The Help, Page 35

  staring with his lip curled like I deserved every bad day I’ve ever lived, every night I haven’t slept, every blow Leroy’s ever given. Deserved it and

  more.

  And his fist starts punching his palm with a slow rhythm. Punch. Punch. Punch. Like he knows exactly what he’s going to do with me. I feel the

  throb in my eye start again.

  “We’ve got to cal the police!” whispers Miss Celia. Her wide eyes dart to the phone on the other side of the kitchen, but she doesn’t move

  an inch.

  “It’l take em forty-five minutes just to find the house,” I say. “He could break the door down by then!”

  I run to the back door, flip the lock on. I dart to the front door and lock it, ducking down when I pass the back window. I stand up on my

  tiptoes, peek through the little square window on the back door. Miss Celia peeks around the side of the big window.

  The naked man’s walking real slow up toward the house. He comes up the back steps. He tries the doorknob and I watch it jiggle, feeling my

  heart whapping against my ribs. I hear Miss Celia on the phone, saying, “Police? We’re getting intruded! There’s a man! A naked man trying to get

  in the—”

  I jump back from the little square window just in time for the rock to smash through, feel the sprinkle of shards hit my face. Through the big

  window, I see the man backing up, like he’s trying to see where to break in next. Lord, I’m praying, I don’t want to do this, don’t make me have to do this…

  Again, he stares at us through the window. And I know we can’t just sit here like a duck dinner, waiting for him to get in. Al he has to do is

  break a floor-to-ceiling window and step on in.

  Lord, I know what I have to do. I have to go out there. I have to get him first.

  “You stand back, Miss Celia,” I say and my voice is shaking. I go get Mister Johnny’s hunting knife, stil in the sheath, from the bear. But the

  blade’s so short, he’l have to be awful close for me to cut him, so I get the broom too. I look out and he’s in the middle of the yard, looking up at the house. Figuring things out.

  I open the back door and slip out. Across the yard, the man smiles at me, showing a mouth with about two teeth. He stops punching and

  goes back to stroking himself, smoothly, evenly now.

  “Lock the door,” I hiss behind me. “Keep it locked.” I hear the click.

  I tuck the knife in the belt of my uniform, make sure it’s tight. And I grip the broom with both hands.

  “You get on out a here, you fool!” I yel . But the man doesn’t move. I take a few steps closer. And then so does he and I hear myself praying,

  Lord protect me from this naked white man…

  “I got me a knife!” I hol er. I take some more steps and he does too. When I get seven or eight feet from him, I’m panting. We both stare.

  “Why, you’re a fat nigger,” he cal s in a strange, high voice and gives himself a long stroke.

  I take a deep breath. And then I rush forward and swing with the broom. Whoosh! I’ve missed him by inches and he dances away. I lunge

  again and the man runs toward the house. He heads straight for the back door, where Miss Celia’s face is in the window.

  “Nigger can’t catch me! Nigger too fat to run!”

  He makes it to the steps and I panic that he’s going to try and bust down the door, but then he flips around and runs along the sideyard,

  holding that gigantic flopping po’boy in his hand.

  “You get out a here!” I scream after him, feeling a sharp pain, knowing my cut’s ripping wider.

  I rush him hard from the bushes to the pool, heaving and panting. He slows at the edge of the water and I get close and land a good swing

  on his rear, thwak! The stick snaps and the brush-end flies off.

  “Didn’t hurt!” He jiggles his hand between his legs, hitching up his knees. “Have a little pecker pie, nigger? Come on, get you some pecker

  pie!”

  I dive around him back to the middle of the yard, but the man is too tal and too fast and I’m getting slower. My swings are flying wild and

  soon I’m hardly even jogging. I stop, lean over, breathing hard, the short broken-off broom in my hand. I look down and the knife—it is gone.

  As soon as I look back up, whaaam! I stagger. The ringing comes harsh and loud, making me totter. I cover my ear but the ringing gets

  louder. He’s punched me on the same side as the cut.

