The Help《姐妹》(4)

The Help

《姐妹》

The Help is a 2009 novel by American author Kathryn Stockett. The story is about African American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the early 1960s. A USA Today article called it one of 2009's "summer sleeper hits". An early review in The New York Times notes Stockett's "affection and intimacy buried beneath even the most seemingly impersonal household connections" and says the book is a "button-pushing, soon to be wildly popular novel". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said of the book, "This heartbreaking story is a stunning début from a gifted talent".

The novel is Stockett's first. It took her five years to complete and was rejected by 60 literary agents before agent Susan Ramer agreed to represent Stockett. The Help has since been published in 35 countries and three languages. As of August 2011, it has sold five million copies and has spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list.

The Help's audio book version is narrated by Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer, and Cassandra Campbell. Spencer was Stockett's original inspiration for the character of Minny, and also plays her in the film adaptation.

Plot Summary

The Help is set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, and told primarily from the first-person perspectives of three women: Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. Aibileen is an African-American maid who cleans houses and cares for the young children of various white families. Her first job since her own 24-year-old son died from an accident on his job is tending the Leefolt household and caring for their toddler, Mae Mobley. Minny is Aibileen's confrontational friend who frequently tells her employers what she thinks of them, resulting in having being fired from nineteen jobs. Minny's most recent employer was Mrs. Walters, mother of Hilly Holbrook. Hilly is the social leader of the community, and head of the Junior League. She is the nemesis of all three main characters.

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is the daughter of a prominent white family whose cotton farm employs many African-Americans in the fields, as well as in the household. Skeeter has just finished college and comes home with dreams of becoming a writer. Her mother's dream is for Skeeter to get married. Skeeter frequently wonders about the sudden disappearance of Constantine, the maid who raised her. She had been writing to Skeeter while she was away at college and her last letter promised a surprise upon her homecoming. Skeeter's family tells her that Constantine abruptly quit, then went to live with relatives in Chicago. Skeeter does not believe that Constantine would just leave and continually pursues anyone she thinks has information about her to come forth, but no one will discuss the former maid.

The life that Constantine led while being the help to the Phelan family leads Skeeter to the realization that her friends' maids are treated very differently from how the white employers are treated. She decides (with the assistance of a publisher) that she wants to reveal the truth about being a colored maid in Mississippi. Skeeter struggles to communicate with the maids and gain their trust. The dangers of undertaking writing a book about African-Americans speaking out in the South during the early '60s hover constantly over the three women.

Racial issues of overcoming long-standing barriers in customs and laws are experienced by all of the characters. The lives and morals of Southern socialites are also explored.

Characters

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan - Recent graduate of the University of Mississippi, has returned to her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, to find a job and find herself. This leaves her open to seeing her hometown's inequitable treatment of the black domestics, primarily the female maids in the employ of her friends. Skeeter both admires and fears disappointing her mother and her friend Hilly, yet she pursues completing a manuscript called Help[9] with primary assistance from Aibileen, her friend's maid. She also seeks the reason her beloved maid Constantine abruptly left her family's employ.

Aibileen Clark - A maid and nanny in Jackson, Mississippi. Aibileen is the first narrator, a middle-aged African American employed by Skeeter's friend Elizabeth Leefolt. Although demure and shy, Aibileen is introspective, thoughtful and strong and writes down her thoughts at night. Her son died before the novel begins and his death leaves a bitterness within her which spurs her to recount to Skeeter her memories and thoughts. Their shared intention is to help change the embedded Racism of Mississippi.

Minny Jackson - Aibileen's friend, and a maid who is unable to keep employment because of her bossy demeanor and sharp tongue, Minny's sassy mouth has frequently gotten her into trouble. After she loses her job with Miss Walters (Hilly's mother), Aibileen helps her land another one with Celia Foote, who is considered white trash and is shunned by sorority sisters and socialites like Hilly and Elizabeth. Minny is married with five children and a sixth on the way.

Hilly Holbrook - Childhood friend of Skeeter and Elizabeth, the president of the Junior League in Jackson, Mississippi. Roomed with Skeeter at Ole Miss for two years, dropped out to get married. Her husband is running for the senate, and Hilly tries to push through a sanitation initiative so that all the white homeowners have a separate bathroom (outside, like an outhouse) for the black domestics. Hilly is a woman who enjoys controlling others and striking fear into those who dare oppose her. When Skeeter begins working with the maids and subsequently has Help published, she runs afoul of Hilly.

Celia Foote - Newest resident of Jackson, Mississippi, hires Minny because she herself cannot cook. Initially Celia tries to hide Minny's presence from her husband, Johnny Foote. Celia has suffered multiple miscarriages, also hidden from her husband. However, Celia is caring and empathetic towards those she meets, including Minny and Aibileen.

Elizabeth Leefolt - employer of Aibileen, best friends with Hilly and Skeeter. Elizabeth is easily led by Hilly. She's also unable to be an affectionate mother to her daughter Mae Mobley, and so Aibileen becomes the child's primary carer, teacher and surrogate mother. Has a child named Ross later in the novel. Aibileen calls him Li'l Man.

Charlotte Phelan - Skeeter's demanding, overbearing mother. She has been diagnosed with cancer, but tells Skeeter she has "refused to die". Skeeter has never been able to live up to her mother's ideal of how she should look and behave. Their relationship is a tenuous one. Charlotte is concerned with Skeeter being the proper lady, while Skeeter longs to be anything but.

Stuart Whitworth - Hilly sets Skeeter up on a blind date with Stuart, a senator's son. While Stuart is handsome, charming, and appears to be smitten with Skeeter (after a disastrous blind date), when he learns of her involvement with the maids' stories, he immediately takes back his engagement ring.

Mae Mobley Leefolt - Toddler watched daily by Aibileen and one of Elizabeth Leefolt's two children. Because Mae's mother is unable and unwilling to devote time and attention to her, the child turns to Aibileen, who treats her with tenderness and love. When the novel begins Mae is two years old. By the time the novel ends, Mae is five and in school, old enough to beg Aibileen to stay, after Elizabeth Leefolt fires the maid at Hilly's insistence.

Leroy Jackson - Minny's husband. He is abusive toward her and frequently drunk. He is fired from his job when Minny's involvement in the book is suspected.

Constantine Bates - Skeeter's beloved childhood maid. Constantine's inexplicable departure from the Phelan household, while Skeeter is away at college, causes Skeeter to confront her mother and triggers her desire to explore the other maids' feelings, thus ultimately leading to her writing The Help.

Elaine Stein - Harper & Row Publishing house editor, "Missus Stein" as she's referred to by Skeeter in the book. Inspires Skeeter to write this book.

黑人遭受種族歧視在美國已經是一個老問題，凱瑟琳‧史托勒的暢銷小說，講述上個世紀六十年代初，在美國南部種族歧視最嚴重的密西西比州，有錢的白人家庭普遍僱用黑人女傭，不但由她們料理家務，還讓她們照顧自己的孩子，可是在日常生活上卻對這些女傭處處歧視和設防，不人道的情況隨處可見。

由黑人保姆一手帶大的白人女孩史基特（艾瑪‧史東飾）剛從北部大學畢業返鄉，夢想成為一名作家，卻只在地方小報免強謀得撰寫家事問答專欄之職。由於帶大她的康士坦丁（西西莉‧泰森飾）被其母因不明原因開革，她只好找朋友家的女傭艾彼琳（薇拉‧戴維絲飾）幫忙提供家事心得，接觸多了之後發現這些黑人女傭受到很多不公平的待遇，乃決意著手一個大膽的寫作計劃：採訪黑傭在白人家庭工作的實況，並整理成書。沒想到黑傭均害怕遭到報復而不敢答應接受採訪，最後只有慘遭喪子之痛的艾彼琳膽敢挺身而出。後來，艾彼琳的好友敏妮（奧塔薇亞‧史班賽飾）因遭到僱主希莉‧賀布洛克（布萊絲‧達拉斯‧霍華飾）惡整和逼害，也毅然加入向史基特爆料的行列。這本名為「女傭」的書經一波三折後終以匿名作者和遮掩當事人姓名地點的方式出版了，但這個小鎮上的每個居民無論黑白都很容易「對號入座」看到真相，那些虛假作態的偽善者也得到了出乎意料的懲罰。

這是黑人民權運動還沒有星火燎原之前發生的故事，當時要捅破「種族歧視」這塊鋼板，無論是黑人還是白人都需要過人勇氣。編劇將女主角史基特塑造成個性純真的初生之犢，而且自幼跟黑傭培養了極深厚的感情，故當她返家後發現行事相對開明的母親竟然會將已在他們家工作了一輩子、且親如家人的老僕康士坦丁無情辭退，心裡已產生了很大疑問。待她跟艾彼琳、敏妮等女傭有了較多接觸後，自然刺激了她要盡一己之力寫書揭露這些不公平待遇的決心，而成為出書作家的現實動機也發揮了相應的鞭策作用。

不過在寫書的主情節之外，最有趣和最好看的地方，還是黑白雙方在同一時空中卻享受著天堂與地獄般鮮明對照的生活細節。白人貴婦們在公開場合總是儀態優雅地進行社交，她們最關心的問題是給好友史基特介紹一個如意郎君，閒時就為弱勢舉辦籌款以表現她們的仁慈愛心，其實她們在自己的家裡卻對「非我族類」的女傭提防如蛇蠍，害怕他們使用同一個馬桶會傳染病菌，因此非要替女傭在屋外蓋一個獨立廁所讓她獨自解決不可。尤其是希莉這個以文明標竿和社區女王自居的白女菁英，實際上心腸最惡毒，對黑傭的壓迫也最嚴重，所以她最後受到敏妮的報復也最大快人心。

Awards and Honors

New York Times bestseller (Fiction, 2009, 2011)

Amazon's Best Books of the Year (#19, 2009)

Orange Prize Longlist (2010)

Indies Choice Book Award (Adult Debut, 2010)

Townsend Prize for Fiction (2010)

Exclusive Books Boeke Prize (2009)

SIBA Book Award (Fiction, 2010)

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Longlist (2011)

Christian Science Monitor Best Book (Fiction, 2009)

Original Text & Dialogues
THE BENEFIT
 Chapter 25
THE JACKSON JUNIOR LEAGUE Annual Ball and Benefit is known simply as “the Benefit” to anyone who lives within a ten-mile radius of town. At seven o’clock on a cool November night, guests will arrive at the Robert E. Lee Hotel bar for the cocktail hour. At eight o’clock, the doors from the lounge will open to the ballroom. Swags of green velvet have been hung around the windows, adorned with bouquets of real holly berries.

Along the windows stand tables with auction lists and the prizes. The goods have been donated by members and local shops, and the auction is expected to generate more than six thousand dollars this year, five hundred more dollars than last year. The proceeds will go to the Poor Starving Children of Africa.

In the center of the room, beneath a gigantic chandelier, twenty-eight tables are dressed and ready for the sit-down dinner to be served at nine. A dance floor and bandstand are off to the side, opposite the podium where Hilly Holbrook will give her speech.

After the dinner, there will be dancing. Some of the husbands will get drunk, but never the member wives. Every member there considers herself a hostess and will be heard asking one another, “Is it going alright? Has Hilly said anything?” Everyone knows it is Hilly’s night.

At seven on the dot, couples begin drifting through the front doors, handing their furs and overcoats to the colored men in gray morning suits. Hilly, who’s been there since six o’clock sharp, wears a long taffeta maroon-colored dress. Ruffles clutch at her throat, swathes of material hide her body. Tight-fitted sleeves run all the way down her arms. The only genuine parts of Hilly you can see are her fingers and her face.

Some women wear slightly saucier evening gowns, with bare shoulders here and there, but long kid-leather gloves ensure they don’t have more than a few inches of epidermis exposed. Of course, every year some guest will show up with a hint of leg or a shadow of cleavage. Not much is said, though. They aren’t members, those kind.

Celia Foote and Johnny arrive later than they’d planned, at seven twenty-five. When Johnny came home from work, he stopped in the doorway of the bedroom, squinted at his wife, briefcase still in his hand. “Celia, you think that dress might be a little bit too . . . um . . . open at the top?”

Celia had pushed him toward the bathroom. “Oh Johnny, you men don’t know the first thing about fashion. Now hurry up and get ready.”

Johnny gave up before he even tried to change Celia’s mind. They were already late as it was.

They walk in behind Doctor and Missus Ball. The Balls step left, Johnny steps right, and for a moment, it is just Celia, standing under the holly berries in her sparkling hot pink gown.

In the lounge, the air seems to still. Husbands drinking their whiskeys stop in mid-sip, spotting this pink thing at the door. It takes a second for the image to register. They stare, but don’t see, not yet. But as it turns real—real skin, real cleavage, perhaps not-so-real blond hair—their faces slowly light up. They all seem to be thinking the same thing—Finally... But then, feeling the fingernails of their wives, also staring, digging into their arms, their foreheads wrinkle. Their eyes hint remorse, as marriages are scorned (she never lets me do anything fun), youth is remembered (why didn’t I go to California that summer?), first loves are recalled (Roxanne . . .). All of this happens in a span of about five seconds and then it is over and they are left just staring.

William Holbrook tips half his gin martini onto a pair of patent-leather shoes. The shoes are attached to the feet of his biggest campaign contributor.
 “Oh, Claiborne, forgive my clumsy husband,” says Hilly. “William, get him a handkerchief!” But neither man moves. Neither, frankly, really cares to do more than just stare.

Hilly’s eyes follow the trail of gazes and finally land on Celia. The inch of skin showing on Hilly’s neck grows taut.
 “Look at the chest on that one,” an old geezer says. “Feel like I’m not a year over seventy-five looking at those things.”

The geezer’s wife, Eleanor Causwell, an original founder of the League, frowns. “Bosoms,” she announces, with a hand to her own, “are for bedrooms and breastfeeding. Not for occasions with dignity.”
 “Well, what do you want her to do, Eleanor? Leave them at home?”
 “I want her to cover. Them. Up.”

Celia grabs for Johnny’s arm as they make their way into the room. She teeters a bit as she walks, but it’s not clear if it’s from alcohol or the high heels. They drift around, talking to other couples. Or at least Johnny talks; Celia just smiles. A few times she blushes, looks down at herself. “Johnny, do you think I might’ve overdressed a little for this thing? The invitation said formal, but these girls here all look like they’re dressed for church.”

Johnny gives her a sympathetic smile. He’d never tell her “I told you so,” and instead whispers, “You look gorgeous. But if you’re cold, you can put my jacket on.”
 “I can’t wear a man’s jacket with a ball gown.” She rolls her eyes at him, sighs. “But thanks, honey.”

Johnny squeezes her hand, gets her another drink from the bar, her fifth, although he doesn’t know this. “Try and make some friends. I’ll be right back.” He heads for the men’s room.

Celia is left standing alone. She tugs a little at the neckline of her dress, shimmies down deeper into the waist.
 “. . . there’s a hole in the buck-et dear Liza, dear Liza . . .” Celia sings an old county fair song softly to herself, tapping her foot, looking around the room for somebody she recognizes. She stands on tiptoe and waves over the crowd. “Hey Hilly, yoo-hoo.”

Hilly looks up from her conversation a few couples away. She smiles, gives a wave, but as Celia comes toward her, Hilly heads off into the crowd.

Celia stops where she is, takes another sip of her drink. All around her, tight little groups have formed, talking and laughing, she guesses, about all those things people talk and laugh about at parties.
 “Oh, hey there, Julia,” Celia calls. They’d met at one of the few parties Celia and Johnny attended when they first got married.

Julia Fenway smiles, glances around.
 “It’s Celia. Celia Foote. How are you? Oh, I just love that dress. Where’d you get that? Over at the Jewel Taylor Shoppe?”
 “No, Warren and I were in New Orleans a few months ago . . .” Julia looks around, but there is no one near enough to save her. “And you look very... glamorous tonight.”

Celia leans closer. “Well, I asked Johnny, but you know how men are. Do you think I’m a tad overdressed?”

Julia laughs, but not once does she look Celia in the eye. “Oh no. You’re just perfect.”

A fellow Leaguer squeezes Julia on the forearm. “Julia, we need you over here a second, excuse us.” They walk away, heads leaned close together, and Celia is alone again.

Five minutes later, the doors to the dining room slide open. The crowd moves forward. Guests find their tables using the tiny cards in their hands as oohs and aahs come from the bidding tables along the walls. They are full of silver pieces and hand-sewn daygowns for infants, cotton handkerchiefs, monogrammed hand towels, a child’s tea set imported from Germany.

Minny is at a table in the back polishing glasses. “Aibileen,” she whispers. “There she is.”

Aibileen looks up, spots the woman who knocked on Miss Leefolt’s door a month ago. “Ladies better hold on to they husbands tonight,” she says.

Minny jerks the cloth around the rim of a glass. “Let me know if you see her talking to Miss Hilly.”
 “I will. I been doing a super power prayer for you all day.”
 “Look, there Miss Walters. Old bat. And there Miss Skeeter.”

Skeeter has on a long-sleeved black velvet dress, scooped at the neck, setting off her blond hair, her red lipstick. She has come alone and stands in a pocket of emptiness. She scans the room, looking bored, then spots Aibileen and Minny. They all look away at once.

One of the other colored helpers, Clara, moves to their table, picks up a glass. “Aibileen,” she whispers, but keeps her eyes on her polishing. “That the one?”
 “One what?”
 “One who taking down the stories bout the colored help. What she doing it for? Why she interested? I hear she been coming over to your house ever week.”

Aibileen lowers her chin. “Now look, we got to keep her a secret.”

Minny looks away. No one outside the group knows she’s part of this. They only know about Aibileen.

Clara nods. “Don’t worry, I ain’t telling nobody nothing.”

Skeeter jots a few words on her pad, notes for the newsletter article about the Benefit. She looks around the room, taking in the swags of green, the holly berries, red roses and dried magnolia leaves set as centerpieces on all the tables. Then her eyes land on Elizabeth, a few feet away, ticking through her handbag. She looks exhausted, having had her baby only a month ago. Skeeter watches as Celia Foote approaches Elizabeth. When Elizabeth looks up and sees who she’s been surrounded by, she coughs, draws her hand up to her throat as if she’s shielding herself from some kind of attack.
 “Not sure which way to turn, Elizabeth?” asks Skeeter.
 “What? Oh, Skeeter, how are you?” Elizabeth offers a quick, wide smile. “I was . . . feeling so warm in here. I think I need some fresh air.”

Skeeter watches Elizabeth rush away, at Celia Foote rattling after Elizabeth in her awful dress. That’s the real story, Skeeter thinks. Not the flower arrangements or how many pleats are around the rear end of Hilly’s dress. This year, it’s all about The Celia Foote Fashion Catastrophe.

Moments later, dinner is announced and everyone settles into their assigned seats. Celia and Johnny have been seated with a handful of out-of-town couples, friends of friends who aren’t really friends of anyone at all. Skeeter is seated with a few local couples, not President Hilly or even Secretary Elizabeth this year. The room is full of chatter, praise for the party, praise for the Chateaubriand. After the main course, Hilly stands behind the podium. There is a round of applause and she smiles at the crowd.
 “Good evening. I sure do thank y’all for coming tonight. Everybody enjoying their dinner?”

There are nods and rumbles of consent.
 “Before we start the announcements, I’d like to go ahead and thank the people who are making tonight such a success.” Without turning her head from the audience, Hilly gestures to her left, where two dozen colored women have lined up, dressed in their white uniforms. A dozen colored men are behind them, in gray-and-white tuxedos.
 “Let’s give a special round of applause to the help, for all the wonderful food they cooked and served, and for the desserts they made for the auction.” Here, Hilly picks up a card and reads, “In their own way, they are helping the League reach its goal to feed the Poor Starving Children of Africa, a cause, I’m sure, dear to their own hearts as well.”

The white people at the tables clap for the maids and servers. Some of the servers smile back. Many, though, stare at the empty air just above the crowd’s heads.
 “Next we’d like to thank those nonmembers in this room who have given their time and help, for it’s you who made our job that much easier.”

There is light applause, some cold smiles and nods between members and nonmembers. Such a pity, the members seem to be thinking. Such a shame you girls haven’t the gentility to join our club. Hilly goes on, thanking and recognizing in a musical, patriotic voice. Coffee is served and the husbands drink theirs, but most of the women keep rapt attention on Hilly. “. . . thanks to Boone Hardware . . . let us not forget Ben Franklin’s dime store . . .” She concludes the list with, “And of course we thank our anonymous contributor of, ahem, supplies, for the Home Help Sanitation Initiative.”

A few people laugh nervously, but most turn their heads to see if Skeeter has had the gall to show up.
 “I just wish instead of being so shy, you’d step up and accept our gratitude. We honestly couldn’t have accomplished so many installations without you.”

Skeeter keeps her eyes on the podium, her face stoic and unyielding. Hilly gives a quick, brilliant smile. “And finally, a special thanks to my husband, William Holbrook, for donating a weekend at his deer camp.” She smiles down at her husband, adds in a lower tone, “And don’t forget, voters. Holbrook for State Senate.”

The guests offer an amicable laugh at Hilly’s plug.
 “What’s that, Virginia?” Hilly cups her ear, then straightens. “No, I’m not running with him. But congressmen with us tonight, if you don’t straighten this thing out with the separate schools, don’t think I won’t come down there and do it myself.”

There is more laughter at this. Senator and Missus Whitworth, seated at a table in the front, nod and smile. At her table in the back, Skeeter looks down at her lap. They spoke earlier, during the cocktail hour. Missus Whitworth steered the Senator away from Skeeter before he could give her a second hug. Stuart didn’t come.

Once the dinner and the speech have ended, people get up to dance, husbands head for the bar. There is a scurry to the auction tables for last-minute bids. Two grandmothers are in a bidding war over the child’s antique tea set. Someone started the rumor that it had belonged to royalty and had been smuggled out via donkey cart across Germany until it eventually wound up in the Magnolia Antique Store on Fairview Street. The price shot up from fifteen dollars to eighty-five in no time.

In the corner by the bar, Johnny yawns. Celia’s brow is scrunched together. “I can’t believe what she said about nonmembers helping. She told me they didn’t need any help this year.”
 “Well, you can help out next year,” Johnny says.

Celia spots Hilly. For the moment, Hilly has only a few people around her.
 “Johnny, I’ll be right back,” Celia says.
 “And then let’s get the hell out of here. I’m sick of this monkey suit.”

Richard Cross, who’s a member of Johnny’s duck camp, slaps Johnny’s back. They say something, then laugh. Their gazes sweep across the crowd.

Celia almost makes it to Hilly this time, only to have Hilly slip behind the podium table. Celia backs away, as if she’s afraid to approach Hilly where she’d seemed so powerful a few minutes ago.

As soon as Celia disappears into the ladies room, Hilly heads for the corner.
 “Why Johnny Foote,” Hilly says. “I’m surprised to see you here. Everybody knows you can’t stand big parties like this.” She squeezes the crook of his arm.

Johnny sighs. “You are aware that doe season opens tomorrow?”

Hilly gives him an auburn-lipsticked smile. The color matches her dress so perfectly, it must have been searched out for days.
 “I am so tired of hearing that from everybody. You can miss one day of hunting season, Johnny Foote. You used to for me.”

Johnny rolls his eyes. “Celia wouldn’t have missed this for anything.”
 “Where is that wife of yours?” she asks. Hilly’s still got her hand tucked in the crook of Johnny’s arm and she gives it another pull. “Not at the LSU game serving hot dogs, is she?”

Johnny frowns down at her, even though it’s true, that’s how they met.
 “Oh, now you know I’m just teasing you. We dated long enough to where I can do that, can’t I?”

Before Johnny can answer, Hilly’s shoulder is tapped and she glides over to the next couple, laughing. Johnny sighs when he sees Celia headed toward him. “Good,” he says to Richard, “we can go home. I’m getting up in,” he looks at his watch, “five hours.”

Richard keeps his eyes locked on Celia as she strides toward them. She stops and bends down to retrieve her dropped napkin, offering a generous view of her bosoms. “Going from Hilly to Celia must’ve been quite the change, Johnny.”

Johnny shakes his head. “Like living in Antarctica all my life and one day moving to Hawaii.”

Richard laughs. “Like going to bed in seminary and waking up at Ole Miss,” Richard says, and they both laugh.

Then Richard adds in a lower voice, “Like a kid eating ice cream for the very first time.”

Johnny gives him a look. “That’s my wife you’re talking about.”
 “Sorry, Johnny,” Richard says, lowering his eyes. “No harm meant.”

Celia walks up, sighs with a disappointed smile.
 “Hey Celia, how are you?” Richard says. “You sure are looking nice tonight.”
 “Thanks, Richard.” Celia lets out a loud hiccup and she frowns, covers her mouth with a tissue.
 “You getting tipsy?” asks Johnny.
 “She’s just having fun, aren’t you, Celia?” Richard says. “In fact, I’m fixing to get you a drink you’re gonna love. It’s called an Alabama Slammer.”

Johnny rolls his eyes at his friend. “And then we’re going home.” Three Alabama Slammers later, the winners of the silent auction are announced. Susie Pernell stands behind the podium while people mill about drinking or smoking at the tables, dancing to Glenn Miller and Frankie Valli songs, talking over the din of the microphone. As names are read, items are received with the excitement of someone winning a real contest, as if the booty were free and not paid for at three, four, or five times the store value. Tablecloths and nightgowns with the lace tatted by hand bring in high bids. Odd sterling servers are popular, for spooning out deviled eggs, removing pimentos from olives, cracking quail legs. Then there are the desserts: cakes, slabs of pralines, divinity fudge. And of course, Minny’s pie.
 “ . . . and the winner of Minny Jackson’s world-famous chocolate custard pie is . . . Hilly Holbrook!”

There is a little more applause for this one, not just because Minny’s known for her treats, but because the name Hilly elicits applause on any occasion.

Hilly turns from her conversation. “What? Was that my name? I didn’t bid on anything.”

She never does, Skeeter thinks, sitting alone, a table away.
 “Hilly, you just won Minny Jackson’s pie! Congratulations,” says the woman to her left.

Hilly scans the room, eyes narrowed.

Minny, having heard her name called in the same sentence as Hilly’s, is suddenly very alert. She is holding a dirty coffee cup in one hand, a heavy silver tray in the other. But she stands stock-still.

Hilly spots her, but doesn’t move either, just smiles very slightly. “Well. Wasn’t that sweet? Someone must’ve signed me up for that pie.”

She doesn’t take her eyes off Minny and Minny can feel it. She stacks the rest of the cups on the tray, and heads for the kitchen as fast as she can.
 “Why congratulations, Hilly. I didn’t know you were such a fan of Minny’s pies!” Celia’s voice is shrill. She’s come up from behind without Hilly noticing. As she trots toward Hilly, Celia stumbles over a chair leg. There are sideline giggles.

Hilly stands very still, watching her approach. “Celia, is this some kind of joke?”

Skeeter moves in closer too. She’s bored to death by this predictable evening. Tired of seeing embarrassed faces of old friends too scared to come and speak to her. Celia’s the only interesting thing to happen all night.
 “Hilly,” Celia says, grasping Hilly’s arm, “I’ve been trying to talk to you all night. I think there’s been some kind of miscommunication between us and I just think if I explained . . .”
 “What have you done? Let me go—” Hilly says between gritted teeth. She shakes her head, tries to walk off.

But Celia clutches Hilly’s long sleeve. “No, wait! Hang on, you got to listen—”

Hilly pulls away, but still Celia doesn’t let go. There’s a moment of determination between them—Hilly trying to escape, Celia holding on, and then a ripping sound cuts through the air.

