The Help《姐妹》(2)

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
Chapter 9
ON SATURDAY, the day of my date with Stuart Whitworth, I sit for two hours under the Shinalator (results, it seems, only last until the next wash). When I’m dry, I go to Kennington’s and buy the flattest shoes I can find and a slim black crepe dress. I hate shopping, but I’m glad for the distraction, to not have to worry about Missus Stein or Aibileen for an afternoon. I charge the eighty-five dollars to Mother’s account since she’s always begging me to go buy new clothes. (“Something flattering for your size.”) I know Mother would profoundly disapprove of the cleavage the dress enables me to have. I’ve never owned a dress like this.

In the Kennington’s parking lot I start the car, but cannot drive for the sudden pains in my stomach. I grip the white padded steering wheel, telling myself for the tenth time that it’s ridiculous to wish for something I’ll never have. To think I know the color blue his eyes are from a black-and-white photograph. To consider something a chance that is nothing but paper and filament and postponed dinners. But the dress, with my new hair, it actually looks pretty good on me. And I can’t help but hope.

IT WAS FOUR MONTHS AGO when Hilly showed me the picture, out back by her swimming pool. Hilly was tanning in the sun, I was fanning in the murky shade. My heat rash had flared in July and hadn’t subsided.
 “I’m busy,” I said. Hilly sat on the edge of the pool, saggy and post-pregnant fat, inexplicably confident in her black swimsuit. Her stomach was paunchy, but her legs, as always, were thin and pretty.
 “I haven’t even told you when he’s coming,” she said. “And he comes from such a good family.” She was, of course, talking about her own. He was William’s second cousin removed. “Just meet him and see what you think.”

I looked down at the picture again. He had clear open eyes, light brown curly hair, was the tallest in a group of men by a lake. But his body was half-hidden by the others. He must not have all his limbs.
 “There’s nothing wrong with him,” Hilly said. “Ask Elizabeth, she met him at the Benefit last year while you were up at school. Not to mention, he dated Patricia van Devender for forever.”
 “Patricia van Devender?” Most Beautiful at Ole Miss, two years in a row?
 “Plus he started his own oil business over in Vicksburg. So if it doesn’t work out, it’s not like you’ll be running into him every day in town.”
 “Alright,” I finally sighed, more than anything to get Hilly off my back.

IT’s PAST THREE O’CLOCK BY the time I get back home from buying the dress. I’m supposed to be at Hilly’s at six to meet Stuart. I check the mirror. The curls are starting to fray on the ends, but rest of my hair is still smooth. Mother was thrilled when I told her I wanted to try the Shinalator again and wasn’t even suspicious of why. She doesn’t know about my date tonight and if she somehow finds out, the next three months will be full of excruciating questions like “Did he call?” and “What did you do wrong?” when it doesn’t work out.

Mother’s downstairs in the relaxing room with Daddy, hollering at the Rebel basketball team. My brother, Carlton, is on the sofa with his shiny new girlfriend. They drove up this afternoon from LSU. She has a dark straight pontytail and wears a red blouse.

When I get Carlton alone in the kitchen, he laughs, yanks my hair like we’re kids again. “So how are you, sister?”

I tell him about the job at the paper, that I’m editor of the League newsletter. I also tell him he better be moving back home after law school. “You deserve some of Mother’s time too. I’m taking more than my fair share here,” I say through gritted teeth.

He laughs like he understands, but how could he really? He’s three years older than me and great-looking, tall with wavy blond hair, finishing LSU law school, protected by a hundred and seventy miles of badly paved roads.

When he goes back to his girlfriend, I search for Mother’s car keys, but I can’t find them anywhere. It’s already a quarter to five. I go and stand in the doorway, try to catch Mother’s attention. I have to wait for her to finish firing questions at Ponytail Girl about her people and where she’s from, but Mother will not let up until she finds at least one person they have in common. After that, it’s what sorority the girl was in at Vanderbilt, and she finally concludes by asking what her silver pattern is. It’s better than a horoscope, Mother always says.

Ponytail Girl says her family pattern is Chantilly, but she’ll be picking out her own new pattern when she gets married. “Since I consider myself an independent thinker and all.” Carlton pets her on the head and she nudges against his hand like a cat. They both look up at me and smile.
 “Skeeter,” Ponytail Girl says to me across the room, “you’re so lucky to come from a Francis the First family pattern. Will you keep it when you get married?”
 “Francis the First is just dreamy,” I beam. “Why, I pull those forks out all the time just to look at them.”

Mother narrows her eyes at me. I motion her to the kitchen, but another ten minutes pass until she comes in.
 “Where in the world are your keys, Mama? I’m late for Hilly’s. I’m staying there tonight.”
 “What? But Carlton’s home. What’s his new friend going to think if you leave for something better to do?”

I’ve put off telling her this because I knew, whether Carlton was home or not, it would turn into an argument.
 “And Pascagoula made a roast and Daddy’s got the wood all ready for a fire tonight in the relaxing room.”
 “It’s eighty-five degrees outside, Mama.”
 “Now look. Your brother is home and I expect you to behave like a good sister. I don’t want you leaving until you’ve had a nice long visit with this girl.” She’s looking at her watch while I remind myself I’m twenty-three years old. “Please, darling,” she says and I sigh and carry a damn tray of mint juleps out to the others.
 “Mama,” I say back in the kitchen at five twenty-eight. “I’ve got to go. Where are your keys? Hilly’s waiting on me.”
 “But we haven’t even had the pigs in a blanket yet.”
 “Hilly’s got . . . a stomach bug,” I whisper. “And her help doesn’t come in tomorrow. She needs me to watch the kids.”

Mother sighs. “I guess that means you’re going to church with them too. And I thought we could all go tomorrow as a family. Have Sunday dinner together.”
 “Mama, please,” I say, rummaging through a basket where she keeps her keys. “I can’t find your keys anywhere.”
 “You can’t take the Cadillac overnight. That’s our good Sunday church car.”

He’s going to be at Hilly’s in thirty minutes. I’m supposed to dress and do my makeup at Hilly’s so Mother won’t suspect anything. I can’t take Daddy’s new truck. It’s full of fertilizer and I know he’ll need it at dawn tomorrow.
 “Alright, I’ll take the old truck, then.”
 “I believe it has a trailer on it. Go ask your daddy.”

But I can’t ask Daddy because I can’t go through this in front of three other people who will look all hurt that I’m leaving, so I grab the old truck keys and say, “It doesn’t matter. I’m just going straight to Hilly’s,” and I huff outside only to find that not only does the old truck have a trailer hitched to it, but a half-ton tractor on top of that trailer.

So I drive into town for my first date in two years in a red 1941 Chevrolet four-on-the-floor with a John Deere motor grader hooked behind me. The engine sputters and churns and I wonder if the truck will make it. Chunks of mud spray behind me off the tires. The engine stalls on the main road, sending my dress and bag flying onto the dirty floor. I have to restart twice.

At five forty-five, a black thing streaks out in front of me and I feel a thunk. I try to stop but braking’s just not something you can do very quickly with a 10,000-pound piece of machinery behind you. I groan and pull over. I have to go check. Remarkably, the cat stands up, looks around stunned, and shoots back into the woods as quickly as it came.

At three minutes to six, after doing twenty in a fifty with horns honking and teenagers hollering at me, I park down the street from Hilly’s house since Hilly’s cul-de-sac doesn’t provide adequate parking for farm equipment. I grab my bag and run inside without even knocking, all out of breath and sweaty and windblown and there they are, the three of them, including my date. Having highballs in the front living room.

I freeze in the entrance hall with all of them looking at me. William and Stuart both stand up. God, he’s tall, has at least four inches over me. Hilly’s eyes are big when she grabs my arm. “Boys, we’ll be right back. Y’all just sit tight and talk about quarterbacks or something.”

Hilly whisks me off to her dressing room and we both start groaning. It’s just so goddamn awful.
 “Skeeter, you don’t even have lipstick on! Your hair looks like a rat’s nest!”
 “I know, look at me!” All traces of the Shinalator’s miracle are gone. “There’s no air-conditioning in the truck. I had to ride with the damn windows down.”

I scrub my face and Hilly sits me in her dressing room chair. She starts combing my hair out the way my mother used to do, twisting it into these giant rollers, spraying it with Final Net.
 “Well? What did you think of him?” she asks.

I sigh and close my unmascaraed eyes. “He looks handsome.”

I smear the makeup on, something I hardly even know how to do. Hilly looks at me and smudges it off with a tissue, reapplies it. I slip into the black dress with the deep V in the front, the black Delman flats. Hilly quickly brushes out my hair. I wash my armpits with a wet rag and she rolls her eyes at me.
 “I hit a cat,” I say.
 “He’s already had two drinks waiting on you.”

I stand up and smooth my dress down. “Alright,” I say, “give it to me. One to ten.”

Hilly looks me up and down, stops on the dip in the front of the dress. She raises her eyebrows. I’ve never shown cleavage before in my life; kind of forgot I had it.
 “Six,” she says, like she is surprised herself.

We just look at each other a second. Hilly lets out a little squeal and I smile back. Hilly’s never given me higher than a four.

When we come back into the front living room, William’s pointing his finger at Stuart. “I’m going to run for that seat and by God, with your daddy’s—”
 “Stuart Whitworth,” Hilly announces, “I’d like to introduce Skeeter Phelan.”

He stands up, and for a minute my head is perfectly quiet inside. I make myself look, like self-inflicted torture, as he takes me in.
 “Stuart here went to school over at the University of Alabama,” William says, adding, “Roll Tide.”
 “Nice to meet you.” Stuart flips me a brief smile. Then he takes a long slurp of his drink until I hear the ice clink against his teeth. “So where we off to?” he asks William.

We take William’s Oldsmobile to the Robert E. Lee Hotel. Stuart opens my door and sits beside me in the back, but then leans over the seat talking to William about deer season the rest of the ride.

At the table, he pulls out my chair for me and I sit, smile, say thank you.
 “You want a drink?” he asks me, not looking my way.
 “No, thanks. Just water, please.”

He turns to the waiter and says, “Double Old Kentucky straight with a water back.”

I guess it’s some time after his fifth bourbon, I say, “So Hilly tells me you’re in the oil business. That must be interesting.”
 “The money’s good. If that’s what you really want to know.”
 “Oh, I didn’t . . .” But I stop because he’s craning his neck at something. I look up and see he’s staring at a woman who’s at the door, a busty blonde with red lipstick and a tight green dress.

William turns to see what Stuart’s looking at, but he swings back around quickly. He shakes his head no, very slightly, at Stuart and I see, heading out the door, it’s Hilly’s old boyfriend, Johnny Foote, with his new wife, Celia. They leave and William and I glance at each other, sharing our relief that Hilly didn’t see them.
 “Lord, that girl’s hot as Tunica blacktop,” Stuart says under his breath and I suppose that’s when I just stop caring what happens.

At some point, Hilly looks at me to see what’s going on. I smile like everything’s fine and she smiles back, happy to see it’s all working out. “William! The lieutenant governor just walked in. Let’s go speak before he sits down.”

They go off together, leaving us, the two lovebirds sitting on the same side of the table, staring at all the happy couples in the room.
 “So,” he says, hardly turning his head. “You ever go to any of the Alabama football games?”

I never even made it to Colonel Field and that was five thousand yards from my bed. “No, I’m not really a football fan.” I look at my watch. It’s hardly seven fifteen.
 “That so.” He eyes the drink the waiter has handed him like he’d really enjoy downing it. “Well, what do you do with your time?”
 “I write a . . . domestic maintenance column for the Jackson Journal.”

He wrinkles his brow, then laughs. “Domestic maintenance. You mean . . . housekeeping?”

I nod.
 “Jesus.” He stirs his drink. “I can’t think of anything worse than reading a column on how to clean house,” he says, and I notice that his front tooth is the slightest bit crooked. I long to point this imperfection out to him, but he finishes his thought with, “Except maybe writing it.”

I just stare at him.
 “Sounds like a ploy to me, to find a husband. Becoming an expert on keeping house.”
 “Well, you must be a genius. You’ve figured out my whole scheme.”
 “Isn’t that what you women from Ole Miss major in? Professional husband hunting?”

I watch him, dumbfounded. I may not’ve had a date in umpteen years, but who does he think he is?
 “I’m sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?”

He blinks at me, then laughs for the first time all night.
 “Not that it’s any of your business,” I say, “but I had to start somewhere if I plan on being a journalist.” I think I’ve actually impressed him. But then he throws back the drink and the look is gone.

We eat dinner, and from his profile I can see his nose is a little pointy. His eyebrows are too thick, and his light brown hair too coarse. We say little else, to each other at least. Hilly chats, throwing things our way like, “Stuart, Skeeter here lives on a plantation just north of town. Didn’t the senator grow up on a peanut farm?”

Stuart orders yet another drink.

When Hilly and I go to the bathroom, she gives me a hopeful smile. “What do you think?”
 “He’s . . . tall,” I say, surprised she hasn’t noticed that not only is my date inexplicably rude, but drop-dead drunk.

The end of the meal finally comes and he and William split the check. Stuart stands up and helps me with my jacket. At least he has nice manners.
 “Jesus, I’ve never met a woman with such long arms,” he says.
 “Well, I’ve never met anybody with such a drinking problem.”
 “Your coat smells like—” He leans down and sniffs it, grimacing. “Fertilizer.”

He strides off to the men’s room and I wish I could disappear.

The car ride, all three minutes of it, is impossibly silent. And long.

We go back inside Hilly’s house. Yule May comes out in her white uniform, says, “They all fine, went to bed good,” and she slips out through the kitchen door. I excuse myself to the bathroom.
 “Skeeter, why don’t you drive Stuart home?” William says when I come out. “I’m bushed, aren’t you, Hilly?”

Hilly’s looking at me like she’s trying to figure out what I want to do. I thought I’d made it obvious when I stayed in the bathroom for ten minutes.
 “Your . . . car’s not here?” I ask the air in front of Stuart.
 “I don’t believe my cousin’s in a position to drive.” William laughs. Everyone’s quiet again.
 “I came in a truck,” I say. “I’d hate for you to . . .”
 “Shoot,” William says, slapping Stuart on the back. “Stuart doesn’t mind riding in a truck, do you, buddy?”
 “William,” Hilly says, “why don’t you drive and, Skeeter, you can ride along.”
 “Not me, I’m too boozed up myself,” William says even though he just drove us home.

Finally, I just walk out the door. Stuart follows me, doesn’t comment that I didn’t park in front of Hilly’s house or in Hilly’s driveway. When we get to my truck, we both stop, stare at the fifteen-foot tractor hooked behind my vehicle.
 “You pulled that thing all by yourself?”

I sigh. I guess it’s because I’m a big person and have never felt petite or particularly feminine or girly, but that tractor. It just seems to sum up so much.
 “That is the funniest damn looking thing I have ever seen,” he says.

I step away from him. “Hilly can take you,” I say. “Hilly will drive you.” He turns and focuses on me for what, I’m pretty sure, is the first time all night. After several long moments of standing there being looked at, my eyes fill with tears. I’m just so tired.
 “Ah, shit,” he says and his body loosens. “Look, I told Hilly I wasn’t ready for any damn date.”
 “Don’t . . .” I say, backing away from him, and I head back to the house.

SUNDAY MORNING I GET up EARLY, before Hilly and William, before the kids and the church traffic. I drive home with the tractor rumbling behind me. The fertilizer smell gives me a hangover even though I had nothing but water last night.

I’d gone back in Hilly’s house last night, Stuart trailing behind me. Knocking on Hilly’s bedroom door, I asked William, who already had a mouth full of toothpaste, would he mind driving Stuart home. I’d walked upstairs to the guest room before he even answered.

I step over Daddy’s dogs on the porch, go into my parents’ house. As soon as I see Mother, I give her a hug. When she tries to let go, I can’t let her.
 “What is it, Skeeter? You didn’t catch Hilly’s stomach bug, did you?”
 “No, I’m fine.” I wish I could tell her about my night. I feel guilty for not being nicer to her, for not needing her until my own life turns bad. I feel bad for wishing Constantine was here instead.

Mother pats my windblown hair down since it must be adding at least two inches to my height. “You sure you’re not feeling bad?”
 “I’m alright, Mama.” I am too tired to resist. I ache like someone kicked me in the stomach. With boots on. It won’t go away.
 “You know,” she says, smiling, “I think this might be the one for Carlton.”
 “Good, Mama,” I say. “I’m really glad for him.”

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK the next morning, the phone rings. Luckily, I’m in the kitchen and pick it up.
 “Miss Skeeter?”

I stand very still, then look out at Mother examining her checkbook at the dining room table. Pascagoula is pulling a roast out of the oven. I go into the pantry and shut the door.
 “Aibileen?” I whisper.

She’s quiet a second and then she blurts it out. “What if—what if you don’t like what I got to say? I mean, about white peoples.”
 “I—I . . . this isn’t about my opinion,” I say. “It doesn’t matter how I feel.”
 “But how I know you ain’t gone get mad, turn around on me?”
 “I don’t . . . I guess you’ll just have to . . . trust me.” I hold my breath, hoping, waiting. There is a long pause.
 “Law have mercy. I reckon I’m on do it.”
 “Aibileen.” My heart is pounding. “You have no idea how much I appreciate—”
 “Miss Skeeter, we gone have to be real careful.”
 “We will, I promise.”
 “And you gone have to change my name. Mine, Miss Leefolt’s, everbody’s.”
 “Of course.” I should’ve mentioned this. “When can we meet? Where can we meet?”
 “Can’t do it in the white neighborhood, that’s for sure. I guess . . . we gone have to do it over at my house.”
 “Do you know any other maids who might be interested?” I ask, even though Missus Stein has only agreed to read one. But I have to be ready, on the slim chance she likes it.

Aibileen is quiet a moment. “I guess I could ask Minny. But she ain’t real keen on talking to white peoples.”
 “Minny? You mean . . . Missus Walters’ old maid,” I say, feeling suddenly how incestuous this is turning. I wouldn’t just be peering into Elizabeth’s life, but Hilly’s too.
 “Minny got her some stories. Sho nuff.”
 “Aibileen,” I say. “Thank you. Oh, thank you.”
 “Yes ma’am.”
 “I just . . . I have to ask you. What changed your mind?”

Aibileen doesn’t even pause. “Miss Hilly,” she says.

I go quiet, thinking of Hilly’s bathroom plan and accusing the maid of stealing and her talk of diseases. The name comes out flat, bitter as a bad pecan.MINNY Chapter 10
I WALK INTO WORK with one thing on my mind. Today is the first day of December and while the rest of the United States is dusting off their manger scenes and pulling out their old stinky stockings, I’ve got another man I’m waiting on. And it’s not Santy Claus and it’s not the Baby Jesus. It’s Mister Johnny Foote, Jr., who will learn that Minny Jackson is his maid on Christmas Eve.

I am waiting on the twenty-fourth like a court date. I don’t know what Mister Johnny’s going to do when he finds out I’m working here. Maybe he’ll say, Good! Come clean my kitchen anytime! Here’s some money! But I’m not that stupid. This secret-keeping is way too fishy for him to be some smiling whitey wanting to give me a raise. There’s a good chance I might not have a job come Christmas Day.

It’s eating me up, not knowing, but what I do know is, a month ago, I decided there had to be a more dignified way to die than having a heart attack squatting on top of a white lady’s toilet lid. And after all that, it wasn’t even Mister Johnny that came home, it was just the damn meter man.

But there wasn’t much relief when it was over. What scared me worse was Miss Celia. Afterwards, during her cooking lesson, she was still shaking so bad, she couldn’t even measure the salt in a spoon.

MONDAY COMES and I can’T stop thinking about Louvenia Brown’s grandson, Robert. He got out of the hospital this weekend, went to live with Louvenia, what with his parents already dead and all. Last night, when I went over there to take them a caramel cake, Robert had a cast on his arm and bandages over his eyes. “Oh, Louvenia,” was all I could say when I saw him. Robert was laid up on the sofa asleep. They’d shaved half his head to operate. Louvenia, with all her troubles, still wanted to know how each and every person in my family was doing. And when Robert started to stir, she asked if I wouldn’t mind going on home because Robert wakes up screaming. Terrified and remembering all over again that he’s blind. She thought it might bother me. I can’t stop thinking about it.
 “I’m going to the store after while,” I say to Miss Celia. I hold the grocery list out for her to see. Every Monday we do this. She gives me the grocery cash and when I get home I push the receipt in her face. I want her to see that every penny of change matches the paper. Miss Celia just shrugs but I keep those tickets safe in a drawer in case there’s ever any question.

Minny cooking:
1. Ham with pineapples
 2. Black-eyed peas
 3. Sweet potatoes
 4. Apple pie
 5. Biscuits


Miss Celia cooking:
1. Butter beans

 “But I did butter beans last week.”
 “Learn those, everything else come easy.”
 “I guess it’s better anyway,” she says. “I can sit down and be still when I’m shelling.”

Almost three months and the fool still can’t boil coffee. I pull out my pie dough, want to get it ready before I go to the store.
 “Can we do a chocolate pie this time? I love chocolate pie.”

