The Life of the Author: Maya Angelou. Linda Wagner-Martin
thought it would not matter to “just children.” Going to live with a community paragon, a woman considered important to her entire community, was less than reassuring to children, especially to children who had never met, or even seen, this grandmother. Annie Henderson was often accompanied by her older son, the sometimes helpless Uncle Willie. (These children had early learned to give Grandmother Baxter a wide berth – her officious, curt behavior never endeared her to either Bailey, Jr. or to Marguerite.)
In Marguerite’s own words, Annie Johnson Henderson was “the big-hearted woman who was taller and bigger than most men yet who spoke with a voice a little above a whisper. Her hands were so large one would span my entire head but they were so gentle that when she rubbed my legs and arms and face with blue-seal Vaseline every morning, I felt as if an angel had just approved of me.”3 Never demonstrative, Annie – Momma to the children – led Bailey and Marguerite through the oughts and shoulds of her modest Christian life with a steadying hand, never an abusive one. They received very few hugs but as Angelou remembered, Annie’s touch was always gently helpful. It was Marguerite who became Annie’s shadow, following her everywhere possible. And the neighbors in the black part of Stamps called her “Annie’s shadow.”
The changes of circumstances were immense. In St. Louis, whether in the Baxter household or in Vivian’s, neither Bailey nor Marguerite ever felt at home. Not that they knew what was missing but they did know that a tone of impatience surrounded them. What they did was not quite on target – they cried from bewilderment as much as from fear. In contrast with Grandmother Baxter, Annie Henderson was sometimes short but she never showed the impatience that could have resulted from caring for two small children: when she asked them to help in the store, it was to locate them within the place where both Uncle Willie and she herself needed to be. They knew they could play with the children passing by, and hover around the pickle barrel. They knew that what they did to “help” was seldom a real chore. But they also knew that the store was their home, as it was Annie’s and Willie’s, and so they enjoyed being there, hearing the customers order, listening to the grown-up talk – even if they pretended not to be doing so.
In Annie Henderson’s world, everything had its place. In the outside world of the paths and the chinaberry tree and the cleanly swept front lawn as well as in the inside world of the bedrooms, the kitchen and the outbuildings like the chicken coop and the pig sty. Order was key. The first week after the long train trip, Annie made sure that the grandchildren understood the procedures. Marguerite had cried because she could not find any sidewalks. There were only the edges of the dirt road and the sometimes straw-covered paths. Nothing in Arkansas seemed familiar. But what quickly became familiar was the way to Annie’s bedroom, to the right out the first back door in the store. Annie shared her bedroom with Marguerite. Uncle Willie, whose bedroom was across the path, shared his room with Bailey. Back of those rooms was, to one side, the chicken coop and to the other, the pig sty. Between those two locations was the outhouse, complete with a door that closed and a box filled with not only Sears Roebuck catalogues but also such magazines as Ladies’ Home Companion, Liberty, and some Christian magazines. The children already knew that this was the toilet paper to be used.
When darkness fell over the yard, the animals quieted and people prepared for going to bed. Washing at the pump was a nightly ritual; saying prayers was a similar ritual. Sometimes Uncle Willie would read Scripture from the Bible. Occasionally Annie would allow the radio to be played. But the quiet of the farming community pervaded everyone’s thinking. The store closed around suppertime so it too was dark and still. Suppertime, held in the kitchen that shielded Willie’s bedroom from passers-by, was the crowning daytime event: no family in Stamps had better meals than Annie Henderson’s. There were not many different foods in any one meal, but the cooking was good. And for dessert, there was the whole province of the store.
After Marguerite and Bailey had lived in Stamps for several weeks, they began to see how central Momma’s store was to the community. Not only did people shop for cheese, lunchmeats, sausage, sardines, oil, syrup, greens, crackers, eggs, potatoes, onions, and leather soles for worn-out shoes, they also came by on Saturdays to see what was happening around the chinaberry tree in the back yard. Annie had early on built a table around the base of the tree, providing shade in summer and protection from rains and the occasional snow. Around the tree barbers set up their equipment of a Saturday, as did women hairdressers. Visiting as well as commerce brought people together. Men played juice-harps and cigar-box guitars. Everybody sang. And when the people of black Stamps saw both Bailey, Jr. and Marguerite, they began to bring along outgrown clothing from their own households. It had been thirty years since Annie had had to outfit children.
Off to the side of the chicken coop Annie and Willie grew their large garden – flowers as well as vegetables, rows and rows of different kinds of greens and radishes, potatoes, corn, and cabbages. And across the yard, near the well, stood the deep washing pots (one for soaking and boiling, one for rinsing), with a long clothesline connecting the two larger trees on the plot. It didn’t take Bailey, Jr. or Marguerite long to understand how Momma’s household worked. What was more important was that they understood that there was a place for them in every activity.
They also quickly learned that Annie never bought anything that she could make for herself. She carpentered. She planted. She harvested. She canned. She butchered and preserved. She bartered with neighbors. Famous for her caramel cake, Annie also made the brown sugar for that delicacy – baking that cake and icing it took nearly a whole day. She had always quilted but now that her grandchildren had come to live, she sewed clothes for them, buying whole bolts of fabric so that Bailey’s shirts and Marguerite’s dresses and blouses were from the same fabric (and sometimes Uncle Willie’s work shirts and Annie’s dresses as well). Except for a few fancy buttons on Marguerite’s good dresses, every one of Annie’s results were buttoned with plain white shirt buttons.
One of Momma’s prize possessions was the Singer Sewing Machine. Another was the quilting frame that she housed in her bedroom. When half a dozen neighbors came for a quilting bee, they rolled out the quilt and attached it to the frame. Then each woman began her neatest, tiniest stitches. Marguerite hid behind whatever door seemed nearest and listened to the women’s stories – about black men who had been lynched, or black men who had run away, or white men who had tried to molest black women – their white wives pretending not to notice their efforts, and instead only showing anger at the black women who were being hunted. Black women who, somehow, without agency, were the sexual rivals for those married to the white men in pursuit.4
Even pre-school African American children knew where the loaded shotguns were kept, though they also knew not to tell anyone about the weapons. Set against the omnipresence of the Colored Methodist Episcopalian church, the threat of harming or killing was an obvious sin, but the knowledge that the family had this power – righteous or not – was comforting. And it wasn’t just the African American knowledge that pervaded in the Stamps, Arkansas, culture: the young white girls who came into the store, thinking that if Uncle Willie waited on them they could pull the sexual threat of claiming that he had touched them – and thereby get their candy for free – also knew how racial power worked. Black men who were unfortunately confronted by white girls or women had no power at all.
The comfort of the church was not only based on its spirituality. It also stemmed from its segregated character. African American ministers traveled from rural church to rural church; if there was no minister, Uncle Willie, as Superintendent of the Sunday School, might read some Scripture. In any case, the rituals were known; the families sat where they usually did; the hymns were chosen in advance, and were often led by Sister Henderson – with or without the piano. An oasis in the midst of what might have been a stormy week, the Sunday services took up not only the morning hours but also the early afternoons. Sunday breakfasts were big so that people were held over till the main Sunday meal, the mid-afternoon dinner, usually built around roasted chicken, complete with peas and greens, and inch-high buttermilk biscuits. Served with apple butter in the autumn, the biscuits were memorable with sweet butter no matter the time of year. Metaphoric in several ways, the church service and its accompanying meals were the heart of the serenity that Annie Henderson, Uncle Willie Johnson, and now Bailey, Jr. and Marguerite experienced. The other