The Help, Page 41

  “Her sister…she just couldn’t handle it. Being Negro with white skin…in Mississippi, it’s like you don’t belong to nobody. But it wasn’t just

  hard on the girl. It was hard on Constantine. She…folks would look at her. White folks would stop her, ask her al suspicious what she doing toting

  round a white child. Policeman used to stop her on State Street, told her she need to get her uniform on. Even colored folks…they treat her

  different, distrustful, like she done something wrong. It was hard for her to find somebody to watch Lulabel e while she at work. Constantine got to

  where she didn’t want to bring Lula…out much.”

  “Was she already working for my mother then?”

  “She’d been with your mama a few years. That’s where she met the father, Connor. He worked on your farm, lived back there in Hotstack.”

  Aibileen shakes her head. “We was al surprised Constantine would go and…get herself in the family way. Some folks at church wasn’t so kind

  about it, especial y when the baby come out white. Even though the father was black as me.”

  “I’m sure Mother wasn’t too pleased, either.” Mother, I’m sure, knew al about it. She’s always kept tabs on al the colored help and their

  situations—where they live, if they’re married, how many children they have. It’s more of a control thing than a real interest. She wants to know who’s walking around her property.

  “Was it a colored orphanage or a white one?” Because I am thinking, I am hoping, maybe Constantine just wanted a better life for her child.

  Maybe she thought she’d be adopted by a white family and not feel so different.

  “Colored. White ones wouldn’t take her, I heard. I guess they knew…maybe they seen that kind a thing before.

  “When Constantine went to the train station with Lulabel e to take her up there, I heard white folks was staring on the platform, wanting to

  know why a little white girl was going in the colored car. And when Constantine left her at the place up in Chicago…four is…pretty old to get given

  up. Lulabel e was screaming. That’s what Constantine told somebody at our church. Said Lula was screaming and thrashing, trying to get her

  mama to come back to her. But Constantine, even with that sound in her ears…she left her there.”

  As I listen, it starts to hit me, what Aibileen is tel ing me. If I hadn’t had the mother I have, I might not have thought it. “She gave her up

  because she was…ashamed? Because her daughter was white?”

  Aibileen opens her mouth to disagree, but then she closes it, looks down. “A few years later, Constantine wrote the orphanage, told em she

  made a mistake, she wanted her girl back. But Lula been adopted already. She was gone. Constantine always said giving her child away was the

  worst mistake she’d ever made in her life.” Aibileen leans back in her chair. “And she said if she ever got Lulabel e back, she’d never let her go.”

  I sit quietly, my heart aching for Constantine. I am starting to dread what this has to do with my mother.

  “Bout two years ago, Constantine get a letter from Lulabel e. I reckon she was twenty-five by then, and it said her adoptive parents give her

  the address. They start writing to each other and Lulabel e say she want a come down and stay with her awhile. Constantine, Law, she so nervous

  she couldn’t walk straight. Too nervous to eat, wouldn’t even take no water. Kept throwing it up. I had her on my prayer list.”

  Two years ago. I was up at school then. Why didn’t Constantine tel me in her letters what was going on?

  “She took al her savings and bought new clothes for Lulabel e, hair things, had the church bee sew her a new quilt for the bed Lula gone

  sleep in. She told us at prayer meeting, What if she hate me? She’s gone ask me why I give her away and if I tell her the truth…she’ll hate me for

  what I done.”

  Aibileen looks up from her cup of tea, smiles a little. “She tel us, I can’t wait for Skeeter to meet her, when she get back home from school. I

  forgot about that. I didn’t know who Skeeter was, back then.”

  I remember my last letter from Constantine, that she had a surprise for me. I realize now, she’d wanted to introduce me to her daughter. I

  swal ow back tears coming up in my throat. “What happened when Lulabel e came down to see her?”

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

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

  Afterward, I stare at the eight pages I’ve already written about walking to Hotstack with Constantine, the puzzles we worked on together, her

  pressing her thumb in my hand. I take a deep breath and put my hands on the typewriter keys. I can’t waste any more time. I have to finish her story.

  I write about what Aibileen told me, that Constantine had a daughter and had to give her up so she could work for our family—the Mil ers I

  cal us, after Henry, my favorite banned author. I don’t put in that Constantine’s daughter was high yel ow; I just want to show that Constantine’s love for me began with missing her own child. Perhaps that’s what made it so unique, so deep. It didn’t matter that I was white. While she was wanting

  her own daughter back, I was longing for Mother not to be disappointed in me.

  For two days, I write al the way through my childhood, my col ege years, where we sent letters to each other every week. But then I stop and

  listen to Mother coughing downstairs. I hear Daddy’s footsteps, going to her. I light a cigarette and stub it out, thinking, Don’t start up again. The toilet water rushes through the house, fil ed with a little more of my mother’s body. I light another cigarette and smoke it down to my fingers. I can’t write about what’s in Aibileen’s letter.

  That afternoon, I cal Aibileen at home. “I can’t put it in the book,” I tel her. “About Mother and Constantine. I’l end it when I go to col ege. I

  just…”

  “Miss Skeeter—”

  “I know I should. I know I should be sacrificing as much as you and Minny and al of you. But I can’t do that to my mother.”

