Alice Walker on Counting Her Financial Eggs
I HAD my first paying job when I was 7. My two older brothers and I were hired to pick daffodils for the wife of the man who owned the land our parents worked. In this part of middle Georgia there are thousands of gigantic pecan trees, and it was under such trees that the three of us set to work. There were deep-yellow and pale-yellow daffodils (which our boss, in a strong Southern accent, referred to as “jon’quils”) almost as far as the eye could see. To a child it seemed a fairyland, and I set to picking daffodils with delight. We were paid a nickel a bunch (our boss lady sold them in town for a quarter a bunch, which we didn’t know and didn’t care about), and I proved to be a speedy and efficient picker. I might have earned as much as half a dollar each day.
This went into a piggy bank that was shaped like an actual pig. My hardworking parents instilled in all their children, early on, that saving was to be a habit that would mean we could afford to buy presents for ourselves as well as for others at Christmas.
A few years later, when I wanted desperately to learn to play the piano, my mother decided to let me have all the eggs laid by our chickens. I sold these to a market in town and was able to pay the 50 cents per lesson my teacher required. In winter, though, the hens laid less, and eventually I had to give this up.
Not until 50 years later would I circle back to this dream, hire a piano teacher, and learn to play six songs, among them James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” (commonly known as “The Negro National Anthem”) and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Having learned these six songs, I promptly forgot how to play the piano, which is one of those mysterious happenings in life that make you wonder.
But the egg experiment taught me something that put me at odds with the endless-growth idea of classic capitalism and made me a budding socialist. I could see that the number of eggs required to fund my musical expansion was finite. I could also see that the eggs my passion for music was taking from my protein-deficient family would, in the end, under- mine the health and stability of all of us. The experience taught me that I needed to develop a keener sense of planning and a deeper understanding of the means and reliability of production.
One of my father’s biggest dreams was to own a car. When my older brothers grew skilled enough to keep one running, my father bought one. It was not the little red sports car of his dreams, but it was roomy and rugged, and he could get almost all of his large family inside it. In this car the two of us, when I was 13 or so, rode off to his lodge meetings, where I was designated secretary and took notes, or “minutes,” as they were called. We also rode into town to visit the bank. If the family had accumulated even 10 dollars above the month’s expenses, into the passbook of the Farmers & Merchants Bank it went.
Many years after I, the youngest, had left home, it was a joy to learn that my mother, who had always stayed home after getting everyone else dressed and ready to leave the house, learned to drive a car and at some point found her way to the ocean, which she had never seen. Not even bothering to take off her stockings, she plunged in, as if she could swim. There is a wonderful photograph of her beaming and sopping wet, as if she’d just met her own mother. (And of course she had!)
But how clever it was of my father to take me with him to his boring (to me) lodge meetings, where I was to take down information that had zero meaning to me. I see it now as preparation for the writing life that has been mine since I was in my teens. And how positively resolute it was of him to take me with him to make deposits in the Farmers & Merchants Bank, the only unsegregated establishment in the county and the only place white people seemed almost happy to see him.
I somehow developed, with the guidance of my parents and the love of my community, a sense that I could learn the mechanics of life: find work, do it well, enjoy it as much as possible, and use my earnings to support the yearnings that sprang, apparently, from my soul. Babysitting, waiting tables, and working as a “salad girl” at a local 4-H retreat for white youth all meant I could, by the time I was a junior in high school, take care of all my clothing, hair, health, and dental needs. This was fortunate because, after raising eight children, my parents were exhausted and struggling with their own health.
Right up to my 40s, I made a monthly list of every purchase and every anticipated expense and measured it against what income I might expect to receive. I had a profound sense of my indebtedness to both my parents on the day that I knew I could singlehandedly pay all my daughter’s expenses as she went off to Yale.
As a woman I was always aware that unless I wanted to be someone else’s dependent throughout my life, I must become, myself, my own breadwinner and independent person, and that the freedom this assured meant I could speak my mind and share my thoughts and resources in any way I choose. A woman afraid to speak her mind is usually a woman who depends for her upkeep on someone else. This would have been intolerable for me, though I might have adored the person who “kept” me.
Learning about money is as important, perhaps more important, than any other subject. I recommend finding a teacher, or teachers, who can help navigate the world of saving, and of spending, wisely. It is crucial that women have shelter, for instance, listed in their names. Otherwise, they and their children can be held hostage as they were for hundreds of years during which only the man “owned” the house, as, by marriage, he “owned” his children.
If individual ownership is impossible, then by all means form collectives with other women that will allow for the acquiring of property together. This can strengthen one’s own stability as well as ease the burden on everyone. I have not myself been able to do this, but it has always seemed to me to be both extremely logical as well as a way to foster well- being and community in a country rarely supportive of independence of this kind and magnitude.
Attempt to find a system of saving and increasing one’s wealth that is ethical in its concern for the planet and for other creatures, as well as humans. Witnessing school closures, widespread food anxiety and homelessness, and the lack of access to basic healthcare in our country and beyond, I am reminded of what was important in my community and in my family as I was growing up: learning how to earn money, how to use it for good purposes, and to save whatever you could of it, in anticipation of one’s most cherished desires. All with the understanding that if there is to be a future at all, it is best to be able to support it in a style that one wants, rather than one that is imposed.
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