Grace and Grit

by Lilly Ledbetter

  I TOOK a few days off in February so I could take Edna to the doctor to continue the battery of tests as the doctor determined the best chemotherapy and radiation treatment for her; he’d decided not to perform surgery. On the drive to Birmingham, Edna was quieter than usual, her rattled breath and the occasional grumble of my empty stomach the only sounds between us.

  “How do you feel today? Were you able to sleep okay last night?” I asked. She had to prop herself up on pillows and barely rested each night.

  “I feel about the same as I do every day.” I glanced at her as I made a right turn, her tight lips thinner than they used to be, pulled inward as if holding in a disgraceful secret. “I’d feel better if you’d been here on time when you said you would to pick me up. I waited and waited and thought you weren’t coming. I was about to call Charles when you drove up.”

  I turned on the radio. She had no idea how hard it had been to get the week off, and since I hadn’t shared my troubles at work with her, she didn’t understand the stress I was dealing with. Every minute outside work I’d dedicated to her, and I’d rushed as best as I could to get to her house straight from work. For a minute I fantasized about stopping the car and letting her out on the side of the road, but listening to her struggle to breathe, I kept driving, embarrassed by my ugly thoughts.

  “I told you that we sometimes have a managers’ meeting and if I didn’t get to your house by nine o’clock, the meeting was on and I’d be running an hour late.”

  “I’ve never understood why it takes you twelve hours to work an eight-hour shift. No one else works like that.”

  How many times had I heard her say those exact same words, and how many times had I explained that I had to go in early to prep and stay late for the morning meetings?

  My head felt as heavy as a piece of metal, and I snapped, “Has anyone ever told you that you are the hardest person in the world to be nice to?”

  She turned her face away from me and stared out the window without a word. I immediately regretted my outburst. She was nitpicking me over being late, but her anger didn’t have anything to do with me. She was mad about the cancer, and I was an easy target. I’d overreacted as usual, the same way I did with poor Charles, yelling at him in a flash now. My nerves had gotten so bad that, like Edna, I could no longer sleep.

  THE TESTING showed that Edna’s cancer was more aggressive than originally diagnosed. Only the approaching spring weather lifted my spirits, and I’d leave work scouring the skyline, the way I used to search for four-leaf clovers as a girl, looking for my favorite bird, the redheaded woodpecker, which I considered a good-luck omen. I’d lose myself for a moment observing something inconsequential like a flock of startled blackbirds swelling from the branches, the oily sheen of their dark wings swirling like ink against the sky. I’d linger and marvel at their simple beauty before I’d pick up Edna and take her to Anniston for her radiation treatments. Before I went home to try to rest before the next shift, I made sure she had enough food and medicine. Each day felt like more of the same until the day a coworker named Ray joined me in final finish.

  Walking behind the force grinders, he reached behind him and automatically pulled the lever to shut the gates, which had been let down while he showed me how to operate the machinery. The steel gate caught me, pinned my body to the ground, and pressed my knee down in a vise grip. Pain shot up my leg into my groin. The world became a grainy blur, like the snowy static of a late-night TV screen when the daily programming is over. Unable to speak, I looked over at Ray. He stood for what seemed like a long moment before he flipped the lever. As the gate lifted off of me, I rolled to my side, clutching my knee. He helped me up, and I hobbled to the hospital at the back of the plant.

  The Goodyear nurse confirmed that my leg wasn’t broken, but my knee was swollen as big as a baseball, the torn cartilage, I’d find out later, balled up under my kneecap like a stubborn wad of rubber caught in a machine. I knew then, more than ever, that I’d need all the luck I could get to avoid the guillotine’s sharp edge my final years at Goodyear.

  CHAPTER 7

  Holding the Tiger by the Tail

  Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  —WILLIAM BLAKE

  I CALLED A specialist to schedule an appointment for my knee but had to wait a couple of weeks before he could fit me in. In the meantime, I kept working as best as I could. Then, before my shift one day, I found the torn piece of paper stuffed with the mail in my cubby listing my name next to the names of the three other area managers in the tire room.

  The note showed my salary, down to the dollar, and the male managers’ salaries: I was earning thousands less than they were. I earned $44,724 while the highest-paid man earned $59,028 and the other two followed close behind him, earning $58,464 and $58,226. I don’t know how I made it through that night. I was scalding on the inside and out, as if someone had thrown a skilletful of hot grease on me. One minute I wanted to give somebody a piece of my mind, wondering how many people knew about this; and the next I wanted to throw up from the anxiety, remembering how much we’d done without as a family. All night, humiliated and devastated, I struggled over what to do. If I ignored it, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. It would gnaw away at me. If I said something, there’d be retaliation, payback far worse than any I’d experienced before.

  By the end of my shift that day, I was so tired I could barely walk, and I was sopping wet with the effort it took to keep my emotions at bay. On the way home, I didn’t bother to go through the drive-through at Hardee’s for my usual bacon biscuit, and I didn’t turn on the country music station that never failed to soothe me. Heading back to Jacksonville directly into the morning sun, I let my emotions flow through me—anger, sadness, fear. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was something of a relief, like blood returning to your arm or leg when the circulation has been cut off.