I grit my teeth. “I don’t know how to cook no chocolate pie,” I lie. Never. Never again after Miss Hilly.
 “You can’t? Gosh, I thought you could cook anything. Maybe we ought to get us a recipe.”
 “What else kind a pie you thinking about?”
 “Well, what about that peach pie you did that time?” she says, pouring a glass of milk. “That was real good.”
 “Them peaches from Mexico. Peaches ain’t in season around here yet.”
 “But I saw them advertised in the paper.”

I sigh. Nothing is easy with her, but at least she’s off the chocolate. “One thing you got to know, things is best when they in season. You don’t cook pumpkins in the summer, you don’t cook peaches in the fall. You can’t find it selling on the side a the road, it ain’t in. Let’s just do us a nice pecan pie instead.”
 “And Johnny loved those pralines you did. He thought I was the smartest girl he’d ever met when I gave him those.”

I turn back to my dough so she can’t see my face. Twice in a minute she’s managed to irritate me. “Anything else you want Mister Johnny to think you did?” Besides being scared out of my wits, I am sick and tired of passing off my cooking for somebody else’s. Except my kids, my cooking’s the only thing I’m proud of.
 “No, that’s all.” Miss Celia smiles, doesn’t notice I’ve stretched my pie crust to where five holes rip through. Just twenty-four more days of this shit. I am praying to the Lord and the devil on the side that Mister Johnny doesn’t come home before then.

EVERY OTHER DAY, I hear Miss Celia on the phone in her room, calling and calling the society ladies. The Benefit was three weeks ago and here she is already gunning up for next year. She and Mister Johnny didn’t go or I would’ve heard plenty about it.

I didn’t work the Benefit this year, first time in a decade. The money’s pretty good, but I just couldn’t risk running into Miss Hilly.
 “Could you tell her Celia Foote called again? I left her a message a few days back . . .”

Miss Celia’s voice is chipper, like she’s peddling something on the tee-vee. Every time I hear it, I want to jerk the phone out of her hand, tell her to quit wasting her time. Because never mind she looks like a hussy. There’s a bigger reason why Miss Celia doesn’t have any friends and I knew it the minute I saw that picture of Mister Johnny. I’ve served enough bridge club luncheons to know something about every white woman in this town. Mister Johnny dumped Miss Hilly for Miss Celia back in college, and Miss Hilly never got over him.

I Walk in THE CHURCH on Wednesday night. It’s not but half full since it’s only a quarter to seven and the choir doesn’t start singing until seven thirty. But Aibileen asked me to come early so here I am. I’m curious what she has to say. Plus Leroy was in a good mood and playing with the kids so I figure, if he wants them, he can have them.

I see Aibileen in our usual pew, left side, fourth from the front, right by the window fan. We’re prime members and we deserve a prime spot. She’s got her hair smoothed back, a little roll of pencil curls around her neck. She’s wearing a blue dress with big white buttons that I’ve never seen before. Aibileen has white lady clothes out the wazoo. White ladies love giving her their old stuff. As usual, she looks plump and respectable, but for all her prim and proper, Aibileen can still tell a dirty joke that’ll make you tinkle in your pants.

I walk up the aisle, see Aibileen frown at something, creasing her forehead. For a second I can see the fifteen-odd years between us. But then she smiles and her face goes young and fat again.
 “Lord,” I say as soon as I’m settled in.
 “I know. Somebody got to tell her.” Aibileen fans her face with her hanky. It was Kiki Brown’s morning for cleaning and the whole church is gaudied up with her lemon smell-good she makes and tries to sell for twenty-five cents a bottle. We have a sign-up sheet for cleaning the church. Ask me, Kiki Brown ought to sign a little less and the men ought to sign a lot more. Far as I know, no man has signed that sheet once.

Besides the smell, the church looks pretty good. Kiki shined the pews to where you could pick your teeth looking at them. The Christmas tree’s already up, next to the altar, full of tinsel and a shiny gold star on top. Three windows of the church have stained glass—the birth of Christ, Lazarus raised from the dead, and the teaching of those fool Pharisees. The other seven are filled with regular clear panes. We’re still raising money for those.
 “How Benny’s asthma?” Aibileen asks.
 “Had a little spell yesterday. Leroy dropping him and the rest a the kids by in a while. Let’s hope the lemon don’t kill him.”
 “Leroy.” Aibileen shakes her head and laughs. “Tell him I said he better behave. Or I put him on my prayer list.”
 “I wish you would. Oh Lord, hide the food.”

Hoity-toity Bertrina Bessemer waddles toward us. She leans over the pew in front of us, smilling with a big, tacky blue-bird hat on. Bertrina, she’s the one who called Aibileen a fool for all those years.
 “Minny,” Bertrina says, “I sure was glad to hear about your new job.”
 “Thank you, Bertrina.”
 “And Aibileen, I thank you for putting me on your prayer list. My angina sure is better now. I call you this weekend and we catch up.”

Aibileen smiles, nods. Bertrina waddles off to her pew.
 “Maybe you ought a be a little pickier who you pray for,” I say.
 “Aw, I ain’t mad at her no more,” says Aibileen. “And look a there, she done lost some weight.”
 “She telling everybody she lost forty pounds,” I say.
 “Lord a mercy.”
 “Only got two hundred more to go.”

Aibileen tries not to smile, acts like she’s waving away the lemon smell.
 “So what you want me to come early for?” I ask. “You miss me or something?”
 “Naw, it’s no big deal. Just something somebody said.”
 “What?”

Aibileen takes a breath, looks around for anybody listening. We’re like royalty here. Folks are always hemming in on us.
 “You know that Miss Skeeter?” she asks.
 “I told you I did the other day.”

She quiets her voice, says, “Well, remember how I slipped up and told her about Treelore writing colored things down?”
 “I remember. She want a sue you for that?”
 “No, no. She nice. But she had the gall to ask if me and some a my maid friends might want a put down on paper what it’s like to tend for white people. Say she writing a book.”
 “Say what?”

Aibileen nods, raises her eyebrows. “Mm-hmm.”
 “Phhh. Well, you tell her it’s a real Fourth of July picnic. It’s what we dream a doing all weekend, get back in they houses to polish they silver,” I say.
 “I told her, let the regular old history books tell it. White people been representing colored opinions since the beginning a time.”
 “That’s right. You tell her.”
 “I did. I tell her she crazy,” Aibileen says. “I ask her, what if we told the truth? How we too scared to ask for minimum wage. How nobody gets paid they Social Security. How it feel when your own boss be calling you . . .” Aibileen shakes her head. I’m glad she doesn’t say it.
 “How we love they kids when they little . . .” she says and I see Aibileen’s lip tremble a little. “And then they turn out just like they mamas.”

I look down and see Aibileen’s gripping her black pocketbook like it’s the only thing she has left in this world. Aibileen, she moves on to another job when the babies get too old and stop being color-blind. We don’t talk about it.
 “Even if she is changing all the names a the help and the white ladies,” she sniff.
 “She crazy if she think we do something dangerous as that. For her.”
 “We don’t want a bring all that mess up.” Aibileen wipes her nose with a hankie. “Tell people the truth.”
 “No, we don’t,” I say, but I stop. It’s something about that word truth. I’ve been trying to tell white women the truth about working for them since I was fourteen years old.
 “We don’t want a change nothing around here,” Aibileen says and we’re both quiet, thinking about all the things we don’t want to change. But then Aibileen narrows her eyes at me, asks, “What. You don’t think it’s a crazy idea?”
 “I do, I just . . .” And that’s when I see it. We’ve been friends for sixteen years, since the day I moved from Greenwood to Jackson and we met at the bus stop. I can read Aibileen like the Sunday paper. “You thinking about it, ain’t you,” I say. “You want a talk to Miss Skeeter.”

She shrugs and I know I’m right. But before Aibileen can confess, Reverend Johnson comes and sits down in the pew behind us, leans between our shoulders. “Minny, I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to tell you congratulations on your new job.”

I smooth my dress down. “Why, thank you, Reverend Minister.”
 “You must of been on Aibileen’s prayer list,” he says, patting Aibileen on the shoulder.
 “Sure was. I told Aibileen, at this rate, she needs to start charging.”

The Reverend laughs. He gets up and treads slowly to the pulpit. Everything goes still. I can’t believe Aibileen wants to tell Miss Skeeter the truth.

Truth.

It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that’s been burning me up all my life.

Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.

Reverend Johnson raises his hands and speaks in a soft, deep voice. The choir behind him begins to hum “Talking to Jesus” and we all stand up. In half a minute I’m sweating.
 “Think you might be interested? In talking to Miss Skeeter?” whispers Aibileen.

I look back and there’s Leroy with the kids, late as usual. “Who, me?” I say and my voice is loud against the soft music. I tamp it down, but not by much.
 “Ain’t no way I’m gonna do something crazy as that.”

FOR NO REASON but to irritate me, we get a heat wave in December. In forty degrees, I sweat like iced tea in August and here I woke up this morning to eighty-three on the dial. I’ve spent half my life trying not to sweat so much: Dainty Lady sweat cream, frozen potatoes in my pockets, ice pack tied to my head (I actually paid a doctor for that fool advice), and I still soak my sweat pads through in five minutes. I tote my Fairley Funeral Home fan every place I go. Works good and it was free.

Miss Celia takes to the week of warm weather, though, and actually goes outside and sits by the pool in these tacky white sunglasses and a fuzzy bathrobe. Thank the Lord she’s out of the house. At first I thought maybe she was sick in the body, but now I’m wondering if she’s sick in the head. I don’t mean the talking to yourself variety you see in old ladies like Miss Walters where you know it’s just the old timers disease, but the capital C crazy where you get hauled to Whitfield in a straitjacket.

I catch her slipping upstairs to the empty bedrooms almost every day now. I hear her sneaky little feet walking down the hall, passing over that little squeak in the floor. I don’t think much of it—heck, it’s her house. But then one day, she does it again, and then again, and it’s the fact that she’s so darn sneaky about it, waiting until I turn on the Hoover or get busy on a cake, that makes me suspicious. She spends about seven or eight minutes up there and then pokes her little head around to make sure I don’t see her come down again.
 “Don’t go getting in her business,” Leroy says. “You just make sure she tells her mister you cleaning his house.” Leroy’s been on the damn Crow the past couple of nights, drinking behind the power plant after his shift. He’s no fool. He knows if I’m dead, that paycheck won’t be showing up on its own.

After she makes her trip upstairs, Miss Celia comes to the kitchen table instead of going back to bed. I wish she’d get on out of here. I’m pulling chicken off the bone. I’ve got the broth boiling and the dumplings already cut. I don’t want her trying to help with this.
 “Just thirteen more days before you tell Mister Johnny about me,” I say, and like I knew she would, Miss Celia gets up from the kitchen table and heads for her bedroom. But before she makes it out the door she mutters, “Do you have to remind me of that fact every day of my life?”

I stand up straighter. That’s the first time Miss Celia’s ever gotten cross with me. “Mm-hmm,” I tell her, not even looking up because I will remind her until Mister Johnny’s shook my hand and said nice to meet you, Minny.

But then I look over and see Miss Celia still standing there. She’s holding on to the doorframe. Her face has gone flat white, like cheap wall paint.
 “You been fooling with the raw chicken again?”
 “No, I’m . . . just tired.”

But the pricks of sweat on her makeup—that now’s gone gray—tell me she’s not fine. I help her to bed and bring her the Lady-a-Pinkam to drink. The pink label has a picture of a real proper lady on it with a turban on her head, smiling like she feels better. I hand Miss Celia the spoon to measure it out, but that tacky woman just drinks it straight from the bottle.

Afterward, I wash my hands. Whatever it is she’s got, I hope it ain’t catching.

THE DAY AFTER Miss CELIA’S face goes funny is change-the-damn-sheets day and the day I hate the most. Sheets are just too personal a thing for folks who aren’t kin to be fooling with. They are full of hair and scabs and snot and the signs of jelly-rolling. But it’s the blood stains that are the worst. Scrubbing those out with my bare hands, I gag over the sink. That goes for blood anywhere and anything with a suspicious resemblance. A stepped-on strawberry can hang me over the toilet bowl for the rest of the day.

Miss Celia knows about Tuesdays and usually she moves out to the sofa so I can do my work. A cold front started in this morning, so she can’t go out to the swimming pool, and they say the weather’s going to get worse. But at nine, then ten, then eleven the bedroom door’s still closed. Finally, I knock.
 “Yes?” she says. I open the door.
 “Morning, Miss Celia.”
 “Hey, Minny.”
 “It’s Tuesday.”

Not only is Miss Celia still in bed, she’s curled up on top of the covers in her nightgown without a drop of her makeup on.
 “I got to get them sheets washed and ironed and then I got to get to this old chiffarobe you done let go dry as Texas. And then we cooking—”
 “No learning lesson today, Minny.” She isn’t smiling either, like she usually does when she sees me.
 “You feeling bad?”
 “Fetch me some water, will you?”
 “Yes’m.” I go in the kitchen and fill up a glass from the sink. She must be feeling bad because she’s never asked me to serve her anything before.

When I walk back in the bedroom though, Miss Celia’s not in bed and the bathroom door’s closed. Now why’d she ask me to go get her water if she’s got the means to get up and go to the bathroom? At least she’s out of my way. I pick Mister Johnny’s pants up off the floor, toss them over my shoulder. Ask me, this woman doesn’t take enough exercise, sitting around the house all day. Oh now, Minny, don’t go on that way. If she’s sick, she’s sick.
 “You sick?” I holler outside the bathroom door.
 “I’m . . . fine.”
 “While you in there, I’m on go head and change these sheets.”
 “No, I want you to go on,” she says through the door. “Go on home for the day, Minny.”

I stand there and tap my foot on her yellow rug. I don’t want to go on home. It’s Tuesday, change-the-damn-sheets day. If I don’t do it today, that makes Wednesday change-the-damn-sheets day too.
 “What Mister Johnny gone do if he come home and the house’s a mess?”
 “He’s at the deer camp tonight. Minny, I need you to bring me the phone over—” her voice breaks into a trembly wail. “Drag it on over and fetch my phone book that’s setting in the kitchen.”
 “You sick, Miss Celia?”

But she doesn’t answer so I go get the book and stretch the phone over to the bathroom door and tap on it.
 “Just leave it there.” Miss Celia sounds like she’s crying now. “I want you to go on home now.”
 “But I just gots—”
 “I said go home, Minny!”

I step back from that closed door. Heat rises up my face. And it stings, not because I haven’t been yelled at before. I just haven’t been yelled at by Miss Celia yet.

THE NEXT MORNING, Woody Asap on Channel Twelve is waving his white scaly hands all over the state map. Jackson, Mississippi, is frozen like an ice pop. First it rained, then it froze, then anything with more than a half-inch extending broke off to the ground by this morning. Tree branches, power lines, porch awnings collapsed like they’d plumb given up. Outside’s been dunked in a shiny clear bucket of shellac.

My kids glue their sleepy faces to the radio and when the box says the roads are frozen and school is closed, they all jump around and whoop and whistle and run outside to look at the ice with nothing on but their long johns.
 “Get back in this house and put some shoes on!” I holler out the door. Not one of them does. I call Miss Celia to tell her I can’t drive in the ice and to find out if she’s got power out there. After she yelled at me like I was a nigger in the road yesterday, you’d think I wouldn’t give a hoot about her.

When I call, I hear, “Yeeello.”

My heart hiccups.
 “Who is this? Who’s calling here?”

Real careful I hang up that phone. I guess Mister Johnny’s not working today either. I don’t know how he made it home with the storm. All I know is, even on a day off, I can’t escape the fear of that man. But in eleven days, that’s all going to be over.

MOST Of THE TOWN THAWS in a day. Miss Celia’s not in bed when I walk in. She’s sitting at the white kitchen table staring out the window with an ugly look on her face like her poor fancy life is just too hot a hell to live in. It’s the mimosa tree she’s eyeing out there. It took the ice pretty hard. Half of the branches broke off and all the spindly leaves are brown and soggy.
 “Morning, Minny,” she says, not even looking my way.

But I just nod. I have nothing to say to her, not after the way she treated me day before yesterday.
 “We can finally cut that old ugly thing down now,” says Miss Celia.
 “Go ahead. Cut em all down.” Just like me, cut me down for no reason at all.

Miss Celia gets up and comes over to the sink where I’m standing. She grabs hold of my arm. “I’m sorry I hollered at you like I did.” Tears brim up in her eyes when she says it.
 “Mm-hmm.”
 “I was sick and I know that’s no excuse, but I was feeling real poor and . . .” She starts sobbing then, like the worst thing she’s ever done in her life is yell at her maid.
 “Alright,” I say. “Ain’t nothing to boo-hoo over.”

And then she hugs me tight around the neck until I kind of pat her on the back and peel her off. “Go on, set down,” I say. “I’ll fix you some coffee.”

I guess we all get a little snippy when we’re not feeling good.

BY THE NEXT MONDAY, the leaves on that mimosa tree have turned black like it burned instead of froze. I come in the kitchen ready to tell her how many days we have left, but Miss Celia’s staring at that tree, hating it with her eyes the same way she hates the stove. She’s pale, won’t eat anything I put in front of her.

All day, instead of laying up in bed, she works on decorating the ten-foot Christmas tree in the foyer, making my life a vacuuming hell with all the needles flying around. Then she goes in the backyard, starts clipping the rose bushes and digging the tulip bulbs. I’ve never seen her move that much, ever. She comes in for her cooking lesson afterward with dirt under her nails but she’s still not smiling.
 “Six more days before we tell Mister Johnny,” I say.

She doesn’t say anything for a while, then her voice comes out flat as a pan. “Are you sure I have to? I was thinking maybe we could wait.”

I stop where I am, with buttermilk dripping off my hands. “Ask me how sure I am again.”
 “Alright, alright.” And then she goes outside again to take up her new favorite pastime, staring down that mimosa tree with the axe in her hand. But she never takes a chop.

Wednesday night all I can think is just ninety-six more hours. Knowing I might not have a job after Christmas gnaws at my stomach. I’ll have a lot more to worry about than just being shot dead. Miss Celia’s supposed to tell him on Christmas Eve, after I leave, before they go over to Mister Johnny’s mama’s house. But Miss Celia’s acting so strange, I wonder if she’s going to try and back out. No ma’am, I say to myself all day. I intend to stay on her like hair on soap.

When I walk in Thursday morning though, Miss Celia’s not even home. I can’t believe she’s actually left the house. I sit at the table and pour myself a cup of coffee.

I look out at the backyard. It’s bright, sunny. That black mimosa tree sure is ugly. I wonder why Mister Johnny doesn’t just go ahead and cut that thing down.

I lean in a little closer to the windowsill. “Well look a there.” Down around the bottom, some green fronds are still hanging on, perking up a little in the sun.
 “That old tree just playing possum.”

I pull a pad out of my pocketbook where I keep a list of what needs to be tended to, not for Miss Celia, but my own groceries, Christmas presents, things for my kids. Benny’s asthma has gotten a little better but Leroy came home last night smelling like Old Crow again. He pushed me hard and I bumped my thigh on the kitchen table. He comes home like that tonight, I’ll fix him a knuckle sandwich for supper.

I sigh. Seventy-two more hours and I’m a free woman. Maybe fired, maybe dead after Leroy finds out, but free.

I try to concentrate on the week. Tomorrow’s heavy cooking and I’ve got the church supper Saturday night and the service on Sunday. When am I going to clean my own house? Wash my own kids’ clothes? My oldest girl, Sugar, is sixteen and pretty good about keeping things neat, but I like to help her out on the weekends the way my mama never helped me. And Aibileen. She called me again last night, asked if I’d help her and Miss Skeeter with the stories. I love Aibileen, I do. But I think she’s making a king-sized mistake trusting a white lady. And I told her, too. She’s risking her job, her safety. Not to mention why anyone would want to help a friend of Miss Hilly’s.

Lord, I better get on with my work.

I pineapple the ham and get it in the oven. Then I dust the shelves in the hunting room, vacuum the bear while he stares at me like I’m a snack. “Just you and me today,” I tell him. As usual he doesn’t say much. I get my rag and my oil soap, work my way up the staircase, polishing each spoke on the banister as I go. When I make it to the top, I head into bedroom number one.

I clean upstairs for about an hour. It’s chilly up here, no bodies to warm it up. I work my arm back and forth, back and forth across everything wood. Between the second and third bedrooms, I go downstairs to Miss Celia’s room before she comes back.

I get that eerie prickle, of being in a house so empty. Where’d she go? After working here all this time and her only leaving three times and always telling me when and where and why she’s leaving, like I care anyway, now she’s gone like the wind. I ought to be happy. I ought to be glad that fool’s out of my hair. But being here by myself, I feel like an intruder. I look down at the little pink rug that covers the bloodstain by the bathroom. Today I was going to take another crack at it. A chill blows through the room, like a ghost passing by. I shiver.

Maybe I won’t work on that bloodstain today.

On the bed the covers, as usual, have been thrown off. The sheets are twisted and turned around the wrong way. It always looks like a wrestling match has gone on in here. I stop myself from wondering. You start to wonder about people in the bedroom, before you know it you’re all wrapped up in their business.

