Were I to be reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
When my mother and I reached the hardware store on 61st street, I asked if she could buy me a blue light bulb. She didn't answer. I was learning more and more about her since we hadn't lived together until a few months before when she remarried my father in the church's chapel. I was present as the only witness, even though my mother's parents and at least one brother was a block away and her only sister two blocks away. Of course when you are young, you see a problem, but it's usually not the same problem the adults are experiencing.
I remained silent as we both entered the store. She went in search of a bathroom mat. I decided to find the aisle with light bulbs. I was optimistic. I had to be, as most children are at eleven.
This is the 1964. Malcolm was shot dead already. President Kennedy was assassinated the year before. Here we were walking on creaky wooden floors, in a store on the Southside of Chicago still owned by a white man, looking for a blue bulb to summon a very special lady.
My mother decided on a green mat. Green was her favorite color. I saw the mat come down my aisle near where I stood in front of the bulb section, and then I tried to look at her eyes. My mother was looking around, everywhere but at me. She had no intention of looking at bulbs, let alone buy one. But I held the bulb out to her, hoping she would find it pretty, at least. I said it would be nice as a night light in the bedroom I shared with my sister. My mother looked at the bulb without taking it out of my hand. I watched her walk away.
I was beginning to understand that if she didn't say ask that I return whatever item I picked up to the shelf, it was okay to follow her to the counter. So following her to the counter, I placed the bulb beside the mat and hand towels.
We continued in silence, walking the five or six blocks, side by side.
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