The Help, Page 38

  After Celia and Johnny leave, the party winds down quickly. Member wives look exhausted and tired of smiling. There is talk of

  the auction, of babysitters to get home to, but mostly of Celia Foote retching in the middle of it al .

  When the room is nearly empty, at midnight, Hil y stands at the podium. She flips through the sheets of silent bids. Her lips

  move as she calculates. But she keeps looking off, shaking her head. Then she looks back down and curses because she has to

  start al over again.

  “Hil y, I’m headed on back to your house.”

  Hil y looks up from tal ying. It is her mother, Missus Walters, looking even frailer than usual in her formalwear. She wears a

  floor-length gown, sky blue and beaded, from 1943. A white orchid wilts at her clavicle. A colored woman in a white uniform is

  attached to her side.

  “Now, Mama, don’t you get in that refrigerator tonight. I won’t have you keeping me up al night with your indigestion. You go

  right to bed, you hear?”

  “I can’t even have some of Minny’s pie?”

  Hil y narrows her eyes at her mother. “That pie is in the garbage.”

  “Wel , why’d you throw it out? I won it just for you.”

  Hil y is stil a moment, letting this sink in. “You? You signed me up?”

  “I may not remember my name or what country I live in, but you and that pie is something I wil never forget.”

  “You—you old, useless…” Hil y throws down the papers she’s holding, scattering them everywhere.

  Missus Walters turns and hobbles toward the door, the colored nurse in tow. “Wel , cal the papers, Bessie,” she says. “My

  daughter’s mad at me again.”

  MINNY

  CHAPTER 26

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, I get up tired and sore. I walk in the kitchen where Sugar’s counting out her nine dol ars and fifty cents, the money she earned at the Benefit last night. The phone rings and Sugar’s on it quicker than a grease fire. Sugar’s got a boyfriend and she doesn’t want her mama to

  know.

  “Yessir,” Sugar whispers and hands me the phone.

  “Hel o?” I say.

  “It’s Johnny Foote,” he says. “I’m up at deer camp but I just want you to know, Celia’s real upset. She had a rough time at the party last night.”

  “Yessir, I know.”

  “You heard, then, huh?” He sighs. “Wel , keep an eye on her next week, wil you, Minny? I’l be gone and—I don’t know. Just cal me if she

  doesn’t perk up. I’l come home early if I need to.”

  “I look after her. She gone be alright.”

  I didn’t see myself what happened at the party, but I heard about it while I was doing dishes in the kitchen. Al the servers were talking about

  it.

  “You see that?” Farina said to me. “That big pink lady you work for, drunk as a Injun on payday.”

  I looked up from my sink and saw Sugar headed straight for me with her hand up on her hip. “Yeah, Mama, she upchuck al over the floor.

  And everbody at the whole party see!” Then Sugar turned around, laughing with the others. She didn’t see the whap coming at her. Soapsuds flew through the air.

  “You shut your mouth, Sugar.” I yanked her to the corner. “Don’t you never let me hear you talking bad about the lady who put food in your

  mouth, clothes on your back! You hear me?”

  Sugar, she nodded and I went back to my dishes, but I heard her muttering. “You do it, al the time. ”

  I whipped around and put my finger in her face. “I got a right to. I earn it every day working for that crazy fool.”

  WHEN I GET TO WORK on Monday, Miss Celia’s stil laid up in bed with her face buried under the sheets.

  “Morning, Miss Celia.”

  But she just rol s over and won’t look at me.

  At lunchtime, I take a tray of ham sandwiches to the bed.

  “I’m not hungry,” she says and throws the pil ow over her head.

  I stand there looking at her, al mummified in the sheets.

  “What you gone do, just lay there al day?” I ask, even though I’ve seen her do it plenty of times before. But this is different. There’s no goo on

  her skin or smile on her face.

  “Please, just leave me alone.”