I strip off one of the pillowcases. Miss Celia’s mascara smudged little charcoal butterflies all over it. The clothes on the floor I stuff into the pillowcase to make it easier to carry. I pick up Mister Johnny’s folded pants off the yellow ottoman.
 “Now how’m I sposed to know if these is clean or dirty?” I stick them in the sack anyway. My motto on housekeeping: when in doubt, wash it out.

I tote the bag over to the bureau. The bruise on my thigh burns when I bend down to pick up a pair of Miss Celia’s silky stockings.
 “Who are you?”

I drop the sack.

Slowly, I back away until my bottom bumps the bureau. He’s standing in the doorway, eyes narrowed. Real slow, I look down at the axe hanging from his hand.

Oh Lord. I can’t get to the bathroom because he’s too close and he’d get in there with me. I can’t make it past him out the door unless I pummel him, and the man has an axe. My head throbs hot I’m so panicked. I’m cornered.

Mister Johnny stares down at me. He swings the axe a little. Tilts his head and smiles.

I do the only thing I can do. I wrinkle my face as mean as I can and pull my lips across my teeth and yell: “You and your axe better get out a my way.”

Mister Johnny looks down at the axe, like he forgot he had it. Then back up at me. We stare at each other a second. I don’t move and I don’t breathe.

He sneaks a look over at the sack I’ve dropped to see what I was stealing. The leg of his khakis is poking out the top. “Now, listen,” I say, and tears spring up in my eyes. “Mister Johnny, I told Miss Celia to tell you about me. I must a asked her a thousand times—”

But he just laughs. He shakes his head. He thinks it’s funny he’s about to chop me up.
 “Just listen to me, I told her—”

But he’s still chuckling. “Calm down, girl. I’m not going to get you,” he says. “You surprised me, that’s all.”

I’m panting, easing my way toward the bathroom. He still has the axe in his hand, swinging it a little.
 “What’s your name, anyway?”
 “Minny,” I whisper. I’ve still got five feet to go.
 “How long have you been coming, Minny?”
 “Not long.” I jiggle my head no.
 “How long?”
 “Few . . . weeks,” I say. I bite down on my lip. Three months.

He shakes his head. “Now, I know it’s been longer than that.”

I look at the bathroom door. What good would it do to be in a bathroom where the door won’t even lock? When the man’s got an axe to hack the door down with?
 “I swear I’m not mad,” he says.
 “What about that axe?” I say, my teeth gritted.

He rolls his eyes, then he sets it on the carpet, kicks it to the side.
 “Come on, let’s go have us a talk in the kitchen.”

He turns and walks away. I look down at the axe, wondering if I should take it. Just the sight of it scares me. I push it under the bed and follow him.

In the kitchen, I edge myself close to the back door, check the knob to make sure it’s unlocked.
 “Minny, I promise. It’s fine that you’re here,” he says.

I watch his eyes, trying to see if he’s lying. He’s a big man, six-two at least. A little paunch in the front, but strong looking. “I reckon you gone fire me, then.”
 “Fire you?” He laughs. “You’re the best cook I’ve ever known. Look what you’ve done to me.” He frowns down at his stomach that’s just starting to poke out. “Hell, I haven’t eaten like this since Cora Blue was around. She practically raised me.”

I take a deep breath because his knowing Cora Blue seems to safen things up a little. “Her kids went to my church. I knew her.”
 “I sure do miss her.” He turns, opens the refrigerator, stares in, closes it.
 “When’s Celia coming back? You know?” Mister Johnny asks.
 “I don’t know. I spec she went to get her hair done.”
 “I thought for a while there, when we were eating your food, she really did learn how to cook. Until that Saturday, when you weren’t here, and she tried to make hamburgers.”

He leans against the sink board, sighs. “Why doesn’t she want me to know about you?”
 “I don’t know. She won’t tell me.”

He shakes his head, looks up at the black mark on the ceiling from where Miss Celia burned up the turkey that time. “Minny, I don’t care if Celia never lifts another finger for the rest of her life. But she says she wants to do things for me herself.” He raises his eyebrows a little. “I mean, do you understand what I was eating before you got here?”
 “She learning. Least she . . . trying to learn,” but I kind of snort at this. Some things you just can’t lie about.
 “I don’t care if she can cook. I just want her here”—he shrugs—“with me.”

He rubs his brow with his white shirtsleeve and I see why his shirts are always so dirty. And he is sort of handsome. For a white man.
 “She just doesn’t seem happy,” he says. “Is it me? Is it the house? Are we too far away from town?”
 “I don’t know, Mister Johnny.”
 “Then what’s going on?” He props his hands down on the counter behind him, grabs hold. “Just tell me. Is she”—he swallows hard—“is she seeing somebody else?”

I try not to, but I feel kind of sorry for him then, seeing he’s just as confused as I am about all this mess.
 “Mister Johnny, this ain’t none a my business. But I can tell you Miss Celia ain’t having no relations outside a this house.”

He nods. “You’re right. That was a stupid thing to ask.”

I eye the door, wondering when Miss Celia’s going to be home. I don’t know what she’d do if she found Mister Johnny here.
 “Look,” he says, “don’t say anything about meeting me. I’m going to let her tell me when she’s ready.”

I manage my first real smile. “So you want me to just go on like I been doing?”
 “Look after her. I don’t like her in this big house by herself.”
 “Yessuh. Whatever you say.”
 “I came by today to surprise her. I was going to cut down that mimosa tree she hates so much, then take her into town for lunch. Pick out some jewelry for her Christmas present.” Mister Johnny walks to the window, looks out, and sighs. “I guess I’ll go get lunch in town somewhere.”
 “I fix you something. What you want?”

He turns around, grinning like a kid. I start going through the refrigerator, pulling things out.
 “Remember those pork chops we had that time?” He starts nibbling on his fingernail. “Will you make those for us this week?”
 “I fix em for supper tonight. Got some in the freezer. And tomorrow night you having chicken and dumplings.”
 “Oh, Cora Blue used to make us those.”
 “Sit up there at the table and I’m on do you a good BLT to take with you in the truck.”
 “And will you toast the bread?”
 “A course. Can’t have no proper sandwich on no raw bread. And this afternoon I’ll make one a Minny’s famous caramel cakes. And next week we gone do you a fried catfish . . .”

I pull out the bacon for Mister Johnny’s lunch, get the skillet out to fry. Mister Johnny’s eyes are clear and wide. He’s smiling with every part of his face. I fix his sandwich and wrap it in waxed paper. Finally, somebody I get the satisfaction of feeding.
 “Minny, I have to ask, if you’re here . . . what in the world is Celia doing all day?”

I shrug. “I ain’t never seen a white woman sit there like she do. Most of em is busy-busy, running errands, acting like they busier than me.”
 “She needs some friends. I asked my buddy Will if he’d get his wife to come out and teach her to play bridge, get her in a group. I know Hilly’s the ringleader of all that stuff.”

I stare at him, like if I kept real still, maybe it wouldn’t be true. Finally I ask, “That Miss Hilly Holbrook you talking about?”
 “You know her?” he asks.
 “Mm-hmm.” I swallow the tire iron that’s rising up in my throat at the thought of Miss Hilly hanging around this house. Miss Celia finding out the truth about the Terrible Awful. There’s no way those two could be friends. But I bet Miss Hilly would do anything for Mister Johnny.
 “I’ll call Will tonight and ask him again.” He pats me on my shoulder and I find myself thinking about that word again, truth. And Aibileen’s telling Miss Skeeter all about it. If the truth gets out on me, I’m done. I crossed the wrong person, and that’s all it takes.
 “I’m going to give you my number at the office. Call me if you ever run into trouble, alright?”
 “Yessuh,” I say, feeling my dread erase any relief I had coming to me today.MISS SKEETER Chapter 11
IT’S TECHNICALLY WINTER in most of the nation, but already there is gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands in my mother’s house. Signs of spring have come too early. Daddy’s in a cotton-planting frenzy, had to hire ten extra field workers to till and drive tractors to get the seed in the ground. Mother’s been studying The Farmer’s Almanac, but she’s hardly concerned with planting. She delivers the bad news to me with a hand on her forehead.
 “They say this’ll be the most humid one in years.” She sighs. The Shinalator never did much good after those first few times. “I’d pick up some more spray cans down at Beemon’s, the new extra-heavy kind.”

She looks up from the Almanac, narrows her eyes at me. “What are you dressed that way for?”

I have on my darkest dress, dark stockings. The black scarf over my hair probably makes me look more like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia than Marlene Dietrich. The ugly red satchel hangs from my shoulder.
 “I have some errands to run tonight. Then I’m meeting... some girls. At church.”
 “On a Saturday night?”
 “Mama, God doesn’t care what day of the week it is,” I say and make for the car before she can ask any more questions. Tonight, I’m going to Aibileen’s for her first interview.

My heart racing, I drive fast on the paved town roads, heading for the colored part of town. I’ve never even sat at the same table with a Negro who wasn’t paid to do so. The interview has been delayed by over a month. First, the holidays came and Aibileen had to work late almost every night, wrapping presents and cooking for Elizabeth’s Christmas party. In January, I started to panic when Aibileen got the flu. I’m afraid I’ve waited so long, Missus Stein will have lost interest or forgotten why she even agreed to read it.

I drive the Cadillac through the darkness, turning on Gessum Avenue, Aibileen’s Street. I’d rather be in the old truck, but Mother would’ve been too suspicious and Daddy was using it in the fields. I stop in front of an abandoned, haunted-looking house three down from Aibileen’s, as we planned. The front porch of the spooky house is sagging, the windows have no panes. I step into the dark, lock the doors and walk quickly. I keep my head lowered, my noisy heels clicking on the pavement.

A dog barks and my keys jangle to the pavement. I glimpse around, pick them up. Two sets of colored people sit on porches, watching, rocking. There are no streetlights so it’s hard to say who else sees me. I keep walking, feeling as obvious as my vehicle: large and white.

I reach number twenty-five, Aibileen’s house. I give one last look around, wishing I wasn’t ten minutes early. The colored part of town seems so far away when, evidently, it’s only a few miles from the white part of town.

I knock softly. There are footsteps, and something inside slams closed. Aibileen opens the door. “Come on in,” she whispers and quickly shuts it behind me and locks it.

I’ve never seen Aibileen in anything but her whites. Tonight she has on a green dress with black piping. I can’t help but notice, she stands a little taller in her own house.
 “Make yourself comfortable. I be back real quick.”

Even with the single lamp on, the front room is dark, full of browns and shadows. The curtains are pulled and pinned together so there’s no gap. I don’t know if they’re like that all the time, or just for me. I lower myself onto the narrow sofa. There’s a wooden coffee table with hand-tatted lace draped over the top. The floors are bare. I wish I hadn’t worn such an expensive-looking dress.

A few minutes later, Aibileen comes back with a tray holding a teapot and two cups that don’t match, paper napkins folded into triangles. I smell the cinnamon cookies she’s made. As she pours the tea, the top to the pot rattles.
 “Sorry,” she says and holds the top down. “I ain’t never had a white person in my house before.”

I smile, even though I know it wasn’t meant to be funny. I drink a sip of tea. It is bitter and strong. “Thank you,” I say. “The tea is nice.”

She sits and folds her hands in her lap, looks at me expectantly.
 “I thought we’d do a little background work and then just jump right in with the questions,” I say. I pull out my notebook and scan the questions I’ve prepared. They suddenly seem obvious, amateur.
 “Alright,” she says. She is sitting up very straight, on the sofa, turned toward me.
 “Well, to start, um, when and where were you born?”

She swallows, nods. “Nineteen o-nine. Piedmont Plantation down in Cherokee County.”
 “Did you know when you were a girl, growing up, that one day you’d be a maid?”
 “Yes ma’am. Yes, I did.”

I smile, wait for her to elucidate. There is nothing.
 “And you knew that . . . because . . . ?”
 “Mama was a maid. My granmama was a house slave.”
 “A house slave. Uh-huh,” I say, but she only nods. Her hands stay folded in her lap. She’s watching the words I’m writing on the page.
 “Did you . . . ever have dreams of being something else?”
 “No,” she says. “No ma’am, I didn’t.” It’s so quiet, I can hear both of us breathing.
 “Alright. Then . . . what does it feel like, to raise a white child when your own child’s at home, being . . .” I swallow, embarrassed by the question, “. . . looked after by someone else?”
 “It feel . . .” She’s still sitting up so straight it looks painful. “Um, maybe . . . we could go on to the next one.”
 “Oh. Alright.” I stare at my questions. “What do you like best about being a maid and what do you like least?”

She looks up at me, like I’ve asked her to define a dirty word.
 “I—I spec I like looking after the kids best,” she whispers.
 “Anything . . . you’d like to add . . . about that?”
 “No ma’am.”
 “Aibileen, you don’t have to call me ‘ma’am.’ Not here.”
 “Yes ma’am. Oh. Sorry.” She covers her mouth.

Loud voices shout in the street and both our eyes dart toward the window. We are quiet, stock-still. What would happen if someone white found out I was here on a Saturday night talking to Aibileen in her regular clothes? Would they call the police, to report a suspicious meeting? I’m suddenly sure they would. We’d be arrested because that is what they do. They’d charge us with integration violation—I read about it in the paper all the time—they despise the whites that meet with the coloreds to help with the civil rights movement. This has nothing to do with integration, but why else would we be meeting? I didn’t even bring any Miss Myrna letters as backup.

I see open, honest fear on Aibileen’s face. Slowly the voices outside dissipate down the road. I exhale but Aibileen stays tense. She keeps her eyes on the curtains.

I look down at my list of questions, searching for something to draw this nervousness out of her, out of myself. I keep thinking about how much time I’ve lost already.
 “And what . . . did you say you disliked about your job?”

Aibileen swallows hard.
 “I mean, do you want to talk about the bathroom? Or about Eliz—Miss Leefolt? Anything about the way she pays you? Has she ever yelled at you in front of Mae Mobley?”

Aibileen takes a napkin and dabs it to her forehead. She starts to speak, but stops herself.
 “We’ve talked plenty of times, Aibileen . . .”

She puts her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, I—” She gets up and walks quickly down the narrow hall. A door closes, rattling the teapot and the cups on the tray.

Five minutes pass. When she comes back, she holds a towel to her front, the way I’ve seen Mother do after she vomits, when she doesn’t make it to her toilet in time.
 “I’m sorry. I thought I was . . . ready to talk.”

I nod, not sure what to do.
 “I just . . . I know you already told that lady in New York I’s gone do this but . . .” She closes her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can. I think I need to lay down.”
 “Tomorrow night. I’ll . . . come up with a better way. Let’s just try again and . . .”

She shakes her head, clutches her towel.

On my drive home, I want to kick myself. For thinking I could just waltz in and demand answers. For thinking she’d stop feeling like the maid just because we were at her house, because she wasn’t wearing a uniform.

I look over at my notebook on the white leather seat. Besides where she grew up, I’ve gotten a total of twelve words. And four of them are yes ma’am and no ma’am.

PATSY CLINE’S VOICE DRIFTS out of WJDX radio. As I drive down the County Road, they’re playing “Walking After Midnight.” When I pull into Hilly’s driveway, they’re on “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray.” Her plane crashed this morning and everyone from New York to Mississippi to Seattle is in mourning, singing her songs. I park the Cadillac and stare out at Hilly’s rambling white house. It’s been four days since Aibileen vomited in the middle of our interview and I’ve heard nothing from her.

I go inside. The bridge table is set up in Hilly’s antebellum-style parlor with its deafening grandfather clock and gold swag curtains. Everyone is seated—Hilly, Elizabeth, and Lou Anne Templeton, who has replaced Missus Walters. Lou Anne is one of those girls who wears a big eager smile—all the time, and it never stops. It makes me want to stick a straight pin in her. And when you’re not looking, she stares at you with that vapid, toothy smile. And she agrees with every single little thing Hilly says.

Hilly holds up a Life magazine, points to a spread of a house in California. “A den they’re calling it, like wild animals are living there.”
 “Oh, isn’t that dreadful!” Lou Anne beams.

The picture shows wall-to-wall shag carpet and low, streamlined sofas, egg-shaped chairs and televisions that look like flying saucers. In Hilly’s parlor, a portrait of a Confederate general hangs eight feet tall. It is as prominent as if he were a grandfather and not a third cousin removed.
 “That’s it. Trudy’s house looks just like that,” Elizabeth says. I’ve been so wrapped up in the interview with Aibileen, I’d almost forgotten Elizabeth’s trip last week to see her older sister. Trudy married a banker and they moved to Hollywood. Elizabeth went out there for four days to see her new house.
 “Well, that’s just bad taste, is what it is,” Hilly says. “No offense to your family, Elizabeth.”
 “What was Hollywood like?” Lou Anne asks.
 “Oh, it was like a dream. And Trudy’s house—T.V. sets in every room. That same crazy space-age furniture you could hardly even sit in. We went to all these fancy restaurants, where the movie stars eat, and drank martinis and burgundy wine. And one night Max Factor himself came over to the table, spoke to Trudy like they’re just old friends”—she shakes her head—“like they were just passing by in the grocery store.” Elizabeth sighs.
 “Well, if you ask me, you’re still the prettiest in the family,” Hilly says. “Not that Trudy’s unattractive, but you’re the one with the poise and the real style.”

Elizabeth smiles at this, but then drifts back to frowning. “Not to mention she has live-in help, every day, every hour. I hardly had to see Mae Mobley at all.”

I cringe at this comment, but no one else seems to notice. Hilly’s watching her maid, Yule May, refill our tea glasses. She’s tall, slender, almost regal-looking and has a much better figure than Hilly. Seeing her makes me worry about Aibileen. I’ve called Aibileen’s house twice this week, but there wasn’t any answer. I’m sure she’s avoiding me. I guess I’ll have to go to Elizabeth’s house to talk to her whether Elizabeth likes it or not.
 “I was thinking next year we might do a Gone With the Wind theme for the Benefit,” Hilly says, “maybe rent the old Fairview Mansion?”
 “What a great idea!” Lou Anne says.
 “Oh Skeeter,” Hilly says, “I know you just hated missing it this year.” I nod, give a pitiful frown. I’d pretended to have the flu to avoid going alone.
 “I’ll tell you one thing,” Hilly says, “I won’t be hiring that rock-and-roll band again, playing all that fast dance music . . .”

Elizabeth taps my arm. She has her handbag in her lap. “I almost forgot to give this to you. From Aibileen, for the Miss Myrna thing? I told her though, y’all cannot powwow on this today, not after all that time she missed in January.”

I open the folded piece of paper. The words are in blue ink, in a lovely cursive hand.

I know how to make the teapot stop rattling.
 “And who in the world cares about how to make a teapot not rattle?” Elizabeth says. Because of course she read it.

It takes me two seconds and a drink of iced tea to understand. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is,” I tell her.

TWO DAYS LATER, I sit in my parents’ kitchen, waiting for dusk to fall. I give in and light another cigarette even though last night the surgeon general came on the television set and shook his finger at everybody, trying to convince us that smoking will kill us. But Mother once told me tongue kissing would turn me blind and I’m starting to think it’s all just a big plot between the surgeon general and Mother to make sure no one ever has any fun.

At eight o’clock that same night, I’m stumbling down Aibileen’s street as discreetly as one can carrying a fifty-pound Corona typewriter. I knock softly, already dying for another cigarette to calm my nerves. Aibileen answers and I slip inside. She’s wearing the same green dress and stiff black shoes as last time.

I try to smile, like I’m confident it will work this time, despite the idea she explained over the phone. “Could we . . . sit in the kitchen this time?” I ask. “Would you mind?”
 “Alright. Ain’t nothing to look at, but come on back.”

The kitchen is about half the size of the living room, and warmer. It smells like tea and lemons. The black-and-white linoleum floor has been scrubbed thin. There’s just enough counter for the china tea set.

I set the typewriter on a scratched red table under the window. Aibileen starts to pour the hot water into the teapot.
 “Oh, none for me, thanks,” I say and reach in my bag. “I brought us some Co-Colas if you want one.” I’ve tried to come up with ways to make Aibileen more comfortable. Number One: don’t make her feel like she has to serve me.
 “Well, ain’t that nice. I usually don’t take my tea till later anyway.” She brings over an opener and two glasses. I drink mine straight from the bottle and, seeing this, she pushes the glasses aside, does the same.

I called Aibileen after Elizabeth gave me the note, and listened hopefully as Aibileen told me her idea—for her to write her own words down and then show me what’s she’s written. I tried to act excited. But I know I’ll have to rewrite everything she’s written, wasting even more time. I thought it might make it easier if she could see it in typeface instead of me reading it and telling her it can’t work this way.

We smile at each other. I take a sip of my Coke, smooth my blouse. “So . . .” I say.

Aibileen has a wire-ringed notebook in front of her. “Want me to . . . just go head and read?”
 “Sure,” I say.

We both take deep breaths and she begins reading in a slow, steady voice.
 “My first white baby to ever look after was named Alton Carrington Speers. It was 1924 and I’d just turned fifteen years old. Alton was a long, skinny baby with hair fine as silk on a corn . . .”

