To Bette Nesmith Graham, Inventor of Liquid Paper

Mom and I, or maybe it’s Dad and I, are in M.E. Moses walking through the stationery area. Shelves full of loose leaf paper, Bic pens and fresh folders tower above me. I’m in a jungle of office products and Mom--or Dad--says to me, “Do you know the person who invented Liquid Paper was a woman?”

Bette, I was stunned. You were famous in Dallas, home to Liquid Paper, but I had never heard of you and, what felt like for the first time, I put the words “inventor” and “woman” together. Mind. Blown.

I imagined you with a beaker in hand, smoke, because there’s always smoke in an inventor’s lab, curling behind your back. Safety goggles wrapped across thick black hair. You slowly pour from the beaker into a jar, the resulting mix turns a creamy white. You are looking for just the right thickness, just the right color. Just the right smell that says, “Clean. No errors here.”

I wasn’t even close. You were a single mom, a secretary because there was little else available to women. But you wanted to be an artist, a painter. Painters, when they draw a line too long or paint a misshapen eye, simply paint over it. As a typist, you knew the danger of “form” for “from” or “its” for “it’s”. Imagine typing a whole page and on the last line, letters transposed. You have to type the entire page. The meeting is at 3:30. Your son was up all night with a fever. This is not the life you wanted. And you have to type the whole page again. Your boss doesn’t know, doesn’t care, doesn’t even think about what typing is. Mashing words into the paper. Writers call it “banging it out.”

Your boss tells you not to use your invention, but you do. Soon, the other women in the office are coming to you, secretly, asking for a bottle. You begin to sell it because women know this isn’t liquid paper, this is liquid gold. They want to leave work on time; they want to go hang out at the bar after work and make travel plans. They want more than a perfectly typed letter or memo.

Your bio says that you were fired for a “mistake you could not fix.” Did you speak up? Did you call someone out on their bullshit? Did you reveal a secret? I want to assume it was not a mistake at all. You were the best at hiding mistakes.

So you focus on your company and by the 1970’s, you’re a wealthy woman. You are the boss with your own secretary. You call her into your office and ask her what her goal is in life. When she starts to say “family,” you nod. You have a son. You were married. You know the vision. You try to get her to see herself, alone. No people attached to her. Now, what does she see?

www.mead.com

In M. E. Moses that day, when I thought of a woman inventor, for the first time I realized I could imagine a life of my own direction. A weight fell away. I was staring at the paper; I picked out a black and white spotted composition book. This one is not for school; this one is mine.