Gail Mitchell
Day Work
For Lenora Ross Carrington Rutherford
She said that she made sixty-five cents for ironing a shirt, two-dollars for a
basket of laundry. There was no hourly wage for day work. If you could get a
real job in 1960’s San Francisco you made one-dollar and sixty-five cents an
hour and you earned every cent. There was a battalion of colored women on the
street car all of them going to white folks houses, cooking, cleaning, answering
the question of other peoples children while their parents worked downtown.
Maybe she’d get back before her husband, put the dinner on for her own kids,
bring home a bag of hand-me-downs and a check
My Sister Went to Tahlequah
(For Sandra Mitchell)
My sister went to Tahlequah
She wanted to see
where the Trail of Tears ended
My sister went to Tahlequah
She wanted to see for herself
where the Trail of Tears ended
and she took her baby daughter
You see my people come from
Africa, a long time ago but they
also come from Oklahoma
And she had listened
to her grandmother tell
tales of her grandmother
and she knew that blood
could not be divided
She knew that she must integrate
all the people whose blood
ran through her veins
She knew that the heart drum
beat red as well as black
and she knew that you can not
divide blood
My sister went Tahlequah
to see for herself
where the Trail of Tears ended
She wanted to integratea
ll the blood of the nations
that ran through her veins
She knew she could
not integrate the shame
but had lived the pain,
and the tears were there
inside her
hidden away
right behind the eyes,t
he silent tears
So she took her baby daughter
to Tahlequah to see where
the Trail of Tears ended
and to teach her that blood
could not be divided and that the
heart drum beat black as well
as red and she rattled
the dance of integration
mixing all the blood
of the nations that ran
through her veins
And the heart drum beat
to tell the story correctly
as she rattled, dancing away
the shame that was not her shame
but integrating the pain so the
tears could fall and she wept
because she knew blood could
not be divided but the truthc
ould make her whole
Previously printed in Endangered Species, Enduring Values: An Anthology of San Francisco Area Writers and Artists of Color, Pease Press, 2018.
Reflection Questions:
How does the work and pay in "Day Work" compare to today?
What is the Trail of Tears and how it has impacted different communities?
What does the idea of "blood divided" mean to you?
Gail Mitchell is a poet living in San Francisco. The author of Bone Songs, she received her MFA from San Francisco State University.
I am a native San Franciscan. My parents met here. My mother was from Okmulgee and my father was from New Orleans. My ancestry is Black and Muskogee Nation (Creek Indian) on my mother’s side and on my father’s side Black, Creole and Italian. There is Indian on my father’s side, but I could not possibly tell you what tribe. I am undocumented.
Artist Statement:
I pick words like gems to make the right necklace to go out into the world. I think of jewelry as amulets to protect and of course as adornment to help one shine. I am a jeweler and a poet. I am a maker. It is a must— a desire that runs as deep as breath.
Photo by Chris Felver