  The drive that morning in March 1998 seemed like the longest drive I’d ever made. I could feel myself holding the steering wheel so tight that my fingers tingled as I saw my life at Goodyear flash before me. I remembered all the times I brought a cake Edna had baked and the guys almost finished it before I set it on the break-room table. I thought about more serious moments when the men I supervised, with a simple nod or a few quiet words, thanked me for looking out for them, making sure they were paid properly for overtime or given the right number of vacation days.

  What upset me the most was what could have been. If I had ever been accepted by management at Goodyear, I know I could have accomplished more and contributed more—not just made more tires but helped to make the plant a better place to work. I could have made a difference for the women who came after me. Instead, all those years management had been trying to get rid of me, all I’d done was survive.

  As those numbers tumbled through my mind again and again, I understood that my belief that hard work pays off was downright naïve, even though I’d been far from naïve when I started. I’d known from the get-go that I’d have to work longer and smarter than the men in order to prove myself. And that’s what I did. I came in early and stayed late to make sure my area was prepped properly. I rarely said no, never stopped learning, and never backed down. And I’d done what I was supposed to; over the years my production numbers were high, my scrap low. I kept absenteeism in my department to a minimum. Now I was the first one they called when a machine went down.

  There wasn’t any logic behind these numbers. I couldn’t catch up to their salaries scribbled on that note, and I couldn’t start over.

  On the drive home, even as I deliberated about what to do, I knew that the only choice I had was to stand up for myself and do what was right. I understood the risk I was taking. I’d seen workers who’d lost so much fighting for years for disability. It surely would be the hardest fight of my life, and there were no guarantees that the man in the white hat
would win. I certainly didn’t have the money to pay for a lawyer to help me. And I might lose my pension with less than a year left before retirement. But as I ruminated, I realized I had to at least try to prove that the good guy could still win, and that I could still make a difference. It was just my nature. I couldn’t help myself. Alone in the car, I ached to get home and try to see my way clear through this situation. I needed to tell Charles what had happened. With him by my side, I could handle whatever I had to.

  When I finally made it home, I walked past the banana plant one of the union men who gardened had given me, its green shoots unfurling from the brown stalk we covered in black plastic for the winter. Walking into the house, I smelled coffee. Charles was in the kitchen pouring a fresh cup, standing next to my favorite plaque hanging on the wall that read DON’T LOOK BACK. I stood in the doorway of our small kitchen and didn’t even sit down.

  “You look beat. You want a cup of coffee?” Charles offered.

  I nodded. He reached into the cabinet for the coffee cup I always used, one he’d given me from Fort McClellan.

  “I’ve had a hard night.”

  He fixed my coffee the way I liked it and motioned for me to sit at the table. Before I sat down, I pulled the note out of my pocket and gave it to him.

  “What’s this?

  “Read it.”

  He did, and looked up at me, his eyes wide. “Is this a joke or something?”

  “Don’t think so.” I took a quick sip. “I’ve already made up my mind. This won’t be a quick fix by any stretch of the imagination, but unless you can convince me otherwise, I’m going to Birmingham to file an EEOC complaint.” This would be my second time filing. And it would make the first look like a walk in the park.

  He looked at me. His hair had turned gray years ago, but his eyes, still a startling blue, sparkled brighter, as they always did when he realized there was something that needed doing. That was a good sign. After a few moments, he put the note on the table between us. “What time would you like to leave?”

  I’d never loved him more than in that moment.

  THE FOLLOWING morning, on the drive to Birmingham, Charles and I didn’t say much. To keep my mind off the task before me, I stared into the woods whizzing by, marveling at the blooming white dogwood trees, hoping to catch a glimpse of a deer. After a couple of wrong turns, we found the EEOC building downtown. Inside, we passed through security and walked into a crowded waiting room. I tried to find a vacant seat in the corner and settled on a spot in the middle of the room. I don’t like crowds, but Charles was worse. He didn’t sit down at all. “I’m going to get some coffee and a newspaper down the street,” he said before he hightailed it out of there.

  I couldn’t blame him. The somber atmosphere felt the same as a hospital waiting room—everyone fortified for a long wait with newspapers and coffee. I glanced at the girl next to me. She was about Vickie’s age. I wondered why she was there. I pretended to read the Time magazine I picked up from the stack on a table but peered around the room instead. Each person there was waiting to tell her story. What were the experiences that had brought them all to this point? Were they similar to mine? Did they feel as nervous as I did? I couldn’t help but feel that we’d been thrown together by a natural disaster, united by default into a club I had no desire to join.

  I flipped through the magazine and tried to read the article about the thirty-third anniversary of the Selma march in Alabama; I couldn’t concentrate, discouraged by the fact that Alabama only made national news for negative stories. The only positive press for the state highlighted Heisman trophy winners or national football championships.