Celia stares at the red material in her fingers. She’s torn the auburn cuff clear off Hilly’s arm.

Hilly looks down, touches her exposed wrist. “What are you trying to do to me?” she says in a low growl. “Did that Nigra maid put you up to this? Because whatever she told you and whatever you’ve blabbed to anyone else here—”

Several more people have gathered around them, listening, all looking at Hilly with frowns of concern.
 “Blabbed? I don’t know what you—”

Hilly grabs Celia’s arm. “Who did you tell?” she snarls.
 “Minny told me. I know why you don’t want to be friends with me.” Susie Pernell’s voice over the microphone announcing the winners grows louder, forcing Celia to raise her own voice. “I know you think me and Johnny went behind your back,” she yells, and there is laughter from the front of the room over some comment, and more applause. Just as Susie Pernell pauses over the microphone to look at her notes, Celia yells, “—but I got pregnant after you broke up.” The room echoes with the words. All is silent for a few long seconds.

The women around them wrinkle their noses, some start to laugh. “Johnny’s wife is d-r-u-n-k,” someone says.

Celia looks around her. She wipes at the sweat that’s beading on her makeuped forehead. “I don’t blame you for not liking me, not if you thought Johnny cheated on you with me.”
 “Johnny never would’ve—”
 “—and I’m sorry I said that, I thought you’d be tickled you won that pie.”

Hilly bends over, snatches her pearl button from the floor. She leans closer to Celia so no one else can hear. “You tell your Nigra maid if she tells anybody about that pie, I will make her suffer. You think you’re real cute signing me up for that auction, don’t you? What, you think you can blackmail your way into the League?”
 “What?”
 “You tell me right this minute who else you’ve told ab—”
 “I didn’t tell nobody nothing about a pie, I—”
 “You liar,” Hilly says, but she straightens quickly and smiles. “There’s Johnny. Johnny, I think your wife needs your attention.” Hilly flashes her eyes at the girls around them, as if they’re all in on a joke.
 “Celia, what’s wrong?” Johnny says.

Celia scowls at him, then scowls at Hilly. “She’s not making sense, she called me a—a liar, and now she’s accusing me of signing her name on that pie and . . .” Celia stops, looks around like she recognizes no one around her. She has tears in her eyes. Then she groans and convulses. Vomit splatters onto the carpet.
 “Oh shit!” Johnny says, pulling her back.

Celia pushes Johnny’s arm off her. She runs for the bathroom and he follows her.

Hilly’s hands are in fists. Her face is crimson, nearly the color of her dress. She marches over and grabs a waiter’s arm. “Get that cleaned up before it starts to smell.”

And then Hilly is surrounded by women, faces upturned, asking questions, arms out like they are trying to protect her.
 “I heard Celia’s been battling with drinking, but this problem with lying now?” Hilly tells one of the Susies. It’s a rumor she’d intended to spread about Minny, in case the pie story ever got out. “What do they call that?”
 “A compulsive liar?”
 “That’s it, a compulsive liar.” Hilly walks off with the women. “Celia trapped him into that marriage, telling him she was pregnant. I guess she was a compulsive liar even back then.”

After Celia and Johnny leave, the party winds down quickly. Member wives look exhausted and tired of smiling. There is talk of the auction, of babysitters to get home to, but mostly of Celia Foote retching in the middle of it all.

When the room is nearly empty, at midnight, Hilly stands at the podium. She flips through the sheets of silent bids. Her lips move as she calculates. But she keeps looking off, shaking her head. Then she looks back down and curses because she has to start all over again.
 “Hilly, I’m headed on back to your house.”

Hilly looks up from tallying. It is her mother, Missus Walters, looking even frailer than usual in her formalwear. She wears a floor-length gown, sky blue and beaded, from 1943. A white orchid wilts at her clavicle. A colored woman in a white uniform is attached to her side.
 “Now, Mama, don’t you get in that refrigerator tonight. I won’t have you keeping me up all night with your indigestion. You go right to bed, you hear?”
 “I can’t even have some of Minny’s pie?”

Hilly narrows her eyes at her mother. “That pie is in the garbage.”
 “Well, why’d you throw it out? I won it just for you.”

Hilly is still a moment, letting this sink in. “You? You signed me up?”
 “I may not remember my name or what country I live in, but you and that pie is something I will never forget.”
 “You—you old, useless . . .” Hilly throws down the papers she’s holding, scattering them everywhere.

Missus Walters turns and hobbles toward the door, the colored nurse in tow. “Well, call the papers, Bessie,” she says. “My daughter’s mad at me again.”MINNY Chapter 26
ON SATURDAY MORNING, I get up tired and sore. I walk in the kitchen where Sugar’s counting out her nine dollars and fifty cents, the money she earned at the Benefit last night. The phone rings and Sugar’s on it quicker than a grease fire. Sugar’s got a boyfriend and she doesn’t want her mama to know.
 “Yessir,” Sugar whispers and hands me the phone.
 “Hello?” I say.
 “It’s Johnny Foote,” he says. “I’m up at deer camp but I just want you to know, Celia’s real upset. She had a rough time at the party last night.”
 “Yessir, I know.”
 “You heard, then, huh?” He sighs. “Well, keep an eye on her next week, will you, Minny? I’ll be gone and—I don’t know. Just call me if she doesn’t perk up. I’ll come home early if I need to.”
 “I look after her. She gone be alright.”

I didn’t see myself what happened at the party, but I heard about it while I was doing dishes in the kitchen. All the servers were talking about it.
 “You see that?” Farina said to me. “That big pink lady you work for, drunk as a Injun on payday.”

I looked up from my sink and saw Sugar headed straight for me with her hand up on her hip. “Yeah, Mama, she upchuck all over the floor. And everbody at the whole party see!” Then Sugar turned around, laughing with the others. She didn’t see the whap coming at her. Soapsuds flew through the air.
 “You shut your mouth, Sugar.” I yanked her to the corner. “Don’t you never let me hear you talking bad about the lady who put food in your mouth, clothes on your back! You hear me?”

Sugar, she nodded and I went back to my dishes, but I heard her muttering. “You do it, all the time.”

I whipped around and put my finger in her face. “I got a right to. I earn it every day working for that crazy fool.”

WHEN I GET TO WORK on Monday, Miss Celia’s still laid up in bed with her face buried under the sheets.
 “Morning, Miss Celia.”

But she just rolls over and won’t look at me.

At lunchtime, I take a tray of ham sandwiches to the bed.
 “I’m not hungry,” she says and throws the pillow over her head.

I stand there looking at her, all mummified in the sheets.
 “What you gone do, just lay there all day?” I ask, even though I’ve seen her do it plenty of times before. But this is different. There’s no goo on her skin or smile on her face.
 “Please, just leave me alone.”

I start to tell her she needs to just get up, put on her tacky clothes, and forget about it, but the way she’s laying there so pitiful and poor, I keep quiet. I am not her psychiatrist and she’s not paying me to be one.

On Tuesday morning, Miss Celia’s still in the bed. Yesterday’s lunch tray’s on the floor without a single bite missing. She’s still in that ratty blue nightgown that looks left over from her Tunica County days, the gingham ruffle torn at the neck. Something that looks like charcoal stains on the front.
 “Come on, lemme get to them sheets. Show bout to come on and Miss Julia gone be in trouble. You ain’t gone believe what that fool done yesterday with Doctor Bigmouth.”

But she just lays there.

Later on, I bring her a tray of chicken pot pie. Even though what I really want to do is tell Miss Celia to pull herself together and go in the kitchen and eat proper.
 “Now, Miss Celia, I know it was terrible what happened at the Benefit. But you can’t set in here forever feeling sorry for yourself.”

Miss Celia gets up and locks herself in the bathroom.

I start stripping the bed. When I’m done, I pick up all the wet tissues and glasses off the nightstand. I see a stack of mail. At least the woman’s gotten up to go to the mailbox. I pick it up to wipe the table and there I see the letters H W H across the top of a card. Before I know it, I’ve read the whole note:

Dear Celia,
In lieu of reimbursing me for my dress you tore, we at the League would gladly receive a donation of no less than two hundred dollars. Furthermore, please withhold from volunteering for any nonmember activities in the future, as your name has been placed on a probationary list. Your cooperation in this matter is appreciated.
Do kindly make the check out to the Jackson League Chapter.
Sincerely,
Hilly Holbrook
President and Chairman of Appropriations


ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Miss Celia’s still under the covers. I do my work in the kitchen, try to appreciate the fact that she’s not hanging around with me in here. But I can’t enjoy it because the phone’s been ringing all morning, and for the first time since I started, Miss Celia won’t pick it up. After the tenth time, I can’t listen to it anymore and finally just grab it and say hello.

I go in her bedroom, tell her, “Mister Johnny on the phone.”
 “What? He’s not supposed to know that I know that he knows about you.”

I let out a big sigh to show I don’t give a fat rat about that lie anymore. “He called me at home. The jig is up, Miss Celia.”

Miss Celia shuts her eyes. “Tell him I’m asleep.”

I pick up the bedroom line and look Miss Celia hard in the eye and tell him she’s in the shower.
 “Yessir, she doing alright,” I say and narrow my eyes at her.

I hang up the phone and glare down at Miss Celia.
 “He want to know how you doing.”
 “I heard.”
 “I lied for you, you know.”

She puts the pillow back over her head.

By the next afternoon, I can’t stand it another minute. Miss Celia’s still in the same spot she’s been all week. Her face is thin and that Butterbatch is greasy-looking. The room is starting to smell too, like dirty people. I bet she hasn’t bathed since Friday.
 “Miss Celia,” I say.

Miss Celia looks at me, but doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak.
 “Mister Johnny gone be home tonight and I told him I’d look after you. What’s he gone think if he find you laid up in that old nasty nightthing you got on?”

I hear Miss Celia sniffle, then hiccup, then start to cry full-on. “None of this would’ve happened if I’d just stayed where I belonged. He should’ve married proper. He should’ve married . . . Hilly.”
 “Come on, Miss Celia. It ain’t—”
 “The way Hilly looked at me . . . like I was nothing. Like I was trash on the side of the road.”
 “But Miss Hilly don’t count. You can’t judge yourself by the way that woman see you.”
 “I’m not right for this kind of life. I don’t need a dinner table for twelve people to sit at. I couldn’t get twelve people to come over if I begged.”

I shake my head at her. Complaining again cause she has too much.
 “Why does she hate me so much? She doesn’t even know me,” Miss Celia cries. “And it’s not just Johnny, she called me a liar, accused me of getting her that . . . pie.” She bangs her fists against her knees. “I never would a thrown up if it wasn’t for that.”
 “What pie?”
 “H-H-Hilly won your pie. And she accused me of signing her up for it. Playing some . . . trick on her.” She wails and sobs. “Why would I do that? Write her name down on a list?”

It comes to me real slow what’s going on here. I don’t know who signed up Hilly for that pie, but I sure know why she’d eat alive anybody she thought did it.

I glance over at the door. That voice in my head says, Walk away, Minny. Just ease on out a here. But I look at Miss Celia bawling into her old nightgown, and I get a guilt thick as Yazoo clay.
 “I can’t do this to Johnny anymore. I’ve already decided, Minny. I’m going back,” she sobs. “Back to Sugar Ditch.”
 “You gone leave your husband just cause you throwed up at some party?” Hang on, I think, my eyes opening wide. Miss Celia can’t leave Mister Johnny—where in the heck would that leave me?

Miss Celia cries down harder at the reminder. I sigh and watch her, wondering what to do.

Lord, I reckon it’s time. Time I told her the one thing in the world I never want to tell anybody. I’m going to lose my job either way, so I might as well take the chance.
 “Miss Celia . . .” I say and I sit down in the yellow armchair in the corner. I’ve never sat anywhere in this house but in the kitchen and her bathroom floor, but today calls for extreme measures.
 “I know why Miss Hilly got so mad,” I say. “About the pie, I mean.”

Miss Celia blows a hard, loud honk into a tissue. She looks at me.
 “I did something to her. It was Terrible. Awful.” My heart starts thumping just thinking about it. I realize I can’t sit in this chair and tell her this story at the same time. I get up and walk to the end of the bed.
 “What?” she sniffs. “What happened, Minny?”
 “Miss Hilly, she call me up at home last year, when I’s still working for Miss Walters. To tell me she sending Miss Walters to the old lady home. I got scared, I got five kids to feed. Leroy was already working two shifts.”

I feel a burn rise up in my chest. “Now I know what I did wasn’t Christian. But what kind a person send her own mama to the home to take up with strangers? They’s something bout doing wrong to that woman that make it just seem right.”

Miss Celia sits up in bed, wipes her nose. She looks like she’s paying attention now.
 “For three weeks, I be looking for work. Ever day after I get off from Miss Walters’, I went looking. I go over to Miss Child’s house. She pass me up. I go on to the Rawleys’ place, they don’t want me neither. The Riches, the Patrick Smiths, the Walkers, not even those Catholic Thibodeaux with them seven kids. Nobody do.”
 “Oh Minny . . .” says Miss Celia. “That’s awful.”

I clench my jaw. “Ever since I was a li’l girl, my mama tell me not to go sass-mouthing. But I didn’t listen and I got knowed for my mouth round town. And I figure that’s what it be, why nobody want to hire me.
 “When they was two days left at Miss Walters’s and I still didn’t have no new job, I start getting real scared. With Benny’s asthma and Sugar still in school and Kindra and . . . we was tight on money already. And that’s when Miss Hilly, she come over to Miss Walters’s to talk to me.
 “She say, ‘Come work for me, Minny. I pay you twenty-five more cent a day than Mama did.’ A ‘dangling carrot’ she call it, like I was some kind a plow mule.” I feel my fists forming. “Like I’d even consider beating my friend Yule May Crookle out a her job. Miss Hilly think everbody just as two-faced as she is.”

I wipe my hand across my face. I’m sweating. Miss Celia’s listening with her mouth open, looking dazed.
 “I tell her ‘No thank you, Miss Hilly.’ And so she say she pay me fifty cent more and I say, ‘No ma’am. No thank you.’ Then she break my back, Miss Celia. She tell me she know bout the Childs and the Rawleys and all them others that turn me down. Said it was cause she’d made sure everbody knew I was a thief. I’ve never stole a thing in my life but she told everbody I did and wasn’t nobody in town gone hire a sass-mouthing thieving Nigra for a maid and I might as well go head and work for her for free.
 “And that’s how come I did it.”

Miss Celia blinks at me. “What, Minny?”
 “I tell her to eat my shit.”

Miss Celia sits there, still looking dazed.
 “Then I go home. I mix up that chocolate custard pie. I puts sugar in it and Baker’s chocolate and the real vanilla my cousin bring me from Mexico.
 “I tote it over to Miss Walters’s house, where I know Miss Hilly be setting round, waiting for the home to come and get her mama, so she can sell that house. Go through her silver. Collect her due.
 “Soon as I put that pie down on the countertop, Miss Hilly smiles, thinking it’s a peace offering, like that’s my way a showing her I’m real sorry bout what I said. And then I watch her. I watch her eat it myself. Two big pieces. She stuff it in her mouth like she ain’t ever eaten nothing so good. Then she say, ‘I knew you’d change your mind, Minny. I knew I’d get my way in the end.’ And she laugh, kind a prissy, like it was all real funny to her.
 “That’s when Miss Walters, she say she getting a mite hungry too and ask for a piece a that pie. I tell her, ‘No ma’am. That one’s special for Miss Hilly.’
 “Miss Hilly say, ‘Mama can have some if she wants. Just a little piece, though. What do you put in here, Minny, that makes it taste so good?’
 “I say ‘That good vanilla from Mexico’ and then I go head. I tell her what else I put in that pie for her.”

Miss Celia’s still as a stone staring at me, but I can’t meet her eyes now.
 “Miss Walters, her mouth fall open. Nobody in that kitchen said anything for so long, I could a made it out the door fore they knew I’s gone. But then Miss Walters start laughing. Laugh so hard she almost fall out the chair. Say, ‘Well, Hilly, that’s what you get, I guess. And I wouldn’t go tattling on Minny either, or you’ll be known all over town as the lady who ate two slices of Minny’s shit.’ ”

I sneak a look up at Miss Celia. She’s staring wide-eyed, disgusted. I start to panic that I told her this. She’ll never trust me again. I walk over to the yellow chair and sit myself down.
 “Miss Hilly thought you knew the story. That you were making fun a her. She never would a pounced on you if I hadn’t done what I did.”

Miss Celia just stares at me.
 “But I want you to know, if you leave Mister Johnny, then Miss Hilly done won the whole ball game. Then she done beat me, she beat you . . . ” I shake my head, thinking about Yule May in jail, and Miss Skeeter without any friends left. “There ain’t many people left in this town that she ain’t beat.”

Miss Celia’s quiet awhile. Then she looks over at me and starts to say something, but she shuts her mouth back.

Finally, she just says, “Thank you. For . . . telling me that.”

She lays back down. But before I close the door, I can see her eyes are wide smack open.

THE NEXT MORNING, I find Miss Celia’s finally managed to get herself out of bed, wash her hair, and put all that makeup on again. It’s cold outside so she’s back in one of her tight sweaters.
 “Glad to have Mister Johnny back home?” I ask. Not that I care, but what I do want to know is if she’s still fiddling with the idea of leaving.

But Miss Celia doesn’t say much. There’s a tiredness in her eyes. She’s not so quick to smile at every little thing. She points her finger out the kitchen window. “I think I’ll plant a row of rosebushes. Along the back of the property.”
 “When they gone bloom?”
 “We should see something by next spring.”

I take this as a good sign, that she’s planning for the future. I figure somebody running off wouldn’t go to the trouble to plant flowers that won’t bloom until next year.

For the rest of the day, Miss Celia works in the flower garden, tending to the mums. The next morning I come in and find Miss Celia at the kitchen table. She’s got the newspaper out, but she’s staring out at that mimosa tree. It’s rainy and chilly outside.
 “Morning, Miss Celia.”
 “Hey, Minny.” Miss Celia just sits, looking out at that tree, fiddling with a pen in her hand. It’s started to rain.
 “What you want for lunch today? We got a roast beef or some a this chicken pie left over . . .” I lean in the refrigerator. I’ve got to make a decision about Leroy, tell him how it is. Either you quit beating on me, or I’m gone. And I’m not taking the kids either. Which ain’t true, about the kids, but that ought to scare him more than anything.
 “I don’t want anything.” Miss Celia stands up, slips off one red high heel, then the other. She stretches her back, still staring out the window at that tree. She cracks her knuckles. And then she walks out the back door.

I see her on the other side of the glass and then I see the axe. I get a little spooked because nobody likes to see a crazy lady with an axe in her hand. She swings it hard through the air, like a bat. A practice chop.
 “Lady, you done lost it this time.” The rain is pouring down all over Miss Celia, but she doesn’t care. She starts chopping at that tree. Leaves are sprinkling down all over her, sticking in her hair.

I set the platter of roast beef down on the kitchen table and watch, hoping this doesn’t turn into something. She bunches her mouth up, wipes the rain from her eyes. Instead of getting tired, every chop comes a little harder.
 “Miss Celia, come on out the rain,” I holler. “Let Mister Johnny do that when he get home.”

But she’s nothing doing. She’s made it halfway through that trunk and the tree’s starting to sway a little, drunk as my daddy. Finally I just plop down in the chair where Miss Celia was reading, wait for her to finish the job. I shake my head and look down at the newspaper. That’s when I see Miss Hilly’s note tucked underneath it and Miss Celia’s check for two hundred dollars. I look a little closer. Along the bottom of the check, in the little space for the notes, Miss Celia’s written the words in pretty cursive handwriting: For Two-Slice Hilly.

I hear a groan and see the tree crash to the ground. Leaves and dead fronds fly through the air, sticking all over her Butterbatch.MISS SKEETER Chapter 27
I STARE AT THE PHONE in the kitchen. No one’s called here in so long, it’s like a dead thing mounted to the wall. There’s a terrible quiet looming everywhere—at the library, at the drugstore where I pick up Mother’s medicine, on High Street where I buy typewriter ink, in our own house. President Kennedy’s assassination, less than two weeks ago, has struck the world dumb. It’s like no one wants to be the first to break the silence. Nothing seems important enough.

On the rare occasion that the phone does ring lately, it’s Doctor Neal, calling with more bad test results, or a relative checking on Mother. And yet, I still think Stuart sometimes, even though it’s been five months since he’s called. Even though I finally broke down and told Mother we’d broken up. Mother looked shocked, as I suspected she would, but thankfully, just sighed.

I take a deep breath, dial zero, and close myself up in the pantry. I tell the local operator the long distance number and wait.
 “Harper and Row, Publishers, how may I connect you?”
 “Elaine Stein’s office, please.”

I wait for her secretary to come on the line, wishing I’d done this earlier. But it felt wrong to call the week of Kennedy’s death and I heard on the news most offices were closed. Then it was Thanksgiving week and when I called, the switchboard told me no one was answering in her office at all, so now I’m calling more than a week later than I’d planned.
 “Elaine Stein.”

I blink, surprised it’s not her secretary. “Missus Stein, I’m sorry, this is—Eugenia Phelan. In Jackson, Mississippi.”
 “Yes . . . Eugenia.” She sighs, evidently irritated that she took the chance to answer her own phone.
 “I was calling to let you know that the manuscript will be ready right after the new year. I’ll be mailing it to you the second week of January.” I smile, having delivered my rehearsed lines perfectly.

There is silence, except for an exhale of cigarette smoke. I shift on the flour can. “I’m . . . the one writing about the colored women? In Mississippi?”
 “Yes, I remember,” she says, but I can’t tell if she really does. But then she says, “You’re the one who applied for the senior position. How is that project going?”
 “It’s almost finished. We just have two more interviews to complete and I was wondering if I should send it directly to your attention or to your secretary.”
 “Oh no, January is not acceptable.”
 “Eugenia? Are you in the house?” I hear Mother call.

I cover the phone. “Just a minute, Mama,” I call back, knowing if I don’t, she’ll barge in here.
 “The last editor’s meeting of the year is on December twenty-first,” Missus Stein continues. “If you want a chance at getting this read, I’ve got to have it in my hands by then. Otherwise it goes in The Pile. You don’t want to be in The Pile, Miss Phelan.”
 “But . . . you told me January . . .” Today is December second. That only gives me nineteen days to finish the entire thing.
 “December twenty-first is when everyone leaves for vacation and then in the new year we’re deluged with projects from our own list of authors and journalists. If you’re a nobody, as you are, Miss Phelan, before the twenty-first is your window. Your only window.”

I swallow, “I don’t know if . . .”
 “By the way, was that your mother you were speaking to? Do you still live at home?”

I try to think of a lie—she’s just visiting, she’s sick, she’s passing through, because I do not want Missus Stein to know that I’ve done nothing with my life. But then I sigh. “Yes, I still live at home.”
 “And the Negro woman who raised you, I’m assuming she’s still there?”
 “No, she’s gone.”
 “Mmm. Too bad. Do you know what happened to her? It’s just occurred to me, you’ll need a section about your own maid.”

I close my eyes, fighting frustration. “I don’t . . . know, honestly.”
 “Well, find out and definitely get that in. It’ll add something personal to all this.”
 “Yes ma’am,” I say, even though I have no idea how I’ll finish two maids in time, much less write stories about Constantine. Just the thought of writing about her makes me wish, deeply, that she was here now.
 “Goodbye, Miss Phelan. I hope you make the deadline,” she says, but before she hangs up, she mutters, “and for God’s sake, you’re a twenty-four-year-old educated woman. Go get an apartment.”

I GET Off THE PHONE, stunned by the news of the deadline and Missus Stein’s insistence to get Constantine in the book. I know I need to get to work immediately, but I check on Mother in her bedroom. In the past three months, her ulcers have gotten much worse. She’s lost more weight and can’t get through two days without vomiting. Even Doctor Neal looked surprised when I brought her in for her appointment last week.

Mother eyes me up and down from her bed. “Don’t you have bridge club today?”
 “It’s canceled. Elizabeth’s baby is colicky,” I lie. So many lies have been told, the room is thick with them. “How are you feeling?” I ask. The old white enamel bowl is next to her on the bed. “Have you been sick?”
 “I’m fine. Don’t wrinkle your forehead like that, Eugenia. It’s not good for your complexion.”

Mother still doesn’t know that I’ve been kicked out of bridge club or that Patsy Joiner got a new tennis partner. I don’t get invited to cocktail parties or baby showers anymore, or any functions where Hilly will be there. Except the League. At meetings, girls are short, to the point with me when discussing newsletter business. I try to convince myself I don’t care. I fix myself at my typewriter and don’t leave most days. I tell myself, that’s what you get when you put thirty-one toilets on the most popular girl’s front yard. People tend to treat you a little differently than before.

IT Was ALMOST FOUR MONTHS ago that the door was sealed shut between Hilly and me, a door made of ice so thick it would take a hundred Mississippi summers to melt it. It’s not as if I hadn’t expected consequences. I just hadn’t thought they’d last so long.

Hilly’s voice over the phone was gravelly sounding, low, like she’d been yelling all morning. “You are sick,” she hissed at me. “Do not speak to me, do not look at me. Do not say hello to my children.”
 “Technically it was a typo, Hilly,” was all I could think to say.
 “I am going over to Senator Whitworth’s house myself and telling him you, Skeeter Phelan, will be a blight on his campaign in Washington. A wart on the face of his reputation if Stuart ever associates with you again!”

I cringed at the mention of his name, even though we’d been broken up for weeks by then. I could imagine him looking away, not caring what I did anymore.
 “You turned my yard into some kind of a sideshow,” Hilly’d said. “Just how long have you been planning to humiliate my family?”

What Hilly didn’t understand was, I hadn’t planned it at all. When I started typing out her bathroom initiative for the newsletter, typing words like disease and protect yourself and you’re welcome!, it was like something cracked open inside of me, not unlike a watermelon, cool and soothing and sweet. I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it. I’d paid Pascagoula’s brothers twenty-five dollars each to put those junkyard pots onto Hilly’s lawn and they were scared, but willing to do it. I remember how dark the night had been. I remember feeling lucky that some old building had been gutted and there were so many toilets at the junkyard to choose from. Twice I’ve dreamed I was back there doing it again. I don’t regret it, but I don’t feel quite as lucky anymore.
 “And you call yourself a Christian,” were Hilly’s final words to me and I thought, God. When did I ever do that?

This November, Stooley Whitworth won the senator’s race for Washington. But William Holbrook lost the local election, to take his state seat. I’m quite sure Hilly blames me for this too. Not to mention all that work she’d put into setting me up with Stuart was for nothing.

A FEW HOURS after talking to Missus Stein over the phone, I tiptoe back to check on Mother one last time. Daddy’s already asleep beside her. Mother has a glass of milk on the table. She’s propped up on her pillows but her eyes are closed. She opens them as I’m peeking in.
 “Can I get you anything, Mama?”
 “I’m only resting because Doctor Neal told me to. Where are you going, Eugenia? It’s nearly seven o’clock.”
 “I’ll be back in a little while. I’m just going for a drive.” I give her a kiss, hoping she doesn’t ask any more questions. When I close the door, she’s already fallen asleep.

I drive fast through town. I dread telling Aibileen about the new deadline. The old truck rattles and bangs in the potholes. It’s in fast decline after another hard cotton season. My head practically hits the ceiling because someone’s retied the seat springs too tight. I have to drive with the window down, my arm hanging out so the door won’t rattle. The front window has a new smash in it the shape of a sunset.

