The Help

  EVERY OTHER NIGHT for the next two weeks, I tel 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, tel s

  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’l be writing the other maids’ stories and that wil 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 tel her so.

  “Wel , look who I been writing to.” She chuckles. “Can’t lie to God.”

  Before I was born, she actual y 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 chil s, 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 tel myself not to press her. I wish I could hear everything she knows about Constantine, but I’l 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, practical y 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 stil 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 tel you if she like it?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. If we mail it next week, maybe we’l 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 thril ed 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

  rol ed 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 Hil y complain about sharing a toilet with the maid. She tel s 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 ful of Southern writers. Faulkner, Eudora Welty—”

  Aibileen gives me a dry cough. “You know colored folks ain’t al owed 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’l 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 fal in a lake? He say you dreaming about your

  own self being born. Miss Frances, who I work for in 1957, she had al 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 fol owing 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, ful 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 fol ow this with Aibileen’s own stories, just as she wrote them, simple, straightforward.

  On day three, Mother cal s up the stairs to ask what in the world I’m doing up there al day and I hol er down, Just typing up some notes from

  the Bible study. Just writing down all the things I love about Jesus. I hear her tel 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 real y 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 cal ing 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 yel ow envelope.

  Yesterday, I made a long-distance phone cal 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 cal back from Missus Stein today.

  I hold the envelope to my heart and almost weep f
rom 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 wil happen… if she likes it. What if Elizabeth or Hil y catches us at what we’re doing? What if Aibileen gets fired, sent to jail? I feel like I’m fal ing 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 Hil y 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 cal ed once and Ruth said she passed it on to her four days ago, but stil I’ve heard nothing.

  “Is this not just the rudest thing you’ve ever heard of?” Hil y 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 Hil y around.

  Aibileen walks in the dining room and I do my best not to look at her for too long. I am afraid Hil y or Elizabeth wil see something in my eyes.

  “Stop jiggling your foot, Skeeter. You’re shaking the whole entire table,” Hil y 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.

  Hil y 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. Smal details I’m privy to

  now.

  Aibileen offers me a biscuit from a silver tray. She fil s 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 stil wears the green dress with black piping when I

  come over. Sometimes she’l slip off her shoes under the table. Last time, she pul ed 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.

  “Wel , 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.”

  “Wel , it’s about time,” Hil y says, giving her a hug. “Mae Mobley’s practical y grown.”

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

  While we play a few practice hands, Hil y and Elizabeth talk about baby names. I try to contribute to the conversation. “Definitely Raleigh, if

  it’s a boy,” I add. Hil y talks about Wil iam’s campaign. He’s running for state senate next year, even though he has no political experience. I’m

  grateful when Elizabeth tel s Aibileen to go ahead and serve lunch.

  When Aibileen comes back in with the gelatin salad, Hil y 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 al 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 Hil y, Aibileen?” Elizabeth nods. “You go on and get those clothes right after we’re done.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Hil y 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. Hil y is amazingly forgiving.

  Lou Anne was late, after al , because of a League duty.

  Afterward, I tel Elizabeth congratulations again, walk out to my car. Aibileen is outside col ecting her gently used coat from 1942 and old

  clothes that, for some reason, Hil y won’t give to her own maid, Yule May. Hil y strides over to me, hands me an envelope.

  “For the newsletter next week. You’l be sure and get it in for me?”

  I nod and Hil y 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 Hil y’s envelope. I open it. It is one page, written in Hil y’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 practical y fal 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 stil 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 tel ing me to write it! She’s tel ing me…“Are you saying you’l publish it? If I can write it by—
”

  “I said nothing of the sort,” she snaps. “I wil read it. I look at a hundred manuscripts a month and reject nearly al of them.”

  “Sorry, I just…I’l write it,” I say. “I’l have it finished in January.”

  “And four or five interviews won’t be enough for a book. You’l 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’l 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 wal 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 real y 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 wil 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, pul ing out my list. “What’s her name…Louvenia? Do you know her?”