  Rifling through the magazine stack next to me, I recalled something one of my interviewers had said while I was training at Goodyear. I hadn’t thought of it in years, but on the drive into Birmingham it had popped into my thoughts with other bits and pieces of moments at Goodyear. Now his words kept running through my mind, stuck in my head like a bad song. The interviewer, one of the factory council members, wanted to know why I was at Goodyear when I should be home at the kitchen sink. Why was I at Goodyear looking for a job when Goodyear didn’t need women working there? he’d asked. That was such a long time ago, and I thought so much had changed in the world—until I found the note.

  Over the years, I’d done exactly what the men had done: I’d climbed the two-story buildings in the mill room; knocked down the lampblack from the boxcar into the giant banburies; started the dangerous conveyors, as wide as one-lane roads, in the rain and the sleet. I’d made it alone; the handful of women managers along the way had come and gone, quitting or having nervous breakdowns and seeking professional help. Good men like Bruce, the union representative who’d stood by me when I made the first EEOC claim in 1982, suffered when they stood up for the right thing. His integrity had cost him his position as the union rep; the following year he was defeated. I’d always regretted that had happened to such a decent person.

  When my name was finally called, I met in a cramped cubicle with Ollie Crooms, the EEOC officer, an attractive, pleasant woman. In this confined office with a stranger, I relived my darkest moments at Goodyear. Over the course of several hours, without lunch or a restroom break, I recounted being blamed for a tire hold the day I returned from the week off in February when I took Edna for testing. I was never shown the actual tires or the printout with the wrong specifications. I was simply informed that I had made a $10,000 mistake, that they were deciding what to do about it, and that I’d probably be suspended. I knew there’d been one hold that year—someone had let the wrong lampblack get mixed in a batch of tires, which resulted in the scrapping of more than 76,000 tires—and that no one had been suspended for that.

  Much of the time I talked, I was struck by the ugliness I was describing. Then that poor woman had to pull the more embarrassing details from me—the conversation was as painfully slow and halting as plucking a stubborn splinter deeply embedded in the flesh.

  She needed to know the other details, like the unbelievable fact that when I challenged Jeff about his unfair audits, after so much that had happened so long ago, he’d actually asked me to go get a drink after work, starting up the same nasty behavior he’d demonstrated at my very first evaluation, when he asked me to meet him at the Ramada Inn. In our brief conversations with Eddie about my performance, I had intimated that Jeff’s remarks were inappropriate because my audit scores continued to drop after my refusal. Eddie ignored me and I didn’t push the matter—I had enough of a challenge to try to make him see that I was being evaluated unfairly. Relaying these awkward and sordid details, saying out loud the incidents and remarks I had kept to myself for so long, I couldn’t help but feel like I had done something wrong to provoke the mistreatment. It was twisted, but I kept worrying that the EEOC officer would somehow think I had deserved my treatment at Goodyear. I guess that’s the nature of trauma: In order to make sense of it all, you tend to blame yourself.

  At the close of the interview, Ollie was more upset than I was. “You do realize, don’t you, those guys were just messing with you all that time?”

  I gathered my purse and stood up to shake her hand. “Yes, ma’am, I do. They’ve been messing with me for almost twenty years.”

  ONCE I filled out the EEOC questionnaire, I didn’t feel any better about the whole situation. I was more anxious than I’d been before I had the interview. I’d felt compelled to take my stand, but now I was consumed by the same jumpy feeling that possessed me when I was in the house alone at night and I let my fears run away from me, convinced someone was hiding in the bushes outside the window about to break in. It was irrational, but I had a mixture of feelings, vacillating from anger to fear to worry that I’d opened a Pandora’s box. Mainly, I was resigned to the fact that there was nothing to do now but wait for the EEOC to investigate. That would take months. No matter what happened, I had to make it another year until retirement age when I was sixty-two and eligible for Social Security, though the actual
thought of trying to work again overwhelmed me.

  The long journey I’d embarked on that day in late March 1998 would be a lesson in the intricacies and convolutions of a complex justice system steeped in politics and inconsistencies. I had entered the labyrinth, and I would be approaching my seventy-first birthday, more than a decade later, before I found my way out.

  SINCE MY injury, I’d felt like I had a knife stuck in my leg. Shortly after my meeting with the EEOC, I was able to see the specialist. He performed an MRI that day and scheduled arthroscopic surgery the very next day. I took some time off work to heal and attend physical therapy. In a matter of a couple of weeks after my knee surgery, I was able to move around and walk with crutches. During those weeks at home recovering, I kept smelling something rancid in the house. I thought maybe a rat had died outside in the yard. I also couldn’t focus when I was reading the newspaper; I tried to work the crossword puzzles, but I forgot how to spell simple words. I couldn’t sleep at night, and when I did, I had nightmares. I kept dreaming that I was standing at the edge of a tall building, looking down weak with fear, knowing I was about to fall off. I woke up, my heart racing, unable to go back to sleep.

  Then one morning I decided to get dressed and get out of the house. I felt someone staring at me as I ran a brush through my hair. I looked behind me. Charles was standing in the doorway of our bedroom, the book he was reading, Left Behind, still in his hand. He had a quizzical look on his face.

  “What?” I said. “Why are you looking at me that way? Is there something wrong? Did I leave the coffeepot on again?” I kept forgetting to turn it off, along with leaving the garage door open at night.