Everyday Use

Everyday Use Summary | Detailed Summary

"Everyday Use" begins with a mother, Ms. Johnson and her daughter, Maggie, waiting for her sister, Dee. They have obviously prepared the yard very carefully waiting for her arrival. They have perhaps raked the clay ground in preparation for comfortably sitting down in the yard together and staring up at the elm tree.

Once upon a time, there was a fire and Maggie was burned very badly. There are still scars up and down her arms and legs. Dee, her sister, fared better. It was as though she had then, as she perhaps has now, a kind of charmed life. Whereas the world turned to Maggie and always said, "No," it would never do that to Dee.

The mother has a recurring daydream. Perhaps it has been suggested by those talk shows where a successful, grown-up child sees parents he or she has not seen in many years. The parents are old and unsuccessful. The child embraces the parents, thanking them for their help, expressing gratitude.

In the mother's dream, she meets Dee on something like Johnny Carson's show. She is ushered into a blinding, bright room after having stepped out of the cozy darkness of a limousine. The sporty gray man smiles at her. Dee pins an orchid onto her dress. There is quiet celebration of their success as a mother and child.

On the show, Ms. Johnson is more beautiful, a hundred pounds lighter with perfected skin- unlike the fatter, big-boned reality, the real tough woman who kills and cleans hogs, who can work all day in icy temperatures, who can eat a pork liver minutes after she has killed the hog. She is radiant, with glistening hair on the show. And, yes, this is Johnny Carson who tries his best to keep up with her clever repartee.

This dream is far from reality. In truth, if Ms. Johnson were really talking to Johnny Carson she, like all her kind, could never keep up with him and, God help her, would be as fearful of him as of any white man. She would be ready to run away any minute. She wasn't like Dee, who was quite fearless with anyone.

They are still waiting. Maggie comes out, wondering how she looks. Maggie comes out gingerly. She is always bent over, shuffling, hiding herself- like an animal that was once run over. She had been this way since the fire. Ms. Johnson had held her during the fire, while Dee stood outside by the gum tree. Dee had always hated the house anyway. The fire was like a present. Dee always had looked nicer than Maggie.

After the fire, the church helped Ms. Johnson raise money to send Dee to school in Augusta. She tried to share her precious knowledge with her mother and sister. But most of it didn't take. She seemed to end things just before there was a glimmer of understanding.

Dee was relentless when she wanted something. And she wanted nice things, like a yellow, organdy dress for graduation, like black pumps to match a dress she made from some discards given to her mother.

The mother never went to school for any time. In fact, her whole school was closed down in second grade. Black people accepted it back then. Maggie tries to read to her sometimes but she can't see well and she isn't really good at learning. She won't have good looks or money but she will marry her boyfriend, John Thomas. Then her mother can sit home alone and sing her church songs to herself. Not that she was a singer. She was better at doing man's work. In 1949, a cow kicked her in the side when she was milking it and she lost her taste for milk.

Ms. Johnson doesn't care about the house she lives in. Dee won't like it. She'll visit but she'll never bring her friends. Some boys hung around the house in the afternoon, when they washed clothes. There were some tittering little girls here and there. The girls liked her and she read to them.

At one point, she went after Jimmy T, she kind of ignored Maggie and her mother. But, then, Jimmy T went away and got married. It kind of shocked her. Therefore, her mother was reflecting on the past, when Dee showed up. She saw her leg first, Dee's very recognizable, neat looking feet extending out first- from some man's car. He is a very hairy looking gentleman. Maggie greets them by sucking in her breath several times.

Dee is dressed blindingly. She is decked out in a dress of orange and gold, with gold earrings and resplendent sounds when she walked. Dee's hair is very black and stands on her head like a sheep's wool with two pigtails. Maggie sucks in her breath again. The man greets them in Arabic, calling them "my mother in sister." Dee gets a Polaroid out of the car. The man, a barber, tries to shake hands with Maggie, very unsuccessfully.

Dee has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo to rid herself of "her oppressors." But, as her mother gives her the true lineage of her name, she gets tired. Perhaps she just likes the new name. Her mother doesn't mind and manages to hear it a few times. Far more different is the barber's actual name so they wind up just calling him Hakim.

There were some cattle folk down the road, who also greeted people with "Asalamalakim," but generally were too busy, to be friendly. At some point, their herd was poisoned and they spent the evening, wide-awake, with guns. Was Hakim Dee's husband? Her mother couldn't tell. Hakim shared some beliefs with the "cattle people," but he wanted to do other things with his life besides raise animals. He had his own trade, didn't he?

When they ate lunch, Hakim wouldn't eat collards or pork. He thought that eating pork was unclean. Dee was filled with delight at the food, particularly the sweet potatoes. This was the food she grew up with. And, for the moment, Dee/Wangaroo was an aficionado of the past. She even loved the hand-made bench her father meant, rubbing her hands over it to feel the shape of the "rump prints" that use and age had created. Now, she was coveting different pieces of the butter churn. She wanted to use them for decoration. They gave it to her as a gift.

Now Dee went over to a trunk in her mother's bedroom and started to go through it. Grandma Dee had made it out of scraps from her old dresses, from Grandpa Jattell's shirts, even a scrap from Great Grandpa Ezra's Civil War uniform. There were others, machine-made, that could last longer. But Dee wanted the hand-stitched ones. Her mother had thought of giving them to Maggie. Dee gasped when she heard that. Still, Maggie would probably actually use them and they wouldn't use them. Dee appreciated them more, wanted them as precious relics. She had forgotten how she had rejected them before as "old-fashioned" before she went to college. Now the quilts were her need and her obsession. Maggie would destroy them. She would "hang them." She would archive them forever.

Maggie overheard the conversation. She said to give the quilts to Dee. But her mother could also tell that she felt she had lost out again. Yes, she said she didn't need the quilts to remember her Grandmother, but she also knew, deep down inside, that something was being taken away from her.

Then her mother did an uncharacteristic thing. It was as if she were touched with the Holy Spirit, some kind of current of energy running from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. It was "Halellujah" energy, the energy that led to shouting and stomping in Church. She grabbed Maggie, hugged her, dragging her into the room, snatching the quilts away from Dee/Wangaroo and dumping them into Maggie's lap.

This action greatly surprised both girls. Dee was offended and went to the car. She reprimanded them both on not appreciating their heritage. She told Maggie to make something of herself. She then put on her sunglasses. At this time, Maggie just smiled- for no clear reason. Later, they watched the car go off. Dee and her barber friend were off to another world. Maggie brought some snuff for her mother. They sat outside and enjoyed the rest of the day.