I begin typing as she reads, her words rhythmic, pronounced more clearly than her usual talk. “Every window in that filthy house was painted shut on the inside, even though the house was big with a wide green lawn. I knew the air was bad, felt sick myself . . .”
 “Hang on,” I say. I’ve typed wide greem. I blow on the typing fluid, retype it. “Okay, go ahead.”
 “When the mama died, six months later,” she reads, “of the lung disease, they kept me on to raise Alton until they moved away to Memphis. I loved that baby and he loved me and that’s when I knew I was good at making children feel proud of themselves . . .”

I hadn’t wanted to insult Aibileen when she told me her idea. I tried to urge her out of it, over the phone. “Writing isn’t that easy. And you wouldn’t have time for this anyway, Aibileen, not with a full-time job.”
 “Can’t be much different than writing my prayers every night.”

It was the first interesting thing she’d told me about herself since we’d started the project, so I’d grabbed the shopping pad in the pantry. “You don’t say your prayers, then?”
 “I never told nobody that before. Not even Minny. Find I can get my point across a lot better writing em down.”
 “So this is what you do on the weekends?” I asked. “In your spare time?” I liked the idea of capturing her life outside of work, when she wasn’t under the eye of Elizabeth Leefolt.
 “Oh no, I write a hour, sometimes two ever day. Lot a ailing, sick peoples in this town.”

I was impressed. That was more than I wrote on some days. I told her we’d try it just to get the project going again.

Aibileen takes a breath, a swallow of Coke, and reads on.

She backtracks to her first job at thirteen, cleaning the Francis the First silver service at the governor’s mansion. She reads how on her first morning, she made a mistake on the chart where you filled in the number of pieces so they’d know you hadn’t stolen anything.
 “I come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month’s worth a light bill for. I guess that’s when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain’t black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.”

Aibileen looks up to see what I think. I stop typing. I’d expected the stories to be sweet, glossy. I realize I might be getting more than I’d bargained for. She reads on.
 “. . . so I go on and get the chiffarobe straightened out and before I know it, that little white boy done cut his fingers clean off in that window fan I asked her to take out ten times. I never seen that much red come out a person and I grab the boy, I grab them four fingers. Tote him to the colored hospital cause I didn’t know where the white one was. But when I got there, a colored man stop me and say, Is this boy white?” The typewriter keys are clacking like hail on a roof. Aibileen is reading faster and I am ignoring my mistakes, stopping her only to put in another page. Every eight seconds, I fling the carriage aside.
 “And I say, Yessuh, and he say, Is them his white fingers? And I say, Yessuh, and he say, Well, you better tell em he your high yellow cause that colored doctor won’t operate on a white boy in a Negro hospital. And then a white policeman grab me and he say, Now you look a here—”

She stops. Looks up. The clacking ceases.
 “What? The policeman said look a here what?”
 “Well, that’s all I put down. Had to catch the bus for work this morning.”

I hit the return and the typewriter dings. Aibileen and I look each other straight in the eye. I think this might actually work.Chapter 12
EVERY OTHER NIGHT for the next two weeks, I tell Mother I’m off to feed the hungry at the Canton Presbyterian Church, where we, fortunately, know not a soul. Of course she’d rather I go down to the First Presbyterian, but Mother’s not one to argue with Christian works and she nods approvingly, tells me on the side to make sure I wash my hands thoroughly with soap afterward.

Hour after hour, in Aibileen’s kitchen, she reads her writing and I type, the details thickening, the babies’ faces sliding into focus. At first, I’m disappointed that Aibileen is doing most of the writing, with me just editing. But if Missus Stein likes it, I’ll be writing the other maids’ stories and that will be more than enough work. If she likes it... I find myself saying this over and over in my head, hoping it might make it so.

Aibileen’s writing is clear, honest. I tell her so.
 “Well, look who I been writing to.” She chuckles. “Can’t lie to God.”

Before I was born, she actually picked cotton for a week at Longleaf, my own family’s farm. Once she lapses into talking about Constantine without my even asking.
 “Law, that Constantine could sing. Like a purebred angel standing in the front a the church. Give everbody chills, listening to that silky voice a hers and when she wouldn’t sing no more after she had to give her baby to—” She stops. Looks at me.

She says, “Anyway.”

I tell myself not to press her. I wish I could hear everything she knows about Constantine, but I’ll wait until we’ve finished her interviews. I don’t want to put anything between us now.
 “Any word from Minny yet?” I ask. “If Missus Stein likes it,” I say, practically chanting the familiar words, “I just want to have the next interview set up and ready.”

Aibileen shakes her head. “I asked Minny three times and she still say she ain’t gone do it. I spec it’s time I believed her.”

I try not to show my worry. “Maybe you could ask some others? See if they’re interested?” I am positive that Aibileen would have better luck convincing someone than I would.

Aibileen nods. “I got some more I can ask. But how long you think it’s gone take for this lady to tell you if she like it?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. If we mail it next week, maybe we’ll hear from her by mid-February. But I can’t say for sure.”

Aibileen presses her lips together, looks down at her pages. I see something that I haven’t noticed before. Anticipation, a glint of excitement. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own self, it hasn’t occurred to me that Aibileen might be as thrilled as I am that an editor in New York is going to read her story. I smile and take a deep breath, my hope growing stronger.

On our fifth session, Aibileen reads to me about the day Treelore died. She reads about how his broken body was thrown on the back of a pickup by the white foreman. “And then they dropped him off at the colored hospital. That’s what the nurse told me, who was standing outside. They rolled him off the truck bed and the white men drove away.” Aibileen doesn’t cry, just lets a parcel of time pass while I stare at the typewriter, she at the worn black tiles.

On the sixth session, Aibileen says, “I went to work for Miss Leefolt in 1960. When Mae Mobley two weeks old,” and I feel I’ve passed through a leaden gate of confidence. She describes the building of the garage bathroom, admits she is glad it is there now. It’s easier than listening to Hilly complain about sharing a toilet with the maid. She tells me that I once commented that colored people attend too much church. That stuck with her. I cringe, wondering what else I’ve said, never suspecting the help was listening or cared.

One night she says, “I was thinking . . .” But then she stops.

I look up from the typewriter, wait. It took Aibileen vomiting on herself for me to learn to let her take her time.
 “I’s thinking I ought to do some reading. Might help me with my own writing.”
 “Go down to the State Street Library. They have a whole room full of Southern writers. Faulkner, Eudora Welty—”

Aibileen gives me a dry cough. “You know colored folks ain’t allowed in that library.”

I sit there a second, feeling stupid. “I can’t believe I forgot that.” The colored library must be pretty bad. There was a sit-in at the white library a few years ago and it made the papers. When the colored crowd showed up for the sit-in trial, the police department simply stepped back and turned the German shepherds loose. I look at Aibileen and am reminded, once again, the risk she’s taking talking to me. “I’ll be glad to pick the books up for you,” I say.

Aibileen hurries to the bedroom and comes back with a list. “I better mark the ones I want first. I been on the waiting list for To Kill a Mockingbird at the Carver Library near bout three months now. Less see . . .”

I watch as she puts checkmarks next to the books: The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, poems by Emily Dickinson (any), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
 “I read some a that back in school, but I didn’t get to finish.” She keeps marking, stopping to think which one she wants next.
 “You want a book by . . . Sigmund Freud?”
 “Oh, people crazy.” She nods. “I love reading about how the head work. You ever dream you fall in a lake? He say you dreaming about your own self being born. Miss Frances, who I work for in 1957, she had all them books.”

On her twelfth title, I have to know. “Aibileen, how long have you been wanting to ask me this? If I’d check these books out for you?”
 “A while.” She shrugs. “I guess I’s afraid to mention it.”
 “Did you . . . think I’d say no?”
 “These is white rules. I don’t know which ones you following and which ones you ain’t.”

We look at each other a second. “I’m tired of the rules,” I say.

Aibileen chuckles and looks out the window. I realize how thin this revelation must sound to her.

FOR FOUR DAYS STRAIGHT, I sit at my typewriter in my bedroom. Twenty of my typed pages, full of slashes and red-circled edits, become thirty-one on thick Strathmore white. I write a short biography of Sarah Ross, the name Aibileen chose, after her sixth-grade teacher who died years ago. I include her age, what her parents did for a living. I follow this with Aibileen’s own stories, just as she wrote them, simple, straightforward.

On day three, Mother calls up the stairs to ask what in the world I’m doing up there all day and I holler down, Just typing up some notes from the Bible study. Just writing down all the things I love about Jesus. I hear her tell Daddy, in the kitchen after supper, “She’s up to something.” I carry my little white baptism Bible around the house, to make it more believable.

I read and re-read and then take the pages to Aibileen in the evenings and she does the same. She smiles and nods over the nice parts where everyone gets along fine but on the bad parts she takes off her black reading glasses and says, “I know I wrote it, but you really want to put that in about the—”

And I say, “Yes, I do.” But I am surprised myself by what’s in these stories, of separate colored refrigerators at the governor’s mansion, of white women throwing two-year-old fits over wrinkled napkins, white babies calling Aibileen “Mama.”

At three a.m., with only two white correction marks on what is now twenty-seven pages, I slide the manuscript into a yellow envelope. Yesterday, I made a long-distance phone call to Missus Stein’s office. Her secretary, Ruth, said she was in a meeting. She took down my message, that the interview is on its way. There was no call back from Missus Stein today.

I hold the envelope to my heart and almost weep from exhaustion, doubt. I mail it at the Canton P. O. the next morning. I come home and lie down on my old iron bed, worrying over what will happen . . . if she likes it. What if Elizabeth or Hilly catches us at what we’re doing? What if Aibileen gets fired, sent to jail? I feel like I’m falling down a long spiral tunnel. God, would they beat her the way they beat the colored boy who used the white bathroom? What am I doing? Why am I putting her at such risk?

I go to sleep. I have nightmares for the next fifteen hours straight.

IT’s a QUARTER PAST ONE and Hilly and Elizabeth and I are sitting at Elizabeth’s dining room table waiting on Lou Anne to show up. I’ve had nothing to eat today except Mother’s sexual-correction tea and I feel nauseous, jumpy. My foot is wagging under the table. I’ve been like this for ten days, ever since I mailed Aibileen’s stories to Elaine Stein. I called once and Ruth said she passed it on to her four days ago, but still I’ve heard nothing.
 “Is this not just the rudest thing you’ve ever heard of ?” Hilly looks at her watch and scowls. This is Lou Anne’s second time to be late. She won’t last long in our group with Hilly around.

Aibileen walks in the dining room and I do my best not to look at her for too long. I am afraid Hilly or Elizabeth will see something in my eyes.
 “Stop jiggling your foot, Skeeter. You’re shaking the whole entire table,” Hilly says.

Aibileen moves around the room in her easy, white-uniformed stride, not showing even a hint of what we’ve done. I guess she’s grown deft at hiding her feelings.

Hilly shuffles and deals out a hand of gin rummy. I try to concentrate on the game, but little facts keep jumping in my head every time I look at Elizabeth. About Mae Mobley using the garage bathroom, how Aibileen can’t keep her lunch in the Leefolts’ refrigerator. Small details I’m privy to now.

Aibileen offers me a biscuit from a silver tray. She fills my iced tea like we are the strangers we were meant to be. I’ve been to her house twice since I mailed the package to New York, both times to trade out her library books. She still wears the green dress with black piping when I come over. Sometimes she’ll slip off her shoes under the table. Last time, she pulled out a pack of Montclairs and smoked right there with me in the room and that was kind of something, the casualness of it. I had one too. Now she is clearing away my crumbs with the sterling silver scraper I gave to Elizabeth and Raleigh for their wedding.
 “Well, while we wait, I have some news,” Elizabeth says and I recognize the look on her face already, the secretive nod, one hand on her stomach.
 “I’m pregnant.” She smiles, her mouth trembling a little.
 “That’s great,” I say. I put down my cards and touch her arm. She truly looks like she might cry. “When are you due?”
 “October.”
 “Well, it’s about time,” Hilly says, giving her a hug. “Mae Mobley’s practically grown.”

Elizabeth lights a cigarette, sighs. She looks down at her cards. “We’re all real excited.”

While we play a few practice hands, Hilly and Elizabeth talk about baby names. I try to contribute to the conversation. “Definitely Raleigh, if it’s a boy,” I add. Hilly talks about William’s campaign. He’s running for state senate next year, even though he has no political experience. I’m grateful when Elizabeth tells Aibileen to go ahead and serve lunch.

When Aibileen comes back in with the gelatin salad, Hilly straightens in her chair. “Aibileen, I have an old coat for you and a sack of clothes from Missus Walters’ house.” She dabs her mouth with her napkin. “So you come on out to the car after lunch and pick it all up, alright?”
 “Yes ma’am.”
 “Don’t forget now. I can’t worry with bringing them by again.”
 “Oh now isn’t that nice of Miss Hilly, Aibileen?” Elizabeth nods. “You go on and get those clothes right after we’re done.”
 “Yes ma’am.”

Hilly raises her voice about three octaves higher when she talks to colored people. Elizabeth smiles like she’s talking to a child, although certainly not her own. I am starting to notice things.

By the time Lou Anne Templeton shows up, we’ve finished our shrimp and grits and are just starting on dessert. Hilly is amazingly forgiving. Lou Anne was late, after all, because of a League duty.

Afterward, I tell Elizabeth congratulations again, walk out to my car. Aibileen is outside collecting her gently used coat from 1942 and old clothes that, for some reason, Hilly won’t give to her own maid, Yule May. Hilly strides over to me, hands me an envelope.
 “For the newsletter next week. You’ll be sure and get it in for me?”

I nod and Hilly walks back to her car. Just as Aibileen opens the front door to go back in the house, she glances back my way. I shake my head, mouth the word Nothing. She nods and goes on in the house.

That night, I work on the newsletter, wishing I was working on the stories instead. I go through the notes from the last League meeting, and come across Hilly’s envelope. I open it. It is one page, written in Hilly’s fat, curly pen:

Hilly Holbrook introduces the Home Help Sanitation Initiative. A disease preventative measure. Low-cost bathroom installation in your garage or shed, for homes without such an important fixture.
Ladies, did you know that: • 99% of all colored diseases are carried in the urine • Whites can become permanently disabled by nearly all of these diseases because we lack immunities coloreds carry in their darker pigmentation • Some germs carried by whites can also be harmful to coloreds too Protect yourself. Protect your children. Protect your help.
From the Holbrooks, we say, You’re welcome!


THE PHONE rings in THE kitchen and I practically fall over myself racing to it. But Pascagoula has already answered it.
 “Miss Charlotte residence.”

I stare her down, watch as tiny Pascagoula nods, says, “Yes ma’am, she here,” and hands me the phone.
 “This is Eugenia,” I say quickly. Daddy’s in the fields and Mother’s at a doctor’s appointment in town, so I stretch the black, twisting phone cord to the kitchen table.
 “Elaine Stein here.”

I breathe deep. “Yes ma’am. Did you receive my package?”
 “I did,” she says and then breathes into the phone a few seconds.
 “This Sarah Ross. I like her stories. She likes to kvetch without complaining too much.”

I nod. I don’t know what kvetch means, but I think it must be good.
 “But I still stand by my opinion that a book of interviews . . . ordinarily wouldn’t work. It’s not fiction, but it’s not nonfiction either. Perhaps it’s anthropological but that’s a ghastly category to be in.”
 “But you . . . liked it?”
 “Eugenia,” she says, exhaling her cigarette smoke into the phone. “Have you seen the cover of Life magazine this week?”

I haven’t seen the cover of my Life magazine in a month, I’ve been so busy.
 “Martin Luther King, dear. He just announced a march on D.C. and invited every Negro in America to join him. Every white person, for that matter. This many Negro and white people haven’t worked together since Gone With the Wind.”
 “Yes, I did hear about the . . . marching . . . event,” I lie. I cover my eyes, wishing I’d read the paper this week. I sound like an idiot.
 “My advice to you is, write it and write it fast. The march is in August. You should have it written by New Year’s.”

I gasp. She’s telling me to write it! She’s telling me . . . “Are you saying you’ll publish it? If I can write it by—”
 “I said nothing of the sort,” she snaps. “I will read it. I look at a hundred manuscripts a month and reject nearly all of them.”
 “Sorry, I just . . . I’ll write it,” I say. “I’ll have it finished in January.”
 “And four or five interviews won’t be enough for a book. You’ll need a dozen, maybe more. You have more interviews set up, I assume?”

I press my lips together. “Some . . . more.”
 “Good. Then get going. Before this civil rights thing blows over.”

THAT EVENING, I go to Aibileen’s. I hand her three more books from her list. My back hurts from leaning over the typewriter. This afternoon, I wrote down everyone I know who has a maid (which is everyone I know), and their maid’s name. But some of the names I can’t remember.
 “Thank you, oh Law, look at this.” She smiles and flips to the first page of Walden, looks like she wants to start reading it right there.
 “I spoke to Missus Stein this afternoon,” I say.

Aibileen’s hands freeze on the book. “I knew something was wrong. I seen it on your face.”

I take a deep breath. “She said she likes your stories very much. But . . . she won’t say if she’ll publish it until we’ve written the whole thing.” I try to look optimistic. “We have to be finished just after the new year.”
 “But that’s good news, ain’t it?”

I nod, try to smile.
 “January,” Aibileen whispers and she gets up and leaves the kitchen. She comes back with a Tom’s candy wall calendar. She sets it down on the table, flips through the months.
 “Seem a long ways off now, but January ain’t but . . . two . . . four . . . six... ten pages away. Gone be here before we know it.” She grins.
 “She said we have to interview at least twelve maids for her to consider it,” I say. The strain in my voice is starting to really come through.
 “But . . . you ain’t got any other maids to talk to, Miss Skeeter.”

I clench my hands. I close my eyes. “I don’t have anyone I can ask, Aibileen,” I say, my voice rising. I’ve spent the last four hours poring over this very fact. “I mean, who is there? Pascagoula? If I talk to her, Mama will find out. I’m not the one who knows the other maids.”

Aibileen’s eyes drop from mine so fast I want to cry. Damn it, Skeeter. Any barrier that had eroded between us these past few months, I’ve just built back up in a matter of seconds. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I’m sorry I raised my voice.”
 “No, no, it’s alright. That was my job, to get the others.”
 “What about . . . Lou Anne’s maid,” I say quietly, pulling out my list. “What’s her name . . . Louvenia? Do you know her?”

Aibileen nods. “I asked Louvenia.” Her eyes are still on her lap. “Her grandson the one got blinded. She say she real sorry, but she have to keep her mind on him.”
 “And Hilly’s maid, Yule May? You’ve asked her?”
 “She say she too busy trying to get her boys into college next year.”
 “Any other maids that go to your church? Have you asked them?”

Aibileen nods. “They all got excuses. But really, they just too scared.”
 “But how many? How many have you asked?”

Aibileen picks up her notebook, flips though a few pages. Her lips move, counting silently.
 “Thirty-one,” Aibileen says.

I let out my breath. I didn’t know I’d been holding it.
 “That’s . . . a lot,” I say.

Aibileen finally meets my look. “I didn’t want a tell you,” she says and her forehead wrinkles. “Until we heard from the lady . . .” She takes off her glasses. I see the deep worry in her face. She tries to hide it with a trembling smile.
 “I’m on ask em again,” she says, leaning forward.
 “Alright,” I sigh.

She swallows hard, nods rapidly to make me understand how much she means it. “Please, don’t give up on me. Let me stay on the project with you.”

I close my eyes. I need a break from seeing her worried face. How could I have raised my voice to her? “Aibileen, it’s alright. We’re . . . together on this.”

A FEW DAYS LATER, I sit in the hot kitchen, bored, smoking a cigarette, something I can’t seem to stop doing lately. I think I might be “addicted.” That’s a word Mister Golden likes to use. The idjits are all addicts. He calls me in his office every once in a while, scans the month’s articles with a red pencil, marking and slashing and grunting.
 “That’s fine,” he’ll say. “You fine?”
 “I’m fine,” I say.
 “Fine, then.” Before I leave, the fat receptionist hands me my ten-dollar check and that’s pretty much it for my Miss Myrna job.

The kitchen is hot, but I have to get out of my room, where all I do is worry because no other maids have agreed to work with us. Plus, I have to smoke in here because it’s about the only room in the house without a ceiling fan to blow ashes everywhere. When I was ten, Daddy tried to install one in the tin kitchen ceiling without asking Constantine. She’d pointed to it like he’d parked the Ford on the ceiling.
 “It’s for you, Constantine, so you don’t get so hot being up in the kitchen all the time.”
 “I ain’t working in no kitchen with no ceiling fan, Mister Carlton.”
 “Sure you will. I’m just hooking up the current to it now.”

Daddy climbed down the ladder. Constantine filled a pot with water. “Go head,” she sighed. “Turn it on then.”

Daddy flipped the switch. In the seconds it took to really get going, cake flour blew up from the mixing bowl and swirled around the room, recipes flapped off the counter and caught fire on the stovetop. Constantine snatched the burning roll of parchment paper, quickly dipped it in the bucket of water. There’s still a hole where the ceiling fan hung for ten minutes.