  I start to tel her she needs to just get up, put on her tacky clothes, and forget about it, but the way she’s laying there so pitiful and poor, I keep quiet. I am not her psychiatrist and she’s not paying me to be one.

  On Tuesday morning, Miss Celia’s stil in the bed. Yesterday’s lunch tray’s on the floor without a single bite missing. She’s stil in that ratty

  blue nightgown that looks left over from her Tunica County days, the gingham ruffle torn at the neck. Something that looks like charcoal stains on the

  front.

  “Come on, lemme get to them sheets. Show bout to come on and Miss Julia gone be in trouble. You ain’t gone believe what that fool done

  yesterday with Doctor Bigmouth.”

  But she just lays there.

  Later on, I bring her a tray of chicken pot pie. Even though what I real y want to do is tel Miss Celia to pul herself together and go in the

  kitchen and eat proper.

  “Now, Miss Celia, I know it was terrible what happened at the Benefit. But you can’t set in here forever feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Miss Celia gets up and locks herself in the bathroom.

  I start stripping the bed. When I’m done, I pick up al the wet tissues and glasses off the nightstand. I see a stack of mail. At least the

  woman’s gotten up to go to the mailbox. I pick it up to wipe the table and there I see the letters H W H across the top of a card. Before I know it, I’ve read the whole note:

  Dear Celia,

  In lieu of reimbursing me for my dress you tore, we at the League would gladly receive a donation of no less than two

  hundred dollars. Furthermore, please withhold from volunteering for any nonmember activities in the future, as your name has

  been placed on a probationary list. Your cooperation in this matter is appreciated.

  Do kindly make the check out to the Jackson League Chapter.

  Sincerely,

  Hilly Holbrook

  President and Chairman of Appropriations

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Miss Celia’s still under the covers. I do my work in the kitchen, try to appreciate the fact that she’s not hanging around with me in here. But I can’t enjoy it because the phone’s been ringing al morning, and for the first time since I started, Miss Celia won’t pick it up. After the tenth time, I can’t listen to it anymore and final y just grab it and say hel o.

  I go in her bedroom, tel her, “Mister Johnny on the phone.”

  “What? He’s not supposed to know that I know that he knows about you.”

  I let out a big sigh to show I don’t give a fat rat about that lie anymore. “He cal ed me at home. The jig is up, Miss Celia.”

  Miss Celia shuts her eyes. “Tel him I’m asleep.”

  I pick up the bedroom line and look Miss Celia hard in the eye and tel him she’s in the shower.

  “Yessir, she doing alright,” I say and narrow my eyes at her.

  I hang up the phone and glare down at Miss Celia.

  “He want to know how you doing.”

  “I heard.”

  “I lied for you, you know.”

  She puts the pil ow back over her head.

  By the next afternoon, I can’t stand it another minute. Miss Celia’s stil in the same spot she’s been al week. Her face is thin and that

  Butterbatch is greasy-looking. The room is starting to smel too, like dirty people. I bet she hasn’t bathed since Friday.

  “Miss Celia,” I say.

  Miss Celia looks at me, but doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak.

  “Mister Johnny gone be home tonight and I to
ld him I’d look after you. What’s he gone think if he find you laid up in that old nasty nightthing

  you got on?”

  I hear Miss Celia sniffle, then hiccup, then start to cry ful -on. “None of this would’ve happened if I’d just stayed where I belonged. He

  should’ve married proper. He should’ve married… Hilly. ”

  “Come on, Miss Celia. It ain’t—”

  “The way Hil y looked at me…like I was nothing. Like I was trash on the side of the road.”

  “But Miss Hil y don’t count. You can’t judge yourself by the way that woman see you.”

  “I’m not right for this kind of life. I don’t need a dinner table for twelve people to sit at. I couldn’t get twelve people to come over if I begged.”

  I shake my head at her. Complaining again cause she has too much.

