The Maid

This is Doris. For 47 years, she worked for my grandfather in Mobile, Ala. Last week, I saw her for the first time in 16 years, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

As a kid visiting Papa, I couldn’t wait for Doris to get to work. I loved being at my grandfather’s house, and Doris made Papa’s house even more fun. Doris called herself “the maid,” but everyone else called her by name.

In the morning, either with one of my cousins or alone, I’d sit on the bottom of the basement stairs waiting for Doris to arrive. She would come in through the carport on the side of the house, immediately go into her bathroom, and like magic come out in a crisp white dress and white shoes.

“I brought you some Fruit Stripe.” Those were the words I would cross my fingers and hope she’d say. And most of the time, if she caught the bus on time, she did.

After she was dressed, I’d follow her around the house from room to room as she would dust and clean, make all of the beds and send dirty laundry down the chute.

I asked Doris a lot of questions. I was as curious about her as I was about my Momma, my aunts, and everyone else in our family. My mother was 4 and Doris was 26 when she started working for Papa, which meant she had the kind of stories I wanted to hear. Like the time when Mom gave her pet fish a hot bath. Or when Doris found peas inside the Polaroid camera, a place where Mom and her sister would hide them instead of eating them. Doris kept everyone’s secrets.

When it was time for lunch, she would make me a grilled cheese in a cast-iron skillet, and then start dinner for the family. In the afternoon, just like a shadow, I’d follow her back down into the basement. She would do the laundry and iron while I laid underneath the ironing board watching the cord move back and forth. I’d blow bubbles with my Fruit Stripe gum and we’d talk and laugh. Looking back, I knew Doris’ skin color was different, but the only time I remember talking about it was when I asked if her skin could get sunburned. I don’t recall what her answer was.

When it was time for Doris to go home for the day, she’d return to her bathroom, change back into the clothes she came in, hang the white dress on a hanger on the back of the door, and tell me goodbye. I’d always hug her, she’d hug me back quickly and tell me to run upstairs so she could turn off the basement light.

In 2011, after I saw the movie “The Help,” I couldn’t stop thinking of Doris. I called my mother and my aunts upset. Was Doris treated differently and I just didn’t know about it because I was a kid? Did she really love us like I thought she did? Did she know we really loved her? I was angry that I couldn’t see as a child whether Doris was treated with disrespect, and that I still didn’t really know as an adult. My Mom and aunts had the same reaction to the story. Because Doris had been around since they were young children, they had a lifetime of memories to look back on and wonder.

I thought about how my grandparents were raised on farms in Louisiana. There were stories of my great grandparents having slaves who worked for them, and suspicions about how they were treated as such. If this was all my grandparents knew growing up, did they view Doris differently than the rest of us? Did they see her as the help?

Mom often talked about memories she had of being a kid and noticing right from wrong. These were memories of the 1950s when the world was still divided into black and white. The time she rode the bus with Doris, yet Doris sat in the back. Or the time Doris took her and her sister to get a milkshake and they sat at separate counters. This world Mom spoke of was completely different than the one I was raised to know. But my Mom and aunts assured me, aside from the public segregation, no one in the family ever treated Doris poorly.

On the contrary, according to Mom, my grandparents did everything they could to help Doris. They bought her a car so she wouldn’t have to ride the bus. Paid off her mortgage so she wouldn’t have to worry about a house payment. Always made sure she had presents under the Christmas tree. And of course there were the stories of how when you’d give her a hug and tell her you loved her, she would never really hug you back. Instead of saying I love you, too, she always replied, “Thank you, honey. You are so sweet.”

Last week, I was visiting Mom, who just recently moved back to the Mobile area. She had been away for more than a decade and hadn’t called Doris yet to let her know she was back in town. So I asked if we could go see her. The last time I saw Doris was in 1997 when Papa passed away. Doris took care of the house while we were all at his funeral. She insisted on staying behind.

When we pulled up to Doris’ house, I wasn’t sure we had the right address. This wasn’t the neighborhood and house I had pictured in my mind as a kid. The one-story brick ranch was certainly the most well-kept on the street, surrounded by a chain-link fence. I went to lift the latch on the gate and a woman from behind a door covered in iron bars stuck her head out. She called out my mom’s name and mine as if to question who we were. But she knew instantly. We nodded yes, she dropped her head into her forearm resting on the door and shook it back and forth. When she looked up she was laughing and smiling. It was Doris.

For the next two hours, Mom and I sat in Doris’ living room. It was hot. The sweat poured down my back. There was no AC. She wasn’t dressed for company, but when we asked her if she was mad that we didn’t call first, she insisted she was thrilled to see us.

Doris looked just as I remembered her—same glasses, same smile—although she was much thinner. All around us were pictures of familiar faces, my grandparents, my mother, my aunts, my cousins. Every birth, graduation and wedding ceremony. She pulled out stacks of albums and pointed at pictures that told stories from the past. She pointed to a faded wingback chair and then to several gilded lamps, making sure to tell me where they used to be in my grandparents’ house before they gave them to her. She told a story about how she got her first Zenith TV from Papa as a gift. She always wanted a Zenith, she said.

We put my aunt Merrie on speakerphone, and Doris said, “Hey, Merrie. This is Doris, your maid.” I took video with my iPhone. The conversation they had was all I needed to hear. My aunt said she wished she could be there with us and that she loved her. Doris told her how thankful she was that my Mom and her sisters have never forgotten her. How special she has always felt because of them. How they are such a blessing in her life. And how we are always welcome in her home.

She knew.

She knew and when I knew she knew, I cried the kind of cry where the tears felt like they would never, ever stop. They felt absolutely amazing and strange at the same time. Doris confirmed what I wanted to hear. For our family, it wasn’t like “The Help” at all.

When we left Doris’ house, she hugged us goodbye and said she was going to crawl in her bed and eat the box of cookies and brownies we brought her from the local bakery. After 47 years of taking care of our family, I love imagining her doing just that.

I told her the next time I stop by, I promise to bring her Fruit Stripe. She said she looked forward to it. And I believe her.