In the newspaper, I see State Senator Whitworth pointing to an empty lot of land where they plan to build a new city coliseum. I turn the page. I hate being reminded of my date with Stuart Whitworth.

Pascagoula pads into the kitchen. I watch as she cuts out biscuits with a shot glass that’s never shot a thing but short dough. Behind me, the kitchen windows are propped open with Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogues. Pictures of two-dollar hand mixers and mail-order toys flutter in a breeze, swollen and puckered from a decade of rain.

Maybe I should just ask Pascagoula. Maybe Mother won’t find out. But who am I kidding? Mother watches her every move and Pascagoula seems afraid of me anyway, like I might tell on her if she does something wrong. It could take years to break through that fear. My best sense tells me, leave Pascagoula out of this.

The phone rings like a fire alarm. Pascagoula clangs her spoon on the bowl and I grab the receiver before she can.
 “Minny gone help us,” Aibileen whispers.

I slip into the pantry and sit on my flour can. I can’t speak for about five seconds. “When? When can she start?”
 “Next Thursday. But she got some . . . requirements.”
 “What are they?”

Aibileen pauses a moment. “She say she don’t want your Cadillac anywhere this side a the Woodrow Wilson bridge.”
 “Alright,” I say. “I guess I could... drive the truck in.”
 “And she say . . . she say you can’t set on the same side a the room as her. She want a be able to see you square on at all times.”
 “I’ll . . . sit wherever she wants me to.”

Aibileen’s voice softens. “She just don’t know you, is all. Plus she ain’t got a real good history with white ladies.”
 “Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it.”

I walk out of the pantry beaming, hang the phone up on the wall. Pascagoula is watching me, the shot glass in one hand, a raw biscuit in the other. She looks down quickly and goes back to her work.

TWO DAYS LATER, I tell Mother I’m going to pick up a new copy of the King James Bible since I’ve worn mine so thin and all. I also tell her I feel guilty driving the Cadillac what with all those poor starving babies in Africa and I’ve decided to take the old truck today. She narrows her eyes at me from her porch rocker. “Where exactly do you plan on buying this new Bible?”

I blink. “The . . . they ordered it for me. At the Canton church.”

She nods, watches me the entire time it takes to start the old truck.

I drive to Farish Street with a lawn mower in the back and a rusted-out floorboard. Under my feet, I can see flashes of pavement whiz by. But at least I’m not pulling a tractor.

Aibileen opens the door and I come in. In the back corner of the living room, Minny stands with her arms crossed over her huge bosom. I’ve met her the few times Hilly allowed Missus Walters to host bridge club. Minny and Aibileen are both still in their white uniforms.
 “Hello,” I say from my side of the room. “Good to see you again.”
 “Miss Skeeter.” Minny nods. She settles in a wooden chair Aibileen has brought out from the kitchen, and the frame creaks. I sit on the far end of the sofa. Aibileen sits on the other end of the sofa, between us.

I clear my throat, produce a nervous smile. Minny doesn’t smile back. She is fat and short and strong. Her skin is blacker than Aibileen’s by ten shades, and shiny and taut, like a pair of new patent shoes.
 “I already told Minny how we doing the stories,” Aibileen says to me. “You helping me write mine. And hers she gone tell you, while you write it down.”
 “And Minny, everything you say here is in confidence,” I say. “You’ll get to read everything we—”
 “What makes you think colored people need your help?” Minny stands up, chair scraping. “Why you even care about this? You white.”

I look at Aibileen. I’ve never had a colored person speak to me this way.
 “We all working for the same thing here, Minny,” Aibileen says. “We just talking.”
 “And what thing is that?” Minny says to me. “Maybe you just want me to tell you all this stuff so I get in trouble.” Minny points to the window. “Medgar Evers, the NAACP officer who live five minutes away, they blew up his carport last night. For talking.”

My face is burning red. I speak slowly. “We want to show your perspective . . . so people might understand what it’s like from your side. We—we hope it might change some things around here.”
 “What you think you gone change with this? What law you want to reform so it say you got to be nice to your maid?”
 “Now hold on,” I say, “I’m not trying to change any laws here. I’m just talking about attitudes and—”
 “You know what’ll happen if people catch us? Forget the time I accidentally use the wrong changing room down at McRae’s women’s wear, I’d have guns pointing at my house.”

There’s a still, tight moment in the room with just the sound of the brown Timex clock ticking on the shelf.
 “You don’t have to do this, Minny,” Aibileen says. “It’s alright if you want a change your mind.”

Slowly, warily, Minny settles again in her chair. “I do it. I just want a make sure she understand, this ain’t no game we playing here.”

I glance at Aibileen. She nods at me. I take a deep breath. My hands are shaking.

I start with the background questions and somehow we back our way into talking about Minny’s work. She looks at Aibileen as she talks, like she’s trying to forget I’m even in the room. I record everything she says, my pencil scratching as fast as I can move it. We thought it might be less formal than using the typewriter.
 “Then they’s one job where I work late ever night. And you know what happened?”
 “What’s . . . that?” I ask, even though she’s looking at Aibileen.
 “Oh, Minny,” she cat-calls, “you the best help we ever had. Big Minny, we gone keep you on forever. Then one day she say she gone give me a week a paid vacation. I ain’t had no vacation, paid or unpaid, in my entire life. And when I pull up a week later to go back to work, they gone. Moved to Mobile. She tell somebody she scared I’d find new work before she move. Miss Lazy Fingers couldn’t go a day without having a maid waiting on her.”

She suddenly stands up, throws her bag on her arm. “I got to go. You giving me the heart palpitations talking bout this.” And out she goes, slamming the door behind her.

I look up, wipe the sweat off my temple.
 “And that was a good mood,” Aibileen says.Chapter 13
FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, the three of us arrange ourselves in the same seats in Aibileen’s small, warm living room. Minny storms in mad, quiets down as she tells Aibileen her story, then rushes out in a rage as fast as she came in. I write down as much as I can.

When Minny lapses into news about Miss Celia—“She sneaking upstairs, think I don’t see her, but I know, that crazy lady up to something”—she always stops herself, the way Aibileen does when she speaks of Constantine. “That ain’t part a my story. You leave Miss Celia out a this.” She watches me until my writing stops.

Besides her furiousness at white people, Minny likes to talk about food. “Let’s see, I put the green beans in first, then I go on and get the pork chops going cause, mmm-mmm, I like my chops hot out the pan, you know.”

One day, while she’s saying, “. . . got a white baby on one arm, green beans in the pot—” she stops. Cocks her jaw at me. Taps her foot.
 “Half this stuff don’t have nothing to do with colored rights. Ain’t but day-to-day business.” She eyes me up and down. “Look to me like you just writing life.”

I stop my pencil. She’s right. I realize that’s just what I wanted to do. I tell her, “I hope so.” She gets up and says she’s got more important things to worry about than what I’m hoping for.

THE NEXT EVENING, I’m working upstairs in my room, banging the keys on my Corona. Suddenly I hear Mother hit the stairs running. In two seconds she’s made it in my room. “Eugenia!” she whispers.

I stand so fast my chair teeters, trying to guard the contents of my typewriter. “Yes ma’am?”
 “Now don’t panic but there is a man—a very tall man—downstairs to see you.”
 “Who?”
 “He says his name is Stuart Whit worth.”
 “What?”
 “He said y’all spent an evening together awhile back but how can that be, I didn’t know anything—”
 “Christ.”
 “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Eugenia Phelan. Just put some lipstick on.”
 “Believe me, Mama,” I say, putting on lipstick anyway. “Jesus wouldn’t like him either.”

I brush my hair because I know it’s awful. I even wash the typewriter ink and correcting fluid off my hands and elbows. But I won’t change clothes, not for him.

Mother gives me a quick up and down in my dungarees and Daddy’s old button-up white shirt. “Is he a Greenwood Whitworth or a Natchez?”
 “He’s the state senator’s son.”

Mother’s jaw drops so far it hits her string of pearls. I go down the stairs, past the assembly of our childhood portraits. Pictures of Carlton line the wall, taken up until about the day before yesterday. Pictures of me stop when I was twelve. “Mother, give us some privacy.” I watch as she slowly drags herself back to her room, glancing over her shoulder before she disappears.

I walk out onto the porch, and there he is. Three months after our date, there is Stuart Whitworth himself, standing on my front porch in khaki pants and a blue coat and a red tie like he’s ready for Sunday dinner.

Asshole.
 “What brings you here?” I ask. I don’t smile though. I’m not smiling at him.
 “I just . . . I wanted to drop by.”
 “Well. Can I get you a drink?” I ask. “Or should I just get you the entire bottle of Old Kentucky?”

He frowns. His nose and forehead are pink, like he’s been working in the sun. “Look, I know it was . . . a long while back, but I came out here to say I’m sorry.”
 “Who sent you—Hilly? William?” There are eight empty rocking chairs on my porch. I don’t ask him to sit in any of them.

He looks off at the west cotton field where the sun is dipping into the dirt. He shoves his hands down in his front pockets like a twelve-year-old boy. “I know I was... rude that night, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot and . . .”

I laugh then. I’m just so embarrassed that he would come out here and have me relive it.
 “Now look,” he says, “I told Hilly ten times I wasn’t ready to go out on any date. I wasn’t even close to being ready . . .”

I grit my teeth. I can’t believe I feel the heat of tears; the date was months ago. But I remember how secondhand I’d felt that night, how ridiculously fixed up I’d gotten for him. “Then why’d you even show up?”
 “I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “You know how Hilly can be.”

I stand there waiting for whatever it is he’s here for. He runs a hand through his light brown hair. It is almost wiry it’s so thick. He looks tired.

I look away because he’s cute in an overgrown boy kind of way and it’s not something I want to be thinking right now. I want him to leave—I don’t want to feel this awful feeling again, yet I hear myself saying, “What do you mean, not ready?”
 “Just not ready. Not after what happened.”

I stare at him. “You want me to guess?”
 “Me and Patricia van Devender. We got engaged last year and then . . . I thought you knew.”

He sinks down in a rocking chair. I don’t sit next to him. But I don’t tell him to leave either.
 “What, she ran off with someone else?”
 “Shoot.” He drops his head down into his hands, mumbles, “That’d be a goddamn Mardi Gras party compared to what happened.”

I don’t let myself say to him what I’d like to, that he probably deserved whatever she did, but he’s just too pathetic-looking. Now that all his good ole boy, tough bourbon talk has evaporated, I wonder if he’s this pathetic all the time.
 “We’d been dating since we were fifteen. You know how it is, when you’ve been steady with somebody that long.”

And I don’t know why I admit this, except that I simply have nothing to lose. “Actually, I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I’ve never dated anybody.”

He looks up at me, kind of laughs. “Well, that must be it, then.”
 “Be what?” I steel myself, recalling fertilizer and tractor references.
 “You’re . . . different. I’ve never met anybody that said exactly what they were thinking. Not a woman, anyway.”
 “Believe me, I had a lot more to say.”

He sighs. “When I saw your face, out there by the truck . . . I’m not that guy. I’m really not such a jerk.”

I look away, embarrassed. It’s just starting to hit me what he said, that even though I’m different, maybe it’s not in a strange way or an abnormal, tall-girl way. But maybe in a good way.
 “I came by to see if you’d like to come downtown with me for supper. We could talk,” he says and stands up. “We could... I don’t know, listen to each other this time.”

I stand there, shocked. His eyes are blue and clear and fixed on me like my answer might really mean something to him. I take in a deep breath, about to say yes—I mean, why would I of all people refuse—and he bites his bottom lip, waiting.

And then I think about how he treated me like I was nothing. How he got shit-dog drunk he was so miserable to be stuck with me. I think about how he told me I smelled like fertilizer. It took me three months to stop thinking about that comment.
 “No,” I blurt out. “Thank you. But I really can’t imagine anything worse.”

He nods, looks down at his feet. Then he goes down the porch steps.
 “I’m sorry,” he says, the door to his car open. “That’s what I came to say and, well, I guess I said it.”

I stand on the porch, listening to the hollow sounds of the evening, gravel under Stuart’s shifting feet, dogs moving in the early darkness. For a second, I remember Charles Gray, my only kiss in a lifetime. How I’d pulled away, somehow sure the kiss hadn’t been intended for me.

Stuart gets in his car and his door clicks shut. He props his arm up so his elbow pokes through the open window. But he keeps his eyes turned down.
 “Just give me a minute,” I holler out to him. “Let me get my sweater.”

NO ONE TELLS us, girls who don’t go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens. Mother climbs all the way to the third floor and stands over me in my bed, but I act like I’m still asleep. Because I just want to remember it awhile.

We’d driven to the Robert E. Lee for dinner last night. I’d thrown on a light blue sweater and a slim white skirt. I’d even let Mother brush out my hair, trying to drown out her nervous, complicated instructions.
 “And don’t forget to smile. Men don’t want a girl who’s moping around all night, and don’t sit like some squaw Indian, cross your—”
 “Wait, my legs or my ank—”
 “Your ankles. Don’t you remember anything from Missus Rheimer’s etiquette class? And just go ahead and lie and tell him you go to church every Sunday, and whatever you do, do not crunch your ice at the table, it’s awful. Oh, and if the conversation starts to lag, you tell him about our second cousin who’s a city councilman in Kosciusko . . .”

As she brushed and smoothed and brushed and smoothed, Mother kept asking how I’d met him and what happened on our last date, but I managed to scoot out from under her and dash down the stairs, shaking with wonder and nervousness of my own. By the time Stuart and I walked into the hotel and sat down and put our napkins in our lap, the waiter said they’d be closing soon. All they’d serve us was dessert.

Then Stuart had gotten quiet.
 “What . . . do you want, Skeeter?” he’d asked and I’d sort of tensed up then, hoping he wasn’t planning on getting drunk again.
 “I’ll have a Co-Cola. Lots of ice.”
 “No.” He smiled. “I mean . . . in life. What do you want?”

I took a deep breath, knowing what Mother would advise me to say: fine, strong kids, a husband to take care of, shiny new appliances to cook tasty yet healthful meals in. “I want to be a writer,” I said. “A journalist. Maybe a novelist. Maybe both.”

He lifted his chin and looked at me then, right in the eye.
 “I like that,” he said, and then he just kept staring. “I’ve been thinking about you. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you’re”—he smiled—“tall.”

Pretty?

We ate strawberry soufflés and had one glass of Chablis apiece. He talked about how to tell if there’s oil underneath a cotton field and I talked about how the receptionist and I were the only females working for the paper.
 “I hope you write something really good. Something you believe in.”
 “Thank you. I . . . hope so too.” I don’t say anything about Aibileen or Missus Stein.

I haven’t had the chance to look at too many men’s faces up close and I noticed how his skin was thicker than mine and a gorgeous shade of toast; the stiff blond hairs on his cheeks and chin seemed to be growing before my eyes. He smelled like starch. Like pine. His nose wasn’t so pointy after all.

The waiter yawned in the corner but we both ignored him and stayed and talked some more. And by the time I was wishing I’d washed my hair this morning instead of just bathed and was practically doubled over with gratefulness that I’d at least brushed my teeth, out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body—my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.

On a MONDAY AFTERNOON, a few weeks after my date with Stuart, I stop by the library before going to the League meeting. Inside, it smells like grade school—boredom, paste, Lysoled vomit. I’ve come to get more books for Aibileen and check if anything’s ever been written about domestic help.
 “Well hey there, Skeeter!”

Jesus. It’s Susie Pernell. In high school, she could’ve been voted most likely to talk too much. “Hey . . . Susie. What are you doing here?”
 “I’m working here for the League committee, remember? You really ought to get on it, Skeeter, it’s real fun! You get to read all the latest magazines and file things and even laminate the library cards.” Susie poses by the giant brown machine like she’s on The Price Is Right television show.
 “How new and exciting.”
 “So, what may I help you find today, ma’am? We have murder mysteries, romance novels, how-to makeup books, how-to hair books,” she pauses, jerks out a smile, “rose gardening, home decorating—”
 “I’m just browsing, thanks.” I hurry off. I’ll fend for myself in the stacks. There is no way I can tell her what I’m looking for. I can already hear her whispering at the League meetings, I knew there was something not right about that Skeeter Phelan, hunting for those Negro materials...

I search through card catalogues and scan the shelves, but find nothing about domestic workers. In nonfiction, I spot a single copy of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. I grab it, excited to deliver it to Aibileen, but when I open it, I see the middle section has been ripped out. Inside, someone has written NIGGER BOOK in purple crayon. I am not as disturbed by the words as by the fact that the handwriting looks like a third grader’s. I glance around, push the book in my satchel. It seems better than putting it back on the shelf.

In the Mississippi History room, I search for anything remotely resembling race relations. I find only Civil War books, maps, and old phone books. I stand on tiptoe to see what’s on the high shelf. That’s when I spot a booklet, laid sideways across the top of the Mississippi River Valley Flood Index. A regular-sized person would never have seen it. I slide it down to glance at the cover. The booklet is thin, printed on onionskin paper, curling, bound with staples. “Compilation of Jim Crow Laws of the South,” the cover reads. I open the noisy cover page.

The booklet is simply a list of laws stating what colored people can and cannot do, in an assortment of Southern states. I skim the first page, puzzled why this is here. The laws are neither threatening nor friendly, just citing the facts:

No person shall require any white female to nurse in wards or rooms in which negro men are placed.
It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void.
No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls.
The officer in charge shall not bury any colored persons upon ground used for the burial of white persons.
Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.


I read through four of the twenty-five pages, mesmerized by how many laws exist to separate us. Negroes and whites are not allowed to share water fountains, movie houses, public restrooms, ballparks, phone booths, circus shows. Negroes cannot use the same pharmacy or buy postage stamps at the same window as me. I think about Constantine, the time my family took her to Memphis with us and the highway had mostly washed out, but we had to drive straight on through because we knew the hotels wouldn’t let her in. I think about how no one in the car would come out and say it. We all know about these laws, we live here, but we don’t talk about them. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them written down.

Lunch counters, the state fair, pool tables, hospitals. Number forty-seven I have to read twice, for its irony.

The Board shall maintain a separate building on separate grounds for the instruction of all blind persons of the colored race.


After several minutes, I make myself stop. I start to put the booklet back, telling myself I’m not writing a book about Southern legislation, this is a waste of my time. But then I realize, like a shell cracking open in my head, there’s no difference between these government laws and Hilly building Aibileen a bathroom in the garage, except ten minutes’ worth of signatures in the state capital.

On the last page, I see the pica type that reads Property of Mississippi Law Library. The booklet was returned to the wrong building. I scratch my revelation on a piece of paper and tuck it inside the booklet: Jim Crow or Hilly’s bathroom plan—what’s the difference? I slip it in my bag. Susie sneezes behind the desk across the room.

I head for the doors. I have a League meeting in thirty minutes. I give Susie an extra friendly smile. She’s whispering into the phone. The stolen books in my bag feel like they’re pulsing with heat.
 “Skeeter,” Susie hisses from the desk, eyes wide. “Did I really hear you have been seeing Stuart Whitworth?” She puts a bit too much emphasis on the you for me to keep up my smile. I act like I don’t hear her and walk out into the bright sunshine. I’ve never stolen a thing in my life before today. I’m a little satisfied it was on Susie’s watch.

Our PLACES Of COMFORT ARE expectedly different, my friends and I. Elizabeth’s is hunched over her sewing machine trying to make her life look seamless, store-bought. Mine is at my typewriter writing pithy things I’ll never have the guts to say out loud. And Hilly’s is behind a podium telling sixty-five women that three cans apiece isn’t enough to feed all those PSCAs. The Poor Starving Children of Africa, that is. Mary Joline Walker, however, thinks three is plenty.
 “And isn’t it kind of expensive, carting all this tin across the world to Ethiopia?” Mary Joline asks. “Doesn’t it make more sense just to send them a check?”

The meeting has not officially started, but Hilly’s already behind her podium. There’s a franticness in her eyes. This isn’t our normal evening time, but an extra afternoon session Hilly’s called. In June, many of the members are going out of town for summer vacations. Then, in July, Hilly leaves for her annual trip down to the coast for three weeks. It’s going to be hard for her to trust an entire town to operate properly without her here.

Hilly rolls her eyes. “You cannot give these tribal people money, Mary Joline. There is no Jitney 14 Grocery in the Ogaden Desert. And how would we know if they’re even feeding their kids with it? They’re likely to go to the local voodoo tent and get a satanic tattoo with our money.”
 “Alright.” Mary Joline teeters off, flat-faced, brainwashed-looking. “I guess you know best.” It is this bug-eyed effect Hilly has on people that makes her such a successful League president.

I make my way across the crowded meeting room, feeling the warmth of attention, as if a beam of light is shining down on my head. The room is full of cake-eating, Tab-drinking, cigarette-smoking women all about my age. Some are whispering to each other, glancing my way.
 “Skeeter,” Liza Presley says before I make it past the coffee urns, “did I hear you were at the Robert E. Lee a few weeks ago?”
 “Is that right? Are you really seeing Stuart Whitworth?” says Frances Greenbow.

Most of the questions are not unkind, not like Susie’s at the library. Still, I shrug, try not to notice how when a regular girl gets asked out, it’s information, but when Skeeter Phelan gets asked out, it’s news.