I pull up to a light on State Street across from the paper company. When I look over, there’s Elizabeth and Mae Mobley and Raleigh all crammed in the front seat of their white Corvair, headed home from supper somewhere, I guess. I freeze, not daring to look over again, afraid she’ll see me and ask what I’m doing in the truck. I let them drive ahead, watching their tail-lights, fighting a hotness rising in my throat. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to Elizabeth.

After the toilet incident, Elizabeth and I struggled to stay friends. We still talked on the phone occasionally. But she stopped saying more than a hello and a few empty sentences to me at League meetings, because Hilly would see her. The last time I stopped by Elizabeth’s house was a month ago.
 “I can’t believe how big Mae Mobley’s gotten,” I’d said. Mae Mobley had smiled shyly, hid behind her mother’s leg. She was taller but still soft with baby fat.
 “Growing like a weed,” Elizabeth said, looking out the window, and I thought, what an odd thing to compare your child to. A weed.

Elizabeth was still in her bathrobe, hair rollers in, already tiny again after the pregnancy. Her smile stayed tight. She kept looking at her watch, touching her curlers every few seconds. We stood around the kitchen.
 “Want to go to the club for lunch?” I asked. Aibileen swung through the kitchen door then. In the dining room, I caught a glimpse of silver and Battenburg lace.
 “I can’t and I hate to rush you out but . . . Mama’s meeting me at the Jewel Taylor Shoppe.” She shot her eyes out the front window again. “You know how Mama hates to wait.” Her smile grew exponentially.
 “Oh, I’m sorry, don’t let me keep you.” I patted her shoulder and headed for the door. And then it hit me. How could I be so dumb? It’s Wednesday, twelve o’clock. My old bridge club.

I backed the Cadillac down her drive, sorry that I’d embarrassed her so. When I turned, I saw her face stretched up to the window, watching me leave. And that’s when I realized: she wasn’t embarrassed that she’d made me feel bad. Elizabeth Leefolt was embarrassed to be seen with me.

I park On AIBILEEN’S STREET, several houses down from hers, knowing we need to be even more cautious than ever. Even though Hilly would never come to this part of town, she is a threat to us all now and I feel like her eyes are everywhere. I know the glee she would feel catching me doing this. I don’t underestimate how far she would go to make sure I suffered the rest of my life.

It’s a crisp December night and a fine rain is just starting to fall. Head down, I hurry along the street. My conversation this afternoon with Missus Stein is still racing through my head. I’ve been trying to prioritize everything left to do. But the hardest part is, I have to ask Aibileen, again, about what happened to Constantine. I cannot do a just job on Constantine’s story if I don’t know what’s happened to her. It defeats the point of the book, to put in only part of the story. It wouldn’t be telling the truth.

I hurry into Aibileen’s kitchen. The look on my face must tell her something’s wrong.
 “What is it? Somebody see you?”
 “No,” I say, pulling papers from my satchel. “I talked to Missus Stein this morning.” I tell her everything I know, about the deadline, about “The Pile.”
 “Alright, so . . .” Aibileen is counting days in her head, the same way I have been all afternoon. “So we got two and a half weeks stead a six weeks. Oh Law, that ain’t enough time. We still got to finish writing the Louvenia section and smooth out Faye Belle—and the Minny section, it ain’t right yet . . . Miss Skeeter, we ain’t even got a title yet.”

I put my head in my hands. I feel like I’m slipping underwater. “That’s not all,” I say. “She . . . wants me to write about Constantine. She asked me . . . what happened to her.”

Aibileen sets her cup of tea down.
 “I can’t write it if I don’t know what happened, Aibileen. So if you can’t tell me . . . I was wondering if there’s someone else who will.”

Aibileen shakes her head. “I reckon they is,” she says, “but I don’t want nobody else telling you that story.”
 “Then . . . will you?”

Aibileen takes off her black glasses, rubs her eyes. She puts them back on and I expect to see a tired face. She’s worked all day and she’ll be working even harder now to try to make the deadline. I fidget in my chair, waiting for her answer.

But she doesn’t look tired at all. She’s sitting up straight and gives me a defiant nod. “I’ll write it down. Give me a few days. I’ll tell you ever thing that happened to Constantine.”

I WORK FOR FIFTEEN HOURS straight on Louvenia’s interview. On Thursday night, I go to the League meeting. I’m dying to get out of the house, antsy from nerves, jittery about the deadline. The Christmas tree is starting to smell too rich, the spiced oranges sickly decadent. Mother is always cold and my parents’ house feels like I’m soaking in a vat of hot butter.

I pause on the League steps, take in a deep breath of clean winter air. It’s pathetic, but I’m glad to still have the newsletter. Once a week, I actually feel like I’m a part of things. And who knows, maybe this time will be different, with the holidays starting and all.

But the minute I walk in, backs turn. My exclusion is tangible, as if concrete walls have formed around me. Hilly gives me a smirk, whips her head around to speak to someone else. I go deeper into the crowd and see Elizabeth. She smiles and I wave. I want to talk to her about Mother, tell her I’m getting worried, but before I get too close, Elizabeth turns, head down, and walks away. I go to my seat. This is new, from her, here.

Instead of my usual seat up front, I slip in the back row, angry that Elizabeth wouldn’t even say hello. Beside me is Rachel Cole Brant. Rachel hardly ever comes to meetings, with three kids, working on her master’s in English from Millsaps College. I wish we were better friends but I know she’s too busy. On my other side is damn Leslie Fullerbean and her cloud of hairspray. She must risk her life every time she lights a cigarette. I wonder, if I pushed the top of her head, would aerosol spray out of her mouth.

Almost every girl in the room has her legs crossed, a lit cigarette in her hand. The smoke gathers and curls around the ceiling. I haven’t smoked in two months and the smell makes me feel ill. Hilly steps up to the podium and announces the upcoming gimme-drives (coat drive, can drive, book drive, and a plain old money drive), and then we get to Hilly’s favorite part of the meeting, the trouble list. This is where she gets to call out the names of anyone late on their dues or tardy for meetings or not fulfilling their philanthropic duties. I’m always on the trouble list nowadays for something.

Hilly’s wearing a red wool A-line dress with a cape coat over it, Sherlock Holmes-style, even though it’s hot as fire in here. Every once in a while, she tosses back the front flap like it’s in her way, but she looks like she enjoys this gesture too much for it to really be a problem. Her helper Mary Nell stands next to her, handing her notes. Mary Nell has the look of a blond lapdog, the Pekingese kind with tiny feet and a nose that perks on the end.
 “Now, we have something very exciting to discuss.” Hilly accepts the notes from the lapdog and scans over them.
 “The committee has decided that our newsletter could use a little updating.”

I sit up straighter. Shouldn’t I decide on changes to the newsletter?
 “First of all, we’re changing the newsletter from a weekly to a monthly. It’s just too much with stamps going up to six cents and all. And we’re adding a fashion column, highlighting some of the best outfits worn by our members, and a makeup column with all the latest trends. Oh, and the trouble list of course. That’ll be in there too.” She nods her head, making eye contact with a few members.
 “And finally, the most exciting change: we’ve decided to name this new correspondence The Tattler. After the European magazine all the ladies over there read.”
 “Isn’t that the cutest name?” says Mary Lou White and Hilly’s so proud of herself, she doesn’t even bang the gavel at her for speaking out of turn.
 “Okay then. It is time to choose an editor for our new, modern monthly. Any nominations?”

Several hands pop up. I sit very still.
 “Jeanie Price, what say ye?”
 “I say Hilly. I nominate Hilly Holbrook.”
 “Aren’t you the sweetest thing. Alright, any others?”

Rachel Cole Brant turns and looks at me like, Are you believing this? Evidently, she’s the only one in the room who doesn’t know about me and Hilly.
 “Any seconds to . . .” Hilly looks down at the podium, like she can’t quite remember who’s been nominated. “To Hilly Holbrook as editor?”
 “I second.”
 “I third.”

Bang-bang goes the gavel and I’ve I lost my post as editor.

Leslie Fullerbean is staring at me with eyes so wide, I can see there isn’t anything back there where her brain should be.
 “Skeeter, isn’t that your job?” Rachel says.
 “It was my job,” I mutter and head straight for the doors when the meeting is over. No one speaks to me, no one looks me in the eye. I keep my head high.

In the foyer, Hilly and Elizabeth talk. Hilly tucks her dark hair behind her ears, gives me a diplomatic smile. She strides off to chat with someone else, but Elizabeth stays where she is. She touches my arm as I walk out.
 “Hey, Elizabeth,” I murmur.
 “I’m sorry, Skeeter,” she whispers and our eyes hang together. But then she looks away. I walk down the steps and into the dark parking lot. I thought she had something more to say to me, but I guess I was wrong.

I DON’T GO STRAIGHT HOME after the League meeting. I roll all the Cadillac windows down and let the night air blow on my face. It is warm and cold at the same time. I know I need to go home and work on the stories, but I turn onto the wide lanes of State Street and just drive. I’ve never felt so empty in my life. I can’t help but think of all that’s piling on top of me. I will never make this deadline, my friends despise me, Stuart is gone, Mother is...

I don’t know what Mother is, but we all know it’s more than just stomach ulcers.

The Sun and Sand Bar is closed and I go by slow, stare at how dead a neon sign seems when it’s turned off. I coast past the tall Lamar Life building, through the yellow blinking street lights. It’s only eight o’clock at night but everyone has gone to bed. Everyone’s asleep in this town in every way possible.
 “I wish I could just leave here,” I say and my voice sounds eerie, with no one to hear it. In the dark, I get a glimpse of myself from way above, like in a movie. I’ve become one of those people who prowl around at night in their cars. God, I am the town’s Boo Radley, just like in To Kill a Mockingbird.

I flick on the radio, desperate for noise to fill my ears. “It’s My Party” is playing and I search for something else. I’m starting to hate the whiny teenage songs about love and nothing. In a moment of aligned wavelengths, I pick up Memphis WKPO and out comes a man’s voice, drunk-sounding, singing fast and bluesy. At a dead end street, I ease into the Tote-Sum store parking lot and listen to the song. It is better than anything I’ve ever heard.

. . . you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’.


A voice in a can tells me his name is Bob Dylan, but as the next song starts, the signal fades. I lean back in my seat, stare out at the dark windows of the store. I feel a rush of inexplicable relief. I feel like I’ve just heard something from the future.

At the phone booth outside the store, I put in a dime and call Mother. I know she’ll wait up for me until I get home.
 “Hello?” It’s Daddy’s voice at eight-fifteen at night.
 “Daddy . . . why are you up? What’s wrong?”
 “You need to come on home now, darling.”

The streetlight suddenly feels too bright in my eyes, the night very cold. “Is it Mama? Is she sick?”
 “Stuart’s been sitting on the porch for almost two hours now. He’s waiting on you.”

Stuart? It doesn’t make sense. “But Mama . . . she’s . . .”
 “Oh, Mama’s fine. In fact, she’s brightened up a little. Come on home, Skeeter, and tend to Stuart now.”

THE DRIVE HOME has never felt so long. Ten minutes later, I pull in front of the house and see Stuart sitting on the top porch step. Daddy’s in a rocking chair. They both stand when I turn off the car.
 “Hey, Daddy,” I say. I don’t look at Stuart. “Where’s Mama?”
 “She’s asleep, I just checked on her.” Daddy yawns. I haven’t seen him up past seven o’clock in ten years, when the spring cotton froze.
 “’Night, you two. Turn the lights out when you’re done.” Daddy goes inside and Stuart and I are left alone. The night is so black, so quiet, I can’t see stars or a moon or even a dog in the yard.
 “What are you doing here?” I say and my voice, it sounds small.
 “I came to talk to you.”

I sit on the front step and put my head down on my arms. “Just say it fast and then go on. I was getting better. I heard this song and almost felt better ten minutes ago.”

He moves closer to me, but not so close that we are touching. I wish we were touching.
 “I came to tell you something. I came to say that I saw her.”

I lift my head up. The first word in my head is selfish. You selfish son-of-a-bitch, coming here to talk about Patricia.
 “I went out there, to San Francisco. Two weeks ago. I got in my truck and drove for four days and knocked on the door of the apartment house her mama gave me the address to.”

I cover my face. All I can see is Stuart pushing her hair back like he used to with me. “I don’t want to know this.”
 “I told her I thought that was the ugliest thing you could do to a person. Lie that way. She looked so different. Had on this prairie-looking dress and a peace sign and her hair was long and she didn’t have any lipstick on. And she laughed when she saw me. And then she called me a whore.” He rubs his eyes hard with his knuckles. “She, the one who took her clothes off for that guy—said I was a whore to my daddy, a whore to Mississippi.”
 “Why are you telling me this?” My fists are clenched. I taste metal. I’ve bitten down on my tongue.
 “I drove out there because of you. After we broke up, I knew I had to get her out of my head. And I did it, Skeeter. I drove two thousand miles there and back and I’m here to tell you. It’s dead. It’s gone.”
 “Well, good, Stuart,” I say. “Good for you.”

He moves closer and leans down so I will look at him. And I feel sick, literally nauseated by the smell of bourbon on his breath. And yet I still want to fold myself up and put my entire body in his arms. I am loving him and hating him at the same time.
 “Go home,” I say, hardly believing myself. “There’s no place left inside me for you.”
 “I don’t believe that.”
 “You’re too late, Stuart.”
 “Can I come by on Saturday? To talk some more?”

I shrug, my eyes full of tears. I won’t let him throw me away again. It’s already happened too many times, with him, with my friends. I’d be stupid to let it happen again.
 “I don’t really care what you do.”

I WAKE UP AT FIVE A.M. and start working on the stories. With only seventeen days until our deadline, I work through the day and night with a speed and efficiency I didn’t know I possessed. I finish Louvenia’s story in half the time it took me to write the others and, with an intense burning headache, I turn off the light as the first rays of sun peek through the window. If Aibileen will give me Constantine’s story by early next week, I just might be able to pull this off.

And then I realize I do not have seventeen more days. How dumb of me. I have ten days, because I haven’t accounted for the time it will take to mail it to New York.

I’d cry, if only I had the time to do it.

A few hours later, I wake up and go back to work. At five in the afternoon, I hear a car pull up and see Stuart climb out of his truck. I tear myself away from the typewriter and go out on the front porch.
 “Hello,” I say, standing in the doorway.
 “Hey, Skeeter.” He nods at me, shyly I think, compared to his way two nights ago. “Afternoon, Mister Phelan.”
 “Hey there, son.” Daddy gets up from his rocking chair. “I’ll let you kids talk out here.”
 “Don’t get up, Daddy. I’m sorry, but I’m busy today, Stuart. You’re welcome to sit out here with Daddy as long as you like.”

I go back in the house, pass Mother at the kitchen table drinking warm milk.
 “Was that Stuart I saw out there?”

I go in the dining room. I stand back from the windows, where I know Stuart can’t see me. I watch until he drives away. And then I just keep watching.

THAT NIGHT, as usual, I go to Aibileen’s. I tell her about the deadline of only ten days, and she looks like she might cry. Then I hand her Louvenia’s chapter to read, the one I’ve written at lightning speed. Minny is at the kitchen table with us, drinking a Coke, looking out the window. I hadn’t known she’d be here tonight and wish she’d leave us to work.

Aibileen puts it down, nods. “I think this chapter is right good. Read just as well as the slow-wrote ones.”

I sigh, leaning back in my chair, thinking of what else needs to be done. “We need to decide on the title,” I say and rub my temples. “I’ve been working on a few. I think we should call it Colored Domestics and the Southern Families for Which They Work.”
 “Say what?” Minny says, looking at me for the first time.
 “That’s the best way to describe it, don’t you think?” I say.
 “If you got a corn cob up you butt.”
 “This isn’t fiction, Minny. It’s sociology. It has to sound exact.”
 “But that don’t mean it have to sound boring,” Minny says.
 “Aibileen,” I sigh, hoping we can resolve this tonight. “What do you think?”

Aibileen shrugs and I can see already, she’s putting on her peace-making smile. It seems she has to smooth things over every time Minny and I are in the same room. “That’s a good title. A course you gone get tired a typing all that on top a ever page,” she says. I’d told her this is how it has to be done.
 “Well, we could shorten it a little . . .” I say and pull out my pencil.

Aibileen scratches her nose, says, “What you think about just calling it . . . Help?”
 “Help,” Minny repeats, like she’s never heard of the word.
 “Help,” I say.

Aibileen shrugs, looks down shyly, like she’s a little embarrassed. “I ain’t trying to take over your idea, I just... I like to keep things simple, you know?”
 “I guess Help sound alright to me,” Minny says and crosses her arms.
 “I like . . . Help,” I say, because I really do. I add, “I think we’ll still have to put the description underneath, so the category’s clear, but I think that’s a good title.”
 “Good is right,” Minny says. “Cause if this thing gets printed, Lord knows we gone need some.”

On SUNDAY AFTERNOON, with eight days left, I come downstairs, dizzy and blinking from staring at pica type all day. I was almost glad when I heard Stuart’s car pull up the drive. I rub my eyes. Maybe I’ll sit with him awhile, clear my head, then go back and work through the night.

Stuart climbs out of his mud-splattered truck. He’s still in his Sunday tie and I try to ignore how handsome he looks. I stretch my arms. It’s ridiculously warm out, considering Christmas is in two and a half weeks. Mother’s sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, swathed in blankets.
 “Hello, Missus Phelan. How are you feeling today?” Stuart asks.

Mother gives him a regal nod. “Fair. Thank you for asking.” I’m surprised by the coolness in her voice. She turns back to her newsletter and I can’t help but smile. Mother knows he’s been stopping by but she hasn’t mentioned it but once. I have to wonder when it will come.
 “Hey,” he says to me quietly and we sit on the bottom porch step. Silently, we watch our old cat Sherman sneak around a tree, his tail swaying, going after some creature we can’t see.

Stuart puts his hand on my shoulder. “I can’t stay today. I’m heading to Dallas right now for an oil meeting and I’ll be gone three days,” he says. “I just came by to tell you.”
 “Alright.” I shrug, like it makes no difference.
 “Alright then,” he says and gets back in his truck.

When he has disappeared, Mother clears her throat. I don’t turn around and look at her in the rocking chair. I don’t want her to see the disappointment in my face that he’s gone.
 “Go ahead, Mother,” I finally mutter. “Say what you want to say.”
 “Don’t you let him cheapen you.”

I look back at her, eye her suspiciously, even though she is so frail under the wool blanket. Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.
 “If Stuart doesn’t know how intelligent and kind I raised you to be, he can march straight on back to State Street.” She narrows her eyes out at the winter land. “Frankly, I don’t care much for Stuart. He doesn’t know how lucky he was to have you.”

I let Mother’s words sit like a tiny, sweet candy on my tongue. Forcing myself up from the step, I head for the front door. There is so much work to be done and not nearly enough time.
 “Thank you, Mother.” I kiss her softly on the cheek and go inside.

I’M EXHAUSTED and IRRITABLE. For forty-eight hours I’ve done nothing but type. I am stupid with facts about other people’s lives. My eyes sting from the smell of typing ink. My fingers are striped with paper cuts. Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious.

With just six days left, I go over to Aibileen’s. She’s taken a weekday off from work, despite Elizabeth’s annoyance. I can tell she knows what we need to discuss before I even say it. She leaves me in the kitchen and comes back with a letter in her hand.
 “Fore I give this to you . . . I think I ought to tell you some things. So you can really understand.”

I nod. I am tense in my chair. I want to tear the envelope open and get this over with.

Aibileen straightens her notebook that’s sitting on the kitchen table. I watch as she aligns her two yellow pencils. “Remember, I told you Constantine had a daughter. Well, Lulabelle was her name. Law, she come out pale as snow. Grew hair the color a hay. Not curly like yours. Straight it was.”
 “She was that white?” I ask. I’ve wondered this ever since Aibileen told me about Constantine’s child, way back in Elizabeth’s kitchen. I think about how surprised Constantine must’ve been to hold a white baby and know it was hers.

She nods. “When Lulabelle was four years old, Constantine . . .” Aibileen shifts in her chair. “She take her to a . . . orphanage. Up in Chicago.”
 “An orphanage? You mean . . . she gave her baby away?” As much as Constantine loved me, I can only imagine how much she must’ve loved her own child.

Aibileen looks me straight in the eye. I see something there I rarely see—frustration, antipathy. “A lot a colored womens got to give they children up, Miss Skeeter. Send they kids off cause they have to tend to a white family.”

I look down, wondering if Constantine couldn’t take care of her child because she had to take care of us.
 “But most send em off to family. A orphanage is... different altogether.”
 “Why didn’t she send the baby to her sister’s? Or another relative?”
 “Her sister...she just couldn’t handle it. Being Negro with white skin . . . in Mississippi, it’s like you don’t belong to nobody. But it wasn’t just hard on the girl. It was hard on Constantine. She . . . folks would look at her. White folks would stop her, ask her all suspicious what she doing toting round a white child. Policeman used to stop her on State Street, told her she need to get her uniform on. Even colored folks . . . they treat her different, distrustful, like she done something wrong. It was hard for her to find somebody to watch Lulabelle while she at work. Constantine got to where she didn’t want to bring Lula . . . out much.”
 “Was she already working for my mother then?”
 “She’d been with your mama a few years. That’s where she met the father, Connor. He worked on your farm, lived back there in Hotstack.” Aibileen shakes her head. “We was all surprised Constantine would go and... get herself in the family way. Some folks at church wasn’t so kind about it, especially when the baby come out white. Even though the father was black as me.”
 “I’m sure Mother wasn’t too pleased, either.” Mother, I’m sure, knew all about it. She’s always kept tabs on all the colored help and their situations— where they live, if they’re married, how many children they have. It’s more of a control thing than a real interest. She wants to know who’s walking around her property.
 “Was it a colored orphanage or a white one?” Because I am thinking, I am hoping, maybe Constantine just wanted a better life for her child. Maybe she thought she’d be adopted by a white family and not feel so different.
 “Colored. White ones wouldn’t take her, I heard. I guess they knew... maybe they seen that kind a thing before.
 “When Constantine went to the train station with Lulabelle to take her up there, I heard white folks was staring on the platform, wanting to know why a little white girl was going in the colored car. And when Constantine left her at the place up in Chicago . . . four is . . . pretty old to get given up. Lulabelle was screaming. That’s what Constantine told somebody at our church. Said Lula was screaming and thrashing, trying to get her mama to come back to her. But Constantine, even with that sound in her ears . . . she left her there.”

As I listen, it starts to hit me, what Aibileen is telling me. If I hadn’t had the mother I have, I might not have thought it. “She gave her up because she was . . . ashamed? Because her daughter was white?”

Aibileen opens her mouth to disagree, but then she closes it, looks down. “A few years later, Constantine wrote the orphanage, told em she made a mistake, she wanted her girl back. But Lula been adopted already. She was gone. Constantine always said giving her child away was the worst mistake she’d ever made in her life.” Aibileen leans back in her chair. “And she said if she ever got Lulabelle back, she’d never let her go.”

I sit quietly, my heart aching for Constantine. I am starting to dread what this has to do with my mother.
 “Bout two years ago, Constantine get a letter from Lulabelle. I reckon she was twenty-five by then, and it said her adoptive parents give her the address. They start writing to each other and Lulabelle say she want a come down and stay with her awhile. Constantine, Law, she so nervous she couldn’t walk straight. Too nervous to eat, wouldn’t even take no water. Kept throwing it up. I had her on my prayer list.”

Two years ago. I was up at school then. Why didn’t Constantine tell me in her letters what was going on?
 “She took all her savings and bought new clothes for Lulabelle, hair things, had the church bee sew her a new quilt for the bed Lula gone sleep in. She told us at prayer meeting, What if she hate me? She’s gone ask me why I give her away and if I tell her the truth . . . she’ll hate me for what I done.”

Aibileen looks up from her cup of tea, smiles a little. “She tell us, I can’t wait for Skeeter to meet her, when she get back home from school. I forgot about that. I didn’t know who Skeeter was, back then.”

I remember my last letter from Constantine, that she had a surprise for me. I realize now, she’d wanted to introduce me to her daughter. I swallow back tears coming up in my throat. “What happened when Lulabelle came down to see her?”

Aibileen slides the envelope across the table. “I reckon you ought a read that part at home.”

AT HOME, I GO UPSTAIRS. Without even stopping to sit down, I open Aibileen’s letter. It is on notebook paper, covering the front and back, written in cursive pencil.

Afterward, I stare at the eight pages I’ve already written about walking to Hotstack with Constantine, the puzzles we worked on together, her pressing her thumb in my hand. I take a deep breath and put my hands on the typewriter keys. I can’t waste any more time. I have to finish her story.

I write about what Aibileen told me, that Constantine had a daughter and had to give her up so she could work for our family—the Millers I call us, after Henry, my favorite banned author. I don’t put in that Constantine’s daughter was high yellow; I just want to show that Constantine’s love for me began with missing her own child. Perhaps that’s what made it so unique, so deep. It didn’t matter that I was white. While she was wanting her own daughter back, I was longing for Mother not to be disappointed in me.

For two days, I write all the way through my childhood, my college years, where we sent letters to each other every week. But then I stop and listen to Mother coughing downstairs. I hear Daddy’s footsteps, going to her. I light a cigarette and stub it out, thinking, Don’t start up again. The toilet water rushes through the house, filled with a little more of my mother’s body. I light another cigarette and smoke it down to my fingers. I can’t write about what’s in Aibileen’s letter.

That afternoon, I call Aibileen at home. “I can’t put it in the book,” I tell her. “About Mother and Constantine. I’ll end it when I go to college. I just . . .”
 “Miss Skeeter—”
 “I know I should. I know I should be sacrificing as much as you and Minny and all of you. But I can’t do that to my mother.”
 “No one expects you to, Miss Skeeter. Truth is, I wouldn’t think real high a you if you did.”

THE NEXT EVENING, I go to the kitchen for some tea.
 “Eugenia? Are you downstairs?”

I tread back to Mother’s room. Daddy’s not in bed yet. I hear the television on out in the relaxing room. “I’m here, Mama.”

She is in bed at six in the evening, the white bowl by her side. “Have you been crying? You know how that ages your skin, dear.”

I sit in the straight cane chair beside her bed. I think about how I should begin. Part of me understands why Mother acted the way she did, because really, wouldn’t anyone be angry about what Lulabelle did? But I need to hear my mother’s side of the story. If there’s anything redeeming about my mother that Aibileen left out of the letter, I want to know.
 “I want to talk about Constantine,” I say.
 “Oh Eugenia,” Mother chides and pats my hand. “That was almost two years ago.”
 “Mama,” I say and make myself look into her eyes. Even though she is terribly thin and her collarbone is long and narrow beneath her skin, her eyes are still as sharp as ever. “What happened? What happened with her daughter?”

Mother’s jaw tightens and I can tell she’s surprised that I know about her. I wait for her to refuse to talk about it, as before. She takes a deep breath, moves the white bowl a little closer to her, says, “Constantine sent her up to Chicago to live. She couldn’t take care of her.”

I nod and wait.
 “They’re different that way, you know. Those people have children and don’t think about the consequences until it’s too late.”

They, those people. It reminds me of Hilly. Mother sees it on my face, too.
 “Now you look, I was good to Constantine. Oh, she talked back plenty of times and I put up with it. But Skeeter, she didn’t give me a choice this time.”
 “I know, Mother. I know what happened.”
 “Who told you? Who else knows about this?” I see the paranoia rising in Mother’s eyes. It is her greatest fear coming true, and I feel sorry for her.
 “I will never tell you who told me. All I can say is, it was no one . . . important to you,” I say. “I can’t believe you would do that, Mother.”
 “How dare you judge me, after what she did. Do you really know what happened? Were you there?” I see the old anger, an obstinate woman who’s survived years of bleeding ulcers.
 “That girl—” She shakes her knobby finger at me. “She showed up here. I had the entire DAR chapter at the house. You were up at school and the doorbell was ringing nonstop and Constantine was in the kitchen, making all that coffee over since the old percolator burned the first two pots right up.” Mother waves away the remembered reek of scorched coffee. “They were all in the living room having cake, ninety-five people in the house, and she’s drinking coffee. She’s talking to Sarah von Sistern and walking around the house like a guest and sticking cake in her mouth and then she’s filling out the form to become a member.”