  He comes closer and I close my eyes, knowing what’s about to happen to me, knowing I’ve got to move away but I can’t. Where is the knife?

  Does he have the knife? The ringing’s like a nightmare.

  “You get out a here before I kil you,” I hear, like it’s in a tin can. My hearing’s half gone and I open my eyes. There’s Miss Celia in her pink

  satin nightgown. She’s got a fire poker in her hand, heavy, sharp.

  “White lady want a taste a pecker pie, too?” He flops his penis around at her and she steps closer to the man, slow, like a cat. I take a deep

  breath while the man jumps left, then right, laughing and chomping his toothless gums. But Miss Celia just stands stil .

  After a few seconds he frowns, looks disappointed that Miss Celia isn’t doing anything. She’s not swinging or frowning or hol ering. He looks

  over at me. “What about you? Nigger too tired to—”

  Crack!

  The man’s jaw goes sideways and blood bursts out of his mouth. He wobbles around, turns, and Miss Celia whacks the other side of his

  face too. Like she just wanted to even him up.

  The man stumbles forward, looking nowhere in particular. Then he fal s face flat.

  “Lordy, you…you got him…” I say, but in the back of my head, there’s this voice asking me, real calm, like we’re just having tea out here, Is

  this really happening? Is a white woman real y beating up a white man to save me? Or did he shake my brain pan loose and I’m over there dead

  on the ground…

  I try to focus my eyes. Miss Celia, she’s got a snarl on her lips. She raises her rod and ka-wham! across the back of his knees.

  This ain’t happening, I decide. This is just too damn strange.

  Ka-wham! She hits him across his shoulders, making a ugh sound every time.

  “I—I said you got him now, Miss Celia,” I say. But evidently, Miss Celia doesn’t think so. Even with my ears ringing, it sounds like chicken

  bones cracking. I stand up straighter, make myself focus my eyes before this turns into a homicide. “He down, he down, Miss Celia,” I say. “Fact,

  he”—I struggle to catch the poker—“he might be dead.”

  I final y catch it and she lets go and the poker flies into the yard. Miss Celia steps back from him, spits in the grass. Blood’s spattered

  across her pink satin nightgown. The fabric’s stuck to her legs.

  “He ain’t dead,” Miss Celia says.

  “He close,” I say.

  “Did he hit you hard, Minny?” she asks, but she’s staring down at him. “Did he hurt you bad?”

  I can feel blood running down my temple but I know it’s from the sugar bowl cut that’s split open again. “Not as bad as you hurt him,” I say.

  The man groans and we both jump back. I grab the poker and the broom handle from the grass. I don’t give her either one.

  He rol s halfway over. His face is bloody on both sides, his eyes are swel ing shut. His jaw’s been knocked off its hinge and somehow he stil

  brings himself to his feet. And then he starts to walk away, a pathetic wobbly thing. He doesn’t even look back at us. We just stand there and watch

  him hobble through the prickly boxwood bushes and disappear in the trees.

  “He ain’t gone get far,” I say, and I keep my grip on that poker. “You whooped him pretty good.”

  “
You think?” she says.

  I give her a look. “Like Joe Louis with a tire iron.”

  She brushes a clump of blond hair out of her face, looks at me like it kil s her that I got hit. Suddenly I realize I ought to thank her, but truly, I’ve got no words to draw from. This is a brand-new invention we’ve come up with.

  Al I can say is, “You looked mighty…sure a yourself.”

  “I used to be a good fighter.” She looks out along the boxwoods, wipes off her sweat with her palm. “If you’d known me ten years ago…”

  She’s got no goo on her face, her hair’s not sprayed, her nightgown’s like an old prairie dress. She takes a deep breath through her nose

  and I see it. I see the white-trash girl she was ten years ago. She was strong. She didn’t take no shit from nobody.

  Miss Celia turns and I fol ow her back to the house. I see the knife in the rosebush and snatch it up. Lord, if that man had gotten hold of this,

  we’d be dead. In the guest bathroom, I clean the cut, cover it with a white bandage. The headache is bad. When I come out, I hear Miss Celia on the

  phone, talking to the Madison County police.