But it’s true. I am seeing Stuart Whitworth and have been for three weeks now. Twice at the Robert E. Lee if you include the disaster date, and three more times sitting on my front porch for drinks before he drove home to Vicksburg. My father even stayed up past eight o’clock to speak to him. “Night, son. You tell the Senator we sure do appreciate him stomping out that farm tax bill.” Mother’s been trembling, torn between the terror that I’ll screw it up and glee that I actually like men.

The white spotlight of wonder follows me as I make my way to Hilly. Girls are smiling and nodding at me.
 “When will y’all see each other again?” This is Elizabeth now, twisting a napkin, eyes wide like she’s staring at a car accident. “Did he say?”
 “Tomorrow night. As soon as he can drive over.”
 “Good.” Hilly’s smile is a fat child’s at the Seale-Lily Ice Cream window. The button on her red suitcoat bulges. “We’ll make it a double date, then.”

I don’t answer. I don’t want Hilly and William coming along. I just want to sit with Stuart, have him look at me and only me. Twice, when we were alone, he brushed my hair back when it fell in my eyes. He might not brush my hair back if they’re around.
 “William’ll telephone Stuart tonight. Let’s go to the picture show.”
 “Alright,” I sigh.
 “I’m just dying to see It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Won’t this be fun,” Hilly says. “You and me and William and Stuart.”

It strikes me as suspicious, the way she’s arranged the names. As if the point were for William and Stuart to be together instead of me and Stuart. I know I’m being paranoid. But everything makes me wary now. Two nights ago, as soon as I crossed over the colored bridge, I was stopped by a policeman. He shone his flashlight in the truck, let it shine on the satchel. He asked for my license and where I was going. “I’m taking a check to my maid . . . Constantine. I forgot to pay her.” Another cop pulled up, came to my window. “Why did you stop me?” I asked, my voice sounding about ten pitches too high. “Did something happen?” I asked. My heart was slamming against my chest. What if they looked in my satchel?
 “Some Yankee trash stirring up trouble. We’ll catch em, ma’am,” he said, patting his billy club. “Do your business and get back over the bridge.”

When I got to Aibileen’s street, I parked even farther down the block. I walked around to her back door instead of using the front. I shook so bad for the first hour, I could hardly read the questions I’d written for Minny.

Hilly gives the five-minute-till bang with her gavel. I make my way to my chair, lug my satchel onto my lap. I tick through the contents, suddenly conscious of the Jim Crow booklet I stole from the library. In fact, my satchel holds all the work we’ve done—Aibileen and Minny’s interviews, the book outline, a list of potential maids, a scathing, unmailed response I wrote to Hilly’s bathroom initiative—everything I can’t leave at home for fear Mother will snoop through my things. I keep it all in a side zip-pocket with a flap over it. It bulges unevenly.
 “Skeeter, those poplin pants are just the cutest thing, why haven’t I seen those before?” Carroll Ringer says a few chairs away and I look up at her and smile, thinking Because I wouldn’t dare wear old clothes to a meeting and neither would you. Clothing questions irritate me after so many years of Mother hounding me.

I feel a hand on my other shoulder and turn to find Hilly with her finger in my satchel, right on the booklet. “Do you have the notes for next week’s newsletter? Are these them?” I hadn’t even seen her coming.
 “No, wait!” I say and ease the booklet back into my papers. “I need to... to correct one thing. I’ll bring them to you a little later.”

I take a deep breath.

At the podium, Hilly looks at her watch, toying with the gavel like she’s just dying to bang it. I push my satchel under my chair. Finally, the meeting begins.

I record the PSCA news, who’s on the trouble list, who’s not brought in their cans. The calendar of events is full of committee meetings and baby showers, and I shift around in my wooden chair, hoping the meeting will end soon. I have to get Mother’s car back to her by three.

It’s not until a quarter till, an hour and a half later, that I rush out of the hot room toward the Cadillac. I’ll be on the trouble list for leaving early, but Jesus Christ, what’s worse, the wrath of Mother or the wrath of Hilly?

I Walk INTO THE HOUSE five minutes early, humming “Love Me Do,” thinking I ought to go buy a short skirt like Jenny Foushee wore today. She said she’d gotten it up in New York City at Bergdorf Goodman’s. Mother would keel over if I showed up with a skirt above the knee when Stuart picks me up on Saturday.
 “Mama, I’m home,” I call down the hallway.

I pull a Co-Cola from the fridge, sigh and smile, feeling good, strong. I head to the front door for my satchel, ready to thread together more of Minny’s stories. I can tell she is itching to talk about Celia Foote, but she always stops after a minute of it and changes the subject. The phone rings and I answer it, but it’s for Pascagoula. I take a message on the pad. It’s Yule May, Hilly’s maid.
 “Hey, Yule May,” I say, thinking what a small town this is. “I’ll give her the message when she gets back.” I lean a minute against the counter, wishing Constantine was here like it used to be. How I’d love to share every single thing about my day with her.

I sigh and finish my Coke and then go to the front door for my satchel. It’s not there. I go outside and look in the car but it’s not there either. Huh, I think and head up the stairs, feeling less pink now and more of a pale yellow. Did I go upstairs yet? I scour my room, but it’s nowhere to be found. Finally, I stand still in my quiet bedroom, a slow tingle of panic working its way up my spine. The satchel, it has everything in it.

Mother, I think and I dash downstairs and look in the relaxing room. But suddenly I realize it’s not Mother who has it—the answer has come to me, numbing my entire body. I left my satchel at the League House. I was in such a hurry to get Mother’s car home. And even as the phone is ringing, I already know it is Hilly on the end of that line.

I grab the phone from the wall. Mother calls goodbye from the front door.
 “Hello?”
 “How could you leave this heavy thing behind?” Hilly asks. Hilly never has had a problem with going through other people’s things. In fact, she enjoys it.
 “Mother, wait a second!” I holler from the kitchen.
 “Good Lord, Skeeter, what’s in here?” Hilly says. I’ve got to catch Mother, but Hilly’s voice is muffled, like she’s bending down, opening it.
 “Nothing! Just . . . all those Miss Myrna letters, you know.”
 “Well, I’ve lugged it back to my house so come on by and get it when you can.”

Mother is starting the car outside. “Just . . . keep it there. I’ll be by as soon as I can get there.”

I race outside but Mother’s already down the lane. I look over and the old truck’s gone too, toting cotton seed somewhere in the fields. The dread in my stomach is flat and hard and hot, like a brick in the sun.

Down by the road, I watch the Cadillac slow, then jerk to a stop. Then it goes again. Then stops. Then slowly reverses and zigzags its way back up the hill. By the grace of a god I never really liked, much less believed in, my mother is actually coming back.
 “I can’t believe I forgot Sue Anne’s casserole dish . . .”

I jump in the front passenger seat, wait until she climbs back into the car. She puts her hands on the wheel.
 “Drive me by Hilly’s? I need to pick something up.” I press my hand to my forehead. “Oh God, hurry, Mother. Before I’m too late.”

Mother’s car hasn’t moved. “Skeeter, I have a million things to do today—”

The panic is rising up in my throat. “Mama, please, just drive . . .”

But the Deville sits in the gravel, ticking like a time bomb.
 “Now look,” Mother says, “I have some personal errands to run and I just don’t think it’s a good time to have you tagging along.”
 “It’ll take you five minutes. Just drive, Mama!”

Mother keeps her white-gloved hands on the steering wheel, her lips pressed together.
 “I happen to have something confidential and important to do today.”

I can’t imagine my mother has anything more important to do than what I’m staring down the throat of. “What? A Mexican’s trying to join the DAR? Somebody got caught reading the New American Dictionary ?”

Mother sighs, says, “Fine,” and moves the gear shift carefully into drive. “Alright, here we go.” We roll down the lane at about one-tenth of a mile an hour, putting along so the gravel won’t knock at the paint job. At the end of the lane, she puts on her blinker like she’s doing brain surgery and creeps the Cadillac out onto the County Road. My fists are clenched. I press my imaginary accelerator. Every time’s Mother’s first time to drive.

On the County Road, she speeds up to fifteen and grips the wheel like we’re doing a hundred and five.
 “Mama,” I finally say, “just let me drive the car.”

She sighs. I’m surprised that she pulls over into the tall grass.

I get out and run around the car while she slides over. I put the car in D and press it to seventy, praying, Please, Hilly, resist the temptation to rummage through my personal business. . . .
 “So what’s the big secret, what do you have to do today?” I ask.
 “I’m . . . I’m going to see Doctor Neal for some tests. It’s just routine, but I don’t want your daddy to know. You know how upset he gets every time somebody goes to the doctor.”
 “What kind of tests?”
 “It’s just an iodine test for my ulcers, same as I have every year. Drop me at the Baptist and then you can take yourself to Hilly’s. At least I won’t have to worry over parking.”

I glance at her to see if there’s more to this, but she’s sitting straight and starched in her light blue dress, her legs crossed at the ankles. I don’t remember her having these tests last year. Even with me being up at school, Constantine would’ve written to me about them. Mother must’ve kept them secret.

Five minutes later, at the Baptist Hospital, I come around and help her out of the car.
 “Eugenia, please. Just because this is a hospital doesn’t mean I’m an invalid.”

I open the glass door for her and she walks in, head held high.
 “Mother, do you . . . want me to come with you?” I ask, knowing I can’t—I have to deal with Hilly, but suddenly I don’t want to drop her off here, like this.
 “It’s routine. Go on to Hilly’s and come back in an hour.”

I watch her grow smaller down the long hall, clutching her handbag, knowing I should turn and run. But before I do, I wonder at how frail and inconsequential my mother has become. She used to fill a room by just breathing and now there seems to be . . . less of her. She turns a corner and disappears behind the pale yellow walls. I watch a second longer before I rush back to the car.

A MINUTE and a Half LATER, I’m ringing Hilly’s bell. If these were regular times, I’d talk to Hilly about Mama. But I can’t distract her. It is the first moment that will tell me everything. Hilly is an exceptional liar, except for the moment right before she speaks.

Hilly opens the door. Her mouth is tight and red. I look down at her hands. They are knotted together like ropes. I’ve arrived too late.
 “Well, that was quick,” she says and I follow her inside. My heart is seizing inside my chest. I’m not sure I’m breathing at all.
 “There it is, that ugly thing. I hope you don’t mind, I had to check something in the minutes from the meeting.”

I stare at her, my best friend, trying to see just what she’s read in my things. But her smile is professional if not sparkling. The telling moments are gone.
 “Can I get you something to sip on?”
 “No, I’m fine.” Then I add, “Want to hit balls at the club later? It’s so gorgeous out.”
 “William’s got a campaign meeting and then we’re going to see It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

I study her. Didn’t she ask me, just two hours ago, to double-date to this movie tomorrow night? Slowly, I move down to the end of the dining table, like she might pounce on me if I move too fast. She picks up a sterling fork from the sideboard, thrums her index finger along the tines.
 “Yes, um, I heard Spencer Tracy’s supposed to be divine,” I say. Casually, I tick through the papers in my satchel. Aibileen and Minny’s notes are still tucked deep in the side pocket, the flap closed, the latch snapped. But Hilly’s bathroom initiative is in the open center section with the paper where I wrote Jim Crow or Hilly’s bathroom plan—what’s the difference? Besides this is the draft of the newsletter that Hilly has examined already. But the booklet—the laws—I tick through again—they are gone.

Hilly tilts her head, narrows her eyes at me. “You know, I was just thinking about how Stuart’s daddy stood right next to Ross Barnett when they fought that colored boy walking into Ole Miss. They’re awfully close, Senator Whitworth and Governor Barnett.”

I open my mouth to say something, anything, but then two-year-old William, Jr., totters in.
 “There you are.” Hilly picks him up, nuzzles his neck. “You are perfect, my perfect boy!” she says. William looks at me and screams.
 “Well, enjoy the picture show,” I say, going for the front door.
 “Alright,” she says. I walk down the steps. From her doorway, Hilly waves, flaps William’s hand bye-bye. She slams the door before I’ve even made it to my car.AIBILEEN Chapter 14
I BEEN IN SOME tense situations, but to have Minny on one side a my living room and Miss Skeeter on the other, and the topic at hand be what it feel like being Negro and working for a white woman. Law, it’s a wonder they hadn’t been a injury.

We had some close calls though.

Like last week, when Miss Skeeter showed me Miss Hilly’s reasons why colored folk need they own bathroom.
 “Feel like I’m looking at something from the KKK,” I said to Miss Skeeter. We was in my living room and the nights had started to get warm. Minny’d gone in the kitchen to stand in front a the icebox. Minny don’t stop sweating but for five minutes in January and maybe not even then.
 “Hilly wants me to print it in the League newsletter,” Miss Skeeter said, shaking her head disgusted. “I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have shown it to you. But there’s no one else I can tell.”

A minute later, Minny come back from the kitchen. I gave Miss Skeeter a look, so she slid the list under her notebook. Minny didn’t look much cooler. Fact, she looked hotter than ever.
 “Minny, do you and Leroy ever talk about civil rights?” Miss Skeeter ask. “When he comes home from work?”

Minny had that big bruise on her arm cause that’s what Leroy do when he come home from work. He push her around.
 “Nope” was all Minny said. Minny do not like people up in her business.
 “Really? He doesn’t share the way he feels about the marches and the segregation? Maybe at work, his bo—”
 “Move off a Leroy.” Minny crossed her arms up so that bruise wouldn’t show.

I gave Skeeter a nudge on the foot. But Miss Skeeter, she had that look she gets when she’s all up in something.
 “Aibileen, don’t you think it would be interesting if we could show a little of the husbands’ perspective? Minny, maybe—”

Minny stood so quick the lightshade rattled. “I ain’t doing this no more. You making this too personal. I don’t care about telling white people how it feel.”
 “Minny, okay, I’m sorry,” Miss Skeeter said. “We don’t have to talk about your family.”
 “No. I change my mind. You find somebody else to spill the beans.” We been through this before. But this time, Minny snatched up her pocketbook, grabbed her funeral fan that fell under the chair, and said, “I’m sorry, Aib. But I just can’t do this no more.”

I got a panicky feeling then. She really gone leave. Minny can’t quit. She the only maid besides me who agreed to do it.

So I leant up, slipped Hilly’s piece a paper out from under Miss Skeeter’s notebook. My fingers stopped right in front a Minny.

She look down at it. “What that?”

I put on my blank face. Shrugged my shoulders. Couldn’t act like I really wanted her to read it cause then she wouldn’t.

Minny picked it up and started skimming. Pretty soon, I could see all her front teeth. But she wasn’t smiling.

Then she looked at Miss Skeeter, long and heavy. She said, “Maybe we keep going then. But you stay out a my personal business, you hear?”

Miss Skeeter nodded. She learning.

I MIX a Egg salad for Miss Leefolt and Baby Girl’s lunch, put them little pickles on the side to fancy it up. Miss Leefolt set at the kitchen table with Mae Mobley, start telling her how the baby’s gone be here in October, how she hope she don’t have to be in the hospital for the Ole Miss homecoming game, how she might have her a little sister or a little brother and wonder what they gone name it. It’s nice, seeing them talking like this. Half the morning, Miss Leefolt been on the phone with Miss Hilly gossiping about something, hardly noticing Baby Girl at all. And once the new baby come, Mae Mobley ain’t gone get so much as a swat from her mama.

After lunch, I take Baby Girl out to the backyard and fill up the green plastic pool. It’s already ninety-five degrees outside. Mississippi got the most unorganized weather in the nation. In February, it’ll be fifteen degrees and you be wishing spring would come on, and the next day it’s ninety degrees for the next nine months.

The sun shining. Mae Mobley’s setting in the middle a that pool in bathing bottoms. First thing she do is take off that top. Miss Leefolt come outside and say, “That looks like fun! I’m fixing to call Hilly, tell her to bring Heather and little Will over here.”

And fore I know it, all three kids is playing in there, splashing around, having a good old time.

Heather, Miss Hilly’s girl, she pretty cute. She six months older than Mae Mobley and Mae Mobley just love her. Heather got dark, shiny curls all over her head and some little freckles, and she real talkative. She pretty much just a short version a Miss Hilly, only it look better on a child. Little William, Jr., he two. He tow-headed and he don’t say nothing. Just waddle around like a duck, following them girls to the high monkey grass on the edge a the yard, to the swingset that hitch up on one side if you swing too high and scare me to death, and back into the baby pool.

One thing I got to say about Miss Hilly, she love her children. About every five minutes, she kiss little Will on the head. Or she ask Heather, is she having fun? Or come here and give Mama a hug. Always telling her she the most beautiful girl in the world. And Heather love her mama too. She look at Miss Hilly like she looking up at the Statue a Liberty. That kind a love always make me want a cry. Even when it going to Miss Hilly. Cause it makes me think about Treelore, how much he love me. I appreciate seeing a child adoring they mama.

We grown-ups is setting in the shade a the magnolia tree while the kids play. I put a few feet between me and the ladies so it’s proper. They got towels down in them black iron chairs that gets so hot. I like to sit in the plastic green folding chair. Keep my legs cool.

I watch Mae Mobley make Barbie Doll do the skinny dip, jumping off the side a the pool. But I got my eye on the ladies too. I been noticing how Miss Hilly act all sweet and happy when she talk to Heather and William, but ever time she turn to Miss Leefolt, she get a sneer on her face.
 “Aibileen, get me a little more iced tea, would you, please?” Hilly ask. I go and get the pitcher from the refrigerator.
 “See, that’s what I don’t understand,” I hear Miss Hilly say when I’m close enough. “Nobody wants to sit down on a toilet seat they have to share with them.”
 “It does make sense,” Miss Leefolt say, but then she hush up when I come over to fill up they glasses.
 “Why, thank you,” Miss Hilly say. Then she give me a real perplexed look, say, “Aibileen, you like having your own toilet, don’t you?”
 “Yes ma’am.” She still talking about that pot even though it’s been in there six months.
 “Separate but equal,” Miss Hilly say back to Miss Leefolt. “That’s what Governor Ross Barnett says is right, and you can’t argue with the government.”

Miss Leefolt clap her hand on her thigh like she got the most interesting thing to change the subject to. I’m with her. Let’s discuss something else. “Did I tell you what Raleigh said the other day?”

But Miss Hilly shaking her head. “Aibileen, you wouldn’t want to go to a school full of white people, would you?”
 “No ma’am,” I mumble. I get up and pull the ponytail holder out a Baby Girl’s head. Them green plastic balls get all tangly when her hair get wet. But what I really want to do is put my hands up over her ears so she can’t hear this talk. And worse, hear me agreeing.

But then I think: Why? Why I have to stand here and agree with her? And if Mae Mobley gone hear it, she gone hear some sense. I get my breath. My heart beating hard. And I say polite as I can, “Not a school full a just white people. But where the colored and the white folks is together.”

Hilly and Miss Leefolt both look at me. I look back down at the kids.
 “But Aibileen”—Miss Hilly smile real cold—“colored people and white people are just so . . . different.” She wrinkle up her nose.

I feel my lip curling. A course we different! Everbody know colored people and white people ain’t the same. But we still just people! Shoot, I even been hearing Jesus had colored skin living out there in the desert. I press my lips together.

It don’t matter though, cause Miss Hilly already moved on. Ain’t nothing to her. She back to her low-down talk with Miss Leefolt. Out a nowhere, a big heavy cloud cover the sun. I spec we about to get a shower.
 “. . . government knows best and if Skeeter thinks she’s going to get away with this colored non—”
 “Mama! Mama! Look at me!” holler Heather from the pool. “Look at my pigtails!”
 “I see you! I do! What with William running for office next—”
 “Mama, give me your comb! I want to do beauty parlor!”
 “—cannot have colored-supporting friends in my closet—”
 “Mamaaaaa! Gimme your comb. Get your comb for me!”
 “I read it. I found it in her satchel and I intend to take action.”

And then Miss Hilly quiet, hunting for her comb in her pocketbook. Thunder boom over in South Jackson and way off we hear the wail a the tornado bell. I’m trying to make sense a what Miss Hilly just said: Miss Skeeter. Her satchel. I read it.

I get the kids out the pool, swaddle em up in towels. The thunder come crashing out the sky.

A MINUTE AFTER dark, I’m setting at my kitchen table, twirling my pencil. My white-library copy a Huckleberry Finn’s in front a me, but I can’t read it. I got a bad taste in my mouth, bitter, like coffee grounds in the last sip. I need to talk to Miss Skeeter.

I ain’t never called her house except two times cause I had no choice, when I told her I’d work on the stories, and then to tell her Minny would too. I know it’s risky. Still, I get up, put my hand on the wall phone. But what if her mama answer, or her daddy? I bet their maid gone home hours ago. How Miss Skeeter gone explain a colored woman calling her up on the telephone?

I set back down. Miss Skeeter come over here three days ago to talk to Minny. Seemed like everthing was fine. Nothing like when the police pull her over a few weeks ago. She didn’t say nothing about Miss Hilly.

I huff in my chair awhile, wishing the phone would ring. I shoot up and race a cockroach across the floor with my workshoe. Cockroach win. He crawl under that grocery bag a clothes Miss Hilly give me, been setting there for months.