Again I nod. Maybe I didn’t know those details, but they don’t change what happened.
 “She looked white as anybody, and she knew it too. She knew exactly what she was doing and so I say, How do you do? and she laughs and says, Fine, so I say, And what is your name? and she says, You mean you don’t know? I’m Lulabelle Bates. I’m grown now and I’ve moved back in with Mama. I got here yesterday morning. And then she goes over to help herself to another piece of cake.”
 “Bates,” I say, because this is another detail I didn’t know, albeit insignificant. “She changed her last name back to Constantine’s.”
 “Thank God nobody heard her. But then she starts talking to Phoebe Miller, the president of the Southern States of the DAR, and I pulled her into the kitchen and I said, Lulabelle, you can’t stay here. You need to go on, and oh she looked at me haughty. She said, What, you don’t allow colored Negroes in your living room if we’re not cleaning up? That’s when Constantine walks in the kitchen and she looks as shocked as I am. I say, Lulabelle, you get out of this house before I call Mister Phelan, but she won’t budge. Says, when I thought she was white, I treated her fine and dandy. Says up in Chicago, she’s part of some black cat group so I tell Constantine, I say, You get your daughter out of my house right now.”

Mother’s eyes seem more deep-set than ever. Her nostrils are flaring.
 “So Constantine, she tells Lulabelle to go on back to their house, and Lulabelle says, Fine, I was leaving anyway, and heads for the dining room and of course I stop her. Oh no, I say, you go out the back door, not the front with the white guests. I was not about to have the DAR find out about this. And I told that bawdy girl, whose own mama we gave ten dollars extra to every Christmas, she was not to step foot on this farm again. And do you know what she did?”

Yes, I think, but I keep my face blank. I am still searching for the redemption.
 “Spit. In my face. A Negro in my home. Trying to act white.”

I shudder. Who would ever have the nerve to spit at my mother?
 “I told Constantine that girl better not show her face here again. Not to Hotstack, not to the state of Mississippi. Nor would I tolerate her keeping terms with Lulabelle, not as long as your daddy was paying Constantine’s rent on that house back there.”
 “But it was Lulabelle acting that way. Not Constantine.”
 “What if she stayed? I couldn’t have that girl going around Jackson, acting white when she was colored, telling everybody she got into a DAR party at Longleaf. I just thank God nobody ever found out about it. She tried to embarrass me in my own home, Eugenia. Five minutes before, she had Phoebe Miller filling out the form for her to join.”
 “She hadn’t seen her daughter in twenty years. You can’t . . . tell a person they can’t see their child.”

But Mother is caught up in her own story. “And Constantine, she thought she could get me to change my mind. Miss Phelan, please, just let her stay at the house, she won’t come on this side again, I hadn’t seen her in so long.
 “And that Lulabelle, with her hand up on her hip, saying, ‘Yeah, my daddy died and my mama was too sick to take care of me when I was a baby. She had to give me away. You can’t keep us apart.’ ”

Mother lowers her voice. She seems matter-of-fact now. “I looked at Constantine and I felt so much shame for her. To get pregnant in the first place and then to lie . . .”

I feel sick and hot. I’m ready for this to be over.

Mother narrows her eyes. “It’s time you learned, Eugenia, how things really are. You idolize Constantine too much. You always have.” She points her finger at me. “They are not like regular people.”

I can’t look at her. I close my eyes. “And then what happened, Mother?”
 “I asked Constantine, just as plain as day, ‘Is that what you told her? Is that how you cover your mistakes?’ ”

This is the part I was hoping wasn’t true. This is what I’d hoped Aibileen had been wrong about.
 “I told Lulabelle the truth. I told her, ‘Your daddy didn’t die. He left the day after you were born. And your mama hadn’t been sick a day in her life. She gave you up because you were too high yellow. She didn’t want you.’”
 “Why couldn’t you let her believe what Constantine told her? Constantine was so scared she wouldn’t like her, that’s why she told her those things.”
 “Because Lulabelle needed to know the truth. She needed to go back to Chicago where she belonged.”

I let my head sink into my hands. There is no redeeming piece of the story. I know why Aibileen hadn’t wanted to tell me. A child should never know this about her own mother.
 “I never thought Constantine would go to Illinois with her, Eugenia. Honestly, I was . . . sorry to see her go.”
 “You weren’t,” I say. I think about Constantine, after living fifty years in the country, sitting in a tiny apartment in Chicago. How lonely she must’ve felt. How bad her knees must’ve felt in that cold.
 “I was. And even though I told her not to write you, she probably would’ve, if there’d been more time.”
 “More time?”
 “Constantine died, Skeeter. I sent her a check, for her birthday. To the address I found for her daughter, but Lulabelle . . . sent it back. With a copy of the obituary.”
 “Constantine . . .” I cry. I wish I’d known. “Why didn’t you tell me, Mama?”

Mother sniffs, keeping her eyes straight ahead. She quickly wipes her eyes. “Because I knew you’d blame me when it—it wasn’t my fault.”
 “When did she die? How long was she living in Chicago?” I ask.

Mother pulls the basin closer, hugs it to her side. “Three weeks.”

AIBILEEN OPENS HER back DOOR, lets me in. Minny is sitting at the table, stirring her coffee. When she sees me, she tugs the sleeve of her dress down, but I see the edge of a white bandage on her arm. She grumbles a hello, then goes back to her cup.

I put the manuscript down on the table with a thump.
 “If I mail it in the morning, that still leaves six days for it to get there. We might just make it.” I smile through my exhaustion.
 “Law, that is something. Look at all them pages.” Aibileen grins and sits on her stool. “Two hundred and sixty-six of em.”
 “Now we just . . . wait and see,” I say and we all three stare at the stack.
 “Finally,” Minny says, and I can see the hint of something, not exactly a smile, but more like satisfaction.

The room grows quiet. It’s dark outside the window. The post office is already closed so I brought it over to show to Aibileen and Minny one last time before I mail it. Usually, I only bring over sections at a time.
 “What if they find out?” Aibleen says quietly.

Minny looks up from her coffee.
 “What if folks find out Niceville is Jackson or figure out who who.”
 “They ain’t gone know,” Minny says. “Jackson ain’t no special place. They’s ten thousand towns just like it.”

We haven’t talked about this in a while, and besides Winnie’s comment about tongues, we’ve haven’t really discussed the actual consequences besides the maids losing their jobs. For the past eight months, all we’ve thought about is just getting it written.
 “Minny, you got your kids to think about,” Aibileen says. “And Leroy . . . if he find out . . .”

The sureness in Minny’s eyes changes to something darting, paranoid. “Leroy gone be mad. Sho nuff.” She tugs at her sleeve again. “Mad then sad, if the white people catch hold a me.”
 “You think maybe we ought to find a place we could go . . . in case it get bad?” Aibileen asks.

They both think about this, then shake their heads. “I on know where we’d go,” Minny says.
 “You might think about that, Miss Skeeter. Somewhere for yourself,” Aibileen says.
 “I can’t leave Mother,” I say. I’ve been standing and I sink down into a chair. “Aibileen, do you really think they’d . . . hurt us? I mean, like what’s in the papers?”

Aibileen cocks her head at me, confused. She wrinkles her forehead like we’ve had a misunderstanding. “They’d beat us. They’d come out here with baseball bats. Maybe they won’t kill us but . . .”
 “But . . . who exactly would do this? The white women we’ve written about . . . they wouldn’t hurt us. Would they?” I ask.
 “Don’t you know, white mens like nothing better than ‘protecting’ the white womens a their town?”

My skin prickles. I’m not so afraid for myself, but for what I’ve done to Aibileen, to Minny. To Louvenia and Faye Belle and eight other women. The book is sitting there on the table. I want to put it in my satchel and hide it.

Instead, I look to Minny because, for some reason, I think she’s the only one among us who really understands what could happen. She doesn’t look back at me, though. She is lost in thought. She’s running her thumbnail back and forth across her lip.
 “Minny? What do you think?” I ask.

Minny keeps her eyes on the window, nods at her own thoughts. “I think what we need is some insurance.”
 “Ain’t no such thing,” Aibileen says. “Not for us.”
 “What if we put the Terrible Awful in the book,” Minny asks.
 “We can’t, Minny,” Aibileen says. “It’d give us away.”
 “But if we put it in there, then Miss Hilly can’t let anybody find out the book is about Jackson. She don’t want anybody to know that story’s about her. And if they start getting close to figuring it out, she gone steer em the other way.”
 “Law, Minny, that is too risky. Nobody can predict what that woman gone do.”
 “Nobody know that story but Miss Hilly and her own mama,” Minny says. “And Miss Celia, but she ain’t got no friends to tell anyway.”
 “What happened?” I ask. “Is it really that terrible?”

Aibileen looks at me. My eyebrows go up.
 “Who she gone admit that to?” Minny asks Aibileen. “She ain’t gone want you and Miss Leefolt to get identified either, Aibileen, cause then people gone be just one step away. I’m telling you, Miss Hilly is the best protection we got.”

Aibileen shakes her head, then nods. Then shakes it again. We watch her and wait.
 “If we put the Terrible Awful in the book and people do find out that was you and Miss Hilly, then you in so much trouble”—Aibileen shudders—“there ain’t even a name for it.”
 “That’s a risk I’m just gone have to take. I already made up my mind. Either put it in or pull my part out altogether.”

Aibileen and Minny’s eyes hang on each other’s. We can’t pull out Minny’s section; it’s the last chapter of the book. It’s about getting fired nineteen times in the same small town. About what it’s like trying to keep the anger inside, but never succeeding. It starts with her mother’s rules of how to work for white women, all the way up to leaving Missus Walters. I want to speak up, but I keep my mouth shut.

Finally, Aibileen sighs.
 “Alright,” Aibileen says, shaking her head. “I reckon you better tell her, then.”

Minny narrows her eyes at me. I pull out a pencil and pad.
 “I’m only telling you for the book, you understand. Ain’t nobody sharing no heartfelt secrets here.”
 “I’ll make us some more coffee,” Aibileen says.

On THE DRIVE back to Longleaf, I shudder, thinking about Minny’s pie story. I don’t know if we’d be safer leaving it out or putting it in. Not to mention, if I can’t get it written in time to make the mail tomorrow, it will put us yet another day later, shorting our chances to make the deadline. I can picture the red fury on Hilly’s face, the hate she still feels for Minny. I know my old friend well. If we’re found out, Hilly will be our fiercest enemy. Even if we’re not found out, printing the pie story will put Hilly in a rage like we’ve never seen. But Minny’s right—it’s our best insurance.

I look over my shoulder every quarter mile. I keep exactly to the speed limit and stay on the back roads. They will beat us rings in my ears.

I WRITE ALL NIGHT, grimacing over the details of Minny’s story, and all the next day. At four in the afternoon, I jam the manuscript in a cardboard letter box. I quickly wrap the box in brown paper wrapping. Usually it takes seven or eight days, but it will somehow have to get to New York City in six days to make the deadline.

I speed to the post office, knowing it closes at four-thirty, despite my fear of the police, and rush inside to the window. I haven’t gone to sleep since night before last. My hair is literally sticking straight up in the air. The postman’s eyes widen.
 “Windy outside?”
 “Please. Can you get this out today? It’s going to New York.”

He looks at the address. “Out-a-town truck’s gone, ma’am. It’ll have to wait until morning.”

He stamps the postage and I head back home.

As soon as I walk in, I go straight to the pantry and call Elaine Stein’s office. Her secretary puts me through and I tell her, in a hoarse, tired voice, I mailed the manuscript today.
 “The last editors’ meeting is in six days, Eugenia. Not only will it have to get here in time, I’ll have to have time to read it. I’d say it’s highly unlikely.”

There is nothing left to say, so I just murmur, “I know. Thank you for the chance.” And I add, “Merry Christmas, Missus Stein.”
 “We call it Hanukkah, but thank you, Miss Phelan.”Chapter 28
AFTER I Hang up the phone, I go stand on the porch and stare out at the cold land. I’m so dog-tired I hadn’t even noticed Doctor Neal’s car is here. He must’ve arrived while I was at the post office. I lean against the rail and wait for him to come out of Mother’s room. Down the hall, through the open front door, I can see that her bedroom door is closed.

A little while later, Doctor Neal gently closes her door behind him and walks out to the porch. He stands beside me.
 “I gave her something to help the pain,” he says.
 “The . . . pain? Was Mama vomiting this morning?”

Old Doctor Neal stares at me through his cloudy blue eyes. He looks at me long and hard, as if trying to decide something about me. “Your mother has cancer, Eugenia. In the lining of the stomach.”

I reach for the side of the house. I’m shocked and yet, didn’t I know this?
 “She didn’t want to tell you.” He shakes his head. “But since she refuses to stay in the hospital, you need to know. These next few months are going to be . . . pretty hard.” He raises his eyebrows at me. “On her and you too.”
 “Few months? Is that . . . all?” I cover my mouth with my hand, hear myself groan.
 “Maybe longer, maybe sooner, honey.” He shakes his head. “Knowing your mother, though,” he glances into the house, “she’s going to fight it like the devil.”

I stand there in a daze, unable to speak.
 “Call me anytime, Eugenia. At the office or at home.”

I walk into the house, back to Mother’s room. Daddy is on the settee by the bed, staring at nothing. Mother is sitting straight up. She rolls her eyes when she sees me.
 “Well, I guess he told you,” she says.

Tears drip off my chin. I hold her hands.
 “How long have you known?”
 “About two months.”
 “Oh, Mama.”
 “Now stop that, Eugenia. It can’t be helped.”
 “But what can I . . . I can’t just sit here and watch you . . .” I can’t even say the word. All the words are too awful.
 “You most certainly will not just sit here. Carlton is going to be a lawyer and you . . .” She shakes her finger at me. “Don’t think you can just let yourself go after I’m gone. I am calling Fanny Mae’s the minute I can walk to the kitchen and make your hair appointments through 1975.”

I sink down on the settee and Daddy puts his arm around me. I lean against him and cry.

THE CHRISTMAS TREE Jameso put up a week ago dries and drops needles every time someone walks into the relaxing room. It’s still six days until Christmas, but no one’s bothered to water it. The few presents Mother bought and wrapped back in July sit under the tree, one for Daddy that’s obviously a church tie, something small and square for Carlton, a heavy box for me that I suspect is a new Bible. Now that everyone knows about Mother’s cancer, it is as if she’s let go of the few threads that kept her upright. The marionette strings are cut, and even her head looks wobbly on its post. The most she can do is get up and go to the bathroom or sit on the porch a few minutes every day.

In the afternoon, I take Mother her mail, Good Housekeeping magazine, church newsletters, DAR updates.
 “How are you?” I push her hair back from her head and she closes her eyes like she relishes the feel. She is the child now and I am the mother.
 “I’m alright.”

Pascagoula comes in. She sets a tray of broth on the table. Mother barely shakes her head when she leaves, staring off at the empty doorway.
 “Oh no,” she says, grimacing, “I can’t eat.”
 “You don’t have to eat, Mama. We’ll do it later.”
 “It’s just not the same with Pascagoula here, is it?” she says.
 “No,” I say. “It’s not.” This is the first time she’s mentioned Constantine since our terrible discussion.
 “They say its like true love, good help. You only get one in a lifetime.”

I nod, thinking how I ought to go write that down, include it in the book. But, of course, it’s too late, it’s already been mailed. There’s nothing I can do, there’s nothing any of us can do now, except wait for what’s coming.

CHRISTMAS EVE is DEPRESSING and rainy and warm. Every half hour, Daddy comes out of Mother’s room and looks out the front window and asks, “Is he here?” even if no one’s listening. My brother, Carlton, is driving home tonight from LSU law school and we’ll both be relieved to see him. All day, Mother has been vomiting and dry heaving. She can barely keep her eyes open, but she cannot sleep.
 “Charlotte, you need to be in the hospital,” Doctor Neal said that afternoon. I don’t know how many times he’s said that in the past week. “At least let me get the nurse out here to stay with you.”
 “Charles Neal,” Mother said, not even raising her head from the mattress, “I am not spending my final days in a hospital, nor will I turn my own house into one.”

Doctor Neal just sighed, gave Daddy more medicine, a new kind, and explained to him how to give it to her.
 “But will it help her?” I heard Daddy whisper out in the hall. “Can it make her better?”

Doctor Neal put his hand on Daddy’s shoulder. “No, Carlton.”

At six o’clock that night, Carlton finally pulls up, comes in the house.
 “Hey there, Skeeter.” He hugs me to him. He is rumpled from the car drive, handsome in his college cable-knit sweater. The fresh air on him smells good. It’s nice to have someone else here. “Jesus, why’s it so hot in this house?”
 “She’s cold,” I say quietly, “all the time.”

I go with him to the back. Mother sits up when she sees him, holds her thin arms out. “Oh Carlton, you’re home,” she says.

Carlton stops still. Then he bends down and hugs her, very gently. He glances back at me and I can see the shock on his face. I turn away. I cover my mouth so I don’t cry, because I won’t be able to quit. Carlton’s look tells me more than I want to know.

When Stuart drops by on Christmas Day, I don’t stop him when he tries to kiss me. But I tell him, “I’m only letting you because my mother is dying.”
 “EUGENIA,” I hear Mother calling. It is New Year’s Eve and I’m in the kitchen getting some tea. Christmas has passed and Jameso took the tree out this morning. Needles still litter the house, but I’ve managed to put away the decorations and store them back in the closet. It was tiring and frustrating, trying to wrap each ornament the way Mother likes, to get them ready for next year. I don’t let myself question the futility of it.

I’ve heard nothing from Missus Stein and don’t even know if the package made it on time. Last night, I broke down and called Aibileen to tell her I’ve heard nothing, just for the relief of talking about it to someone. “I keep thinking a things to put in,” Aibileen says. “I have to remind myself we already done sent it off.”
 “Me too,” I say. “I’ll call you as soon as I hear something.”

I go in the back. Mother is propped up on her pillows. The gravity of sitting upright, we’ve learned, helps keep the vomit down. The white enamel bowl is beside her.
 “Hey, Mama,” I say. “What can I get you?”
 “Eugenia, you cannot wear those slacks to the Holbrook New Year’s party.” When Mother blinks, she keeps her eyes closed a second too long. She’s exhausted, a skeleton in a white dressing gown with absurdly fancy ribbons and starched lace. Her neck swims in the neckline like an eighty-pound swan’s. She cannot eat unless it’s through a straw. She’s lost her power of smell completely. Yet she can sense, from an entirely different room, if my wardrobe is disappointing.
 “They canceled the party, Mama.” Perhaps she is remembering Hilly’s party last year. From what Stuart’s told me, all the parties were canceled because of the President’s death. Not that I’d be invited anyway. Tonight, Stuart’s coming over to watch Dick Clark on the television.

Mother places her tiny, angular hand on mine, so frail the joints show through the skin. I was Mother’s dress size when I was eleven.

She looks at me evenly. “I think you need to go on and put those slacks on the list, now.”
 “But they’re comfortable and they’re warm and—”

She shakes her head, shuts her eyes. “I’m sorry, Skeeter.”

There is no arguing, anymore. “Al-right,” I sigh.

Mother pulls the pad of paper from under the covers, tucked in the invisible pocket she’s had sewn in every garment, where she keeps antivomiting pills, tissues. Tiny dictatorial lists. Even though she is so weak, I’m surprised by the steadiness of her hand as she writes on the “Do Not Wear” list: “Gray, shapeless, mannishly tailored pants.” She smiles, satisfied.

It sounds macabre, but when Mother realized that after she’s dead, she won’t be able to tell me what to wear anymore, she came up with this ingenious postmortem system. She’s assuming I’ll never go buy new, unsatisfactory clothes on my own. She’s probably right.
 “Still no vomiting yet?” I ask, because it’s four o’clock and Mother’s had two bowls of broth and hasn’t been sick once today. Usually she’s thrown up at least three times by now.
 “Not even once,” she says but then she closes her eyes and within seconds, she’s asleep.

On NEW YEAR’S DAY, I come downstairs to start on the black-eyed peas for good luck. Pascagoula set them out to soak last night, instructed me on how to put them in the pot and turn on the flame, put the ham hock in with them. It’s pretty much a two-step process, yet everyone seems nervous about me turning on the stove. I remember that Constantine always used to come by on January first and fix our good-luck peas for us, even though it was her day off. She’d make a whole pot but then deliver one single pea on a plate to everyone in the family and watch us to make sure we ate it. She could be superstitious like that. Then she’d wash the dishes and go back home. But Pascagoula doesn’t offer to come in on her holiday and, assuming she’s with her own family, I don’t ask her to.

We’re all sad that Carlton had to leave this morning. It’s been nice having my brother around to talk to. His last words to me, before he hugged me and headed back to school, were, “Don’t burn the house down.” Then he added, “I’ll call tomorrow, to see how she is.”

After I turn off the flame, I walk out on the porch. Daddy’s leaning on the rail, rolling cotton seeds around in his fingers. He’s staring at the empty fields that won’t be planted for another month.
 “Daddy, you coming in for lunch?” I ask. “The peas are ready.”

He turns and his smile is thin, starved for reason.
 “This medicine they got her on . . .” He studies his seeds. “I think it’s working. She keeps saying she feels better.”

I shake my head in disbelief. He can’t really believe this.
 “She’s gone two days and only gotten sick once . . .”
 “Oh, Daddy. No . . . it’s just a . . . Daddy, she still has it.”

But there’s an empty look in Daddy’s eyes and I wonder if he even heard me.
 “I know you’ve got better places to be, Skeeter.” There are tears in his eyes. “But not a day passes that I don’t thank God you’re here with her.”

I nod, feel guilty that he thinks it’s a choice I actually made. I hug him, tell him, “I’m glad I’m here too, Daddy.”

WHEN THE CLUB REOPENS the first week of January, I put my skirt on and grab my racquet. I walk through the snack bar, ignoring Patsy Joiner, my old tennis partner who dumped me, and three other girls, all smoking at the black iron tables. They lean down and whisper to each other when I pass. I’ll be skipping the League meeting tonight, and forever, for that matter. I gave in and sent a letter three days ago with my resignation.

I slam the tennis ball into the backboard, trying my best not to think about anything. Lately I’ve found myself praying, when I’ve never been a very religious person. I find myself whispering long, never-ending sentences to God, begging for Mother to feel some relief, pleading for good news about the book, sometimes even asking for some hint of what to do about Stuart. Often I catch myself praying when I didn’t even know I was doing it.

When I get home from the club, Doctor Neal pulls up behind me in his car. I take him back to Mother’s room, where Daddy’s waiting, and they close the door behind them. I stand there, fidgeting in the hall like a kid. I can see why Daddy is hanging on to his thread of hope. Mother’s gone four days now without vomiting the green bile. She’s eating her oatmeal every day, even asked for more.

When Doctor Neal comes out, Daddy stays in the chair by the bed and I follow Doctor Neal out to the porch.
 “She told you?” I ask. “About how she’s feeling better?”

He nods, but then shakes his head. “There’s no point in bringing her in for an X-ray. It would just be too hard on her.”
 “But . . . is she? Could she be improving?”
 “I’ve seen this before, Eugenia. Sometimes people get a burst of strength. It’s a gift from God, I guess. So they can go on and finish their business. But that’s all it is, honey. Don’t expect anything more.”
 “But did you see her color? She looks so much better and she’s keeping the food—”

He shakes his head. “Just try and keep her comfortable.”

On THE FIRST FRIDAY OF 1964, I can’t wait any longer. I stretch the phone into the pantry. Mother is asleep, after having eaten a second bowl of oatmeal. Her door is open so I can hear her, in case she calls.
 “Elaine Stein’s office.”
 “Hello, it’s Eugenia Phelan, calling long-distance. Is she available?”
 “I’m sorry, Miss Phelan, but Missus Stein isn’t taking any calls regarding her manuscript selection.”
 “Oh. But . . . can you at least tell me if she received it? I mailed it just before the deadline and—”
 “One moment please.”

The phone goes silent, and a minute or so later she comes back.
 “I can confirm that we did receive your package at some point during the holidays. Someone from our office will notify you after Missus Stein has made her decision. Thank you for calling.”

I hear the line on the other end click.

A FEW NIGHTS LATER, after a riveting afternoon answering Miss Myrna letters, Stuart and I sit in the relaxing room. I’m glad to see him and to eradicate, for a while, the deadly silence of the house. We sit quietly, watching television. A Tareyton ad comes on, the one where the girl smoking the cigarette has a black eye—Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!

Stuart and I have been seeing each other once a week now. We went to a movie after Christmas and once to dinner in town, but usually he comes out to the house because I don’t want to leave Mother. He is hesitant around me, kind of respectfully shy. There is a patience in his eyes that replaces my own panic that I felt with him before. We don’t talk about anything serious. He tells me stories about the summer, during college, he spent working on the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The showers were saltwater. The ocean was crystal clear blue to the bottom. The other men were doing this brutal work to feed their families while Stuart, a rich kid with rich parents, had college to go back to. It was the first time, he said, he’d really had to work hard.
 “I’m glad I drilled on the rig back then. I couldn’t go off and do it now,” he’d said, like it was ages ago and not five years back. He seems older than I remember.
 “Why couldn’t you do it now?” I asked, because I am looking for a future for myself. I like to hear about the possibilities of others.

He furrowed his brow at me. “Because I couldn’t leave you.”

I tucked this away, afraid to admit how good it was to hear it.

The commercial is over and we watch the news report. There is a skirmish in Vietnam. The reporter seems to thinks it’ll be solved without much fuss.
 “Listen,” Stuart says after a while of silence between us. “I didn’t want to bring this up before but . . . I know what people are saying in town. About you. And I don’t care. I just want you to know that.”

My first thought is the book. He’s heard something. My entire body goes tense. “What did you hear?”
 “You know. About that trick you played on Hilly.”

I relax some, but not completely. I’ve never talked to anyone about this except Hilly herself. I wonder if Hilly ever called him like she’d threatened.
 “And I could see how people would take it, think you’re some kind of crazy liberal, involved in all that mess.”

I study my hands, still wary of what he might have heard, and a little irritated too. “How do you know,” I ask, “what I’m involved in?”
 “Because I know you, Skeeter,” he says softly. “You’re too smart to get mixed up in anything like that. And I told them, too.”

I nod, try to smile. Despite what he thinks he “knows” about me, I can’t help but appreciate that someone out there cares enough to stand up for me.
 “We don’t have to talk about this again,” he says. “I just wanted you to know. That’s all.”

On SATURDAY EVENING, I say good night to Mother. I have a long coat on so she can’t see my outfit. I keep the lights off so she can’t comment on my hair. Very little has changed with her health. She doesn’t seem to be getting any worse—the vomiting is still at bay—but her skin is grayish white. Her hair has started to fall out. I hold her hands, brush her cheek.
 “Daddy, you’ll call the restaurant if you need me?”
 “I will, Skeeter. Go have some fun.”

I get in Stuart’s car and he takes me to the Robert E. Lee for dinner. The room is gaudy with gowns, red roses, silver service clinking. There is excitement in the air, the feeling that things are almost back to normal since President Kennedy died; 1964 is a fresh, new year. The glances our way are abundant.
 “You look . . . different,” Stuart says. I can tell he’s been holding in this comment all night, and he seems more confused than impressed. “That dress, it’s so . . . short.”