  “Why does she hate me so much? She doesn’t even know me,” Miss Celia cries. “And it’s not just Johnny, she cal ed me a liar, accused me

  of getting her that… pie. ” She bangs her fists against her knees. “I never would a thrown up if it wasn’t for that.”

  “What pie?”

  “H-H-Hil y won your pie. And she accused me of signing her up for it. Playing some…trick on her.” She wails and sobs. “Why would I do that?

  Write her name down on a list?”

  It comes to me real slow what’s going on here. I don’t know who signed up Hil y for that pie, but I sure know why she’d eat alive anybody she

  thought did it.

  I glance over at the door. That voice in my head says, Walk away, Minny. Just ease on out a here. But I look at Miss Celia bawling into her

  old nightgown, and I get a guilt thick as Yazoo clay.

  “I can’t do this to Johnny anymore. I’ve already decided, Minny. I’m going back,” she sobs. “Back to Sugar Ditch.”

  “You gone leave your husband just cause you throwed up at some party?” Hang on, I think, my eyes opening wide. Miss Celia can’t leave

  Mister Johnny—where in the heck would that leave me?

  Miss Celia cries down harder at the reminder. I sigh and watch her, wondering what to do.

  Lord, I reckon it’s time. Time I told her the one thing in the world I never want to tel anybody. I’m going to lose my job either way, so I might as

  wel take the chance.

  “Miss Celia…” I say and I sit down in the yel ow armchair in the corner. I’ve never sat anywhere in this house but in the kitchen and her

  bathroom floor, but today cal s for extreme measures.

  “I know why Miss Hil y got so mad,” I say. “About the pie, I mean.”

  Miss Celia blows a hard, loud honk into a tissue. She looks at me.

  “I did something to her. It was Terrible. Awful.” My heart starts thumping just thinking about it. I realize I can’t sit in this chair and tel her this story at the same time. I get up and walk to the end of the bed.

  “What?” she sniffs. “What happened, Minny?”

  “Miss Hil y, she cal me up at home last year, when I’s stil working for Miss Walters. To tel me she sending Miss Walters to the old lady

  home. I got scared, I got five kids to feed. Leroy was already working two shifts.”

  I feel a burn rise up in my chest. “Now I know what I did wasn’t Christian. But what kind a person send her own mama to the home to take up

  with strangers? They’s something bout doing wrong to that woman that make it just seem right. ”

  Miss Celia sits up in bed, wipes her nose. She looks like she’s paying attention now.

  “For three weeks, I be looking for work. Ever day after I get off from Miss Walters’, I went looking. I go over to Miss Child’s house. She pass

  me up. I go on to the Rawleys’ place, they don’t want me neither. The Riches, the Patrick Smiths, the Walkers, not even those Catholic Thibodeaux

  with them seven kids. Nobody do.”

  “Oh Minny…” says Miss Celia. “That’s awful.”

  I clench my jaw. “Ever since I was a li’l girl, my mama tel me not to go sass-mouthing. But I didn’t listen and I got knowed for my mouth round

  town. And I figure that’s what it be, why nobody want to hire me.

  “When they was two days left at Miss Walters’s and I stil didn’t have no new job, I start getting real scared. With Benny’s asthma and Sugar

  stil in school and Kindra and…we was tight on money already. And that’s when Miss Hil y, she come over to Miss Walters’s to talk to me.

  “She say, ‘Come work for me, Minny. I pay you twenty-five more cent a day than Mama did.’ A ‘dangling carrot’ she cal it, like I was some

  kind a plow mule.” I feel my fists forming. “Like I’d even consider beating my friend Yule May Crookle out a her job. Miss Hil y think everbody just as two-faced as she is.”

  I wipe my hand across my face. I’m sweating. Miss Celia’s listening with her mouth open, looking dazed.

