Grace and Grit by Lilly Ledbetter Page B

supposed to do?”
    My shoulders tightened. A familiar feeling of frustration flooded my stomach. No matter how old I was, it always snuck up on me when something Edna said hurt my feelings. Throughout my life there had remained something stuck between us, something as elemental as two charged electrons repelling each other. It wasn’t one particular thing she did or said but the accumulation of all of the small things: the hard look that could stare a hole right through you, the critical tone of voice, the wall she erected between herself and the rest of the world even though she was always doing for others—myself and the children included.
    Vickie was the one who got the best of Edna those early years of her childhood when she and Phillip stayed with her on the farm in the summer while I worked at H&R Block. She was so good to Vickie, I’d have to remind her that she had two grandchildren. When the children became more independent, I’d go through phases of distancing myself from Edna, being too busy with work, even when she and my father moved a stone’s throw away after Papa died. I’d often fooled myself into thinking that I no longer cared whether or not I measured up in her eyes, yet here I was again, returning to her doorstep, seeking her recognition.
    When Edna finally decided to invite me in, I didn’t stay. I searched for my car keys in my purse and told her to get some rest. She looked tired. It was clear she didn’t feel well. Besides, I was too old for such childish nonsense, and I knew enough to recognize and accept that Edna was doing the best she could, as she always had. Really, how could I fault her if she didn’t know how to love me the way I wanted, if she never once said the words “I love you”? How could I blame her for only knowing how to survive by freezing her feelings, playing dead like a possum? It was the one thing I’d learned to do best, and it’s what would keep me alive during the hard times waiting for me just around the corner at Goodyear.

CHAPTER 4
Becoming a Rubber Worker

    Life should not be estimated exclusively by the standards of dollars and cents. I am not disposed to complain that I have planted and others have gathered fruit. A man has cause for regret only when he sows and no one reaps
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    —C HARLES G OODYEAR
    W HEN I started training at Goodyear, I joined the stream of workers driving to Gadsden before each shift. A small city on the Coosa River, Gadsden is circled by hills brimming with iron ore, coal, and limestone—the three ingredients necessary for making steel. Generation after generation of families had migrated from the surrounding foothills to find a better way of life at Republic Steel (the heart of this industrial city) and smaller factories, producing everything from wire to stovepipes. When Goodyear opened its doors in 1929, men from small bluffs and hollows named Gnatville and Turkeytown had a new opportunity to earn what seemed like a fortune, compared with their fathers, who had made only pennies a day farming. At that time, President Hoover had actually pushed a button at the White House to raise the American flag at the plant.
    In 1979, I, too, faced a new opportunity at Goodyear, but myfirst time inside the plant, I felt like I’d stuck my head in a barrel of hot roofing tar. No exaggeration. It smelled that bad, and I wondered, “Do I really want to work here?” The deafening machinery made my ears buzz, fumes from the curing pits almost choked me, tire-building equipment reared back like gigantic spiders on their hind legs, and machines called banburies, which looked like three-story cake mixers, spit out four-hundred-pound batches of black rubber marshmallows. Several times a day, from that day forward, I asked myself if I really knew what I’d gotten myself into.
    For six months I trained in the plant’s various departments in the five main divisions: the tube plant, the mill, the truck side, the passenger side, and the radial plant. I