I nod and push my hair back. The way he used to do.

This morning, I told Mother I was going shopping. She looked so tired though, I quickly changed my mind. “Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

But I’d already said it. Mother had me fetch the big checkbook. When I came back she tore out a blank check and then handed me a hundred-dollar bill she had folded in the side of her wallet. Just the word shopping seemed to’ve made her feel better.
 “Don’t be frugal, now. And no slacks. Make sure Miss LaVole helps you.” She rested her head back in her pillows. “She knows how young girls should dress.”

But I couldn’t stand the thought of Miss LaVole’s wrinkled hands on my body, smelling of coffee and mothballs. I drove right through downtown and got on Highway 51 and headed for New Orleans. I drove through the guilt of leaving Mother for so long, knowing that Doctor Neal was coming by that afternoon and Daddy would be home all day with her.

Three hours later, I walked into Maison Blanche’s department store on Canal Street. I’d been there umpteen times with Mother and twice with Elizabeth and Hilly, but I was mesmerized by the vast white marble floors, the miles of hats and gloves and powdered ladies looking so happy, so healthy. Before I could ask for help, a thin man said, “Come with me, I have it all upstairs,” and whisked me in the elevator to the third floor, to a room called MODERN WOMEN’S WEAR.
 “What is all this?” I asked. There were dozens of women and rock-and-roll playing and champagne glasses and bright glittering lights.
 “Emilio Pucci, darling. Finally!” He stepped back from me and said, “Aren’t you here for the preview? You do have an invitation, don’t you?”
 “Um, somewhere,” I said, but he lost interest as I faked through my handbag.

All around me, clothes looked like they’d sprouted roots and bloomed on their hangers. I thought of Miss LaVole and laughed. No easter-egg suits here. Flowers! Big bright stripes! And hemlines that showed several inches of thigh. It was electric and gorgeous and dizzying. This Emilio Pucci character must stick his finger in a socket every morning.

I bought with my blank check enough clothes to fill the back seat of the Cadillac. Then on Magazine Street, I paid forty-five dollars to have my hair lightened and trimmed and ironed straight. It had grown longer over the winter and was the color of dirty dishwater. By four o’clock I was driving back over the Lake Pontchartrain bridge with the radio playing a band called the Rolling Stones and the wind blowing through my satiny, straight hair, and I thought, Tonight, I’ll strip off all this armor and let it be as it was before with Stuart.

STUART and I eat our Chateaubriand, smiling, talking. He looks off at the other tables, commenting on people he knows. But no one gets up to tell us hello.
 “Here’s to new beginnings,” Stuart says and raises his bourbon.

I nod, sort of wanting to tell him that all beginnings are new. Instead, I smile and toast with my second glass of wine. I’ve never really liked alcohol, until today.

After dinner, we walk out into the lobby and see Senator and Missus Whitworth at a table, having drinks. People are around them drinking and talking. They are home for the weekend, Stuart told me earlier, their first since they moved to Washington.
 “Stuart, there are your parents. Should we go say hello?”

But Stuart steers me toward the door, practically pushes me outside.
 “I don’t want Mother to see you in that short dress,” he says. “I mean, believe me, it looks great on you, but . . .” He looks down at the hemline. “Maybe that wasn’t the best choice for tonight.” On the ride home, I think of Elizabeth, in her curlers, afraid the bridge club would see me. Why is it that someone always seems to be ashamed of me?

By the time we make it back to Longleaf, it’s eleven o’clock. I smooth my dress, thinking Stuart is right. It is too short. The lights in my parents’ bedroom are off, so we sit on the sofa.

I rub my eyes and yawn. When I open them, he’s holding a ring between his fingers.
 “Oh . . . Jesus.”
 “I was going to do it at the restaurant but . . .” He grins. “Here is better.”

I touch the ring. It is cold and gorgeous. Three rubies are set on both sides of the diamond. I look up at him, feeling very hot all of a sudden. I pull my sweater off my shoulders. I am smiling and about to cry at the same time.
 “I have to tell you something, Stuart,” I blurt out. “Do you promise you won’t tell anyone?”

He stares at me and laughs. “Hang on, did you say yes?”
 “Yes, but . . .” I have to know something first. “Can I just have your word?”

He sighs, looks disappointed that I’m ruining his moment. “Sure, you have my word.”

I am in shock from his proposal but I do my best to explain. Looking into his eyes, I spread out the facts and what details I can safely share about the book and what I’ve been doing over the past year. I leave out everyone’s name and I pause at the implication of this, knowing it’s not good. Even though he is asking to be my husband, I don’t know him enough to trust him completely.
 “This is what you’ve been writing about for the past twelve months? Not . . . Jesus Christ?”
 “No, Stuart. Not . . . Jesus.”

When I tell him that Hilly found the Jim Crow laws in my satchel, his chin drops and I can see that I’ve confirmed something Hilly already told him about me—something he had the naïve trust not to believe.
 “The talk... in town. I told them they were dead wrong. But they were . . . right.”

When I tell him about the colored maids filing past me after the prayer meeting, I feel a swell of pride over what we’ve done. He looks down into his empty bourbon glass.

Then I tell him that the manuscript has been sent to New York. That if they decide to publish it, it would come out in, my guess is, eight months, maybe sooner. Right around the time, I think to myself, an engagement would turn into a wedding.
 “It’s been written anonymously,” I say, “but with Hilly around, there’s still a good chance people will know it was me.”

But he’s not nodding his head or pushing my hair behind my ear and his grandmother’s ring is sitting on Mother’s velvet sofa like some ridiculous metaphor. We are both silent. His eyes don’t even meet mine. They stay a steady two inches to the right of my face.

After a minute, he says, “I just . . . I don’t understand why you would do this. Why do you even . . . care about this, Skeeter?”

I bristle, look down at the ring, so sharp and shiny.
 “I didn’t . . . mean it like that,” he starts again. “What I mean is, things are fine around here. Why would you want to go stirring up trouble?”

I can tell, in his voice, he sincerely wants an answer from me. But how to explain it? He is a good man, Stuart. As much as I know that what I’ve done is right, I can still understand his confusion and doubt.
 “I’m not making trouble, Stuart. The trouble is already here.”

But clearly, this isn’t the answer he is looking for. “I don’t know you.”

I look down, remembering that I’d thought this same thing only moments ago. “I guess we’ll have the rest of our lives to fix that,” I say, trying to smile.
 “I don’t . . . think I can marry somebody I don’t know.”

I suck in a breath. My mouth opens but I can’t say anything for a little while.
 “I had to tell you,” I say, more to myself than him. “You needed to know.”

He studies me for a few moments. “You have my word. I won’t tell anyone,” he says, and I believe him. He may be many things, Stuart, but he’s not a liar.

He stands up. He gives me one last, lost look. And then he picks up the ring and walks out.

THAT NIGHT, after Stuart has left, I wander from room to room, dry-mouthed, cold. Cold is what I’d prayed for when Stuart left me the first time. Cold is what I got.

At midnight, I hear Mother’s voice calling from her bedroom.
 “Eugenia? Is that you?”

I walk down the hall. The door is half open and Mother is sitting up in her starchy white nightgown. Her hair is down around her shoulders. I am struck by how beautiful she looks. The back porch light is on, casting a white halo around her entire body. She smiles and her new dentures are still in, the ones Dr. Simon cast for her when her teeth starting eroding from the stomach acid. Her smile is whiter, even, than in her teen pageant pictures.
 “Mama, what can I get you? Is it bad?”
 “Come here, Eugenia. I want to tell you something.”

I go to her quietly. Daddy is a long sleeping lump, his back to her. And I think, I could tell her a better version of tonight. We all know there’s very little time. I could make her happy in her last days, pretend that the wedding is going to happen.
 “I have something to tell you, too,” I say.
 “Oh? You go first.”
 “Stuart proposed,” I say, faking a smile. Then I panic, knowing she’ll ask to see the ring.
 “I know,” she says.
 “You do?”

She nods. “Of course. He came by here two weeks ago and asked Carlton and me for your hand.”

Two weeks ago? I almost laugh. Of course Mother was the first to know something so important. I’m happy she’s had so long to enjoy the news.
 “And I have something to tell you,” she says. The glow around Mother is unearthly, phosphorescent. It’s from the porch light, but I wonder why I’ve never seen it before. She clasps my hand in the air with the healthy grip of a mother holding her newly engaged daughter. Daddy stirs, then sits straight up.
 “What?” he gasps. “Are you sick?”
 “No, Carlton. I’m fine. I told you.”

He nods numbly, closes his eyes, and is asleep before he has even lain down again.
 “What’s your news, Mama?”
 “I’ve had a long talk with your daddy and I have made a decision.”
 “Oh God,” I sigh. I can just see her explaining it to Stuart when he asked for my hand. “Is this about the trust fund?”
 “No, it’s not that,” she says and I think, Then it must be something about the wedding. I feel a shuddering sadness that Mother will not be here to plan my wedding, not only because she’ll be dead, but because there is no wedding. And yet, I also feel a horrifyingly guilty relief that I won’t have to go through this with her.
 “Now I know you’ve noticed that things have been on the uptick these past few weeks,” she says. “And I know what Doctor Neal says, that it’s some kind of last strength, some nonsense ab—” She coughs and her thin body arches over like a shell. I give her a tissue and she frowns, dabs at her mouth.
 “But as I said, I have made a decision.”

I nod, listening, with the same numbness as my father a moment ago.
 “I have decided not to die.”
 “Oh . . . Mama. God, please . . .”
 “Too late,” she says, waving my hand away. “I’ve made my decision and that’s that.”

She slides her palms across each other, as if throwing the cancer away. Sitting straight and prim in her gown, the halo of light glowing around her hair, I can’t keep from rolling my eyes. How dumb of me. Of course Mother will be as obstinate about her death as she has been about every detail of her life.

THE DATE IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1964. I have on a black A-line dress. My fingernails are all bitten off. I will remember every detail of this day, I think, the way people are saying they’ll never forget what kind of sandwich they were eating, or the song on the radio, when they found out Kennedy was shot.

I walk into what has become such a familiar spot to me, the middle of Aibileen’s kitchen. It is already dark outside and the yellow bulb seems very bright. I look at Minny and she looks at me. Aibileen edges between us as if to block something.
 “Harper and Row,” I say, “wants to publish it.”

Everyone is quiet. Even the flies stop buzzing.
 “You kidding me,” says Minny.
 “I spoke to her this afternoon.”

Aibileen lets out a whoop like I’ve never heard come out of her before. “Law, I can’t believe it!” she hollers, and then we are hugging, Aibileen and me, then Minny and Aibileen. Minny looks in my general direction.
 “Sit down, y’all!” Aibileen says. “Tell me what she say? What a we do now? Law, I ain’t even got no coffee ready!”

We sit and they both stare at me, leaning forward. Aibileen’s eyes are big. I’ve been waiting at home with the news for four hours. Missus Stein told me, clearly, this is a very small deal. Keep our expectations between low and nonexistent. I feel obligated to communicate this to Aibileen so she doesn’t end up disappointed. I’ve hardly even figured out how I should feel about it myself.
 “Listen, she said not to get too excited. That the number of copies they’re going to put out is going to be very, very small.”

I wait for Aibileen to frown, but she giggles. She tries to hide it with her hand.
 “Probably only a few thousand copies.”

Aibileen presses her hand harder against her lips.
 “Pathetic . . . Missus Stein called it.”

Aibileen’s face is turning darker. She giggles again into her knuckles. Clearly she’s not getting this.
 “And she said it’s one of the smallest advances she’s ever seen . . .” I am trying to be serious but I can’t because Aibileen is clearly about to burst. Tears are coming up in her eyes.
 “How . . . small?” she asks behind her hand.
 “Eight hundred dollars,” I say. “Divided thirteen ways.”

Aibileen splits open in laughter. I can’t help but laugh with her. But it makes no sense. A few thousand copies and $61.50 a person?

Tears run down Aibileen’s face and finally she just lays her head on the table. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. It just seem so funny all a sudden.”

Minny rolls her eyes at us. “I knew y’all crazy. Both a you.”

I do my best to tell them the details. I hadn’t acted much better on the phone with Missus Stein. She’d sounded so matter-of-fact, almost uninterested. And what did I do? Did I remain businesslike and ask pertinent questions? Did I thank her for taking on such a risky topic? No, instead of laughing, I started blubbering into the phone, crying like a kid getting a polio shot.
 “Calm down, Miss Phelan,” she’d said, “this is hardly going to be a best-seller,” but I just kept crying while she fed me the details. “We’re only offering a four-hundred-dollar advance and then another four hundred dollars when it’s finished... are you . . . listening?”
 “Ye-yes ma’am.”
 “And there’s definitely some editing you have to do. The Sarah section is in the best shape,” she’d said, and I tell Aibileen this through her fits and snorts.

Aibileen sniffs, wipes her eyes, smiles. We finally calm down, drinking coffee that Minny had to get up and put on for us.
 “She really likes Gertrude, too,” I say to Minny. I pick up the paper and read the quote I’d written so I wouldn’t forget it. “ ‘Gertrude is every Southern white woman’s nightmare. I adore her.’ ”

For a second, Minny actually looks me in the eye. Her face softens into a childlike smile. “She say that? Bout me?”

Aibileen laughs. “It’s like she know you from five hundred miles away.”
 “She said it’ll be at least six months until it comes out. Sometime in August.”

Aibileen is still smiling, completely undeterred by anything I’ve said. And honestly, I’m grateful for this. I knew she’d be excited, but I was afraid she’d be a little disappointed, too. Seeing her makes me realize, I’m not disappointed at all. I’m just happy.

We sit and talk another few minutes, drinking coffee and tea, until I look at my watch. “I told Daddy I’d be home in an hour.” Daddy is at home with Mother. I took a risk and left him Aibileen’s number just in case, telling him I was going to visit a friend named Sarah.

They both walk me to the door, which is new for Minny. I tell Aibileen I’ll call her as soon as I get Missus Stein’s notes in the mail.
 “So six months from now, we’ll finally know what’s gone happen,” Minny says, “good, bad, or nothing.”
 “It might be nothing,” I say, wondering if anyone will even buy the book.
 “Well, I’m counting on good,” Aibileen says.

Minny crosses her arms over her chest. “I better count on bad then. Somebody got to.”

Minny doesn’t look worried about book sales. She looks worried about what will happen when the women of Jackson read what we’ve written about them.AIBILEEN Chapter 29
THE HEAT done seeped into everything. For a week now it’s been a hundred degrees and ninety-nine percent humidity. Get any wetter, we be swimming. Can’t get my sheets to dry on the line, my front door won’t close it done swell up so much. Sho nuff couldn’t get a meringue to whip. Even my church wig starting to frizz.

This morning, I can’t even get my hose on. My legs is too swollen. I figure I just do it when I get to Miss Leefolt’s, in the air-condition. It must be record heat, cause I been tending to white folks for forty-one years and this the first time in history I ever went to work without no hose on.

But Miss Leefolt’s house be hotter than my own. “Aibileen, go on and get the tea brewed and... salad plates . . . wipe them down now . . .” She ain’t even come in the kitchen today. She in the living room and she done pull a chair next to the wall vent, so what’s left a the air-condition blowing up her slip. That’s all she got on, her full slip and her earrings. I wait on white ladies who walk right out the bedroom wearing nothing but they personality, but Miss Leefolt don’t do like that.

Ever once in a while, that air-condition motor go phheeewww. Like it just giving up. Miss Leefolt call the repairman twice now and he say he coming, but I bet he ain’t. Too hot.
 “And don’t forget... that silver thingamajig—cornichon server, it’s in the . . .”

But she give up before she finish, like it’s too hot to even tell me what to do. And you know that be hot. Seem like everbody in town got the heat-crazies. Go out on the street and it feel real still, eerie, like right before a tornado hit. Or maybe it’s just me, jittery cause a the book. It’s coming out on Friday.
 “You think we ought a cancel bridge club?” I ask her from the kitchen. Bridge club changed to Mondays now and the ladies gone be here in twenty minutes.
 “No. Everything’s . . . already done,” she say, but I know she ain’t thinking straight.
 “I’ll try to whip the cream again. Then I got to go in the garage. Get my hose on.”
 “Oh don’t worry about it, Aibileen. It’s too hot for stockings.” Miss Leefolt finally get up from that wall vent, drag herself on in the kitchen, flapping a Chow-Chow Chinese Restaurant fan. “Oh God, it must be fifteen degrees hotter in the kitchen than it is in the dining room!”
 “Oven a be off in a minute. Kids gone out back to play.”

Miss Leefolt look out the window at the kids playing in the sprinkler. Mae Mobley down to just her underpants, Ross—I call him Li’l Man—he in his diaper. He ain’t even a year old yet and already he walking like a big boy. He never even crawled.
 “I don’t see how they can stand it out there,” Miss Leefolt say.

Mae Mobley love playing with her little brother, looking after him like she his mama. But Mae Mobley don’t get to stay home with us all day no more. My Baby Girl go to the Broadmoore Baptist Pre-School ever morning. Today be Labor Day, though, a holiday for the rest a the world, so no class today. I’m glad too. I don’t know how many days I got left with her.
 “Look at them out there,” Miss Leefolt say and I come over to the window where she standing. The sprinkler be blooming up into the treetops, making them rainbows. Mae Mobley got Li’l Man by the hands and they standing under the sprinkles with they eyes closed like they being baptized.
 “They are really something special,” she say, sighing, like she just now figuring this out.
 “They sure is,” I say and I spec we bout shared us a moment, me and Miss Leefolt, looking out the window at the kids we both love. It makes me wonder if things done changed just a little. It is 1964 after all. Downtown, they letting Negroes set at the Woolworth counter.

I get a real heartsick feeling then, wondering if I gone too far. Cause after the book come out, if folks find out it was us, I probably never get to see these kids again. What if I don’t even get to tell Mae Mobley goodbye, and that she a fine girl, one last time? And Li’l Man? Who gone tell him the story a the Green Martian Luther King?

I already been through all this with myself, twenty times over. But today it’s just starting to feel so real. I touch the window pane like I be touching them. If she find out . . . oh, I’m gone miss these kids.

I look over and see Miss Leefolt’s eyes done wandered down to my bare legs. I think she curious, you know. I bet she ain’t never seen bare black legs up close before. But then, I see she frowning. She look up at Mae Mobley, give her that same hateful frown. Baby Girl done smeared mud and grass all across her front. Now she decorating her brother with it like he a pig in a sty and I see that old disgust Miss Leefolt got for her own daughter. Not for Li’l Man, just Mae Mobley. Saved up special for her.
 “She’s ruining the yard!” Miss Leefolt say.
 “I go get em. I take care—”
 “And I can’t have you serving us like that, with your—your legs showing!”
 “I tole you—”
 “Hilly’s going to be here in five minutes and she’s messed up everything!” she screech. I guess Mae Mobley hear her through the window cause she look over at us, frozen. Smile fades. After a second, she start wiping the mud off her face real slow.

I put a apron on cause I got to hose them kids off. Then I’m on go in the garage, get my stockings on. Book coming out in four days. Ain’t a minute too soon.

WE BEEN living in ANTICIPATION. Me, Minny, Miss Skeeter, all the maids with stories in the book. Feel like we been waiting for some invisible pot a water to boil for the past seven months. After bout the third month a waiting, we just stopped talking about it. Got us too excited.

But for the past two weeks, I’ve had a secret joy and a secret dread both rattling inside a me that make waxing floors go even slower and washing underwear a uphill race. Ironing pleats turns into a eternity, but what can you do. We all pretty sure nothing’s gone be said about it right at first. Just like Miss Stein told Miss Skeeter, this book ain’t gone be no best-seller and to keep our “expectations low.” Miss Skeeter say maybe don’t spec nothing at all, that most Southern peoples is “repressed.” If they feel something, they might not say a word. Just hold they breath and wait for it to pass, like gas.

Minny say, “I hope she hold her breath till she explode all over Hinds County.” She mean Miss Hilly. I wish Minny was wishing for change in the direction a kindness, but Minny is Minny, all the time.
 “YOU WANT YOU a snack, Baby Girl?” I ask when she get home from school on Thursday. Oh, she a big girl! Already four years old. She tall for her age—most folks think she five or six. Skinny as her mama is, Mae Mobley still chubby. And her hair ain’t looking too good. She decide to give herself a haircut with her construction paper scissors and you know how that turn out. Miss Leefolt had to take her down to the grown-up beauty parlor but they couldn’t do a whole lot with it. It still be short on one side with almost nothing in front.

I fix her a little something low-calorie to eat cause that’s all Miss Leefolt let me give her. Crackers and tunafish or Jell-O without no whip cream.
 “What you learn today?” I ask even though she ain’t in real school, just the pretend kind. Other day, when I ask her, she say, “Pilgrims. They came over and nothing would grow so they ate the Indians.”

Now I knew them Pilgrims didn’t eat no Indians. But that ain’t the point. Point is, we got to watch what get up in these kids’ heads. Ever week, she still get her Aibileen lesson, her secret story. When Li’l Man get big enough to listen, I’m on tell him too. I mean, if I still got a job here. But I don’t think it’s gone be the same with Li’l Man. He love me, but he wild, like a animal. Come and hug on my knees so hard then off he shoots to look after something else. But even if I don’t get to do this for him, I don’t feel too bad. What I know is, I got it started and that baby boy, even though he can’t talk a word yet, he listen to everthing Mae Mobley say.

Today when I ask what she learn, Mae Mobley just say, “Nothing,” and stick her lip out.
 “How you like your teacher?” I ask her.
 “She’s pretty,” she say.
 “Good,” I say. “You pretty too.”
 “How come you’re colored, Aibileen?”

Now I’ve gotten this question a few times from my other white kids. I used to just laugh, but I want to get this right with her. “Cause God made me colored,” I say. “And there ain’t another reason in the world.”
 “Miss Taylor says kids that are colored can’t go to my school cause they’re not smart enough.”

I come round the counter then. Lift her chin up and smooth back her funny-looking hair. “You think I’m dumb?”
 “No,” she whispers hard, like she means it so much. She look sorry she said it.
 “What that tell you about Miss Taylor, then?”

She blink, like she listening good.
 “Means Miss Taylor ain’t right all the time,” I say.

She hug me around my neck, say, “You’re righter than Miss Taylor.” I tear up then. My cup is spilling over. Those is new words to me.

AT FOUR O’CLOCK THAT AFTERNOON, I walk as fast as I can from the bus stop to the Church a the Lamb. I wait inside, watch out the window. After ten minutes a trying to breathe and drumming my fingers on the sill, I see the car pull up. White lady gets out and I squint my eyes. This lady looks like one a them hippies I seen on Miss Leefolt’s tee-vee. She got on a short white dress and sandals. Her hair’s long without no spray on it. The weight of it’s worked out the curl and frizz. I laugh into my hand, wishing I could run out there and give her a hug. I ain’t been able to see Miss Skeeter in person in six months, since we finished Miss Stein’s edits and turned in the final copy.

Miss Skeeter pull a big brown box out the back seat, then carries it up to the church door, like she dropping off old clothes. She stop a second and look at the door, but then she get in her car and drive away. I’m sad she had to do it this way but we don’t want a blow it fore it even starts.

Soon as she gone, I run out and tote the box inside and grab out a copy and I just stare. I don’t even try not to cry. Be the prettiest book I ever seen. The cover is a pale blue, color a the sky. And a big white bird—a peace dove—spreads its wings from end to end. The title Help is written across the front in black letters, in a bold fashion. The only thing that bothers me is the who-it-be-by part. It say by Anonymous. I wish Miss Skeeter could a put her name on it, but it was just too much of a risk.

Tomorrow, I’m on take early copies to all the women whose stories we put in. Miss Skeeter gone carry a copy up to the State Pen to Yule May. In a way, she’s the reason the other maids even agreed to help. But I hear Yule May probably won’t get the box. Them prisoners don’t get but one out a ten things sent to em cause the lady guards take it for theyselves. Miss Skeeter say she gone deliver copies ten more times to make sure.

I carry that big box home and take out one copy and put the box under my bed. Then I run over to Minny’s house. Minny six months pregnant but you can’t even tell yet. When I get there, she setting at the kitchen table drinking a glass a milk. Leroy asleep in the back and Benny and Sugar and Kindra is shelling peanuts in the backyard. The kitchen’s quiet. I smile, hand Minny her copy.

She eye it. “I guess the dove bird looks okay.”
 “Miss Skeeter say the peace dove be the sign for better times to come. Say folks is wearing em on they clothes out in California.”
 “I don’t care bout no peoples in California,” Minny say, staring at that cover. “All I care about is what the folks in Jackson, Mississippi, got to say about it.”
 “Copies gone show up in the bookstores and the libraries tomorrow. Twenty-five hundred in Mississippi, other half all over the United States.” That’s a lot more than what Miss Stein told us before, but since the freedom rides started and them civil rights workers disappeared in that station wagon here in Mississippi, she say folks is paying more attention to our state.
 “How many copies going to the white Jackson library?” Minny ask. “Zero?”

I shake my head with a smile. “Three copies. Miss Skeeter told me on the phone this morning.”

Even Minny look stunned. Just two months ago the white library started letting colored people in. I been in twice myself.

Minny open the book and she start reading it right there. Kids come in and she tell them what to do and how to do it without even looking up. Eyes don’t even stop moving across the page. I already done read it many a time, working on it over the past year. But Minny always said she don’t want a read it till it come out in the hardboard. Say she don’t want a spoil it.

I set there with Minny awhile. Time to time she grin. Few times she laugh. And more an once she growl. I don’t ask what for. I leave her to it and head home. After I write all my prayers, I go to bed with that book setting on the pillow next to me.

THE NEXT DAY AT WORK, all I can think about is how stores is putting my book on the shelves. I mop, I iron, I change diapers, but I don’t hear a word about it in Miss Leefolt’s house. It’s like I ain’t even written a book. I don’t know what I spected—some kind a stirring—but it’s just a regular old hot Friday with flies buzzing on the screen.

That night six maids in the book call my house asking has anybody said anything. We linger on the line like the answer’s gone change if we breathe into the phone long enough.

Miss Skeeter call last. “I went by the Bookworm this afternoon. Stood around awhile, but nobody even picked it up.”
 “Eula say she went by the colored bookstore. Same thing.”
 “Alright,” she sigh.

But all that weekend and then into the next week, we don’t hear nothing. The same old books set on Miss Leefolt’s nightstand: Frances Benton’s Etiquette, Peyton Place, that old dusty Bible she keep by the bed for show. But Law if I don’t keep glancing at that stack like a stain.

By Wednesday, they still ain’t even a ripple in the water. Not one person’s bought a copy in the white bookstore. The Farish Street store say they done sold about a dozen, which is good. Might a just been the other maids, though, buying for they friends.

On Thursday, day seven, before I even left for work, my phone ring.
 “I’ve got news,” Miss Skeeter whisper. I reckon she must be locked up in the pantry again.
 “What happen?”
 “Missus Stein called and said we’re going to be on the Dennis James show.”
 “People Will Talk? The tee-vee show?”
 “Our book made the book review. She said it’ll be on Channel Three next Thursday at one o’clock.”

Law, we gone be on WLBT-TV! It’s a local Jackson show, and it come on in color, right after the twelve o’clock news.
 “You think the review gone be good or bad?”
 “I don’t know. I don’t even know if Dennis reads the books or just says what they tell him to.”

I feel excited and scared at the same time. Something got to happen after that.
 “Missus Stein said somebody must’ve felt sorry for us in the Harper and Row publicity department and made some calls. She said we’re the first book she’s handled with a publicity budget of zero.”