  I wash my hands, wonder how an awful day could turn even worse. It seems like at some point you’d just run out of awful. I try to get my mind

  on real life again. Maybe I’l stay at my sister Octavia’s tonight, show Leroy I’m not going to put up with it anymore. I go in the kitchen, put the beans

  on to simmer. Who am I fooling? I already know I’l end up at home tonight.

  I hear Miss Celia hang up with the police. And then I hear her perform her usual pitiful check, to make sure the line is free.

  THAT AFTERNOON, I do a terrible thing. I drive past Aibileen walking home from the bus stop. Aibileen waves and I pretend I don’t even see my own best

  friend on the side of the road in her bright white uniform.

  When I get to my house, I fix an icepack for my eye. The kids aren’t home yet and Leroy’s asleep in the back. I don’t know what to do about

  anything, not Leroy, not Miss Hil y. Never mind I got boxed in the ear by a naked white man this morning. I just sit and stare at my oily yel ow wal s.

  Why can’t I ever get these wal s clean?

  “Minny Jackson. You too good to give old Aibileen a ride?”

  I sigh and turn my sore head so she can see.

  “Oh,” she says.

  I look back at the wal .

  “Aibileen,” I say and hear myself sigh. “You ain’t gone believe my day.”

  “Come on over. I make you some coffee.”

  Before I walk out, I peel that glaring bandage off, slip it in my pocket with my icepack. On some folks around here, a cut-up eye wouldn’t even

  get a comment. But I’ve got good kids, a car with tires, and a refrigerator freezer. I’m proud of my family and the shame of the eye is worse than the

  pain.

  I fol ow Aibileen through the sideyards and backyards, avoiding the traffic and the looks. I’m glad she knows me so wel .

  In her little kitchen, Aibileen puts the coffeepot on for me, the tea kettle for herself.

  “So what you gone do about it?” Aibileen asks and I know she means the eye. We don’t talk about me leaving Leroy. Plenty of black men

  leave their families behind like trash in a dump, but it’s just not something the colored woman do. We’ve got the kids to think about.

  “Thought about driving up to my sister’s. But I can’t take the kids, they got school.”

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with the kids missing school a few days. Not if you protecting yourself.”

  I fasten the bandage back, hold the icepack to it so the swel ing won’t be so bad when my kids see me tonight.

  “You tel Miss Celia you slip in the bathtub again?”

  “Yeah, but she know.”

  “Why, what she say?” Aibileen ask.

  “It’s what she did.” And I tel Aibileen al about how Miss Celia beat the naked man with the fire poker this morning. Feels like ten years ago.

  “That man a been black, he be dead in the ground. Police would a had a al -points alert for fifty-three states,” Aibileen say.

  “Al her girly, high-heel ways and she just about kil him,” I say.

  Aibileen laughs. “What he cal it again?”

  “Pecker pie. Crazy Whitfield fool.” I have to keep myself from smiling because I know it’l make the cut split open again.

  “Law, Minny, you have had some things happen to you.”

  “How come she ain’t got no problem defending herself from that crazy man? But she chase after Miss Hil y like she just begging for abuse?”

  I say this even though Miss Celia getting her feelings hurt is the least of my worries right now. It just feels kind of good to talk about someone else’s screwed-up life.

  “Almost sounds like you care,” Aibileen says, smiling.

  “She just don’t see em. The lines. Not between her and me, not between her and Hil y.”

  Aibileen takes a long sip of her tea. Final y I look at her. “What you so quiet for? I know you got a opinion bout al this.”

  “You gone accuse me a philosophizing.”

  “Go ahead,” I say. “I ain’t afraid a no philosophy.”

  “It ain’t true.”

  “Say what?”

  “You talking about something that don’t exist.”

  I shake my head at my friend. “Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.”

  Aibileen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hil y is always trying to make us

  believe they there. But they ain’t.”

  “I know they there cause you get punished for crossing em,” I say. “Least I do.”

