Grace and Grit (20 page)

“You lucked out that time.”

“Like I tell the other black supervisors, ‘Know your job, do your job, and no one can find fault.’ ”

“How am I supposed to know my job when I don’t even have a job description?” I cringed at the whininess in my voice.

“You have to keep asking.”

“I have. Several times now. I’ll ask again, but you’d think at this point they’d have already have given me a description.”

“Lilly, you’ve been here as long as I have. When I first started, I was still supposed to be sitting at the back of the bus. Now, how many times have they set up the guillotine for you? And each time, you’ve never walked through it. You’ve walked around it, and you might have even thumbed your nose at it a few times. And that makes them even more determined to drop the blade. Don’t get me wrong. I know what you’re up against better than anybody here. They’re pros at this game, and they’ve set up that guillotine for you again. But remember, you don’t have to walk through it.”

Someone across the room called for Rodney. He patted me on the back and gave me a quick smile before he left. I needed to quit complaining, pull up my bootstraps, and get the job done, but the past couple of years had worn me out; I was done stuffing down my disappointment and swallowing my anger, throwing myself harder into my work like a good little hedgehog, thinking that if I just worked longer and smarter, my merit would speak for itself. It hadn’t and it wouldn’t. It had taken me too long to see what had been so transparent for so many years. I needed to earn the best salary possible, yes, but more than that, I needed approval for being someone special. That didn’t have a thing to do with money. I had stuck it out so long, to the detriment of myself and my family, in part because I was waiting for acceptance. Even though I’d found comfort and reward in other parts of my life, like dancing and my grandchildren, I never let go of the secret hope that Goodyear would change how it treated me.

Just a few days earlier I’d finally been given my annual evaluation for the previous year. I’d met with Paul, a manager who had supervised me less than a month after I went on leave for my colon surgery. He told me I wouldn’t get the raise I had been counting
on. Using Jeff’s audits, he said my performance was poor, specifically criticizing me for not having team meetings.

I answered right back. “That’s right. Eddie froze the overtime pay and the guys won’t come in an hour early for a meeting if they’re not paid.”

I was coming to the horrible realization that I held no real value in the eyes of those I had tried hardest to please. I knew I wouldn’t be given the material I needed to perform my duties successfully in my new department. Walking back to where I’d been unloading Hummer tires, I pondered how long I could maneuver the curing presses before I was tripped up unwittingly.

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.

T
HE 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.

—W
ILLIAM
B
LAKE

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?”