We laugh, but we both sound nervous.
 “I hope you get to watch it at Elizabeth’s. If you can’t, I’ll call you and tell you everything they said.”

On FRIDAY NIGHT, a week after the book come out, I get ready to go to the church. Deacon Thomas call me this morning and ask would I come to a special meeting they having, but when I ask what about, he get all in a hurry and say he got to go. Minny say she got the same thing. So I iron up a nice linen dress a Miss Greenlee’s and head to Minny’s house. We gone walk there together.

As usual, Minny’s house be like a chicken coop on fire. Minny be hollering, things be flinging around, all the kids squawking. I see the first hint a Minny’s belly under her dress and I’m grateful she finally showing. Leroy, he don’t hit Minny when she pregnant. And Minny know this so I spec they’s gone be a lot more babies after this one.
 “Kindra! Get your butt off that floor!” Minny holler. “Them beans better be hot when your daddy wakes up!”

Kindra—she seven now—she sass-walk her way to the stove with her bottom sticking out and her nose up in the air. Pans go banging all over the place. “Why I got to do dinner? It’s Sugar’s turn!”
 “Cause Sugar at Miss Celia’s and you want a live to see third grade.”

Benny come in and squeeze me round the middle. He grin and show me the tooth he got missing, then run off.
 “Kindra, turn that flame down fore you burn the house down!”
 “We better go, Minny,” I say, cause this could go on all night. “We gone be late.”

Minny look at her watch. Shake her head. “Why Sugar ain’t home yet? Miss Celia ain’t never kept me this late.”

Last week, Minny started bringing Sugar to work. She getting her trained for when Minny have her baby and Sugar gone have to fill in for her. Tonight Miss Celia ask Sugar to work late, say she drive her home.
 “Kindra, I don’t want a see so much as a bean setting in that sink when I get back. Clean up good now.” Minny give her a hug. “Benny, go tell Daddy he better get his fool self out a that bed.”
 “Aww, Mama, why I—”
 “Go on, be brave. Just don’t stand too close when he come to.”

We make it out the door and down to the street fore we hear Leroy hollering at Benny for waking him up. I walk faster so she don’t go back and give Leroy what he good for.
 “Glad we going to church tonight,” Minny sigh. We round Farish Street, start up the steps. “Give me a hour a not thinking about it all.”

Soon as we step in the church foyer, one a the Brown brothers slip behind us and he lock the door. I’m about to ask why, would a got scared if I had the time, but then the thirty-odd peoples in the room start clapping. Minny and me start clapping with em. Figure somebody got into college or something.
 “Who we clapping for?” I ask Rachel Johnson. She the Reverend wife.

She laugh and it get quiet. Rachel lean in to me.
 “Honey, we clapping for you.” Then she reach down and pull a copy a the book out a her purse. I look around and now everbody got a copy in they hands. All the important officers and church deacons are there.

Reverend Johnson come up to me then. “Aibileen, this is an important time for you and our church.”
 “You must a cleaned out the bookstore,” I say, and the crowd laugh real polite-like.
 “We want you to know, for your safety, this will be the only time the church recognizes you for your achievement. I know a lot of folks helped with this book, but I heard it couldn’t have been done without you.”

I look over and Minny’s smiling, and I know she in on it too.
 “A quiet message has been sent throughout the congregation and all of the community, that if anyone knows who’s in the book or who wrote it, it’s not to be discussed. Except for tonight. I’m sorry”—he smile, shake his head—“but we just couldn’t let this go by without some kind of celebration.”

He hand me the book. “We know you couldn’t put your name in it, so we all signed our own for you.” I open up the front cover and there they is, not thirty or forty names, but hundreds, maybe five hundred, in the front pages, the back pages, along the rim a the inside pages. All the peoples in my church and folks from other churches too. Oh, I just break down then. It’s like two years a doing and trying and hoping all come out at once. Then everbody get in a line and come by and hug me. Tell me I’m brave. I tell em there are so many others that are brave too. I hate to hog all the attention, but I am so grateful they don’t mention no other names. I don’t want em in trouble. I don’t think they even know Minny’s in there.
 “There may be some hard times ahead,” Reverend Johnson say to me. “If it comes to that, the Church will help you in every way.”

I cry and cry right there in front a everbody. I look over at Minny, and she laughing. Funny how peoples show they feelings in different ways. I wonder what Miss Skeeter would do if she was here and it kind a makes me sad. I know ain’t nobody in town gone sign a book for her and tell her she brave. Ain’t nobody gone tell her they look after her.

Then the Reverend hands me a box, wrapped in white paper, tied with light blue ribbon, same colors as the book. He lays his hand on it as a blessing. “This one, this is for the white lady. You tell her we love her, like she’s our own family.”

On THURSDAY, I wake up with the sun and go to work early. Today’s a big day. I get my kitchen work done fast. One a clock come and I make sure I got my ironing all set up in front a Miss Leefolt’s tee-vee, tuned to Channel Three. Li’l Man taking his nap and Mae Mobley at school.

I try and iron some pleats, but my hands is shaking and they come out all crooked. I spray it wet and start all over, fussing and frowning. Finally, the time comes.

In the box pops Dennis James. He start telling us what we gone discuss today. His black hair is sprayed down so heavy, it don’t even move. He is the fastest talking Southern man I ever heard. Make me feel like I’m on a roller-coaster way he make his voice go. I’s so nervous I feel like I’m on throw up right here on Mister Raleigh’s church suit.
 “. . . and we’ll end the show with the book review.” After the commercial, he do something on Elvis Presley’s jungle room. Then he do a piece on the new Interstate 55 they gone build, going through Jackson all the way to New Orleans. Then, at 1:22 p.m., a woman come set next to him by the name a Joline French. She say she the local book reviewer.

That very second, Miss Leefolt walk in the house. She all dressed up in her League outfit and her noisy high heels and she head straight for the living room.
 “I am so glad that heat wave is over I could jump for joy,” she say.

Mister Dennis chatting bout some book called Little Big Man. I try to agree with her but I feel real stiff in the face all of a sudden. “I’ll—I’ll just turn this thing off.”
 “No, keep it on!” say Miss Leefolt. “That’s Joline French on the television set! I better call Hilly and tell her.”

She clomp to the kitchen and get on the phone with Miss Hilly’s third maid in a month. Ernestine ain’t got but one arm. Miss Hilly pickings getting slim.
 “Ernestine, this is Miss Elizabeth . . . Oh, she’s not? Well, you tell her the minute she walks in that our sorority sister is on the television set . . . That’s right, thank you.”

Miss Leefolt rush back in the living room and set on the sofa, but it’s a commercial on. I get to breathing hard. What is she doing? We ain’t never watched the tee-vee together before. And here a all days she front and center like she be watching herself on screen!

All a sudden the Dial soap commercial over. And there be Mister Dennis with my book in his hand! White bird look bigger than life. He holding it up and poking his finger at the word Anonymous. For two seconds I’m more proud than I is scared. I want to yell—That’s my book! That’s my book on the tee-vee! But I got to keep still, like I’m watching something humdrum. I can’t barely breathe!
 “. . . called Help with testimonies from some of Mississippi’s very own housekeepers—”
 “Oh, I wish Hilly was home! Who can I call? Look at those cute shoes she’s got on, I bet she got those at The Papagallo Shoppe.”

Please shut up! I reach down and turn it up a little, but then I wish I hadn’t. What if they talk about her? Would Miss Leefolt even recognize her own life?
 “. . . read it last night and now my wife is reading it . . .” Mister Dennis talking like a auction man, laughing, eyebrows going up and down, pointing at our book. “. . . and it is truly touching. Enlightening, I’d say, and they used the made-up town of Niceville, Mississippi, but who knows?” He halfway cover his mouth, whisper real loud, “It could be Jackson!”

Say what?
 “Now, I’m not saying it is, it could be anywhere, but just in case, you need to go get this book and make sure you aren’t in it! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha—”

I freeze, feel a tingle on my neck. Ain’t nothing in there that say Jackson. Tell me again it could be anywhere, Mister Dennis!

I see Miss Leefolt smiling at her friend on the tee-vee like the fool can see her, Mister Dennis be laughing and talking, but that sorority sister, Miss Joline, got a face on red as a stop sign.
 “—a disgrace to the South! A disgrace to the good Southern women who’ve spent their lives taking care of their help. I know I personally treat my help like family and every one of my friends does the same—”
 “Why is she frowning like that on tee-vee?” Miss Leefolt whine at the box. “Joline!” She lean forward and tap-tap-tap her finger on Miss Joline’s forehead. “Don’t frown! You don’t look cute that way!”
 “Joline, did you read that ending? About the pie? If my maid, Bessie Mae, is out there listening, Bessie Mae, I have a new respect for what you do every day. And I’ll pass on the chocolate pie from now on! Ha-Ha-Ha—”

But Miss Joline holding up the book like she want to burn it. “Do not buy this book! Ladies of Jackson, do not support this slander with your husbands’ hard-earned—”
 “Huh?” Miss Leefolt ask Mister Dennis. And then poof—we on to a Tide commercial.
 “What were they talking about?” Miss Leefolt ask me.

I don’t answer. My heart’s pounding.
 “My friend Joline had a book in her hand.”
 “Yes, ma’am.”
 “What was it called? Help or something like that?”

I press the iron point down in the collar a Mister Raleigh’s shirt. I got to call Minny, Miss Skeeter, find out if they heard this. But Miss Leefolt standing there waiting for my answer and I know she ain’t gone let up. She never do.
 “Did I hear them say it was about Jackson?” she say.

I keep right on staring at my iron.
 “I think they said Jackson. But why don’t they want us to buy it?”

My hands is shaking. How can this be happening? I keep ironing, trying to make what’s beyond wrinkled smooth.

A second later, the Tide commercial’s over and there’s Dennis James again holding up the book and Miss Joline’s still all red in the face. “That’s all for today,” he say, “but y’all be sure and pick up your copy of Little Big Man and Help from our sponsor, the State Street Bookstore. And see for yourself, is it or is it not about Jackson?” And then the music come on and he holler, “Good day, Mississippi!”

Miss Leefolt look at me and say, “See that? I told you they said it was about Jackson!” and five minutes later, she off to the bookstore to buy herself a copy a what I done wrote about her.MINNY Chapter 30
AFTER THE People Will Talk show, I grab the Space Command and punch the “Off ” button. My stories are about to come on, but I don’t even care. Doctor Strong and Miss Julia will just have to turn the world without me today.

I’ve a mind to call that Dennis James on the phone and say, Who do you think you are, spreading lies like that? You can’t tell the whole metro area our book is about Jackson! You don’t know what town we’ve written our book about!

I’ll tell you what that fool’s doing. He’s wishing it was about Jackson. He’s wishing Jackson, Mississippi, was interesting enough to write a whole book on and even though it is Jackson . . . well, he doesn’t know that.

I rush to the kitchen and call Aibileen, but after two tries the line’s still busy. I hang up. In the living room, I flip on the iron, yank Mister Johnny’s white shirt out of the basket. I wonder for the millionth time what’s going to happen when Miss Hilly reads the last chapter. She better get to work soon, telling people it’s not our town. And she can tell Miss Celia to fire me all afternoon and Miss Celia won’t. Hating Miss Hilly’s the only thing that crazy woman and I have in common. But what Hilly’ll do once that fails, I don’t know. That’ll be our own war, between me and Miss Hilly. That won’t affect the others.

Oh, now I’m in a bad mood. From where I’m ironing, I can see Miss Celia in the backyard in a pair of hoochie pink satin pants and black plastic gloves. She’s got dirt all over her knees. I’ve asked her a hundred times to quit digging dirt in her dress-up clothes. But that lady never listens.

The grass in front of the pool is covered in yard rakes and hand tools. All Miss Celia does now is hoe up the yard and plant more fancy flowers. Never mind that Mister Johnny hired a full-time yardman a few months ago, name of John Willis. He was hoping he’d be some kind of protection after the naked man showed up, but he’s so old he’s bent up like a paper clip. Skinny as one too. I feel like I have to check on him just to make sure he hasn’t stroked in the bushes. I guess Mister Johnny didn’t have the heart to send him home for somebody younger.

I spray more starch on Mister Johnny’s collar. I hear Miss Celia hollering instructions on how to plant a bush. “Those hydrangeas, let’s get us some more iron in the dirt. Okay, John Willis?”
 “Yes’m,” John Willis hollers back.
 “Shut up, lady,” I say. The way she hollers at him, he thinks she’s the deaf one.

The phone rings and I run for it.
 “OH MINNY,” Aibileen says on the phone. “They figure out the town, ain’t no time fore they figure out the people.”
 “He a fool is what he is.”
 “How we know Miss Hilly even gone read it?” Aibileen says, her voice turning high. I hope Miss Leefolt can’t hear her. “Law, we should a thought this through, Minny.”

I’ve never heard Aibileen like this. It’s like she’s me and I’m her. “Listen,” I say because something’s starting to make sense here. “Since Mister James done made such a stink about it, we know she gone read it. Everbody in town gone read it now.” Even as I’m saying it, I’m starting to realize it’s true. “Don’t cry yet, cause maybe things is happening just the way they should.”

Five minutes after I hang it up, Miss Celia’s phone rings. “Miss Celia res—”
 “I just talk to Louvenia,” Aibileen whisper. “Miss Lou Anne just come home with a copy for herself and a copy for her best friend, Hilly Holbrook.”

Here we go.

All NIGHT LONG, I swear, I can feel Miss Hilly reading our book. I can hear the words she’s reading whispering in my head, in her cool, white voice. At two a.m. I get up from the bed and open my own copy and try to guess what chapter she’s on. Is it one or two or ten? Finally I just stare at the blue cover. I’ve never seen a book such a nice color. I wipe a smudge off the front.

Then I hide it back in the pocket of my winter coat I’ve never worn, since I’ve read zero books after I married Leroy and I don’t want to make him suspicious with this one. I finally go back to bed, telling myself there’s no way I can guess how far Miss Hilly’s read. I do know, though, she hasn’t gotten to her part at the end. I know because I haven’t heard the screaming in my head yet.

By morning, I swear, I’m glad to be going to work. It’s floor-scrubbing day and I want to just get my mind off it all. I heave myself into the car and drive out to Madison County. Miss Celia went to see another doctor yesterday afternoon to find out about having kids and I about told her, you can have this one, lady. I’m sure she’ll tell me every last detail about it today. At least the fool had the sense to quit that Doctor Tate.

I pull up to the house. I get to park in front now since Miss Celia finally dropped the ruse and told Mister Johnny what he already knew. The first thing I see is Mister Johnny’s truck’s still home. I wait in my car. He’s never once been here when I come in.

I step into the kitchen. I stand in the middle and look. Somebody already made coffee. I hear a man’s voice in the dining room. Something’s going on here.

I lean close to the door and hear Mister Johnny, home on a weekday at 8:30 in the morning, and a voice in my head says run right back out the door. Miss Hilly called and told him I was a thief. He found out about the pie. He knows about the book. “Minny?” I hear Miss Celia call.

Real careful, I push the swinging door, peek out. There’s Miss Celia setting at the head of the table with Mister Johnny setting next to her. They both look up at me.

Mister Johnny looks whiter than that old albino man that lives behind Miss Walters.
 “Minny, bring me a glass of water, please?” he says and I get a real bad feeling.

I get him the water and take it to him. When I set the glass down on the napkin, Mister Johnny stands up. He gives me a long, heavy look. Lord, here it comes.
 “I told him about the baby,” Miss Celia whispers. “All the babies.”
 “Minny, I would’ve lost her if it hadn’t of been for you,” he says, grabbing hold of my hands. “Thank God you were here.”

I look over at Miss Celia and she looks dead in the eyes. I already know what that doctor told her. I can see it, that there won’t ever be any babies born alive. Mister Johnny squeezes my hands, then he goes to her. He gets down on his kneecaps and lays his head down in her lap. She smoothes his hair over and over.
 “Don’t leave. Don’t ever leave me, Celia,” he cries.
 “Tell her, Johnny. Tell Minny what you said to me.”

Mister Johnny lifts his head. His hair’s all mussed and he looks up at me. “You’ll always have a job here with us, Minny. For the rest of your life, if you want.”
 “Thank you, sir,” I say and I mean it. Those are the best words I could hear today.

I reach for the door, but Miss Celia says, real soft, “Stay in here awhile. Will you, Minny?”

So I lean my hand on the sideboard because the baby’s getting heavy on me. And I wonder how it is that I have so much when she doesn’t have any. He’s crying. She’s crying. We are three fools in the dining room crying.
 “I’m TELLING YOU,” I tell Leroy in the kitchen, two days later. “You punch the button and the channel change and you don’t even have to get up from your chair.”

Leroy’s eyes don’t move from his paper. “That don’t make no sense, Minny.”
 “Miss Celia got it, called Space Command. A box bout half the size of a bread loaf.”

Leroy shakes his head. “Lazy white people. Can’t even get up to turn a knob.”
 “I reckon people gone be flying to the moon pretty soon,” I say. I’m not even listening to what’s coming out of my mouth. I’m listening for the scream again. When is that lady going to finish?
 “What’s for supper?” Leroy says.
 “Yeah, Mama, when we gone eat?” Kindra says.

I hear a car pull in the driveway. I listen and the spoon slips down into the pot of beans. “Cream-a-Wheat.”
 “I ain’t eating no Cream-a-Wheat for supper!” Leroy says.
 “I had that for breakfast!” Kindra cries.
 “I mean—ham. And beans.” I go slam the back door and turn the latch. I look out the window again. The car is backing out. It was just turning around.

Leroy gets up and flings the back door open again. “It’s hot as hell in here!” He comes to the stove where I’m standing. “What’s wrong with you?” he asks, about an inch from my face.
 “Nothing,” I say and move back a little. Usually, he doesn’t mess with me when I’m pregnant. But he moves closer. He squeezes my arm hard.
 “What’d you do this time?”
 “I—I didn’t do nothing,” I say. “I’m just tired.”

He tightens his grip on my arm. It’s starting to burn. “You don’t get tired. Not till the tenth month.”
 “I didn’t do nothing, Leroy. Just go set and lemme get to supper.”

He lets go, giving me a long look. I can’t meet his eyes.AIBILEEN Chapter 31
EVER TIME Miss Leefolt go out shopping or in the yard or even to the bathroom, I check her bedside table where she put the book. I act like I’m dusting, but what I really be doing is checking to see if that First Presbyterian Bible bookmark’s moved any deeper in the pages. She’s been reading it for five days now and I flip it open today and she still on Chapter One, page fourteen. She got two hundred and thirty-five pages left. Law, she read slow.

Still, I want to tell her, you reading about Miss Skeeter, don’t you know? About her growing up with Constantine. And I’m scared to death, but I want to tell her, keep reading, lady, cause Chapter Two gone be about you.

I am nervous as a cat seeing that book in her house. All week long I been tiptoeing around. One time Li’l Man come up from behind and touch me on the leg and I near bout jump out a my workshoes. Especially on Thursday, when Miss Hilly come over. They set at the dining room table and work on the Benefit. Ever once in a while they look up and smile, ask me to fetch a mayonnaise sandwich or some ice tea.

Twice Miss Hilly come in the kitchen and call her maid, Ernestine. “Are you done soaking Heather’s smock dress like I told you to? Uh-huh, and have you dusted the half-tester canopy? Oh you haven’t, well go on and do that right away.”

I go in to collect they plates and I hear Miss Hilly say, “I’m up to Chapter Seven,” and I freeze, the plates in my hand clattering. Miss Leefolt look up and wrinkle her nose at me.

But Miss Hilly, she shaking her finger at Miss Leefolt. “And I think they’re right, it just feels like Jackson.”
 “You do?” Miss Leefolt ask.

Miss Hilly lean down and whisper. “I bet we even know some of these Nigra maids.”
 “You really think so?” Miss Leefolt ask and my body go cold. I can barely move a foot toward the kitchen. “I’ve only read a little . . .”
 “I do. And you know what?” Miss Hilly smile real sneaky-like. “I’m going to figure out every last one of these people.”

THE NEXT MORNING, I’m near about hyperventilating at the bus stop thinking about what Miss Hilly gone do when she get to her part, wondering if Miss Leefolt done read Chapter Two yet. And when I walk in her house, there Miss Leefolt is reading my book at the kitchen table. She hand me Li’l Man from her lap without even taking her eyes off the page. Then she wander off to the back reading and walking at the same time. All a sudden, she can’t get enough of it now that Miss Hilly done taken a interest in it.

Few minutes later, I go back to her bedroom to get the dirty clothes. Miss Leefolt’s in the bathroom, so I open the book at the bookmark. She already on Chapter Six, Winnie’s chapter. This where the white lady get the old-timer disease and call the police department ever morning cause a colored woman just walked in her house. That means Miss Leefolt read her part and just kept on going.

I’m scared but I can’t help but roll my eyes. I bet Miss Leefolt ain’t got no idea it be about herself. I mean, thank the Lord, but still. She probably shaking her head in bed last night, reading bout this awful woman who don’t know how to love her own child.

Soon as Miss Leefolt go to her hair appointment, I call Minny. All we do lately is run up our white lady’s phone bill.
 “You heard anything?” I ask.
 “No, nothing. Miss Leefolt finish yet?” she ask.
 “No, but she made it to Winnie last night. Miss Celia still ain’t bought a copy?”
 “That lady don’t look at nothing but trash. I’m coming,” Minny holler. “The fool’s stuck in the hair dryer hood again. I told her not to put her head in there when she got them big rollers in.”
 “Call me if you hear anything,” I say. “I do the same.”
 “Something’s gone happen soon, Aibileen. It’s got to.”

THAT AFTERNOON, I stomp up to the Jitney to pick up some fruit and cottage cheese for Mae Mobley. That Miss Taylor done it again. Baby Girl get out the carpool today, walked straight to her room and throwed herself on her bed. “What’s wrong, Baby? What happen?”
 “I colored myself black,” she cried.
 “What you mean?” I asked. “With the markers you did?” I picked up her hand but she didn’t have no ink on her skin.
 “Miss Taylor said to draw what we like about ourselves best.” I saw then a wrinkled, sad-looking paper in her hand. I turned it over and sure enough, there’s my baby white girl done colored herself black.
 “She said black means I got a dirty, bad face.” She plant her face in her pillow and cried something awful.

Miss Taylor. After all the time I spent teaching Mae Mobley how to love all people, not judge by color. I feel a hard fist in my chest because what person out there don’t remember they first-grade teacher? Maybe they don’t remember what they learn, but I’m telling you, I done raised enough kids to know, they matter.

At least the Jitney’s cool. I feel bad I forgot to buy Mae Mobley’s snack this morning. I hurry so she won’t have to set with her mama for too long. She done hid her paper under her bed so her mama wouldn’t see it.

In the can food section, I get two cans a tunafish. I walk over to find the green Jell-O powder and there’s sweet Louvenia in her white uniform looking at peanut butter. I’ll think a Louvenia as Chapter Seven for the rest a my life.
 “How’s Robert doing?” I ask, patting her arm. Louvenia work all day for Miss Lou Anne and then come home ever afternoon and take Robert to blind school so he can learn to read with his fingers. And I have never heard Louvenia complain once.
 “Learning to get around.” She nod. “You alright? Feel okay?”
 “Just nervous. You heard anything at all?”

She shake her head. “My boss been reading it, though.” Miss Lou Anne’s in Miss Leefolt’s bridge club. Miss Lou Anne was real good to Louvenia when Robert got hurt.

We walk down the aisle with our handbaskets. There be two white ladies talking by the graham crackers. They kind a familiar looking, but I don’t know they names. Soon as we get close, they hush up and look at us. Funny how they ain’t smiling.
 “Scuse me,” I say and move on past. When we not but a foot away, I hear one say, “That’s the Nigra waits on Elizabeth . . .” A cart rattles past us, blocking the words.
 “I bet you’re right,” the other one say. “I bet that’s her . . .”

Me and Louvenia keep walking real quiet, looking dead ahead. I feel prickles up my neck, hearing the ladies’ heels clack away. I know Louvenia heard better than I did, cause her ears is ten years younger than mine. At the end a the aisle we start to go in different directions, but then we both turn to look at each other.

Did I hear right? I say with my eyes.

You heard right, Louvenia’s say back.

Please, Miss Hilly, read. Read like the wind.MINNY Chapter 32
ANOTHER DAY PASSES, and still I can hear Miss Hilly’s voice talking the words, reading the lines. I don’t hear the scream. Not yet. But she’s getting close.

Aibileen told me what the ladies in the Jitney said yesterday, but we haven’t heard another thing since. I keep dropping things, broke my last measuring cup tonight and Leroy’s eyeing me like he knows. Right now he’s drinking coffee at the table and the kids are draped all over the kitchen doing their homework.

I jump when I see Aibileen standing at the screen door. She puts her finger to her lips and nods to me. Then she disappears.
 “Kindra, get the plates, Sugar, watch the beans, Felicia, get Daddy to sign that test, Mama needs some air.” Poof I disappear out the screen door.

Aibileen’s standing on the side of the house in her white uniform.
 “What happen?” I ask. Inside I hear Leroy yell, “A Eff? ” He won’t touch the kids. He’ll yell, but that’s what fathers are supposed to do.
 “One-arm Ernestine call and say Miss Hilly’s talking all over town about who’s in the book. She telling white ladies to fire they maids and she ain’t even guessing the right ones!” Aibileen looks so upset, she’s shaking. She’s twisting a cloth into a white rope. I’ll bet she doesn’t even realize she carried over her real dinner napkin.
 “Who she saying?”
 “She told Miss Sinclair to fire Annabelle. So Miss Sinclair fired her and then took her car keys away cause she loaned her half the money to buy the car. Annabelle already paid most of it back but it’s gone.”
 “That witch,” I whisper, grinding my teeth.
 “That ain’t all, Minny.”

I hear bootsteps in the kitchen. “Hurry, fore Leroy catch us whispering.”
 “Miss Hilly told Miss Lou Anne, ‘Your Louvenia’s in here. I know she is and you need to fire her. You ought to send that Nigra to jail.’ ”
 “But Louvenia didn’t say a single bad thing about Miss Lou Anne!” I say. “And she got Robert to take care of! What Miss Lou Anne say?”

Aibileen bites her lip. She shakes her head and the tears come down her face.
 “She say . . . she gone think about it.”
 “Which one? The firing or the jail?”

Aibileen shrug. “Both, I reckon.”
 “Jesus Christ,” I say, wanting to kick something. Somebody.
 “Minny, what if Miss Hilly don’t ever finish reading it?”
 “I don’t know, Aibileen. I just don’t know.”

Aibileen’s eyes jerk up to the door and there’s Leroy, watching us from behind the screen. He stands there, quiet, until I tell Abileen goodbye and come back inside.

AT FIVE-THIRTY THAT MORNING, Leroy falls into bed next to me. I wake up to the squawk of the frame and the stench of the liquor. I grit my teeth, praying he doesn’t try to start a fight. I am too tired for it. Not that I was asleep good anyway, worrying about Aibileen and her news. For Miss Hilly, Louvenia would just be another jail key on that witch’s belt.

Leroy flops around and tosses and turns, never mind his pregnant wife’s trying to sleep. When the fool finally gets settled, I hear his whisper.
 “What’s the big secret, Minny?”

I can feel him watching me, feel his liquor breath on my shoulder. I don’t move.
 “You know I’ll find out,” he hisses. “I always do.”

In about ten seconds, his breathing slows to almost dead and he throws his hand across me. Thank you for this baby, I pray. Because that’s the only thing that saved me, this baby in my belly. And that is the ugly truth.