  “No one expects you to, Miss Skeeter. Truth is, I wouldn’t think real high a you if you did.”

  THE NEXT EVENING, I go to the kitchen for some tea.

  “Eugenia? Are you downstairs?”

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

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

  I sit in the straight cane chair beside her bed. I think about how I should begin. Part of me understands why Mother acted the way she did,

  because real y, wouldn’t anyone be angry about what Lulabel e did? But I need to hear my mother’s side of the story. If there’s anything redeeming

  about my mother that Aibileen left out of the letter, I want to know.

  “I want to talk about Constantine,” I say.

  “Oh Eugenia,” Mother chides and pats my hand. “That was almost two years ago.”

  “Mama,” I say and make myself look into her eyes. Even though she is terribly thin and her col arbone is long and narrow beneath her skin,

  her eyes are stil as sharp as ever. “What happened? What happened with her daughter?”

  Mother’s jaw tightens and I can tel she’s surprised that I know about her. I wait for her to refuse to talk about it, as before. She takes a deep

  breath, moves the white bowl a little closer to her, says, “Constantine sent her up to Chicago to live. She couldn’t take care of her.”

  I nod and wait.

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

  They, those people. It reminds me of Hil y. Mother sees it on my face, too.

  “Now you look, I was good to Constantine. Oh, she talked back plenty of times and I put up with it. But Skeeter, she didn’t give me a choice

  this time.”

  “I know, Mother. I know what happened.”

  “Who told you? Who else knows about this?” I see the paranoia rising in Mother’s eyes. It is her greatest fear coming true, and I feel sorry for

  her.

  “I wil never tel you who told me. Al I can say is, it was no one…important to you,” I say. “I can’t believe you would do that, Mother.”

  “How dare you judge me, after what she did. Do you real y know what happened? Were you there?” I see the old anger, an obstinate woman

  who’s survived years of bleeding ulcers.

  “That girl—” She shakes her knobby finger at me. “She showed up here. I had the entire DAR chapter at the house. You were up at school

  and the doorbel was ringing nonstop and Constantine was in the kitchen, making al that coffee over since the old percolator burned the first two

  pots right up.” Mother waves away the remembered reek of scorched coffee. “They were al in the living room having cake, ninety-five people in the house, and she’s drinking coffee. She’s talking to Sarah von Sistern and walking around the house like a guest and sticking cake in her mouth and

  then she’s fil ing out the form to become a member.”

  Again I nod. Maybe I didn’t know those details, but they don’t change what happened.

  “She looked white as anybody, and she knew it too. She knew exactly what she was doing and so I say, How do you do? and she laughs

  and says, Fine, so I say, And what is your name? and she says, You mean you don’t know? I’m Lulabelle Bates. I’m grown now and I’ve moved back in with Mama. I got here yesterday morning. And then she goes over to help herself to another piece of cake.”

  “Bates,” I say, because this is another detail I didn’t know, albeit insignificant. “She changed her last name back to Constantine’s.”

  “Thank God nobody heard her. But then she starts talking to Phoebe Mil er, the president of the Southern States of the DAR, and I pul ed her

  into the kitchen and I said, Lulabelle, you can’t stay here. You need to go on, and oh she looked at me haughty. She said, What, you don’t allow colored Negroes in your living room if we’re not cleaning up? That’s when Constantine walks in the kitchen and she looks as shocked as I am. I say, Lulabelle, you get out of this house before I call Mister Phelan, but she won’t budge. Says, when I thought she was white, I treated her fine and dandy. Says up in Chicago, she’s part of some under the ground group so I tel Constantine, I say, You get your daughter out of my house

  right now. ”

  Mother’s eyes seem more deep-set than ever. Her nostrils are flaring.

  “So Constantine, she tel s Lulabel e to go on back to their house, and Lulabel e says, Fine, I was leaving anyway, and heads for the dining

  room and of course I stop her. Oh no, I say, you go out the back door, not the front with the white guests. I was not about to have the DAR find out about this. And I told that bawdy girl, whose own mama we gave ten dol ars extra to every Christmas, she was not to step foot on this farm again.

  And do you know what she did?”

  Yes, I think, but I keep my face blank. I am stil searching for the redemption.

  “Spit. In my face. A Negro in my home. Trying to act white.”

  I shudder. Who would ever have the nerve to spit at my mother?

  “I told Constantine that girl better not show her face here again. Not to Hotstack, not to the state of Mississippi. Nor would I tolerate her

  keeping terms with Lulabel e, not as long as your daddy was paying Constantine’s rent on that house back there.”

  “But it was Lulabel e acting that way. Not Constantine.”

  “What if she stayed? I couldn’t have that girl going around Jackson, acting white when she was colored, tel ing everybody she got into a DAR

  party at Longleaf. I just thank God nobody ever found out about it. She tried to embarrass me in my own home, Eugenia. Five minutes before, she

  had Phoebe Mil er fil ing out the form for her to join. ”

  “She hadn’t seen her daughter in twenty years. You can’t…tel a person they can’t see their child.”

