I picked up some ironing today from my former housekeeper B., a black woman who grew up in the south. She hated ironing but liked me enough to do it for me, and now that she's retired and scraping by, it's a way for us to have a visit and for her to make a little extra cash.
I've hear a lot of tales of woe from her. Just now Social Security cut her off for two months because they overpaid her some, and she's worried about paying the rent. I'll never forget the story she told about one of her wealthy clients who gave her a ride down to some poor part of town, and parked to drop B. off. The woman noticed that she was in a red zone and said she should move, but B. said to her, "It''s okay, they don't give white people tickets." B. Said I should have seen the look on the woman;'s face--we had a good chuckle over that.
Lately I've been hearing that two of her great grand children were sleeping over at her house sometimes. I had thought that it was to keep B. from being alone too much, but today the real story came out. Their mother lives about an hour east towards Sacramento, and she gets up at 3:00 AM to drive them to B.'s place, arriving around 4:30. They sleep a couple of hours and then go off to school, while the mom drives over to San Francisco to work. The town where they come from is pretty redneck, and one of the boys was being beat up by the white boys, and the schools were poor. Now they go to schools in Berkeley and the boy who was being bullied has improved his grades quite a lot.
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