A mathematician, friend of Albert Einstein, and father of two employed an illiterate, numbers-savvy maid to take care of his affluent Washington, D.C., home, and an improbable friendship ensued. In this thoroughly engaging memoir, Newman, the daughter of James Newman, author of 1956’s The World of Mathematics
, wonderfully recreates the early Civil Rights era when the miraculous Jenniemae Harrington came into the family’s lives and rendered their emotionally reticent, offbeat household more warmly human. Jenniemae was a large African-American woman from rural Alabama who lived with her sister in the Washington ghetto when she first came to work for the Newmans in 1948. She spouted folksy wisdom (e.g., “Only a fool will argue against the sun”) and gambled (with phenomenal success) on numbers that had occurred to her in her dreams. As James worked in his home office during the day, he learned of Jenniemae’s daily numbers betting, although she refused to admit it was gambling (“It’s the Lord’s gift,” was how she explained it). Over the years, their endearingly antagonistic friendship deepened, and they managed to see the other through numerous crises (including Jenniemae’s rape by a bus driver and James’s marital and girlfriend grief). The author, as a keen observer growing up in this fraught household, absorbed the emotional ramifications of Jenniemae’s presence, and fashions dialogue that is pitch-perfect. (Mar.)
