better than I remember most of my childhood.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“Nobody knows. I don’t talk about it. For a long time, I was ashamed of it. Can you imagine? I
became a school principal. I wore pearls. I bought a house with forty-two windows. And I never told anybody my mother was a cleaning lady.” She shook her head. “That’s the thing I’m most ashamed of in my whole life. Being ashamed of her.”
She turned around.
“One of the houses my mother cleaned belonged to a woman named Alice Ashford. A widow. Wealthy. Very proper. My mother cleaned for her every Thursday for twelve years.” Mrs. Whitaker
almost laughed. “Thursdays. Can you believe that?”
I couldn’t say anything.
“Mrs. Ashford was never warm. Never friendly. She called my mother by her first name and my
mother called her Mrs. Ashford. My mother ate her lunch on the back steps, because it didn’t feel right to eat in Mrs. Ashford’s kitchen.” She looked at me. “Does that sound familiar?”
