The Help

  Aibileen nods. “I asked Louvenia.” Her eyes are stil on her lap. “Her grandson the one got blinded. She say she real sorry, but she have to

  keep her mind on him.”

  “And Hil y’s maid, Yule May? You’ve asked her?”

  “She say she too busy trying to get her boys into col ege next year.”

  “Any other maids that go to your church? Have you asked them?”

  Aibileen nods. “They al got excuses. But real y, 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 final y meets my look. “I didn’t want a tel 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 swal ows 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 cal s 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’l say. “You fine?”

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “Fine, then.” Before I leave, the fat receptionist hands me my ten-dol ar 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 al 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

  instal 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 al the time.”

  “I ain’t working in no kitchen with no ceiling fan, Mister Carlton.”

  “Sure you wil . I’m just hooking up the current to it now.”

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

  Daddy flipped the switch. In the seconds it took to real y 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 rol of parchment paper, quickly dipped it in the

  bucket of water. There’s stil 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-dol ar hand mixers and mail-order toys flutter in a

  breeze, swol en 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 tel on her if she does something wrong. It could take years to break through that fear. My best

  sense tel s 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 Cadil ac 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 al times.”

  “I’l …sit wherever she wants me to.”

  Aibileen’s voice softens. “She just don’t know you, is al . Plus she ain’t got a real good history with white ladies.”

  “Whatever I have to do, I’l do it.”

  I walk out of the pantry beaming, hang the phone up on the wal . 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 tel Mother I’m going to pick up a new copy of the King James Bible since I’ve worn mine so thin and al . I also tel her I feel guilty driving the Cadil ac what with al 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 pul ing 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 Hil y al owed Missus Walters to host bridge club. Minny and Aibileen are both stil in their white uniforms.

  “Hel o,” 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 tel you, while you write

  it down.”

  “And Minny, everything you say here is in confidence,” I say. “You’l 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 al 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 tel you al 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’l happen if people catch us? Forget the time I accidental y use the wrong changing room down at McRae’s women’s wear,

  I’d have guns pointing at my house.”

  There’s a stil , 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-cal s, “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 pul up a week later to go back to work, they gone.

  Moved to Mobile. She tel 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 smal , warm living room. Minny storms in mad, quiets down as she tel s 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 tel 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’al 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 wal , 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.”

  “Wel . 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—Hil y? Wil iam?” 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 Hil y 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 Hil y 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 tel 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 al his

  good ole boy, tough bourbon talk has evaporated, I wonder if he’s this pathetic al 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. “Actual y, I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I’ve never dated anybody.”

  He looks up at me, kind of laughs. “Wel , that must be it, then.”

  “Be what?” I steel myself, recal ing 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 real y 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, tal -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 real y mean something to him. I take in a deep

  breath, about to say yes—I mean, why would I of al 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 smel ed like fertilizer. It took me three months to stop thinking about that comment.

  “No,” I blurt out. “Thank you. But I real y can’t imagine anything worse.”