It was this aspect of servitude I found to be one of the strongest affronts to my dignity as a human being. To Mrs. Thomas and her son, I became invisible; their conversation was private with me, the black servant, in the room as it would have been with no one in the room… These gestures of ig noring my presence were not, I think, intended as insults; they were expressions of the employer’s ability to annihilate the humanness and even, at times, the very existence of me, a servant and a black woman.

a) Que relação tinha a narradora com a Sra. Thomas e seu filho e como esses a tratavam?
b) Segundo a narradora, o que esse tratamento expressava?