I stare at the sack, start twirling that pencil in my hand again. I got to do something with that bag. I’m used to ladies giving me clothes—got white lady clothes out the wazoo, ain’t had to buy my own clothes in thirty years. It always takes a while till they feel like mine. When Treelore was a little thing, I put on a old coat from some lady I’s waiting on and Treelore, he look at me funny, back away. Say I smell white.

But this bag is different. Even what would fit me in that paper sack, I can’t wear. Can’t give to my friends either. Ever piece in that bag—the culotte pants, the shirt with the Peter Pan collar, the pink jacket with the gravy stain on it, even the socks—they all got the letters H.W.H. sewn in. Red thread, pretty little cursive letters. I reckon Yule May had to sew them letters. Wearing those, I’d feel like I’s personal-owned property a Hilly W. Holbrook.

I get up and kick at the bag, but the cockroach don’t come out. So I take out my notebook, intending to start on my prayers, but I’m just too deep worrying about Miss Hilly. Wondering what she meant when she said Read it.

After while, my mind done drifted to where I wish it wouldn’t. I reckon I know pretty well what would happen if the white ladies found out we was writing about them, telling the truth a what they really like. Womens, they ain’t like men. A woman ain’t gone beat you with a stick. Miss Hilly wouldn’t pull no pistol on me. Miss Leefolt wouldn’t come burn my house down.

No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.

First thing a white lady gone do is fire you. You upset, but you figure you’ll find another job, when things settle down, when the white lady get around to forgetting. You got a month a rent saved. People bring you squash casseroles.

But then a week after you lost your job, you get this little yellow envelope stuck in your screen door. Paper inside say NOTICE Of EVICTION. Ever landlord in Jackson be white and ever one got a white wife that’s friends with somebody. You start to panic some then. You still ain’t got no job prospects. Everwhere you try, the door slams in your face. And now you ain’t got a place to live.

Then it starts to come a little faster.

If you got a note on your car, they gone repossess it.

If you got a parking ticket you ain’t paid, you going to jail.

If you got a daughter, maybe you go live with her. She tend to a white family a her own. But a few days later she come home, say, “Mama? I just got fired.” She look hurt, scared. She don’t understand why. You got to tell her it’s cause a you.

Least her husband still working. Least they can feed the baby.

Then they fire her husband. Just another little sharp tool, shiny and fine.

They both pointing at you, crying, wondering why you done it. You can’t even remember why. Weeks pass and nothing, no jobs, no money, no house. You hope this is the end of it, that she done enough, she ready to forget.

It’ll be a knock on the door, late at night. It won’t be the white lady at the door. She don’t do that kind a thing herself. But while the nightmare’s happening, the burning or the cutting or the beating, you realize something you known all your life: the white lady don’t ever forget.

And she ain’t gone stop till you dead.

THE NEXT MORNING, Miss Skeeter pull her Cadillac up in Miss Leefolt’s driveway. I got raw chicken on my hands and a flame on the stovetop and Mae Mobley whining cause she starving to death but I can’t stand it another second. I walk in the dining room with my dirty hands up in the air.

Miss Skeeter, she asking Miss Leefolt about a list a girls who serving on a committee and Miss Leefolt say, “The head of the cupcake committee is Eileen,” and Miss Skeeter say, “But the cupcake committee chairman is Roxanne,” and Miss Leefolt say, “No, the cupcake co-chair is Roxanne and Eileen is the cupcake head,” and I’m getting so peckertated over this cupcake talk I want to poke Miss Skeeter with my raw-chicken finger but I know better than to interrupt so I don’t. There ain’t no talk at all about the satchel.

Before I know it, Miss Skeeter out the door.

Law.

That night after supper, me and that cockroach stare each other down across the kitchen floor. He big, inch, inch an a half. He black. Blacker than me. He making a crackling sound with his wings. I got my shoe in my hand.

The phone ring and we both jump.
 “Hey, Aibileen,” Miss Skeeter say and I hear a door shut. “Sorry to call so late.”

I breathe out. “I’m glad you did.”
 “I was just calling to see if you had any... word. From any other maids, I mean.”

Miss Skeeter sound strange. Tight in the jaw. Lately, she been glowing like a firefly she so in love. My heart start drumming. Still, I don’t jump right in with my questions. I ain’t sure why.
 “I asked Corrine who work at the Cooleys. She say no. Then Rhonda, and Rhonda’s sister who wait on the Millers... but both a them say no too.”
 “What about Yule May? Have you . . . talked to her recently?”

I wonder then if that’s why Miss Skeeter acting strange. See, I told Miss Skeeter a fib. I told her a month ago I asked Yule May, but I didn’t. It’s not just that I don’t know Yule May well. It’s that she Miss Hilly Holbrook’s maid, and anything having to do with that name make me nervous.
 “Not real recent. Maybe . . . I try her again,” I lie, hating it.

Then I get back to jiggling my pencil. Ready to tell her what Miss Hilly said.
 “Aibileen,” Miss Skeeter voice gone all shaky, “I have to tell you something.”

Miss Skeeter get quiet and it’s like them eerie seconds before a funnel cloud drop.
 “What happen, Miss Skeeter?”
 “I . . . left my satchel. At the League. Hilly picked it up.”

I squint my eyes, feel like I ain’t hearing too good. “The red one?”

She don’t reply.
 “Aw . . . Law.” This all starting to make a sick sense.
 “The stories were in a flap pocket. On the side, in another folder. I think all she saw were Jim Crow laws, some . . . booklet I’d picked up at the library but . . . I can’t say for sure.”
 “Oh Miss Skeeter,” I say and shut my eyes. God help me, God help Minny . . .
 “I know. I know,” Miss Skeeter say and start to cry into the phone.
 “Alright. Alright, now.” I try to make myself swallow my anger down. It was a accident, I tell myself. Kicking her ain’t gone do us no good.

But still.
 “Aibileen, I am so so sorry.”

There’s a few seconds a nothing but heart-pumping. Real slow and scary, my brain start ticking through the few facts she given me, what I know myself.
 “How long ago this happen?” I ask.
 “Three days ago. I wanted to find out what she knew before I told you.”
 “You talked to Miss Hilly?”
 “Just for a second when I picked it up. But I’ve talked to Elizabeth and Lou Anne and probably four other girls who know Hilly. Nobody’s said anything about it. That was... that was why I asked about Yule May,” she say. “I was wondering if she’d heard anything at work.”

I draw in a breath, hating what I have to tell her. “I heard it. Yesterday. Miss Hilly was talking to Miss Leefolt about it.”

Miss Skeeter don’t say nothing. I feel like I’m waiting for a brick to come slamming through my window.
 “She talking about Mister Holbrook running for office and how you supporting colored people and she say . . . she read something.” Saying it out loud now, I’m shaking. And still bobbing the pencil between my fingers.
 “Did she say anything about maids?” Miss Skeeter ask. “I mean, was she only upset with me or did she mention you or Minny?”
 “No, just . . . you.”
 “Okay.” Miss Skeeter blow air into the phone. She sound upset, but she don’t know what could happen to me, to Minny. She don’t know about them sharp, shiny utensils a white lady use. About that knock on the door, late at night. That there are white men out there hungry to hear about a colored person crossing whites, ready with they wooden bats, matchsticks. Any little thing’ll do.
 “I-I can’t say a hundred percent, but . . .” Miss Skeeter say, “if Hilly knew anything about the book or you or especially Minny, she’d be spreading it all over town.”

I think on this, wanting so hard to believe her. “It’s true, she do not like Minny Jackson.”
 “Aibileen,” Miss Skeeter say, and I hear her start to break down again. That calm-down in her voice is cracking. “We can stop. I understand completely if you want to stop working on it.”

If I say I don’t want a do it anymore, then everthing I been writing and still have to write ain’t gone get to be said. No, I think. I don’t want a stop. I’m surprised by how loud I think it.
 “If Miss Hilly know, she know,” I say. “Stopping ain’t gone save us now.”

I DON’T SEE, hear, or smell Miss Hilly for two days. Even when I ain’t holding a pencil, my fingers is jiggling it, in my pocket, on the kitchen counter, thumping like drumsticks. I got to find out what’s inside Miss Hilly’s head.

Miss Leefolt leave Yule May three messages for Miss Hilly, but she always at Mister Holbrook’s office—the “campaign H.Q.” is what Miss Hilly been calling it. Miss Leefolt sigh, hang up the phone like she just don’t know how her brain gone operate without Miss Hilly coming over to push the Think buttons. Ten times Baby Girl ask when little Heather gone come play in the plastic pool again. I reckon they’ll be good friends growing up, with Miss Hilly teaching them both how things is. By that afternoon, we all wandering around the house, jiggling our fingers, wondering when Miss Hilly gone show up again.

After while, Miss Leefolt go to the material store. Say she gone make a cover for something. She don’t know what. Mae Mobley look at me and I reckon we thinking the same thing: that woman’d cover us both up if she could.

I HAVE TO WORK REAL LATE that evening. I feed Baby Girl supper and put her to bed, cause Mister and Miss Leefolt gone to see a picture at the Lamar. Mister Leefolt promise he take her and she hold him to it, even though it’s only the late show left. When they get home, they yawning, crickets is cricking. Other houses, I’d sleep in the maid’s room, but they ain’t one here. I kind a hang around thinking Mister Leefolt gone offer to drive me home, but he just go right to bed.

Outside, in the dark, I walk all the way up to Riverside, about ten minutes away, where they run a late bus for the nighttime water-plant workers. The breeze is good enough keep the mosquitoes off. I sit on the edge a the park, in the grass under the streetlight. Bus come after while. Ain’t but four people on there, two colored, two white, all mens. I don’t know any of em. I take a window seat behind a thin colored fella. He got on a brown suit and a brown hat, be about my age.

We cross the bridge, head in the direction a the colored hospital, where the bus make its turn. I got my prayer book out so I can write some things down. I concentrate on Mae Mobley, try to keep my mind off Miss Hilly. Show me how to teach Baby Girl to be kind, to love herself; to love others, while I got time with her...

I look up. The bus done stopped in the middle a the road. I lean over into the aisle, see a few blocks up they’s blue lights flashing in the dark, people standing around, a road block.

White driver stare ahead. He turn off the motor and my seat go still, feel strange. He straighten his driver’s hat, hop out the seat. “Y’all stay put. Let me find out what’s going on.”

So we all set there in the quiet, waiting. I hear a dog barking, not a house dog, but the kind that sound like he yelling at you. After a full five minutes, driver get back on the bus, start the motor again. He toot his horn, wave his hand out the window, and start backing up real slow.
 “Wha happen up there?” colored man in front a me call to the driver.

Driver don’t answer. He keep backing up. The flashing lights is getting smaller, the dog barking fading off. Driver turn the bus around on Farish Street. At the next corner, he stop. “Colored people off, last stop for you,” he holler in the rearview. “White people lemme know where y’all need to get to. I’ll get you close as I can.”

The colored man look back at me. I guess we both ain’t got a good feeling. He stand up so I do too. I follow him to the front door. It’s eerie quiet, just the sound a our feets.

White man lean up to the driver, say, “What’s going on?”

I follow the colored man down the steps a the bus. Behind me, I hear the driver say, “I don’t know, some nigger got shot. Where you headed?”

The door swish closed. Oh Law, I think, please don’t let this be any a my peoples.

Ain’t a sound on Farish Street, or a person, cept us two. The man look at me. “You alright? You close to home?”
 “I be alright. I’m close.” My house is seven blocks from here.
 “Want me to walk you?”

I kind a do, but I shake my head. “Naw, thank you. I be fine.”

A news truck whiz by, way down at the intersection the bus turned off of. Big WLBT-TV letters on the side.
 “Law, I hope this ain’t as bad as it—” but the man gone. They ain’t a soul now but me. I get that feeling people talk about, right before they get mugged. In two seconds, my stockings is rubbing together so fast I sound like zippers zipping. Up ahead I see three people walking fast like me. All of em turn off, go into houses, shut the door.

I’m real sure I don’t want to be alone another second. I cut between Mule Cato’s house and the back a the auto repair, then through Oney Black’s yard, trip on a hose-pipe in the dark. I feel like a burglar. Can see lights on inside the houses, heads bent down, lights that should be off this time a night. Whatever going on, everbody either talking about it or listening to it.

Finally, up ahead I see Minny’s kitchen light, back door open, screen door closed. The door make a whine when I push it. Minny setting at the table with all five kids: Leroy Junior, Sugar, Felicia, Kindra, and Benny. I guess Leroy Senior gone to work. They all staring at the big radio in the middle a the table. A wave a static come in with me.
 “What is it?” I say. Minny frown, fiddle with the dial. In a second I take in the room: a ham slice curled and red in a skillet. A tin can on the counter, lid open. Dirty plates in the sink. Ain’t Minny’s kitchen at all.
 “What happen?” I ask again.

The radio man come into tune, hollering, “—almost ten years serving as the Field Secretary for the N-double-A-C-P. Still no word from the hospital but wounds are said to be—”
 “Who?” I say.

Minny stare at me like I ain’t got my head on. “Medgar Evers. Where you been?”
 “Medgar Evers? What happen?” I met Myrlie Evers, his wife, last fall, when she visit our church with Mary Bone’s family. She wore this smart red-and-black scarf tied on her neck. I remember how she looked me in the eye, smiled like she was real glad to meet me. Medgar Evers like a celebrity around here, being so high in the NAACP.
 “Set down,” Minny say. I set in a wooden chair. They all ghost-faced, staring at the radio. It’s about half the size of a car engine, wood, four knobs on it. Even Kindra quiet in Sugar’s lap.
 “KKK shot him. Front a his house. A hour ago.”

I feel a prickle creep up my spine. “Where he live?”
 “On Guynes,” Minny say. “The doctors got him at our hospital.”
 “I . . . saw,” I say, thinking a the bus. Guynes ain’t but five minutes away from here if you got a car.
 “. . . witnesses say it was a single man, a white male, who jumped from the bushes. Rumors of KKK involvement are . . .”

Now they’s some unorganized talking on the radio, some people yelling, some fumbling round. I tense up like somebody watching us from outside. Somebody white. The KKK was here, five minutes away, to hunt down a colored man. I want a close that back door.
 “I was just informed,” the announcer say, panting, “that Medgar Evers is dead.”
 “Medgar Evers,” he sound like he getting pushed around, voices round him, “I was just told. Has died.”

Oh Law.

Minny turn to Leroy Junior. Her voice low, steady.
 “Take your brothers and your sisters in the bedroom. Get in bed. And stay back there.” It always sound scarier when a hollerer talk soft.

Even though I know Leroy Junior want a stay, he give em a look and they all disappear, quiet, quick. The radio man go quiet too. For a second, that box nothing but brown wood and wires. “Medgar Evers,” he say, his voice sound like it’s rolling backwards, “NAACP Field Secretary, is dead.” He sigh. “Medgar Evers is dead.”

I swallow back a mouthful a spit and stare at Minny’s wallpaint that’s gone yellow with bacon grease, baby hands, Leroy’s Pall Malls. No pictures or calendars on Minny’s walls. I’m trying not to think. I don’t want a think about a colored man dying. It’ll make me remember Treelore.

Minny’s hands is in fists. She gritting her teeth. “Shot him right in front a his children, Aibileen.”
 “We gone pray for the Everses, we gone pray for Myrlie . . .” but it just sound so empty, so I stop.
 “Radio say his family run out the house when they heard the shots. Say he bloody, stumbling round, all the kids with blood all over em . . .” She slap her hand on the table, rattling the wood radio.

I hold my breath, but I feel dizzy. I got to be the one who’s strong. I got to keep my friend here from losing it.
 “Things ain’t never gone change in this town, Aibileen. We living in hell, we trapped. Our kids is trapped.”

Radio man get loud again, say, “. . . policemen everywhere, blocking the road. Mayor Thompson is expected to hold a press conference shortly—”

I choke then. The tears roll down. It’s all them white peoples that breaks me, standing around the colored neighborhood. White peoples with guns, pointed at colored peoples. Cause who gone protect our peoples? Ain’t no colored policemans.

Minny stare at the door the kids went through. Sweat’s drilling down the sides a her face.
 “What they gone do to us, Aibileen? If they catch us . . .”

I take a deep breath. She talking about the stories. “We both know. It be bad.”
 “But what would they do? Hitch us to a pickup and drag us behind? Shoot me in my yard front a my kids? Or just starve us to death?”

Mayor Thompson come on the radio, say how sorry he is for the Evers family. I look at the open back door and get that watched feeling again, with a white man’s voice in the room.
 “This ain’t . . . we ain’t doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen.”

I turn off the radio, take Minny’s hand in mine. We set like that, Minny staring at the brown moth pressed up on the wall, me staring at that flap a red meat, left dry in the pan.

Minny got the most lonesome look in her eyes. “I wish Leroy was home,” she whisper.

I doubt if them words ever been said in this house before.

FOR DAYS and DAYS, Jackson, Mississippi’s like a pot a boiling water. On Miss Leefolt’s tee-vee, flocks a colored people march up High Street the day after Mister Evers’ funeral. Three hundred arrested. Colored paper say thousands a people came to the service, but you could count the whites on one hand. The police know who did it, but they ain’t telling nobody his name.

I come to find that the Evers family ain’t burying Medgar in Mississippi. His body’s going to Washington, to the Arlington Cemetery, and I reckon Myrlie real proud a that. She should be. But I’d want him here, close by. In the newspaper, I read how even the President a the United States telling Mayor Thompson he need to do better. Put a committee together with blacks and whites and work things out down here. But Mayor Thompson, he say—to President Kennedy—“I am not going to appoint a bi-racial committee. Let’s not kid ourselves. I believe in the separation of the races, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Few days later, the mayor come on the radio again. “Jackson, Mississippi, is the closest place to heaven there is,” he say. “And it’s going to be like this for the rest of our lives.”

For the second time in two months, Jackson, Mississippi’s in the Life magazine. This time, though, we make the cover.Chapter 15
NONE A THE MEDGAR EVERS talk come up in Miss Leefolt’s house. I change the station when she come back from her lunch meeting. We go on like it’s a nice summer afternoon. I still ain’t heard hide nor hair from Miss Hilly and I’m sick a the worry that’s always in my head.

A day after the Evers funeral, Miss Leefolt’s mama stop by for a visit. She live up in Greenwood, Mississippi, and she driving down to New Orleans. She don’t knock, Miss Fredericks just waltz on in the living room where I’m ironing. She give me a lemony smile. I go tell Miss Leefolt who here.
 “Mama! You’re so early! You must’ve gotten up at the crack of dawn this morning, I hope you didn’t tire yourself out!” Miss Leefolt say, rushing into the living room, picking up toys fast as she can. She shoot me a look that say, now. I put Mister Leefolt’s wrinkled shirts in a basket, get a cloth for Baby Girl’s face to wipe off the jelly.
 “And you look so fresh and stylish this morning, Mama.” Miss Leefolt smiling so hard she getting bug-eyed. “Are you excited about your shopping trip?”

From the good Buick she drive and her nice buckle shoes, I spec Miss Fredericks got a lot more money than Mister and Miss Leefolt do.
 “I wanted to break up the drive. And I was hoping you’d take me to the Robert E. Lee for lunch,” Miss Fredericks say. I don’t know how this woman can stand her own self. I heard Mister and Miss Leefolt arguing about how evertime she come to town, she make Miss Leefolt take her to the fanciest place in town and then sit back and make Miss Leefolt pay the bill.

Miss Leefolt say, “Oh, why don’t we have Aibileen fix us lunch here? We have a real nice ham and some—”
 “I stopped by to go out to lunch. Not to eat here.”
 “Alright. Alright, Mama, let me just go get my handbag.”

Miss Fredericks look down at Mae Mobley playing with her baby doll, Claudia, on the floor. She bend down and give her a hug, say, “Mae Mobley, did you like that smocked dress I sent over last week?”
 “Yeah,” Baby Girl say to her Granmama. I hated showing Miss Leefolt how tight that dress was around the middle. Baby Girl getting plumper.

Miss Fredericks, she scowl down at Mae Mobley. “You say yes ma’am, young lady. Do you hear me?”

Mae Mobley, she get a dull look on her face, say, “Yes ma’am.” But I know what she thinking. She thinking, Great. Just what I need today. Another lady in this house who don’t like me.

They head out the door with Miss Fredericks pinching the back a Miss Leefolt’s arm. “You don’t know how to hire proper help, Elizabeth. It is her job to make sure Mae Mobley has good manners.”
 “Alright, Mama, we’ll work on it.”
 “You can’t just hire anybody and hope you get lucky.”

After while, I fix Baby Girl that ham sandwich Miss Fredericks too good to eat. But Mae Mobley only take one bite, push it away.
 “I don’t feel good. My froat hurts, Aibee.”

I know what a froat is and I know how to fix it. Baby Girl getting a summer cold. I heat her up a cup a honey water, little lemon in it to make it good. But what this girl really needs is a story so she can go to sleep. I lift her up in my arms. Law, she getting big. Gone be three years old in a few months, and pudgy as a punkin.

