Toni Morrison's Lorain

Description

Toni Morrison’s “She and Me” provides insight into her early experience working as a housecleaner for a white woman who lived in a well-appointed home in Lorain. As a young schoolgirl, Morrison was initially unfamiliar with some of the newer and more expensive cleaning equipment she was expected to use, suggesting a significant economic difference between her own household and that of her employer. Despite her lack of experience, she worked diligently to meet her employer’s expectations and gradually became more proficient in her responsibilities. However, her growing competence also came at a personal and financial cost. The advice Morrison received from her father ultimately helped her understand her relationship to work, money, and self-worth, lessons that remained important during her life in Lorain. In addition, the fact that Morrison contributed her earnings to her family’s household expenses indicates the financial pressures they faced and the importance of her income in helping the family make ends meet.

This essay was originally published in The Right Words at the Right Time, edited by Marlo Thomas (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 221-23. The following quotes from the essay.

"My pride in earning money that I could squander, if I chose to, was increased by the fact that half of it my mother took. That is, part of my wages was used for real things: an insurance policy payment maybe or the milkman. Pleasure, at that age [12 years old], at being necessary to my parents was profound. I was not like the children in folktales- a burdensome mouth to feed, a problem to be solved, a nuisance to be corrected. I had the status that routine chores at home did not provide- a slow smile, an approving nod from an adult. All suggestions that a place for me among them was imminent." 

"I got better at cleaning Her house; so good, I was given more to do, much more...If I refused Her I would be fired. If I told my mother she would make me quit. Either way my finances and my family standing would be lost...It was slowly eroded anyway because She began to offer me her clothes- for a price...I learned to say 'No thank you' to a faded sweater offered for a half a week's pay. Still I had trouble summoning the courage to discuss or object to the increasing demands made on me. One day alone in the kitchen with my father, I let drop a few whines about my job. I know I gave him details, examples, but while he listened intently, I saw no sympathy in his eyes. No 'Oh, you poor little thing.' Perhaps he understood I wanted a solution to work, not an escape from it. In any case, he put down his cup of coffee finally and said. 'Listen. You don't live there. You live here. At home, with your people. Just go to work; get your money and come on home.'" 

"This is what I heard:

  1. Whatever the work, do it well, not for the boss but for yourself.

  2. You make the job; it doesn't make you.

  3. Your real life is with us, your family.

  4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.

I have worked for all sorts of people since then...had many kinds of jobs, but from that moment on, I never considered the level of labor to be the measure of self or placed the security of a job above the value of home."