I lay there grinding my teeth, wondering, worrying. Leroy, he’s onto something. And God knows what’ll happen to me if he finds out. He knows about the book, everybody does, just not that his wife was a part of it, thank you. People probably assume I don’t care if he finds out—oh I know what people think. They think big strong Minny, she sure can stand up for herself. But they don’t know what a pathetic mess I turn into when Leroy’s beating on me. I’m afraid to hit back. I’m afraid he’ll leave me if I do. I know it makes no sense and I get so mad at myself for being so weak! How can I love a man who beats me raw? Why do I love a fool drinker? One time I asked him, “Why? Why are you hitting me?” He leaned down and looked me right in the face.
 “If I didn’t hit you, Minny, who knows what you become.”

I was trapped in the corner of the bedroom like a dog. He was beating me with his belt. It was the first time I’d ever really thought about it.

Who knows what I could become, if Leroy would stop goddamn hitting me.

THE NEXT NIGHT, I make everybody go to bed early, including myself. Leroy’s at the plant until five and I’m feeling too heavy for my time. Lord, maybe it’s twins. I’m not paying a doctor to tell me that bad news. All I know is, this baby’s already bigger than the others when they came out, and I’m only six months.

I fall into a heavy sleep. I’m dreaming I’m at a long wooden table and I’m at a feast. I’m gnawing on a big roasted turkey leg.

I fly upright in my bed. My breath is fast. “Who there?”

My heart’s flinging itself against my chest. I look around my dark bedroom. It’s half-past midnight. Leroy’s not here, thank God. But something woke me for sure.

And then I realize what it was that woke me. I heard what I’ve been waiting on. What we’ve all been waiting on.

I heard Miss Hilly’s scream.MISS SKEETER Chapter 33
MY EYES POP OPEN. My chest is pumping. I’m sweating. The greenvined wallpaper is snaking up the walls. What woke me? What was that?

I get out of bed and listen. It didn’t sound like Mother. It was too high-pitched. It was a scream, like material ripping into two shredded pieces.

I sit back on the bed and press my hand to my heart. It’s still pounding. Nothing is going as planned. People know the book is about Jackson. I can’t believe I forgot what a slow goddamn reader Hilly is. I’ll bet she’s telling people she’s read more than she has. Now things are spinning out of control, a maid named Annabelle was fired, white women are whispering about Aibileen and Louvenia and who knows who else. And the irony is, I’m gnawing my hands waiting for Hilly to speak up when I’m the only one in this town who doesn’t care what she has to say anymore.

What if the book was a horrible mistake?

I take a deep, painful breath. I try to think of the future, not the present. A month ago, I mailed out fifteen résumés to Dallas, Memphis, Birmingham, and five other cities, and once again, New York. Missus Stein told me I could list her as a reference, which is probably the only notable thing on the page, having a recommendation from someone in publishing. I added the jobs I’ve held for the past year:

Weekly Housekeeping Columnist for the Jackson Journal Newspaper

Editor of the Junior League of Jackson Newsletter

Author of Help, a controversial book about colored housekeepers and

their white employers, Harper & Row


I didn’t really include the book, I just wanted to type it out once. But now, even if I did get a job offer in a big city, I can’t abandon Aibileen in the middle of this mess. Not with things going so badly.

But God, I have to get out of Mississippi. Besides Mother and Daddy, I have nothing left here, no friends, no job I really care about, no Stuart. But it’s not just out of here. When I addressed my résumé to the New York Post, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker magazine, I felt that surge again, the same I’d felt in college, of how much I want to be there. Not Dallas, not Memphis—New York City, where writers are supposed to live. But I’ve heard nothing back from any of them. What if I never leave? What if I’m stuck. Here. Forever?

I lie down and watch the first rays of sun coming through the window. I shiver. That ripping scream, I realize, was me.

I’m STANDING IN BRENT’S Drug Store picking out Mother’s Lustre Cream and a Vinolia soap bar, while Mr. Roberts works on her prescription. Mother says she doesn’t need the medicine anymore, that the only cure for cancer is having a daughter who won’t cut her hair and wears dresses too high above the knee even on Sunday, because who knows what tackiness I’d do to myself if she died.

I’m just grateful Mother’s better. If my fifteen-second engagement to Stuart is what spurred Mother’s will to live, the fact that I’m single again fueled her strength even more. She was clearly disappointed by our breakup, but then bounced back superbly. Mother even went so far as to set me up with a third cousin removed, who is thirty-five and beautiful and clearly homosexual. “Mother,” I’d said when he left after supper, for how could she not see it? “He’s . . .” but I’d stopped. I’d patted her hand instead. “He said I wasn’t his type.”

Now I’m hurrying to get out of the drugstore before anyone I know comes in. I should be used to my isolation by now, but I’m not. I miss having friends. Not Hilly, but sometimes Elizabeth, the old, sweet Elizabeth back in high school. It got harder when I finished the book and I couldn’t even visit Aibileen anymore. We decided it was too risky. I miss going to her house and talking to her more than anything.

Every few days, I speak to Aibileen on the phone, but it’s not the same as sitting with her. Please, I think when she updates me on what’s going on around town, please let some good come out of this. But so far, nothing. Just girls gossiping and treating the book like a game, trying to guess who is who and Hilly accusing the wrong people. I was the one who assured the colored maids we wouldn’t be found out, and I am the one responsible for this.

The front bell tinkles. I look over and in walk Elizabeth and Lou Anne Templeton. I slip back into beauty creams, hoping they don’t see me. But then I peek over the shelves to look. They’re heading for the lunch counter, huddled together like schoolgirls. Lou Anne’s wearing her usual long sleeves in the summer heat and her constant smile. I wonder if she knows she’s in the book.

Elizabeth’s got her hair poufed up in front and she’s covered the back in a scarf, the yellow scarf I gave her for her twenty-third birthday. I stand there a minute, letting myself feel how strange this all is, watching them, knowing what I know. She has read up to Chapter Ten, Aibileen told me last night, and still doesn’t have the faintest idea that she’s reading about herself and her friends.
 “Skeeter?” Mr. Roberts calls out from his landing above the register. “Your mama’s medicine’s ready.”

I walk to the front of the store, and have to pass Elizabeth and Lou Anne at the lunch counter. They keep their backs to me, but I can see their eyes in the mirror, following me. They look down at the same time.

I pay for the medicine and Mother’s tubes and goo and work my way back through the aisles. As I try to escape along the far side of the store, Lou Anne Templeton steps from behind the hairbrush rack.
 “Skeeter,” she says. “You have a minute?”

I stand there blinking, surprised. No one’s asked me for even a second, much less a minute, in over eight months. “Um, sure,” I say, wary.

Lou Anne glances out the window and I see Elizabeth heading for her car, a milkshake in hand. Lou Anne motions me closer, by the shampoos and detanglers.
 “Your mama, I hope she’s still doing better?” Lou Anne asks. Her smile is not quite as beaming as usual. She pulls at the long sleeves of her dress, even though a fine sweat covers her forehead.
 “She’s fine. Still . . . in remission.”
 “I’m so glad.” She nods and we stand there awkwardly, looking at each other. Lou Anne takes a deep breath. “I know we haven’t talked in a while but,” she lowers her voice, “I just thought you should know what Hilly’s saying. She’s saying you wrote that book... about the maids.”
 “I heard that book was written anonymously,” is my quick answer, not sure I even want to act like I’ve read it. Even though everyone in town’s reading it. All three bookstores are sold out and the library has a two-month waiting list.

She holds up her palm, like a stop sign. “I don’t want to know if it’s true. But Hilly . . .” She steps closer to me. “Hilly Holbrook called me the other day and told me to fire my maid Louvenia.” Her jaw tightens and she shakes her head.

Please. I hold my breath. Please don’t say you fired her.
 “Skeeter, Louvenia . . .” Lou Anne looks me in the eye, says, “she’s the only reason I can get out of bed sometimes.”

I don’t say anything. Maybe this is a trap Hilly’s set.
 “And I’m sure you think I’m just some dumb girl . . . that I agree with everything Hilly says.” Tears come up in her eyes. Her lips are trembling. “The doctors want me to go up to Memphis for... shock treatment . . .” She covers her face but a tear slips through her fingers. “For the depression and the . . . the tries,” she whispers.

I look down at her long sleeves and I wonder if that’s what she’s been hiding. I hope I’m not right, but I shudder.
 “Of course, Henry says I need to shape up or ship out.” She makes a marching motion, trying to smile, but it falls quickly and the sadness flickers back into her face.
 “Skeeter, Louvenia is the bravest person I know. Even with all her own troubles, she sits down and talks to me. She helps me get through my days. When I read what she wrote about me, about helping her with her grandson, I’ve never been so grateful in my life. It was the best I’d felt in months.”

I don’t know what to say. This is the only good thing I’ve heard about the book and I want her to tell me more. I guess Aibileen hasn’t heard this yet, either. But I’m worried too because, clearly, Lou Anne knows.
 “If you did write it, if Hilly’s rumor is true, I just want you to know, I will never fire Louvenia. I told Hilly I’d think about it, but if Hilly Holbrook ever says that to me again, I will tell her to her face she deserved that pie and more.”
 “How do—what makes you think that was Hilly?” Our protection—our insurance, it’s gone if the pie secret is out.
 “Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. But that’s the talk.” Lou Anne shakes her head. “Then this morning I heard Hilly’s telling everybody the book’s not even about Jackson. Who knows why.”

I suck in a breath, whisper, “Thank God.”
 “Well, Henry’ll be home soon.” She pulls her handbag up on her shoulder and stands up straighter. The smile comes back on her face like a mask.

She turns for the door, but looks back at me as she opens it. “And I’ll tell you one more thing. Hilly Holbrook’s not getting my vote for League president in January. Or ever again, for that matter.”

On that, she walks out, the bell tinkling behind her.

I linger at the window. Outside, a fine rain has started to fall, misting the glassy cars and slicking the black pavement. I watch Lou Anne slip away in the parking lot, thinking, There is so much you don’t know about a person. I wonder if I could’ve made her days a little bit easier, if I’d tried. If I’d treated her a little nicer. Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’ d thought.

But Lou Anne, she understood the point of the book before she ever read it. The one who was missing the point this time was me.

THAT EVENING, I call Aibileen four times, but her phone line is busy. I hang up and sit for a while in the pantry, staring at the jars of fig preserves Constantine put up before the fig tree died. Aibileen told me that the maids talk all the time about the book and what’s happening. She gets six or seven phone calls a night.

I sigh. It’s Wednesday. Tomorrow I turn in my Miss Myrna column that I wrote six weeks ago. Again, I’ve stockpiled two dozen of them, because I have nothing else to do. After that, there’s nothing left to think about, except worry.

Sometimes, when I’m bored, I can’t help but think what my life would be like if I hadn’t written the book. Monday, I would’ve played bridge. And tomorrow night, I’d be going to the League meeting and turning in the newsletter. Then on Friday night, Stuart would take me to dinner and we’d stay out late and I’d be tired when I got up for my tennis game on Saturday. Tired and content and . . . frustrated.

Because Hilly would’ve called her maid a thief that afternoon, and I would’ve just sat there and listened to it. And Elizabeth would’ve grabbed her child’s arm too hard and I would’ve looked away, like I didn’t see it. And I’d be engaged to Stuart and I wouldn’t wear short dresses, only short hair, or consider doing anything risky like write a book about colored housekeepers, too afraid he’d disapprove. And while I’d never lie and tell myself I actually changed the minds of people like Hilly and Elizabeth, at least I don’t have to pretend I agree with them anymore.

I get out of that stuffy pantry with a panicky feeling. I slip on my man huaraches and walk out into the warm night. The moon is full and there’s just enough light. I forgot to check the mailbox this afternoon and I’m the only one who ever does it. I open it and there’s one single letter. It’s from Harper & Row, so it must be from Missus Stein. I’m surprised she would send something here since I have all the book contracts sent to a box at the post office, just in case. It’s too dark to read, so I tuck it in the back pocket of my blue jeans.

Instead of walking up the lane, I cut through the “orchard,” feeling the soft grass under my feet, stepping around the early pears that have fallen. It is September again and I’m here. Still here. Even Stuart has moved on. An article a few weeks ago about the Senator said that Stuart moved his oil company down to New Orleans so that he can spend time out on the rigs at sea again.

I hear the rumble of gravel. I can’t see the car driving up the lane, though, because for some reason, the headlights aren’t on.

I WATCH HER park the Oldsmobile in front of the house and turn off the engine, but she stays inside. Our front porch lights are on, yellow and flickering with night bugs. She’s leaning over her steering wheel, like she’s trying to see who’s home. What the hell does she want? I watch a few seconds. Then I think, Get to her first. Get to her before she does whatever it is she’s planning.

I walk quietly through the yard. She lights a cigarette, throws the match out the open window into our drive.

I approach her car from behind, but she doesn’t see me.
 “Waiting for someone?” I say at the window.

Hilly jumps and drops her cigarette into the gravel. She scrambles out of the car and slams the door closed, backing away from me.
 “Don’t you get an inch closer,” she says.

So I stop where I am and just look at her. Who wouldn’t look at her? Her black hair is a mess. A curl on top is floppy, sticking straight up. Half her blouse is untucked, her fat stretching the buttons, and I can see she’s gained more weight. And there’s a . . . sore. It’s in the corner of her mouth, scabby and hot red. I haven’t seen Hilly with one of those since Johnny broke up with her in college.

She looks me up and down. “What are you, some kind of hippie now? God, your poor mama must be so embarrassed of you.”
 “Hilly, why are you here?”
 “To tell you I’ve contacted my lawyer, Hibbie Goodman, who happens to be the number one expert on the libel laws in Mississippi, and you are in big trouble, missy. You’re going to jail, you know that?”
 “You can’t prove anything, Hilly.” I’ve had this discussion with the legal department of Harper & Row. We were very careful in our obscurity.
 “Well, I one-hundred-percent know you wrote it because there isn’t anybody else in town as tacky as you. Taking up with Nigras like that.”

It is truly baffling that we were ever friends. I think about going inside and locking the door. But there’s an envelope in her hand, and that makes me nervous.
 “I know there’s been a lot of talk, Hilly, and a lot of rumors—”
 “Oh, that talk doesn’t hurt me. Everyone in town knows it’s not Jackson. It’s some town you made up in that sick little head of yours, and I know who helped you, too.”

My jaw tightens. She obviously knows about Minny, and Louvenia I knew already, but does she know about Aibileen? Or the others?

Hilly waves the envelope at me and it crackles. “I am here to inform your mother of what you’ve done.”
 “You’re going to tell my mother on me?” I laugh, but the truth is, Mother doesn’t know anything about it. And I want to keep it that way. She’d be mortified and ashamed of me and... I look down at the envelope. What if it makes her sick again?
 “I most certainly am.” Hilly walks up the front steps, head held high.

I follow quickly behind Hilly to the front door. She opens it and walks in like it’s her own house.
 “Hilly, I did not invite you in here,” I say, grabbing her arm. “You get—”

But then Mother appears from around the corner and I drop my hand.
 “Why, Hilly,” Mother says. She is in her bathrobe and her cane wobbles as she walks. “It’s been such a long time, dear.”

Hilly blinks at her several times. I do not know if Hilly is more shocked at how my mother looks, or the other way around. Mother’s once thick brown hair is now snow white and thin. The trembling hand on her cane probably looks skeletonlike to someone who hasn’t seen her. But worst of all, Mother doesn’t have all of her teeth in, only her front ones. The hollows in her cheeks are deep, deathly.
 “Missus Phelan, I’m—I’m here to—”
 “Hilly, are you ill? You look horrendous,” Mother says.

Hilly licks her lips. “Well I—I didn’t have time to get fixed up before—”

Mother is shaking her head. “Hilly, darling. No young husband wants to come home and see this. Look at your hair. And that . . .” Mother frowns, peering closer at the cold sore. “That is not attractive, dear.”

I keep my eye on the letter. Mother points her finger at me. “I’m calling Fanny Mae’s tomorrow and I’m going to make an appointment for the both of you.”
 “Missus Phelan, that’s not—”
 “No need to thank me,” Mother says. “It’s the least I can do for you, now that your own dear mother’s not around for guidance. Now, I’m off to bed,” and Mother hobbles toward her bedroom. “Not too late, girls.”

Hilly stands there a second, her mouth hanging open. Finally, she goes to the door and flings it open and walks out. The letter is still in her hand.
 “You are in a lifetime of trouble, Skeeter,” she hisses at me, her mouth like a fist. “And those Nigras of yours?”
 “Exactly who are you talking about, Hilly?” I say. “You don’t know anything.”
 “I don’t, do I? That Louvenia? Oh, I’ve taken care of her. Lou Anne’s all set to go on that one.” The curl on the top of her head bobs as she nods.
 “And you tell that Aibileen, the next time she wants to write about my dear friend Elizabeth, uh-huh,” she says, flashing a crude smile. “You remember Elizabeth? She had you in her wedding?”

My nostrils flare. I want to hit her, at the sound of Aibileen’s name.
 “Let’s just say Aibileen ought to’ve been a little bit smarter and not put in the L-shaped crack in poor Elizabeth’s dining table.”

My heart stops. The goddamn crack. How stupid could I be to let that slip?
 “And don’t think I’ve forgotten Minny Jackson. I have some big plans for that Nigra.”
 “Careful, Hilly,” I say through my teeth. “Don’t give yourself away now.” I sound so confident, but inside I’m trembling, wondering what these plans are.

Her eyes fly open. “That was not me WHO ATE THAT PIE!”

She turns and marches to her car. She jerks the door open. “You tell those Nigras they better keep one eye over their shoulders. They better watch out for what’s coming to them.”

MY Hand SHAKES as I dial Aibileen’s number. I take the receiver in the pantry and shut the door. The opened letter from Harper & Row is in my other hand. It feels like midnight, but it’s only eight thirty.

Aibileen answers and I blurt it out. “Hilly came here tonight and she knows.”
 “Miss Hilly? Knows what?”

Then I hear Minny’s voice in the background. “Hilly? What about Miss Hilly?”
 “Minny’s . . . here with me,” Aibileen says.
 “Well, I guess she needs to hear this too,” I say, even though I wish Aibileen could tell her later, without me. As I describe how Hilly showed up here, stormed into the house, I wait while she repeats everything back to Minny. It is worse hearing it in Aibileen’s voice.

Aibileen comes back onto the phone and sighs.
 “It was the crack in Elizabeth’s dining room table . . . that’s how Hilly knew for sure.”
 “Law, that crack. I can’t believe I put that in.”
 “No, I should’ve caught it. I’m so sorry, Aibileen.”
 “You think Miss Hilly gone tell Miss Leefolt I wrote about her?”
 “She can’t tell her,” Minny hollers. “Then she admitting it’s Jackson.”

I realize how good Minny’s plan was. “I agree,” I say. “I think Hilly’s terrified, Aibileen. She doesn’t know what to do. She said she was going to tell my mother on me.”

Now that the shock of Hilly’s words has passed, I almost laugh at this thought. That’s the least of our worries. If my mother lived through my broken engagement, then she can live through this. I’ll just deal with it when it happens.
 “I reckon they’s nothing we can do but wait, then,” Aibileen says, but she sounds nervous. It’s probably not the best time to tell her my other news, but I don’t think I can keep myself from it.
 “I got a . . . letter today. From Harper and Row,” I say. “I thought it was from Missus Stein, but it wasn’t.”
 “What then?”
 “It’s a job offer at Harper’s Magazine in New York. As a . . . copy editor’s assistant. I’m pretty sure Missus Stein got it for me.”
 “That’s so good!” Aibileen says, and then, “Minny, Miss Skeeter got a job offer in New York City!”
 “Aibileen, I can’t take it. I just wanted to share it with you. I . . .” I’m grateful to at least have Aibileen to tell.
 “What you mean, you can’t take it? This what you been dreaming of.”
 “I can’t leave now, right when things are getting bad. I’m not going to leave you in this mess.”
 “But . . . them bad things gone happen whether you here or not.”

God, to hear her say that, I want to cry. I let out a groan.
 “I didn’t mean it like that. We don’t know what’s gone happen. Miss Skeeter, you got to take that job.”

I truly don’t know what to do. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t have even told Aibileen, of course she would tell me to go, but I had to tell someone. I hear her whisper to Minny, “She say she ain’t gone take it.”
 “Miss Skeeter,” Aibileen says back on the phone, “I don’t mean to be rubbing no salt on your wound but . . . you ain’t got a good life here in Jackson. Your mama’s better and—”

I hear muffled words and handling of the receiver and suddenly it’s Minny on the phone. “You listen to me, Miss Skeeter. I’m on take care a Aibileen and she gone take care a me. But you got nothing left here but enemies in the Junior League and a mama that’s gone drive you to drink. You done burned ever bridge there is. And you ain’t never gone get another boyfriend in this town and everbody know it. So don’t walk your white butt to New York, run it.”

Minny hangs the phone up in my face, and I sit staring at the dead receiver in one hand and the letter in the other. Really? I think, actually considering it for the first time. Can I really do this?

Minny is right, and Aibileen is too. I have nothing left here except Mother and Daddy and staying here for my parents will surely ruin the relationship we have, but . . .

I lean against the shelves, close my eyes. I’m going. I am going to New York.AIBILEEN Chapter 34
MISS LEEFOLT’S silver service got funny spots on it today. Must be cause the humidity’s so high. I go around the bridge club table, polishing each piece again, making sure they all still there. Li’l Man, he’s started swiping things, spoons and nickels and hair pins. He stick em in his diaper to hide. Sometimes, changing diapers can be like opening treasure.

The phone ring so I go in the kitchen and answer it.
 “Got a little bit a news today,” Minny say on the phone.
 “What you hear?”
 “Miss Renfro say she know it was Miss Hilly who ate that pie.” Minny cackle but my heart go ten times faster.
 “Law, Miss Hilly gone be here in five minutes. She better put that fire out fast.” It feel crazy that we rooting for her. It’s confusing in my mind.
 “I call one-arm Ernest—” but then Minny shuts up. Miss Celia must a walked in.
 “Alright, she gone. I call one-arm Ernestine and she say Miss Hilly been screaming in the phone all day. And Miss Clara, she know about Fanny Amos.”
 “She fire her?” Miss Clara put Fanny Amos’s boy through college, one a the good stories.
 “Nuh-uh. Just sat there with her mouth open and the book in her hand.”
 “Thank the Lord. Call me if you hear more,” I say. “Don’t worry bout Miss Leefolt answering. Tell her it’s about my sick sister.” And Lord, don’t You go getting me for that lie. Last thing I need is a sister getting sick.

A few minutes after we hang up, the doorbell ring and I pretend I don’t even hear. I’m so nervous to see Miss Hilly’s face after what she said to Miss Skeeter. I can’t believe I put in that L-shaped crack. I go out to my bathroom and just set, thinking about what’s gone happen if I have to leave Mae Mobley. Lord, I pray, if I have to leave her, give her somebody good. Don’t leave her with just Miss Taylor telling her black is dirty and her Granmama pinching the thank-yous out a her and cold Miss Leefolt. The doorbell in the house ring again, but I stay put. I’m on do it tomorrow, I say to myself. Just in case, I’m on tell Mae Mobley goodbye.

WHEN I COME back in, I hear all the ladies at the table talking. Miss Hilly’s voice is loud. I hold my ear to the kitchen door, dreading going out there.
 “—is not Jackson. This book is garbage, is what it is. I’ll bet the whole thing was made up by some Nigra—”

I hear a chair scrape and I know Miss Leefolt about to come hunting for me. I can’t put it off no more.

I open the door with the ice tea pitcher in my hand. Round the table I go, keeping my eyes to my shoes.
 “I heard that Betty character might be Charlene,” Miss Jeanie say with big eyes. Next to her, Miss Lou Anne’s staring off like she don’t care one way or the other. I wish I could pat her shoulder. I wish I could tell her how glad I am she’s Louvenia’s white lady, without giving nothing away, but I know I can’t. And I can’t tell nothing on Miss Leefolt cause she just frowning like usual. But Miss Hilly’s face, it’s purple as a plum.
 “And the maid in Chapter Four?” Miss Jeanie going on. “I heard Sissy Tucker saying—”
 “The book is not about Jackson!” Miss Hilly kind a scream and I jump while I’m pouring. A drop a tea accidentally plops on Miss Hilly’s empty plate. She look up at me and like a magnet, my eyes pull to hers.

Low and cool, she say, “You spilled some, Aibileen.”
 “I’m sorry, I—”
 “Wipe it up.”

Shaking, I wipe it with the cloth I had on the handle a the pitcher.

She staring at my face. I have to look down. I can feel the hot secret between us. “Get me a new plate. One you haven’t soiled with your dirty cloth.”

I get her a new plate. She study it, sniff real loud. Then she turn to Miss Leefolt and say, “You can’t even teach these people how to be clean.”

I HAVE TO SIT LATE that night for Miss Leefolt. While Mae Mobley sleeping, I pull out my prayer book, get started on my list. I’m so glad for Miss Skeeter. She call me this morning and say she took the job. She moving to New York in a week! But Law, I can’t stop jumping ever time I hear a noise, thinking maybe Miss Leefolt gone walk in the door and say she know the truth. By the time I get home, I’m too jumpy to go to bed. I walk through the pitch-black dark to Minny’s back door. She setting at her table reading the paper. This is the only part a her day when she ain’t running around to clean something or feed something or make somebody do right. The house be so quiet I figure something wrong.
 “Where everbody?”

She shrug, “Gone to bed or gone to work.”

I pull out a chair and set down. “I just want a know what’s gone happen,” I say. “I know I ought a be thankful it ain’t all blowed up in my face yet, but this waiting’s driving me crazy.”
 “It’s gone happen. Soon enough,” Minny say, like we talking about the kind a coffee we drink.
 “Minny, how can you be so calm?”

She looks at me, puts her hand on her tummy that’s popped out in the last two weeks. “You know Miss Chotard, who Willie Mae wait on? She ask Willie Mae yesterday if she treats her bad as that awful lady in the book.” Minny kind a snort. “Willie Mae tell her she got some room to grow but she ain’t too bad.”
 “She really ask her that?”
 “Then Willie Mae tell her what all the other white ladies done to her, the good and the bad, and that white lady listen to her. Willie May say she been there thirty-seven years and it’s the first time they ever sat at the same table together.”

Besides Louvenia, this the first good thing we heard. I try to enjoy it. But I snap back to now. “What about Miss Hilly? What about what Miss Skeeter say? Minny, ain’t you at least a little nervous?”

Minny put her newspaper down. “Look, Aibileen, I ain’t gone lie. I’m scared Leroy gone kill me if he find out. I’m scared Miss Hilly gone set my house on fire. But,” she shake her head, “I can’t explain it. I got this feeling. That maybe things is happening just how they should.”
 “Really?”

Minny kind a laugh. “Lord, I’m starting to sound like you, ain’t I? Must be getting old.”

I poke her with my foot. But I try to understand where Minny’s coming from. We done something brave and good here. And Minny, maybe she don’t want a be deprived a any a the things that go along with being brave and good. Even the bad. But I can’t pick up on the calm she feeling.

Minny looks back down at her paper but after a little while, I can tell she ain’t reading. She just staring at the words, thinking about something else. Somebody’s car door slam next door and she jump. And I see it then, the worry she’s trying to hide. But why? I wonder. Why she hiding that from me?

The more I look, the more I start to understand what’s going on here, what Minny’s done. I don’t know why I’m just now getting this. Minny made us put the pie story in to protect us. Not to protect herself, but to protect me and the other maids. She knew it would only make it worse for herself with Hilly. But she did it anyway, for everbody else. She don’t want anybody to see how scared she is.

