiled as graciously as she could though she could see that nothing in Stamps would be suitable for her new daughter-in-law, citified and educated as she was. Similarly, when she got Bailey’s letter telling her – not asking her – that he would be sending his two children back to her by train, she did not mention any expenses, any concerns about the toddlers’ wellbeing. She never suggested that he keep them in his own household. Annie Henderson did not see the expansion of her family from two to four as anything but a useful gift – from her son? From her God? – and she behaved accordingly. She did not grumble her way into the position of grandmother. She did not grumble at all.
Throughout her mature life, Annie Henderson had provided. She knew that Willie would need care throughout his life. She had set up friendships with Stamps officials – particularly with the various sheriffs who might keep watch over KKK activities. She was known not only in the religious community but also in the circles of education and medicine. She was a fair trade person long before the term existed: she dealt carefully and humanely with her neighbors. She had even created a kind of road to the store, a strip of semi-paving that cars and wagons could traverse – to deliver supplies, to pick up Willie for trips to town, to make the physical connections more agreeable for her and her family. It crossed the back yard at an angle, but Annie kept it clear. Hers was a practical functionality: whatever, whenever, God sent to her, she was going to be ready.
After Marguerite could go to school, so that both the grandchildren were gone during the weekdays, Annie and Uncle Willie realized how much time they had invested in the youngsters. But that investment was never grudging; in fact, nobody ever mentioned it to either the community of Stamps or to Bailey, Jr., or to Ritzie. Strangely, being sent 1,600 miles away from their parents had left little trace on either of the children – perhaps more on Bailey, Jr., who missed Vivian with a passion that did not disappear, ever. But the security of life in Stamps with Momma and Uncle Willie was a wide-reaching plateau of comfort. When Marguerite went to sleep at night, she dreamed occasionally of one of three possibilities:
1 Ritzie as a beautiful little girl, dressed in taffeta, her hair smooth and glossy, reciting either a poem or a Bible verse in front of the church congregation;
2 Ritzie being allowed to eat as much as she wanted from a pile of candy, most of it made by the Spangler Company – chocolate-covered cherries, Bit-o-Honey, Circus Peanuts, Good & Plenties, Necco wafers, Hershey’s kisses, Milky Ways; or
3 Momma in a cloud-filled place, about to meet her God. Angelou describes that scene decades later: “One of my earliest memories of Momma, of my grandmother, is a glimpse of a tall cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice, standing thousands of feet up in the air on nothing visible. That incredible vision was a result of what my imagination would do each time Momma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said ‘I will step out on the word of God.’ Immediately I could see her flung into space, moon at her feet and stars at her head, comets swirling around her. Naturally, since Momma stood out on the word of God, and since Momma was over six feet tall, it wasn’t difficult for me to have faith. I grew up knowing that the word of God had power.”6
Notes
1 1 Quoted in Maya Angelou, “New Directions,” Even the Stars Look Lonesome, 1997, pp. 22–25.
2 2
