Concerning the subject of this week’s column, I only remember her first name. I feel somewhat embarrassed that her surname eludes me, but since a person’s given name is the one more often called, the one more dear, my embarrassment is somewhat tempered.

I have written in previous columns of my mother’s first shift employment at Salisbury’s W.T. Grants and my father’s third shift employment at Southern Railway’s Spencer yard.

Those kinds of schedules lead to a dearth in the hours devoted to housekeeping.

At other times, and preceding Thanksgiving and Christmas, my brother Joe would undertake some of those duties, also enlisting me, in an effort to make our mother’s home-cleaning burden lighter, especially at that time of year.

I remember Joe saying that this would be an additional and practical seasonal gift for us to give her (although neither wrapped in paper, nor tied with ribbon).

Concerning “house cleaning gift-giving,” my memories of being in “scrubbing-proximity” to that old floor are dearer now than then. I can still see it before me. (Sitting “Indian-style” puts me in the same position as then.)

On some Saturdays (just now, I can’t remember whether each, or every other) my mother hired a lady for house-cleaning help.

The lady was African-American, from Dixonville, her name was Inez; and here again, I apologize for the given name being the only one by which I knew her.

Inez didn’t have a lot to say, but when she spoke, her words were pleasant, and pleasantly said.

In those school days, I was a later Saturday morning sleeper than now. I awoke to the sounds of my mother and Inez “scurrying around” in the house. I could also smell the scent of agitated washing powder (long before the days of solid, drop-in discs). Since it was a small house, the sounds and smells of housekeeping permeated the place.

My mother didn’t just hire Inez, then just sit back and watch; instead, they were Saturday co-workers!

About this time (just past the mid-1960s) I had a nervous habit of twisting the natural curls of my hair into little knots. (My son Jeremy does this infrequently now, as well.) After “straightening out” that particular place, my scalp would sometimes hurt.

One Saturday, I had managed to twist my curls into a series of parallel “rows” when Inez walked by and asked me what I was doing to my hair. When I told her about my nervous habit, she just gave me a pleasant smile.

Inez passed away in the early 1970s, while I was at Appalachian. I was home during the weekend of her wake, and I seem to remember that the day my mother and I stopped by was a Saturday (interesting coincidence).

While there, paying our respects, I noticed an old, framed graduation-day photographic portrait on the living room wall.

The subject was a young woman, dressed in cap and gown, with bound diploma in arm.

Thinking it might have been one of Inez’s daughters, of whom she had been proud, I asked one of the daughters present. She said that it was her mother’s portrait, made on the day she graduated college and received her diploma.

I may be wrong, but to the best of my memory, I remember Inez’s daughter saying that her mother’s college degree was in teaching, but since it was way back in the days of Jim Crow, she couldn’t find a job.

The daughter told me that her mother had worked full-time (and over) as hired “house-help,” and was able to get her children through college.

Inez never got a chance to teach, and a memory-scene remains in my mind, which includes her as one of two sweet ladies, busily ironing and folding clothes.

In the case of some of my former teachers (though not all), memory’s stage is vacant, with only a name remaining, as if on an easel-posted placard of vaudeville, but not so with Inez.