Ever afternoon, me and Baby Girl set in the rocking chair before her nap. Ever afternoon, I tell her: You kind, you smart, you important. But she growing up and I know, soon, them few words ain’t gone be enough.
 “Aibee? Read me a story?”

I look through the books to see what I’m on read to her. I can’t read that Curious George one more time cause she don’t want a hear it. Or Chicken Little or Madeline neither.

So we just rock in the chair awhile. Mae Mobley lean her head against my uniform. We watch the rain dripping on the water left in the green plastic pool. I say a prayer for Myrlie Evers, wishing I’d had work off to go to the funeral. I think on how her ten-year-old son, somebody told me, had cried so quiet through the whole thing. I rock and pray, feeling so sad, I don’t know, something just come over me. The words just come out.
 “Once upon a time they was two little girls,” I say. “One girl had black skin, one girl had white.”

Mae Mobley look up at me. She listening.
 “Little colored girl say to the little white girl, ‘How come your skin be so pale?’ White girl say, ‘I don’t know. How come your skin be so black? What you think that mean?’
 “But neither one a them little girls knew. So little white girl say, ‘Well, let’s see. You got hair, I got hair.’ ” I gives Mae Mobley a little tousle on her head.
 “Little colored girl say ‘I got a nose, you got a nose.’ ” I gives her little snout a tweak. She got to reach up and do the same to me.
 “Little white girl say, ‘I got toes, you got toes.’ And I do the little thing with her toes, but she can’t get to mine cause I got my white work shoes on.
 “‘So we’s the same. Just a different color,’ say that little colored girl. The little white girl she agreed and they was friends. The End.”

Baby Girl just look at me. Law, that was a sorry story if I ever heard one. Wasn’t even no plot to it. But Mae Mobley, she smile and say, “Tell it again.”

So I do. By the fourth time, she asleep. I whisper, “I’m on tell you a better one next time.”
 “DON’T WE HAVE MORE TOWELS, Aibileen? This one’s fine, but we can’t take this old ratty thing, I’d be embarrassed to death. I guess we’ll just take the one, then.”

Miss Leefolt all in a tizzy. She and Mister Leefolt don’t belong to no swim club, not even the dinky Broadmoore pool. Miss Hilly call this morning and ask if she and Baby Girl want to go swimming at the Jackson Country Club and that’s a invitation Miss Leefolt ain’t had but once or twice. I probably been there more times than she has.

You can’t use paper money there, you got to be a member and charge it to your account and one thing I know about Miss Hilly is, she don’t like to carry nobody’s costs. I reckon Miss Hilly got other ladies she go to the Country Club with, ones who got the memberships.

We still ain’t heard another word about the satchel. Ain’t even seen Miss Hilly in five days. Neither has Miss Skeeter, which is bad. They sposed to be best friends. Miss Skeeter, she brung over the first Minny chapter last night. Miss Walter was no cup a tea and if Miss Hilly saw anything relating to that, I don’t know what’s gone happen to us. I just hope Miss Skeeter ain’t too scared to tell me if she heard anything new.

I put Baby Girl’s yellow bikini on. “You got to keep you top on, now. They don’t let no nekkid babies swim at the country club.” Nor Negroes nor Jews. I used to work for the Goldmans. The Jackson Jews got to swim at the Colonial Country Club, the Negroes, in May’s Lake.

I feed Baby Girl a peanut butter sandwich and the phone ring.
 “Miss Leefolt residence.”
 “Aibileen, hey, it’s Skeeter. Is Elizabeth there?”
 “Hey Miss Skeeter . . .” I look over at Miss Leefolt, about to hand her the phone, but she wave her hands. She shake her head and mouth, No. Tell her I’m not here.
 “She . . . she gone, Miss Skeeter,” I say and I look Miss Leefolt right in the eye while I tell her lie. I don’t understand it. Miss Skeeter a member a the club, wouldn’t be no trouble inviting her.

At noontime, we all three get in Miss Leefolt’s blue Ford Fairlane. On the back seat next to us, I got a bag with a Thermos a apple juice, cheese nabs, peanuts, and two Co-Cola bottles that’s gone be like drinking coffee they gone be so hot. I spec Miss Leefolt know Miss Hilly ain’t gone be pushing us to the snack bar. Law knows why she invite her today.

Baby Girl ride in my lap in the back seat. I crank the window down, let the warm air blow on our faces. Miss Leefolt keep poofing her hair up. She a stop-and-go driver and I feel nauseous, wish she’d just keep both hands on the wheel.

We pass the Ben Franklin Five and Dime, the Seale-Lily Ice Cream drive-thru. They got a sliding window on the back side so colored folk can get our ice cream too. My legs is sweating with Baby Girl setting on me. After while, we on a long, bumpy road with pasture on both sides, cows flapping at the flies with they tails. We count us twenty-six cows but Mae Mobley just call out “Ten” after the first nine. That’s high as she know.

Bout fifteen minutes later, we pull onto a paved drive. The club’s a low, white building with prickle bushes around it, not nearly so fancy as folks talk about it. They’s plenty a parking places up front, but Miss Leefolt think on it a second, park a ways back.

We step out onto the blacktop, feel the heat cover us. I got the paper sack in one hand, Mae Mobley’s hand in the other and we trudge across the steaming black lot. Gridlines make it like we on a charcoal grill, roasting like corncobs. My face getting tight, burning in the sun. Baby Girl lagging back on my hand looking stunned like she just got slapped. Miss Leefolt panting and frowning at the door, still twenty yards away, wondering, I reckon, why she park so far. The part in my hair get to burning, then itching, but I can’t scratch at it cause both hands is full then whoo! somebody blow out the flame. The lobby’s dark, cool, heaven. We blink awhile.

Miss Leefolt look around, blind and shy, so I point to the side door. “Pool that a way, ma’am.”

She look grateful I know my way around so she don’t have to ask like poor folk.

We push open the door and the sun flash in our eyes again, but it’s nice, cooler. The swimming pool shining blue. The black-and-white stripe awnings look clean. The air smell like laundry soap. Kids is laughing and splashing and ladies is laying around in they swimsuits and sunglasses reading magazines.

Miss Leefolt roof her eyes and spy around for Miss Hilly. She got a white floppy hat on, black-and-white polky-dot dress, clonky white buckle sandals a size too big for her feet. She frowning cause she feel out a place, but smiling cause she don’t want nobody to know it.
 “There she is.” We follow Miss Leefolt around the pool to where Miss Hilly is in a red bathing suit. She laid out on a lounge chair, watching her kids swim. I see two maids I don’t know with other families, but not Yule May.
 “There y’all are,” Miss Hilly say. “Why, Mae Mobley, don’t you look like a little butterball in that bikini. Aibileen, the kids are right there in the baby pool. You can sit in the shade back yonder and look after them. Don’t let William splash the girls, now.”

Miss Leefolt lay down on the lounge chair next to Miss Hilly and I set at the table under a umbrella, few feet behind the ladies. I pop my hose away from my legs to dry the sweat. I’m in a pretty good position for hearing what they say.
 “Yule May,” Miss Hilly shake her head at Miss Leefolt. “Another day off. I tell you, that girl is pushing it with me.” Well, that’s one mystery solved. Miss Hilly invite Miss Leefolt to the pool cause she know she bring me.

Miss Hilly pour more cocoa butter on her plump, tan legs, rub it around. She already so greasy she shining. “I am so ready to get down to the coast,” Miss Hilly say. “Three weeks at the beach.”
 “I wish Raleigh’s family had a house down there.” Miss Leefolt sigh. She pull her dress up a little to sun her white knees. She can’t wear no bathing suit since she pregnant.
 “Of course we have to pay the bus fare to get Yule May back up here on the weekends. Eight dollars. I ought to take it out of her pay.”

The kids yell they want to get in the big pool now. I pull Mae Mobley’s Styrofoam bubble out the bag, fasten it around her tummy. Miss Hilly hand me two more and I put one on William and Heather too. They get in the big pool and float around like a bunch a fishing corks. Miss Hilly look at me, say, “Aren’t they the cutest things?” and I nod. They sure is. Even Miss Leefolt nodding.

They talk and I listen, but they ain’t no mention a Miss Skeeter or a satchel. After while, Miss Hilly send me to the snack window to get cherry Co-Colas for everone, even myself. After while, the locusts in the trees start humming, the shade get cooler and I feel my eyes, trained on the kids in the pool, start to sag.
 “Aibee, watch me! Looky at me!” I focus my eyes, smile at Mae Mobley funning around.

And that’s when I see Miss Skeeter, back behind the pool, outside the fence. She got on her tennis skirt and her racquet in her hand. She staring at Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt, tilting her head like she sorting something out. Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt, they don’t see her, they still talking about Biloxi. I watch Miss Skeeter come in the gate, walk around the pool. Pretty soon, she standing right in front a them and they still don’t see her.
 “Hey y’all,” Miss Skeeter say. She got sweat running down her arms. Her face is pink and swolled up in the sun.

Miss Hilly look up, but she stay stretched out on her pool chair, magazine in her hand. Miss Leefolt jump up off her chair and stand up.
 “Hey, Skeeter! Why—I didn’t . . . we tried to call . . .” Her teeth just about chattering she smiling so big.
 “Hey, Elizabeth.”
 “Tennis?” Miss Leefolt ask, nodding her head like she a doll on a dashboard. “Who’re you playing with?”
 “I was hitting balls on the backboard by myself,” Miss Skeeter say. She blow a thicket a hair off her forehead, but it’s stuck. She don’t move out the sun, though.
 “Hilly,” Miss Skeeter say, “did Yule May tell you I called?”

Hilly smile kind a tight. “She’s off today.”
 “I called you yesterday too.”
 “Look, Skeeter, I didn’t have time. I have been at the campaign H.Q. since Wednesday addressing envelopes to practically every white person in Jackson.”
 “Alright.” Miss Skeeter nod. Then she squint, say, “Hilly, are we . . . did I . . . do something to upset you?” and I feel my fingers jiggling again, twirling that dumb invisible pencil.

Miss Hilly close her magazine, put it on the concrete so she don’t get her grease on it. “This should be discussed at a later time, Skeeter.”

Miss Leefolt sit back down real quick. She pick up Miss Hilly’s Good Housekeeping, start reading it like she ain’t ever seen nothing so important.
 “Alright.” Miss Skeeter shrug. “I just thought we could talk about . . . whatever this is before you go out of town.”

Miss Hilly bout to protest, but then she let out a long sigh. “Why don’t you just tell me the truth, Skeeter?”
 “The truth about wh—”
 “Look, I found that paraphernalia of yours.” I swallow hard. Miss Hilly trying to whisper but she really ain’t no good at it.

Miss Skeeter keep her eyes on Hilly. She real calm, don’t look up at me at all. “What paraphernalia do you mean?”
 “In your satchel when I was hunting for the minutes? And Skeeter”—she flash her eyes up at the sky and back down—“I don’t know. I just do not know anymore.”
 “Hilly, what are you talking about? What did you see in my satchel?”

I look out at the kids, Law, I almost forgot about em. I feel like I’m gone faint listening to this.
 “Those laws you were carrying around? About what the—” Miss Hilly look back at me. I keep my eyes trained on the pool. “What those other people can and cannot do and frankly,” she hiss, “I think it’s downright pig-headed of you. To think you know better than our government? Than Ross Barnett?”
 “When did I ever say a word about Ross Barnett?” Miss Skeeter say.

Miss Hilly wag her finger up at Miss Skeeter. Miss Leefolt staring at the same page, same line, same word. I got the whole scene fixed in the corner a my eye.
 “You are not a politician, Skeeter Phelan.”
 “Well, neither are you, Hilly.”

Miss Hilly stand up then. She point her finger to the ground. “I am about to be a politician’s wife, unless you have anything to do with it. How is William ever going to get elected in Washington, D.C., one day if we have integrational friends in our closet?”
 “Washington?” Miss Skeeter roll her eyes. “William’s running for the local senate, Hilly. And he might not win.”

Oh Law. I finally let myself look at Miss Skeeter. Why you doing this? Why you pushing her hot button?

Oh, Miss Hilly mad now. She snap her head straight. “You know well as I do, there are good, tax-paying white people in this town who would fight you to the death on this. You want to let them get in our swimming pools? Let them put their hands on everything in our grocery stores?”

Miss Skeeter stare long and hard at Miss Hilly. Then, for one-half a second, Miss Skeeter glance at me, see the pleading in my eyes. Her shoulders ease back some. “Oh Hilly, it’s just a booklet. I found it at the darn library. I’m not trying to change any laws, I just took it home to read.”

Miss Hilly take this in a second. “But if you’re looking at those laws,” Miss Hilly snap the leg a her bathing suit that’s crept up her behind, “I have to wonder, what else are you up to?”

Miss Skeeter shift her eyes away, lick her lips. “Hilly. You know me better than anybody else in this world. If I was up to something, you’d have me figured out in half a second.”

Miss Hilly just watch her. Then Miss Skeeter grab Miss Hilly’s hand and squeeze it. “I am worried about you. You disappear for an entire week, you’re working yourself to death on this campaign. Look at that.” Miss Skeeter turn Miss Hilly’s palm over. “You have a blister from addressing all those envelopes.”

And real slow, I watch Miss Hilly’s body slump down, start to give in on itself. She look to make sure Miss Leefolt ain’t listening.
 “I’m just so scared,” Miss Hilly whisper through her teeth. I can’t hear much. “. . . piled so much money in this campaign, if William doesn’t win . . . been working day and . . .”

Miss Skeeter lay a hand on Miss Hilly’s shoulder, say something to her. Miss Hilly nod and give her a tired smile.

After while, Miss Skeeter tell them she got to go. She head off through the sunbathers, winding through the chairs and the towels. Miss Leefolt look over at Miss Hilly with big eyes, like she scared to ask any questions.

I lean back in my chair, wave to Mae Mobley making twirlies in the water. I try to rub the headache out my temples. Across the way, Miss Skeeter look back at me. Everbody around us is sunning and laughing and squinting, not a soul guessing that the colored woman and the white woman with the tennis racquet is wondering the same thing: is we fools to feel some relief?Chapter 16
ABOUT A YEAR AFTER Treelore died, I started going to the Community Concerns Meeting at my church. I reckon I started doing it to fill time. Keep the evenings from getting so lonely. Even though Shirley Boon, with her big know-it-all smile, kind a irritate me. Minny don’t like Shirley neither, but she usually come anyway to get out the house. But Benny got the asthma tonight, so Minny ain’t gone make it.

Lately, the meetings is more about civil rights than keeping the streets clean and who gone work at the clothing exchange. It ain’t aggressive, mostly people just talking things out, praying about it. But after Mr. Evers got shot a week ago, lot a colored folks is frustrated in this town. Especially the younger ones, who ain’t built up a callus to it yet. They done had meetings all week over the killing. I hear folks was angry, yelling, crying. This the first one I come to since the shooting.

I walk down the steps to the basement. Generally, it’s cooler than up in the church, but it’s warm down here tonight. Folks is putting ice cubes in they coffee. I look around to see who’s here, reckoning I better ask some more maids to help us, now that it look like we squeaked by Miss Hilly. Thirty-five maids done said no and I feel like I’m selling something nobody want to buy. Something big and stinky, like Kiki Brown and her lemon smell-good polish. But what really makes me and Kiki the same is, I’m proud a what I’m selling. I can’t help it. We telling stories that need to be told.

I wish Minny could help me ask people. Minny know how to put a sell on. But we decided from the start, nobody needs to know Minny’s a part a this. It’s just too risky for her family. We felt like we had to tell folks it was Miss Skeeter, though. Nobody would agree if they didn’t know who the white lady was, wondering if they knew her or had worked for her. But Miss Skeeter can’t do the front sell. She’d scare em off before she even opened her mouth. So it’s up to me and it didn’t take but five or six maids before everbody already know what I’m on ask before I get three words out my mouth. They say it ain’t worth it. They ask me why I’d put my own self at risk when it ain’t gone do no good. I reckon peoples is starting to think old Aibileen’s basket ain’t got many pawpaws left in it.

All the wooden fold-chairs is full tonight. They’s over fifty people here, mostly womens.
 “Sit down by me, Aibileen,” Bertrina Bessemer say. “Goldella, let the older folk have the chairs.”

Goldella jump up, motion me down. Least Bertrina still treating me like I ain’t crazy.

I settle in. Tonight, Shirley Boon’s sitting down and the Deacon standing at the front. He say we need a quiet prayer meeting tonight. Say we need to heal. I’m glad for it. We close our eyes and the Deacon leads us in a prayer for the Everses, for Myrlie, for the sons. Some folks is whispering, murmuring to God, and a quiet power fill up the room, like bees buzzing on a comb. I say my prayers to myself. When I’m done, I take a deep breath, wait for the others to finish. When I get home tonight, I’ll write my prayers too. This is worth the double time.

Yule May, Miss Hilly’s maid, setting in front a me. Yule May easy to recognize from the back cause she got such good hair, smooth, no nap to it. I hear she educated, went through most a college. Course we got plenty a smart people in our church with they college degrees. Doctors, lawyers, Mr. Cross who own The Southern Times, the colored newspaper that come out ever week. But Yule May, she probably the most educated maid we got in our parish. Seeing her makes me think again about the wrong I need to right.

The Deacon open his eyes, look out on us all real quiet. “The prayers we are say—”
 “Deacon Thoroughgood,” a deep voice boom through stillness. I turn—everbody turn—and there’s Jessup, Plantain Fidelia’s grandson, standing in the doorway. He twenty-two, twenty-three. He got his hands in thick fists.
 “What I want to know is,” he say slow, angry, “what we plan to do about it.”

Deacon got a stern look on his face like he done talked with Jessup before. “Tonight, we are going to lift our prayers to God. We will march peacefully down the streets of Jackson next Tuesday. And in August, I will see you in Washington to march with Doctor King.”
 “That is not enough!” Jessup say, banging his fist on his hand. “They shot him in the back like a dog!”
 “Jessup.” Deacon raise his hand. “Tonight is for prayer. For the family. For the lawyers on the case. I understand your anger, but, son—”
 “Prayer? You mean y’all just gonna sit around and pray about it?”

He look around at all a us in our chairs.
 “Y’all think prayer’s going to keep white people from killing us?”

No one answer, not even the Deacon. Jessup just turn and leave. We all hear his feet stomping up the stairs and then over our heads out the church.

The room is real quiet. Deacon Thoroughgood got his eyes locked a few inches above our heads. It’s strange. He ain’t a man not to look you in the eye. Everbody staring at him, everbody wondering what he thinking so that he can’t look in our faces. Then I see Yule May shaking her head, real small, but like she mean it and I reckon the Deacon and Yule May is thinking the same thing. They thinking about what Jessup ask. And Yule May, she just answering the question.

THE MEETING Ends around eight o’clock. The ones who got kids go on, others get ourselves coffee from the table in the back. They ain’t much chatter. People quiet. I take a breath, go to Yule May standing at the coffee urn. I just want to get this lie off that’s stuck on me like a cocklebur. I ain’t gone ask nobody else at the meeting. Ain’t nobody gone buy my stinky smell-good tonight.

Yule May nod at me, smile polite. She about forty and tall and thin. She done kept her figure nice. She still wearing her white uniform and it fit trim on her waist. She always wear earrings, tiny gold loops.
 “I hear the twins is going to Tougaloo College next year. Congratulations.”
 “We hope so. We’ve still got a little more to save. Two at once’s a lot.”
 “You went to a good bit a college yourself, didn’t you?”

She nod, say, “Jackson College.”
 “I loved school. The reading and the writing. Cept the rithmatic. I didn’t take to that.”

Yule May smiles. “The English was my favorite too. The writing.”
 “I been . . . writing some myself.”

Yule May look me in the eye and I can tell then she know what I’m about to say. For a second, I can see the shame she swallow ever day, working in that house. The fear. I feel embarrassed to ask her.

But Yule May say it before I have to. “I know about the stories you’re working on. With that friend of Miss Hilly’s.”
 “It’s alright, Yule May. I know you can’t do it.”
 “It’s just... a risk I can’t afford to take right now. We so close to getting enough money together.”
 “I understand,” I say and I smile, let her know she off the hook. But Yule May don’t move away.
 “The names . . . you’re changing them, I heard?”

This the same question everbody ask, cause they curious.
 “That’s right. And the name a the town, too.”

She look down at the floor. “So I’d tell my stories about being a maid and she’d write them down? Edit them or . . . something like that?”

I nod. “We want a do all kind a stories. Good things and bad. She working with . . . another maid right now.”

Yule May lick her lips, look like she imagining it, telling what it’s like to work for Miss Hilly.
 “Could we . . . talk about this some more? When I have more time?”
 “A course,” I say, and I see, in her eyes, she ain’t just being nice.
 “I’m sorry, but Henry and the boys are waiting on me,” she says. “But may I call you? And talk in private?”
 “Anytime. Whenever you feel like it.”

She touch my arm and look me straight in the eyes again. I can’t believe what I see. It’s like she been waiting on me to ask her all this time.

Then she gone out the door. I stand in the corner a minute, drinking coffee too hot for the weather. I laugh and mutter to myself, even though everbody gone think I’m even crazier for it.... Chapter 17