Read Online Grace and Grit by Lilly Ledbetter - Free Book Online Page B

Charles I’d taken a full-time position as the office manager, he acted as betrayed as if I’d had an affair. To show him I was no longer willing to be told how to live my life, at the end of my first week as office manager I marched, paycheck in hand, to the First National Bank in Anniston and opened my own checking account. When I’d completed all the forms, the banker pushed the papers back across the desk at me. I asked him what I’d missed.
    He looked at my wedding ring. “Are you married?”
    “Yes.” I looked at his left hand, trying to see where this conversation was headed.
    “You forgot to fill in your husband’s name.”
    I tasted the bitter residue from the packet of saccharin I’d poured into the cup of coffee he’d offered me when I sat down. I handed the forms back to him. “I’m opening a separate account.”
    He was quiet for a minute. “It’s happening more and more these days,” he said.
    “What’s that?” I glanced at the
Anniston Star
sitting on his desk. I thought he was referring to the headlines about the Vietnam War protests. My father, who worked at the Anniston Army Depot, viewed any antiwar sentiment as un-American; the demonstrations made Charles, a member of the National Guard, furious. I secretly sympathized with the protestors.
    “You must be getting a divorce.”
    “No, sir. As a matter of fact, I’m not.”
    He shook his head. I wondered if he was going to give the paperwork back to me.
    He rifled through it, signing below my name before he pulled an account booklet from his drawer.
    “There must be some reason you’re opening a separate account,” he said, more to himself than to me, as he wrote my nameat the top with my new account number and the amount I was depositing underneath.
    I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t say that with my own bank account, I could prove to Charles how much of a difference my paycheck would make; and if I wanted to spend more on myself or the children, who was to stop me?
    He handed the blank account booklet to me. “You’ll receive your new checks in the mail in about two weeks.”
    A few days later, when I opened a charge card at Wakefield’s department store and applied for a Standard Oil gas card, I received the same response the banker had given me. This time I wasn’t surprised. When I told Charles about the account, he blew a gasket, raising his voice and then retreating to the garage for hours to wash and polish his car. The first time we split the household bills at the end of the month, he calmed down a bit.
    Charles settled down even more when we were able to buy our dream house in Jacksonville several months later. For years, we’d drive into town on Sunday afternoons to admire houses and see what was on the market; now Vickie, tired of being so far from school, was begging us to move. We made a budget and started our search in earnest. Charles and I soon found a redbrick ranch house that we all loved on a small hill, tucked near the end of a long street at the foot of a wooded ridge. The yard was big enough for Charles to build a work shed in one day. The best part was that it was only blocks from school and the Jacksonville Baptist Church. In spite of its proximity to public places, our new home was located on a quiet street, and it wasn’t uncommon for us to see deer grazing in our yard or wake up to the ghostly mist of a morning fog.
    Meanwhile, significant social movements were sweeping the country. Historic civil rights struggles were taking root in Alabama. No one in my family was sympathetic to the African Americans and northern agitators advocating change. I lived in a community where change came slowly, if at all; and when it did, it was oftenviolent—as in the case of the firebombing of the Greyhound bus carrying Freedom Riders outside Anniston in 1961.
    Both my parents had voted for George Wallace for governor in 1962. They applauded him when he stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama and so