  But Mother is caught up in her own story. “And Constantine, she thought she could get me to change my mind. Miss Phelan, please, just let

  her stay at the house, she won’t come on this side again, I hadn’t seen her in so long.

  “And that Lulabel e, with her hand up on her hip, saying, ‘Yeah, my daddy died and my mama was too sick to take care of me when I was a

  baby. She had to give me away. You can’t keep us apart.’”

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

  first place and then to lie…”

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

  Mother narrows her eyes. “It’s time you learned, Eugenia, how things real y are. You idolize Constantine too much. You always have.” She

  points her finger at me. “They are not like regular people. ”

  I can’t look at her. I close my eyes. “And then what happened, Mother?”

  “I asked Constantine, just as plain as day, ‘Is that what you told her? Is that how you cover your mistakes?’”

  This is the part I was hoping wasn’t true. This is what I’d hoped Aibileen had been wrong about.

  “I told Lulabel e the truth. I told her, ‘Your daddy didn’t die. He left the day after you were born. And your mama hadn’t been sick a day in her life. She gave you up because you were too high yel ow. She didn’t want you.’”

  “Why couldn’t you let her believe what Constantine told her? Constantine was so scared she wouldn’t like her, that’s why she told her those

  things.”

  “Because Lulabel e needed to know the truth. She needed to go back to Chicago where she belonged.”

  I let my head sink into my hands. There is no redeeming piece of the story. I know why Aibileen hadn’t wanted to tel me. A child should never

  know this about her own mother.

  “I never thought Constantine would go to Il inois with her, Eugenia. Honestly, I was…sorry to see her go.”

  “You weren’t,” I say. I think about Constantine, after living fifty years in the country, sitting in a tiny apartment in Chicago. How lonely she

  must’ve felt. How bad her knees must’ve felt in that cold.

  “I was. And even though I told her not to write you, she probably would’ve, if there’d been more time.”

  “More time?”

  “Constantine died, Skeeter. I sent her a check, for her birthday. To the address I found for her daughter, but Lulabel e…sent it back. With a

  copy of the obituary.”

  “Constantine…” I cry. I wish I’d known. “Why didn’t you tel me, Mama?”

  Mother sniffs, keeping her eyes straight ahead. She quickly wipes her eyes. “Because I knew you’d blame me when it—it wasn’t my fault.”

  “When did she die? How long was she living in Chicago?” I ask.

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

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

  I put the manuscript down on the table with a thump.

  “If I mail it in the morning, that stil leaves six days for it to get there. We might just make it.” I smile through my exhaustion.

  “Law, that is something
. Look at al them pages.” Aibileen grins and sits on her stool. “Two hundred and sixty-six of em.”

  “Now we just…wait and see,” I say and we al three stare at the stack.

  “Final y,” Minny says, and I can see the hint of something, not exactly a smile, but more like satisfaction.

  The room grows quiet. It’s dark outside the window. The post office is already closed so I brought it over to show to Aibileen and Minny one

  last time before I mail it. Usual y, I only bring over sections at a time.

  “What if they find out?” Aibileen says quietly.

  Minny looks up from her coffee.

  “What if folks find out Nicevil e is Jackson or figure out who who.”

  “They ain’t gone know,” Minny says. “Jackson ain’t no special place. They’s ten thousand towns just like it.”

  We haven’t talked about this in a while, and besides Winnie’s comment about tongues, we haven’t real y discussed the actual

  consequences besides the maids losing their jobs. For the past eight months, al we’ve thought about is just getting it written.

  “Minny, you got your kids to think about,” Aibileen says. “And Leroy…if he find out…”

  The sureness in Minny’s eyes changes to something darting, paranoid. “Leroy gone be mad. Sho nuff.” She tugs at her sleeve again. “Mad

  then sad, if the white people catch hold a me.”

  “You think maybe we ought to find a place we could go…in case it get bad?” Aibileen asks.

  They both think about this, then shake their heads. “I on know where we’d go,” Minny says.

  “You might think about that, Miss Skeeter. Somewhere for yourself,” Aibileen says.

  “I can’t leave Mother,” I say. I’ve been standing and I sink down into a chair. “Aibileen, do you real y think they’d…hurt us? I mean, like what’s

  in the papers?”

  Aibileen cocks her head at me, confused. She wrinkles her forehead like we’ve had a misunderstanding. “They’d beat us. They’d come out

  here with basebal bats. Maybe they won’t kil us but…”

  “But…who exactly would do this? The white women we’ve written about…they wouldn’t hurt us. Would they?” I ask.

  “Don’t you know, white mens like nothing better than ‘protecting’ the white womens a their town?”

  My skin prickles. I’m not so afraid for myself, but for what I’ve done to Aibileen, to Minny. To Louvenia and Faye Bel e and eight other

  women. The book is sitting there on the table. I want to put it in my satchel and hide it.

  Instead, I look to Minny because, for some reason, I think she’s the only one among us who real y understands what could happen. She

  doesn’t look back at me, though. She is lost in thought. She’s running her thumbnail back and forth across her lip.

  “Minny? What do you think?” I ask.