I reach over and squeeze her hand. “You a beautiful person, Minny.”

She roll her eyes and stick her tongue out like I handed her a plate a dog biscuits. “I knew you was getting senile,” she say.

We both chuckle. It’s late and we so tired, but she get up and refill her coffee and fix me a cup a tea and I drink it slow. We talk late into the night.

THE NEXT DAY, SATURDAY, we all in the house, the whole Leefolt family plus me. Even Mister Leefolt home today. My book ain’t setting on the bedside table no more. For a while, I don’t know where she put it. Then I see Miss Leefolt’s pocketbook on the sofa, and she got it tucked inside. Means she carried it with her somewhere. I peek over and see the bookmark’s gone.

I want to look in her eyes and see what she know, but Miss Leefolt stay in the kitchen most a the day trying to make a cake. Won’t let me in there to help. Say it’s not like one a my cakes, it’s a fancy recipe she got out the Gourmet magazine. She hosting a luncheon tomorrow for her church and the dining room’s stacked up with party serving stuff. She done borrowed three chafing dishes from Miss Lou Anne and eight settings a Miss Hilly’s silver cause they’s fourteen people coming and God forbid any a them church folk got to use a regular ole metal fork.

Li’l Man be in Mae Mobley’s bedroom playing with her. And Mister Leefolt pacing round the house. Time to time he stop in front a Baby Girl’s bedroom, then go to pacing again. Probably thinks he should be playing with his kids with it being Saturday, but I reckon he don’t know how.

So that don’t leave a whole lot a places for me to go. It’s only two o’clock but I already done cleaned the house down to the nubs, polished the bathrooms, washed the clothes. I ironed everthing short a the wrinkles on my face. Been banned from the kitchen and I don’t like Mister Leefolt thinking all I do is set around playing with the kids. Finally I just start wandering round too.

When Mister Leefolt dawdling around the dining room, I peek in and see Mae Mobley got a paper in her hand, teaching Ross something new. She love to play school with her little brother.

I go in the living room, start dusting the books for the second time. I guess I ain’t gone get to tell her my in-case goodbye today, with this crowd around.
 “We’re gonna play a game,” I hear Mae Mobley call out to her brother. “Now you sit up at the counter cause you’re at the Woolworf ’s and you’re colored. And you got to stay there no matter what I do or you go to jail.”

I go to her bedroom fast as I can, but Mister Leefolt’s already there, watching at the door. I stand behind him.

Mister Leefolt cross his arms up over his white shirt. Cock his head to the side. My heart’s beating a thousand miles a hour. I ain’t never once heard Mae Mobley mention our secret stories out loud to anybody except me. And that’s when her mama ain’t home and they ain’t nobody but the house to hear. But she so thick in what she doing, she don’t know her daddy’s listening.
 “Okay,” Mae Mobley say and she guide his wobbly self up on the chair. “Ross, you gotta stay there at the Woolworf counter. No getting up.”

I want to speak, but I can’t get nothing to come out my mouth. Mae Mobley be tippy-toeing up behind Ross, pour a box a crayons on his head, and they clatter down. Li’l Man frown, but she look at him stern, say, “You can’t move. You got to be brave. And no violets.” Then she stick her tongue out at him and start pinging him with baby doll shoes and Li’l Man look at her like Why am I putting up with this nonsense? and he crawl off the chair with a whine.
 “You lose!” she says. “Now come on, we’re playing Back-a-the-Bus and your name is Rosa Parks.”
 “Who taught you those things, Mae Mobley?” Mister Leefolt say and Baby Girl whip her head around with eyes like she seed a ghost.

I feel my bones go soft on me. Everthing say go in there. Make sure she don’t get in trouble, but I can’t breathe enough to go. Baby Girl look right at me standing behind her daddy, and Mister Leefolt turn around and see me, then turn back round to her.

Mae Mobley stare up at her daddy. “I don’t know.” She looks off at a board game laying on the floor, like she might get to playing it again. I seen her do that, I know what she thinking. She think if she get busy with something else and ignore him, he might just go away.
 “Mae Mobley, your daddy asked you a question. Where did you learn about things like that?” He bend down to her. I can’t see his face, but I know he smiling cause Mae Mobley all shylike, all Baby Girl loves her daddy. And then she say loud and clear:
 “Miss Taylor did.”

Mister Leefolt straighten up. Goes into the kitchen and I’m following. He turns Miss Leefolt around by the shoulders and says: “Tomorrow. You go down to that school and put Mae Mobley in a different class. No more Miss Taylor.”
 “What? I can’t just change her teacher—”

I hold my breath, pray, Yes, you can. Please.
 “Just do it.” And like mens do, Mister Raleigh Leefolt walk out the door where he don’t have to give nobody no explanation about nothing.

All DAY SUNDAY, I can’t stop thanking God for getting Baby Girl away from Miss Taylor. Thank you God, thank you God, thank you God rings in my head like a chant. On Monday morning, Miss Leefolt head off to Mae Mobley’s school, all dressed up, and I have to smile, knowing what she going off to do.

While Miss Leefolt’s gone, I get to work on Miss Hilly’s silver. Miss Leefolt’s got it laid out on the kitchen table from the luncheon yesterday. I wash it and spend the next hour polishing it, wondering how one-arm Ernestine do it. Polishing Grand Baroque with all its loops and curls is a two-arm job.

When Miss Leefolt get back, she put her purse up on the table and tsk. “Oh, I meant to return that silver this morning but I had to go to Mae Mobley’s school and I just know she’s getting a cold because she was sneezing all morning long and now it’s almost ten o’clock . . .”
 “Mae Mobley getting sick?”
 “Probably.” Miss Leefolt roll her eyes. “Oh, I’m late for my hair appointment. When you’re finished polishing, go ahead and walk that silver on over to Hilly’s for me. I’ll be back after lunch.”

When I’m done, I wrap all a Miss Hilly’s silver up in the blue cloth. I go get Li’l Man out a bed. He just woke up from his nap and he blink at me and smile.
 “Come on, Li’l Man, let’s get you a new diaper.” I put him up on the changing table and take off the wet one and Lord almighty if there ain’t three tinker toys and one a Miss Leefolt’s bobby pins in there. Thank the Lord it was just a wet diaper and not the other.
 “Boy,” I laugh, “you like Fort Knox.” He grin and laugh. He point at the crib and I go over and poke through the blanket and sho nuff, there’s a hair roller, a measuring spoon, and a dinner napkin. Law, we gone have to do something about this. But not now. I got to get over to Miss Hilly’s.

I lock Li’l Man in the stroller and push him down the street over to Miss Hilly’s house. It’s hot and sunny and quiet. We stroll up her drive and Ernestine open the door. She got a skinny little brown nub that poke out the left sleeve. I don’t know her well, except she like to talk a fair amount. She go to the Methodist church.
 “Hey Aibileen,” she say.
 “Hey Ernestine, you must a seen me coming.”

She nods and looks down at Li’l Man. He watching that nub like he scared it’s gone get him.
 “I come out here fore she do,” Ernestine whisper and then she say, “I guess you heard.”
 “Heard what?”

Ernestine look behind her, then lean down. “Flora Lou’s white lady, Miss Hester? She give it to Flora Lou this morning.”
 “She fired her?” Flora Lou had some bad stories to tell. She angry. Miss Hester who everbody think is real sweet, she give Flora a special “hand wash” to use ever morning. Ends up it was straight bleach. Flora showed me the burn scar.

Ernestine shake her head. “Miss Hester pull that book out and start yelling, ‘Is this me? Is this me you wrote about?’ and Flora Lou say, ‘No ma’am, I didn’t write no book. I ain’t even finished the fifth grade’ but Miss Hester go into a fit yelling, ‘I didn’t know Clorox burned the skin, I didn’t know the minimum wage was a dollar twenty-five, if Hilly wasn’t telling everybody it’s not Jackson I’d fire you so quick your head would spin,’ so Flora Lou say, ‘You mean I’m not fired?’ and Miss Hester scream, ‘Fired? I can’t fire you or people will know I’m Chapter Ten. You’re stuck working here for the rest of your life.’ And then Miss Hester lay her head on the table and tell Flora Lou to finish the dishes.”
 “Law,” I say, feeling dizzy. “I hope . . . they all turn out that good.”

Back in the house, Miss Hilly hollers Ernestine’s name. “I wouldn’t count on it,” Ernestine whisper. I hand Ernestine the heavy cloth full a silver. She reaches out with her good hand to take it, and I guess out a habit, her nub reach out too.

THAT NIGHT, there’s a terrible storm. The thunder’s booming and I’m at my kitchen table sweating. I’m shaking, trying to write my prayers. Flora Lou got lucky, but what’s gone happen next? It’s just too much not knowing and worrying and—

Thunk thunk thunk. Somebody knocking on my front door.

Who that? I sit up straight. The clock over the stove say eight thirty-five. Outside, the rain is blowing hard. Anybody who know me good would use the back door.

I tiptoe to the front. They knock again, and I bout jump out a my shoes.
 “Who—who is it?” I say. I check that the lock is on.
 “It’s me.”

Law. I let out a breath and open the front door. There’s Miss Skeeter, wet and shivering. Her red satchel’s under her raincoat.
 “Lord have mercy—”
 “I couldn’t make it to the back door. The yard’s so thick with mud I couldn’t get through.”

She barefoot and holding her muddy shoes in her hand. I close the door quick behind her. “Nobody see you, did they?”
 “You can’t see a thing out there. I would’ve called but the phone’s out with the storm.”

I know something must a happened, but I’m just so glad to see her face before she leaves for New York. We ain’t seen each other in person in six months. I give her a good hug.
 “Law, let me see your hair.” Miss Skeeter pull back her hood, shake out her long hair past her shoulders.
 “It is beautiful,” I say and I mean it.

She smile like she embarrassed and set her satchel on the floor. “Mother hates it.”

I laugh and then take a big breath, trying to get ready for whatever bad thing she got to tell me.
 “The stores are asking for more books, Aibileen. Missus Stein called this afternoon.” She take my hands. “They’re going to do another print run. Five thousand more copies.”

I just look at her. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t even know they could do that,” I say and I cover my mouth. Our book is setting in five thousand houses, on they bookshelves, next to they night tables, behind they toilets?
 “There’ll be more money coming. At least one hundred dollars to each of you. And who knows? Maybe there’ll be more.”

I put my hand on my heart. I ain’t spent a cent a the first sixty-one dollars and now she telling me they’s more?
 “And there’s something else.” Miss Skeeter look down at the satchel. “I went to the paper on Friday and quit the Miss Myrna job.” She takes a deep breath. “And I told Mr. Golden, I think the next Miss Myrna should be you.”
 “Me?”
 “I told him you’ve been giving me the answers all along. He said he’d think about it and today he called me and said yes, as long as you don’t tell anybody and you write the answers like Miss Myrna did.”

She pull a blue-cloth notebook out a her satchel, hand it to me. “He said he’ll pay you the same as me, ten dollars a week.”

Me? Working for the white newspaper? I go to the sofa and open the notebook, see all them letters and articles from past times. Miss Skeeter set beside me.
 “Thank you, Miss Skeeter. For this, for everthing.”

She smile, take a deep breath like she fighting back tears.
 “I can’t believe you gone be a New Yorker tomorrow,” I say.
 “Actually, I’m going to go to Chicago first. Only for one night. I want to see Constantine, her grave.”

I nod. “I’m glad.”
 “Mother showed me the obituary. It’s right outside of town. And then I’ll go to New York the next morning.”
 “You tell Constantine Aibileen say hello.”

She laugh. “I’m so nervous. I’ve never been to Chicago or New York. I’ve never even been on an airplane before.”

We set there a second, listening to the storm. I think about the first time Miss Skeeter came to my house, how awkward we was. Now I feel like we family.
 “Are you scared, Aibileen?” she asks. “Of what might happen?”

I turn so she can’t see my eyes. “I’m alright.”
 “Sometimes, I don’t know if this was worth it. If something happens to you . . . how am I going to live with that, knowing it was because of me?” She presses her hand over her eyes, like she don’t want to see what’s gone happen.

I go to my bedroom and bring out the package from Reverend Johnson. She take off the paper and stare at the book, all the names signed in it. “I was gone send it to you in New York, but I think you need to have it now.”
 “I don’t . . . understand,” she say. “This is for me?”
 “Yes ma’am.” Then I pass on the Reverend’s message, that she is part of our family. “You need to remember, ever one a these signatures means it was worth it.” She read the thank-yous, the little things they wrote, run her fingers over the ink. Tears fill up her eyes.
 “I reckon Constantine would a been real proud a you.”

Miss Skeeter smile and I see how young she is. After all we written and the hours we spent tired and worried, I ain’t seen the girl she still is in a long, long time.
 “Are you sure it’s alright? If I leave you, with everything so . . .”
 “Go to New York, Miss Skeeter. Go find your life.”

She smile, blinking back the tears, and say, “Thank you.”

THAT NIGHT I lay in bed thinking. I am so happy for Miss Skeeter. She starting her whole life over. Tears run down my temples into my ears, thinking about her walking down them big city avenues I seen on tee-vee with her long hair behind her. Part a me wishes I could have a new start too. The cleaning article, that’s new. But I’m not young. My life’s about done.

The harder I try to sleep, the more I know I’m on be up most a the night. It’s like I can feel the buzz all over town, of people talking about the book. How can anybody sleep with all them bees? I think about Flora Lou, how if Hilly wasn’t telling people the book ain’t Jackson, Miss Hester would a fired her. Oh Minny, I think. You done something so good. You taking care a everbody except yourself. I wish I could protect you.

It sounds like Miss Hilly’s barely hanging on by a thread. Ever day another person say they know it was her that ate that pie and Miss Hilly just fight harder. For the first time in my life, I’m actually wondering who gone win this fight. Before now, I’d always say Miss Hilly but now I don’t know. This time, Miss Hilly just might lose.

I get a few hours sleep before dawn. It’s funny, but I hardly feel tired when I get up at six. I put on my clean uniform I washed in the tub last night. In the kitchen, I drink a long, cool glass a water from the faucet. I turn off the kitchen light and head for the door and my phone ring. Law, it’s early for that.

I pick up and I hear wailing.
 “Minny? That you? What—”
 “They fired Leroy last night! And when Leroy ask why, his boss say Mister William Holbrook told him to do it. Holbrook told him it’s Leroy’s nigger wife the reason and Leroy come home and try to kill me with his bare hands!” Minny panting and heaving. “He throw the kids in the yard and lock me in the bathroom and say he gone light the house on fire with me locked inside!”

Law, it’s happening. I cover my mouth, feel myself falling down that black hole we dug for ourselves. All these weeks a hearing Minny sound so confident and now...
 “That witch,” Minny scream. “He gone kill me cause a her!”
 “Where you now, Minny, where the kids?”
 “The gas station, I run here in my bare feet! The kids run next door . . .” She panting and hiccupping and growling. “Octavia coming to get us. Say she gone drive fast as she can.”

Octavia’s in Canton, twenty minutes north up by Miss Celia. “Minny, I’m on run up there now—”
 “No, don’t hang up, please. Just stay on the phone with me till she get here.”
 “Is you okay? You hurt?”
 “I can’t take this no more, Aibileen. I can’t do this—” She break down crying into the phone.

It’s the first time I ever heard Minny say that. I take a deep breath, knowing what I need to do. The words is so clear in my head and right now is my only chance for her to really hear me, standing barefoot and rock bottom on the gas station phone. “Minny, listen to me. You never gone lose your job with Miss Celia. Mister Johnny told you hisself. And they’s more money coming from the book, Miss Skeeter found out last night. Minny, hear me when I say, You don’t have to get hit by Leroy no more.”

Minny choke out a sob.“It’s time, Minny. Do you hear me? You are free.”

Real slow, Minny’s crying wind down. Until she dead quiet. If I couldn’t hear her breathing, I’d think she hung up the phone. Please, Minny, I think. Please, take this chance to get out.

She take a deep, shaky breath. She say, “I hear what you saying, Aibileen.”
 “Let me come to the gas station and wait with you. I tell Miss Leefolt I be late.”
 “No,” she say. “My sister . . . be here soon. We gone stay with her tonight.”
 “Minny, is it just for tonight or . . .”

She let out a long breath into the phone. “No,” she say. “I can’t. I done took this long enough.” And I start to hear Minny Jackson come back into her own self again. Her voice is shaking, I know she scared, but she say, “God help him, but Leroy don’t know what Minny Jackson about to become.”

My heart jumps. “Minny, you can’t kill him. Then you gone be in jail right where Miss Hilly want you.”

Lord, that silence is a long, terrible one.
 “I ain’t gone kill him, Aibileen. I promise. We gone go stay with Octavia till we find a place a our own.”

I let out a breath.
 “She here,” she say. “I’ll call you tonight.”

WHEN I GET TO Miss Leefolt’s, the house is real quiet. I reckon Li’l Man still sleeping. Mae Mobley already gone to school. I put my bag down in the laundry room. The swinging door to the dining room is closed and the kitchen is a nice cool square.

I put the coffee on and say a prayer for Minny. She can stay out at Octavia’s for a while. Octavia got a fair-size farmhouse, from what Minny’s told me. Minny be closer to her job, but it’s far from the kids’ schools. Still, what’s important is, Minny’s away from Leroy. I never once heard her say she gone leave Leroy, and Minny don’t say things twice. When she do things, they done the first time.

I fix a bottle a milk for Li’l Man and take a deep breath. I feel like my day’s already done and it’s only eight o’clock in the morning. But I still ain’t tired. I don’t know why.

I push open the swinging door. And there be Miss Leefolt and Miss Hilly setting down at the dining room table on the same side, looking at me.

For a second, I stand there, gripping the bottle a milk. Miss Leefolt still got her hair curlers in and she in her blue quilted bathrobe. But Miss Hilly’s all dressed up in a blue plaid pantsuit. That nasty red sore still on the side a her lip.
 “G’morning,” I say and start to walk to the back.
 “Ross is still sleeping,” Miss Hilly say. “No need to go back there.”

I stop where I am and look at Miss Leefolt, but she staring at the funny L-shaped crack in her dining room table.
 “Aibileen,” Miss Hilly says and she lick her lips. “When you returned my silver yesterday, there were three pieces missing out of that felt wrapper. One silver fork and two silver spoons.”

I suck in a breath. “Lemme—lemme go look in the kitchen, maybe I left some behind.” I look at Miss Leefolt to see if that’s what she want me to do, but she keep her eyes on the crack. A cold prickle creeps up my neck.
 “You know as well as I do that silver’s not in the kitchen, Aibileen,” Miss Hilly say.
 “Miss Leefolt, you checked in Ross’s bed? He been sneaking things and sticking em—”

Miss Hilly scoff real loud. “Do you hear her, Elizabeth? She’s trying to blame it on a toddler.”

My mind’s racing, I’m trying to remember if I counted the silver before I put it back in the felt. I think I did. I always do. Law, tell me she ain’t saying what I think she saying—
 “Miss Leefolt, did you already check the kitchen? Or the silver closet? Miss Leefolt?”

But she still won’t look at me and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know, yet, how bad this is. Maybe this ain’t about silver, maybe this is really about Miss Leefolt and Chapter Two . . .
 “Aibileen,” Miss Hilly say, “you can return those pieces to me by today, or else Elizabeth is going to press charges.”

Miss Leefolt look at Miss Hilly and suck in a breath, like she surprised. And I wonder whose idea this whole thing is, both of em or just Miss Hilly’s?
 “I ain’t stole no silver service, Miss Leefolt,” I say and just the words make me want a run.

Miss Leefolt whisper, “She says she doesn’t have them, Hilly.”

Miss Hilly don’t even act like she heard. She raise her eyebrows at me and say, “Then it behooves me to inform you that you are fired, Aibileen.” Miss Hilly sniff. “I’ll be calling the police. They know me.”
 “Maa-maaaa,” Li’l Man holler from his crib in the back. Miss Leefolt look behind her, then at Hilly, like she ain’t sure what to do. I reckon she just now thinking about what it’s gone be like if she don’t have a maid no more.
 “Aaai-beee,” Li’l Man call, starting to cry.
 “Aai-bee,” call another small voice and I realize Mae Mobley’s home. She must not’ve gone to school today. I press on my chest. Lord, please don’t let her see this. Don’t let her hear what Miss Hilly saying about me. Down the hall, the door opens and Mae Mobley walks out. She blinks at us and coughs.
 “Aibee, my froat hurts.”
 “I—I be right there, baby.”

Mae Mobley coughs again and it sounds bad, like a dog barking, and I start for the hall, but Miss Hilly say, “Aibileen, you stay where you are, Elizabeth can take care of her kids.”

Miss Leefolt look at Hilly like, Do I have to? But then she get up and trudge down the hall. She take Mae Mobley into Li’l Man’s room and shut the door. It’s just two of us left now, me and Miss Hilly.

Miss Hilly lean back in her chair, say, “I won’t tolerate liars.”

My head swimming. I want to set down. “I didn’t steal no silver, Miss Hilly.”
 “I’m not talking about silver,” she say, leaning forward. She hissing in a whisper so Miss Leefolt don’t hear her. “I’m talking about those things you wrote about Elizabeth. She has no idea Chapter Two is about her and I am too good of a friend to tell her. And maybe I can’t send you to jail for what you wrote about Elizabeth, but I can send you to jail for being a thief.”

I ain’t going to no penitentiary. I ain’t, is all I can think.
 “And your friend, Minny? She’s got a nice surprise coming to her. I’m calling Johnny Foote and telling him he needs to fire her right now.”

The room getting blurry. I’m shaking my head and my fists is clenching tighter.
 “I’m pretty darn close to Johnny Foote. He listens to what I—”
 “Miss Hilly.” I say it loud and clear. She stops. I bet Miss Hilly ain’t been interrupted in ten years.

I say, “I know something about you and don’t you forget that.”

She narrow her eyes at me. But she don’t say nothing.
 “And from what I hear, they’s a lot a time to write a lot a letters in jail.” I’m trembling. My breath feel like fire. “Time to write to ever person in Jackson the truth about you. Plenty a time and the paper is free.”
 “Nobody would believe something you wrote, Nigra.”
 “I don’t know. I been told I’m a pretty good writer.”

She fish her tongue out and touch that sore with it. Then she drop her eyes from mine.

Before she can say anything else, the door flies open down the hall. Mae Mobley runs out in her nightie and she stop in front a me. She hiccupping and crying and her little nose is red as a rose. Her mama must a told her I’m leaving.

God, I pray, tell me she didn’t repeat Miss Hilly’s lies.

Baby Girl grab the skirt a my uniform and don’t let go. I touch my hand to her forehead and she burning with fever.
 “Baby, you need to get back in the bed.”
 “Noooo,” she bawls. “Don’t gooo, Aibee.”

Miss Leefolt come out a the bedroom, frowning, holding Li’l Man.
 “Aibee!” he call out, grinning.
 “Hey . . . Li’l Man,” I whisper. I’m so glad he don’t understand what’s going on. “Miss Leefolt, lemme take her in the kitchen and give her some medicine. Her fever is real high.”

Miss Leefolt glance at Miss Hilly, but she just setting there with her arms crossed. “Alright, go on,” Miss Leefolt say.

I take Baby Girl’s hot little hand and lead her into the kitchen. She bark out that scary cough again and I get the baby aspirin and the cough syrup. Just being in here with me, she calmed down some, but tears is still running down her face.

I put her up on the counter and crush up a little pink pill, mix it with some applesauce and feed her the spoonful. She swallow it down and I know it hurts her. I smooth her hair back. That clump a bangs she cut off with her construction scissors is growing back sticking straight out. Miss Leefolt can’t hardly look at her lately.
 “Please don’t leave, Aibee,” she say, starting to cry again.
 “I got to, baby. I am so sorry.” And that’s when I start to cry. I don’t want to, it’s just gone make it worse for her, but I can’t stop.
 “Why? Why don’t you want to see me anymore? Are you going to take care of another little girl?” Her forehead is all wrinkled up, just like when her mama fuss at her. Law, I feel like my heart’s gone bleed to death.

I take her face in my hands, feeling the scary heat coming off her cheeks. “No, baby, that’s not the reason. I don’t want a leave you, but . . .” How do I put this? I can’t tell her I’m fired, I don’t want her to blame her mama and make it worse between em. “It’s time for me to retire. You my last little girl,” I say, because this is the truth, it just ain’t by my own choosing.

I let her cry a minute on my chest and then I take her face into my hands again. I take a deep breath and I tell her to do the same.
 “Baby Girl,” I say. “I need you to remember everthing I told you. Do you remember what I told you?”

She still crying steady, but the hiccups is gone. “To wipe my bottom good when I’m done?”
 “No, baby, the other. About what you are.”

I look deep into her rich brown eyes and she look into mine. Law, she got old-soul eyes, like she done lived a thousand years. And I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. A flash from the future. She is tall and straight. She is proud. She got a better haircut. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full-grown woman.

And then she say it, just like I need her to. “You is kind,” she say, “you is smart. You is important.”
 “Oh Law.” I hug her hot little body to me. I feel like she done just given me a gift. “Thank you, Baby Girl.”
 “You’re welcome,” she say, like I taught her to. But then she lay her head on my shoulder and we cry like that awhile, until Miss Leefolt come into the kitchen.
 “Aibileen,” Miss Leefolt say real quiet.
 “Miss Leefolt, are you . . . sure this what you . . .” Miss Hilly walk in behind her and glare at me. Miss Leefolt nods, looking real guilty.
 “I’m sorry, Aibileen. Hilly, if you want to . . . press charges, that’s up to you.”

Miss Hilly sniff at me and say, “It’s not worth my time.”

Miss Leefolt sigh like she relieved. For a second, our eyes meet and I can see that Miss Hilly was right. Miss Leefolt ain’t got no idea Chapter Two is her. Even if she had a hint of it, she’d never admit to herself that was her.

I push back on Mae Mobley real gentle and she looks at me, then over at her mama through her sleepy, fever eyes. She look like she’s dreading the next fifteen years a her life, but she sighs, like she is just too tired to think about it. I put her down on her feet, give her a kiss on the forehead, but then she reaches out to me again. I have to back away.

I go in the laundry room, get my coat and my pocketbook.

I walk out the back door, to the terrible sound a Mae Mobley crying again. I start down the driveway, crying too, knowing how much I’m on miss Mae Mobley, praying her mama can show her more love. But at the same time feeling, in a way, that I’m free, like Minny. Freer than Miss Leefolt, who so locked up in her own head she don’t even recognize herself when she read it. And freer than Miss Hilly. That woman gone spend the rest a her life trying to convince people she didn’t eat that pie. I think about Yule May setting in jail. Cause Miss Hilly, she in her own jail, but with a lifelong term.

I head down the hot sidewalk at eight thirty in the morning wondering what I’m on do with the rest a my day. The rest a my life. I am shaking and crying and a white lady walk by frowning at me. The paper gone pay me ten dollars a week, and there’s the book money plus a little more coming. Still, it ain’t enough for me to live the rest a my life on. I ain’t gone be able to get no other job as a maid, not with Miss Leefolt and Miss Hilly calling me a thief. Mae Mobley was my last white baby. And here I just bought this new uniform.

The sun is bright but my eyes is wide open. I stand at the bus stop like I been doing for forty-odd years. In thirty minutes, my whole life’s . . . done. Maybe I ought to keep writing, not just for the paper, but something else, about all the people I know and the things I seen and done. Maybe I ain’t too old to start over, I think and I laugh and cry at the same time at this. Cause just last night I thought I was finished with everything new.END