250 words

• How does Maya Angelou describe Mrs. Flowers? Does the description help paint a picture of how other characters feel about her?

https://genius.com/Maya-angelou-mrs-flowers-from-i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-annotated

Page 1 of 3

Maya Angelou – Mrs. Flowers

(from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings)
8-10 minutes

Mrs. Bertha Flowers was the aristocrat of Black Stamps. She had the grace of control to appear
warm in the coldest weather, and on the Arkansas summer days it seemed she had a private
breeze which swirled around, cooling her. She was thin without the taut look of wiry people, and
her printed voile dresses and flowered hats were as right for her as denim overalls for a farmer.
She was our side’s answer to the richest white woman in town.

Her skin was a rich black that would have peeled like a plum if snagged, but then no one would
have thought of getting close enough to Mrs. Flowers to ruffle her dress, let alone snag her skin.
She didn’t encourage familiarity. She wore gloves too.

I don’t think I ever saw Mrs. Flowers laugh, but she smiled often. A slow widening of her thin
black lips to show even, small white teeth, then the slow effortless closing. When she chose to
smile on me, I always wanted to thank her. The action was so graceful and inclusively benign.

She was one of the few gentlewomen I have ever known, and has remained throughout my life
the measure of what a human being can be.

One summer afternoon, sweet-milk fresh in my memory, she stopped at the Store to buy
provisions. Another Negro woman of her health and age would have been expected to carry the
paper sacks home in one hand, but Momma said, “Sister Flowers, I’ll send Bailey up to your
house with these things.”

She smiled that slow dragging smile, “Thank you, Mrs. Henderson. I’d prefer Marguerite,
though.” My name was beautiful when she said it. “I’ve been meaning to talk to her, anyway.”
They gave each other age-group looks.

There was a little path beside the rocky road, and Mrs. Flowers walked in front swinging her
arms and picking her way over the stones.

She said, without turning her head, to me, “I hear you’re doing very good schoolwork,
Marguerite, but that it’s all written. The teachers report that they have trouble getting you to talk
in class.” We passed the triangular farm on our left and the path widened to allow us to walk
together. I hung back in the separate unasked and unanswerable questions.

“Come and walk along with me, Marguerite.” I couldn’t have refused even if I wanted to. She
pronounced my name so nicely. Or more correctly, she spoke each word with such clarity that I
was certain a foreigner who didn’t understand English could have understood her.

“Now no one is going to make you talk—possibly no one can. But bear in mind, language is
man’s way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him
from the lower animals.” That was a totally new idea to me, and I would need time to think about
it.

https://genius.com/Maya-angelou-mrs-flowers-from-i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-annotated

https://genius.com/Maya-angelou-mrs-flowers-from-i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-annotated

Page 2 of 3

“Your grandmother says you read a lot. Every chance you get. That’s good, but not good enough.
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with
the shades of deeper meaning.”

I memorized the part about the human voice infusing words. It seemed so valid and poetic.

She said she was going to give me some books and that I not only must read them, I must read
them aloud. She suggested that I try to make a sentence sound in as many different ways as
possible.

“I’ll accept no excuse if you return a book to me that has been badly handled.” My imagination
boggled at the punishment I would deserve if in fact I did abuse a book of Mrs. Flowers’s. Death
would be too kind and brief.

The odors in the house surprised me. Somehow I had never connected Mrs. Flowers with food or
eating or any other common experience of common people. There must have been an outhouse,
too, but my mind never recorded it.

The sweet scent of vanilla had met us as she opened the door.

“I made tea cookies this morning. You see, I had planned to invite you for cookies and lemonade
so we could have this little chat. The lemonade is in the icebox.”

It followed that Mrs. Flowers would have ice on an ordinary day, when most families in our
town bought ice late on Saturdays only a few times during the summer to be used in the wooden
ice cream freezers.

She took the bags from me and disappeared through the kitchen door. I looked around the room
that I had never in my wildest fantasies imagined I would see. Browned photographs leered or
threatened from the walls and the white, freshly done curtains pushed against themselves and
against the wind. I wanted to gobble up the room entire and take it to Bailey, who would help me
analyze and enjoy it.

“Have a seat, Marguerite. Over there by the table.” She carried a platter covered with a tea towel.
Although she warned that she hadn’t tried her hand at baking sweets for some time, I was certain
that like everything else about her the cookies would be perfect.

They were flat round wafers, slightly browned on the edges and butter-yellow in the center. With
the cold lemonade they were sufficient for childhood’s lifelong diet. Remembering my manners,
I took nice little ladylike bites off the edges. She said she had made them expressly for me and
that she had a few in the kitchen that I could take home to my brother. So I jammed one whole
cake in my mouth and the rough crumbs scratched the insides of my jaws, and if I hadn’t had to
swallow, it would have been a dream come true.

As I ate she began the first of what we later called “my lessons in living.” She said that I must
always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go
to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged

https://genius.com/Maya-angelou-mrs-flowers-from-i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-annotated

https://genius.com/Maya-angelou-mrs-flowers-from-i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-annotated

Page 3 of 3

me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings
was couched the collective wisdom of generations.

When I finished the cookies she brushed off the table and brought a thick, small book from the
bookcase. I had read A Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel.
She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .” Her voice slid in and curved down
through and over the words. She was nearly singing. I wanted to look at the pages. Were they the
same that I had read? Or were there notes, music, lined on the pages, as in a hymn book? Her
sounds began cascading gently. I knew from listening to a thousand preachers that she was
nearing the end of her reading, and I hadn’t really heard, heard to understand, a single word.

“How do you like that?”

It occurred to me that she expected a response. The sweet vanilla flavor was still on my tongue
and her reading was a wonder in my ears. I had to speak.

I said, “Yes, ma’am.” It was the least I could do, but it was the most also.

“There’s one more thing. Take this book of poems and memorize one for me. Next time you pay
me a visit, I want you to recite.”

I have tried often to search behind the sophistication of years for the enchantment I so easily
found in those gifts. The essence escapes but its aura remains. To be allowed, no, invited, into
the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the
Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with
Oliver Twist. When I said aloud, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done . . .”
tears of love filled my eyes at my selflessness.

On that first day, I ran down the hill and into the road (few cars ever came along it) and had the
good sense to stop running before I reached the Store.

I was liked, and what a difference it made. I was respected not as Mrs. Henderson’s grandchild
or Bailey’s sister but for just being Marguerite Johnson.

Childhood’s logic never asks to be proved (all conclusions are absolute). I didn’t question why
Mrs. Flowers had singled me out for attention, nor did it occur to me that Momma might have
asked her to give me a little talking-to. All I cared about was that she had made tea cookies for
me and read to me from her favorite book. It was enough to prove that she liked me.

https://genius.com/Maya-angelou-mrs-flowers-from-i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings-annotated