  “Lot a folks think if you talk back to you husband, you crossed the line. And that justifies punishment. You believe in that line?”

  I scowl down at the table. “You know I ain’t studying no line like that.”

  “Cause that line ain’t there. Except in Leroy’s head. Lines between black and white ain’t there neither. Some folks just made those up, long

  time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.”

  Thinking about Miss Celia coming out with that fire poker when she could’ve hid behind the door, I don’t know. I get a twinge. I want her to

  understand how it is with Miss Hil y. But how do you tel a fool like her?

  “So you saying they ain’t no line between the help and the boss either?”

  Aibileen shakes her head. “They’s just positions, like on a checkerboard. Who work for who don’t mean nothing.”

  “So I ain’t crossing no line if I tel Miss Celia the truth, that she ain’t good enough for Hil y?” I pick my cup up. I’m trying hard to get this, but my cut’s thumping against my brain. “But wait, if I tel her Miss Hil y’s out a her league…then ain’t I saying they is a line?”

  Aibileen laughs. She pats my hand. “Al I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”

  “Hmph.” I put the ice to my head again. “Wel , maybe I’l try to tel her. Before she goes to the Benefit and makes a big pink fool a herself.”

  “You going this year?” Aibileen asks.

  “If Miss Hil y gone be in the same room as Miss Celia tel ing her lies about me, I want a be there. Plus Sugar wants to make a little money for

  Christmas. Be good for her to start learning party serving.”

  “I be there too,” says Aibileen. “Miss Leefolt done asked me three months ago would I do a lady-finger cake for the auction.”

  “That old bland thing again? Why them white folks like the lady-fingers so much? I can make a dozen cakes taste better ’n that.”

  “They think it be real European.” Aibileen shakes her head. “I feel bad for Miss Skeeter. I know she don’t want a go, but Miss Hil y tel her if

  she don’t, she lose her officer
job.”

  I drink down the rest of Aibileen’s good coffee, watch the sun sink. The air turns cooler through the window.

  “I guess I got to go,” I say, even though I’d rather spend the rest of my life right here in Aibileen’s cozy little kitchen, having her explain the

  world to me. That’s what I love about Aibileen, she can take the most complicated things in life and wrap them up so smal and simple, they’l fit right in your pocket.

  “You and the kids want a come stay with me?”

  “No.” I untack the bandage, slip it back in my pocket. “I want him to see me,” I say, staring down at my empty coffee cup. “See what he done

  to his wife.”

  “Cal me on the phone if he gets rough. You hear me?”

  “I don’t need no phone. You’l hear him screaming for mercy al the way over here.”

  THE THERMOMETER by Miss Celia’s kitchen window sinks down from seventy-nine to sixty to fifty-five in less than an hour. At last, a cold front’s moving in, bringing cool air from Canada or Chicago or somewhere. I’m picking the lady peas for stones, thinking about how we’re breathing the same air

  those Chicago people breathed two days ago. Wondering if, for no good reason I started thinking about Sears and Roebuck or Shake ’n Bake,

  would it be because some Il inoian had thought it two days ago. It gets my mind off my troubles for about five seconds.

  It took me a few days, but I final y came up with a plan. It’s not a good one, but at least it’s something. I know that every minute I wait is a

  chance for Miss Celia to cal up Miss Hil y. I wait too long and she’l see her at the Benefit next week. It makes me sick thinking about Miss Celia

  running up to those girls like they’re best friends, the look on her made-up face when she hears about me. This morning, I saw the list by Miss

  Celia’s bed. Of what else she needs to do for the Benefit: Get fingernails done. Get tuxedo Martinized and pressed. Cal Hil y Holbrook.

  “Minny, does this new hair color look cheap?”

  I just look at her.

  “Tomorrow I am marching down to Fanny Mae’s and getting it re-colored.” She’s sitting at the kitchen table and holds up a handful of sample

  strips, splayed out like playing cards. “What do you think? Butterbatch or Marilyn Monroe?”