  “I tel her ‘No thank you, Miss Hil y.’ And so she say she pay me fifty cent more and I say, ‘No ma’am. No thank you.’ Then she break my

  back, Miss Celia. She tel me she know bout the Childs and the Rawleys and al them others that turn me down. Said it was cause she’d made sure

  everbody knew I was a thief. I’ve never stole a thing in my life but she told everbody I did and wasn’t nobody in town gone hire a sass-mouthing

  thieving Nigra for a maid and I might as wel go head and work for her for free.

  “And that’s how come I did it.”

  Miss Celia blinks at me. “What, Minny?”

  “I tel her to eat my shit.”

  Miss Celia sits there, stil looking dazed.

  “Then I go home. I mix up that chocolate custard pie. I puts sugar in it and Baker’s chocolate and the real vanil a my cousin bring me from

  Mexico.

  “I tote it over to Miss Walters’s house, where I know Miss Hil y be setting round, waiting for the home to come and get her mama, so she can

  sel that house. Go through her silver. Col ect her due.

  “Soon as I put that pie down on the countertop, Miss Hil y smiles, thinking it’s a peace offering, like that’s my way a showing her I’m real sorry

  bout what I said. And then I watch her. I watch her eat it myself. Two big pieces. She stuff it in her mouth like she ain’t ever eaten nothing so good.

  Then she say, ‘I knew you’d change your mind, Minny. I knew I’d get my way in the end.’ And she laugh, kind a prissy, like it was al real funny to her.

  “That’s when Miss Walters, she say she getting a mite hungry too and ask for a piece a that pie. I tel her, ‘No, ma’am. That one’s special for

  Miss Hil y.’

  “Miss Hil y say, ‘Mama can have some if she wants. Just a little piece, though. What do you put in here, Minny, that makes it taste so good?’

  “I say ‘That good vanil a from Mexico’ and then I go head. I tel her what else I put in that pie for her.”

  Miss Celia’s stil as a stone staring at me, but I can’t meet her eyes now.

  “Miss Walters, her mouth fal open. Nobody in that kitchen said anything for so long, I could a made it out the door fore they knew I’s gone.

  But then Miss Walters start laughing. Laugh so hard she almost fal out the chair. Say, ‘Wel , Hil y, that’s what you get, I guess. And I wouldn’t go

  tattling on Minny either, or you’l be known al over town as the lady who ate two slices of Minny’s shit.’”

  I sneak a look up at Miss Celia. She’s staring wide-eyed, disgusted. I start to panic that I told her this. She’l never trust me again. I walk over

  to the yel ow chair and sit myself down.

  “Miss Hil y thought you knew the story. That you were making fun a her. She never would a pounced on you if I hadn’t done what I did.”

  Miss Celia just stares at me.

  “But I want you to know, if you leave Mister Johnny, then Miss Hil y done won the whole bal game. T
hen she done beat me, she beat you…” I

  shake my head, thinking about Yule May in jail, and Miss Skeeter without any friends left. “There ain’t many people left in this town that she ain’t

  beat.”

  Miss Celia’s quiet awhile. Then she looks over at me and starts to say something, but she shuts her mouth back.

  Final y, she just says, “Thank you. For…tel ing me that.”

  She lays back down. But before I close the door, I can see her eyes are wide smack open.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I find Miss Celia’s final y managed to get herself out of bed, wash her hair, and put al that makeup on again. It’s cold outside so

  she’s back in one of her tight sweaters.

  “Glad to have Mister Johnny back home?” I ask. Not that I care, but what I do want to know is if she’s stil fiddling with the idea of leaving.

  But Miss Celia doesn’t say much. There’s a tiredness in her eyes. She’s not so quick to smile at every little thing. She points her finger out

  the kitchen window. “I think I’l plant a row of rosebushes. Along the back of the property.”

  “When they gone bloom?”

  “We should see something by next spring.”

  I take this as a good sign, that she’s planning for the future. I figure somebody running off wouldn’t go to the trouble to plant flowers that won’t

  bloom until next year.