THAT AFTERNOON 5 page

Three years ago today, Treelore died. But by Miss Leefolt’s book it’s still floor-cleaning day. Thanksgiving coming in two weeks and I got plenty to do to get ready. I scrub my way through the morning, through the twelve o’clock news. I miss my stories cause the ladies is in the dining room having a Benefit meeting and I ain’t allowed to turn on the tee-vee when they’s company. And that’s fine. My muscles is shivering they so tired. But I don’t want a stop moving.

About four o’clock, Miss Skeeter come in the kitchen. Before she can even say hello, Miss Leefolt rush in behind her. “Aibileen, I just found out Missus Fredericks is driving down from Greenwood tomorrow and staying through Thanksgiving. I want the silver service polished and all the guest towels washed. Tomorrow I’ll give you the list of what else.”

Miss Leefolt shake her head at Miss Skeeter like ain’t she got the hardest life in town and walks out. I go on and get the silver service out the dining room. Law, I’m already tired and I got to be ready to work the Benefit next Saturday night. Minny ain’t coming. She too scared she gone run into Miss Hilly.

Miss Skeeter still waiting on me in the kitchen when I come back in. She got a Miss Myrna letter in her hand.

“You got a cleaning question?” I sigh. “Go head.”

“Not really. I just . . . I wanted to ask you . . . the other day . . .”

I take a plug a Pine-Ola cream and start rubbing it onto the silver, working the cloth around the rose design, the lip and the handle. God, please let tomorrow come soon. I ain’t gone go to the gravesite. I can’t, it’ll be too hard—

“Aibileen? Are you feeling alright?”

I stop, look up. Realize Miss Skeeter been talking to me the whole time.

“I’m sorry I’s just . . . thinking about something.”

“You looked so sad.”

“Miss Skeeter.” I feel tears come up in my eyes, cause three years just ain’t long enough. A hundred years ain’t gone be long enough. “You mind if I help you with them questions tomorrow?”

Miss Skeeter start to say something, but then she stop herself. “Of course. I hope you feel better.”

I finish the silver set and the towels and tell Miss Leefolt I got to go home even though it’s half a hour early and she gone short my pay. She open her mouth like she want to protest and I whisper my lie, I vomited, and she say go. Cause besides her own mother, there ain’t nothing Miss Leefolt scared of more than Negro diseases.

“ALRIGHT THEN. I’ll be back in thirty minutes. I’ll pull right up here at nine forty-five,” Miss Leefolt say through the passenger car window. Miss Leefolt dropping me off at the Jitney 14 to pick up what else we need for Thanksgiving tomorrow.

“You bring her back that receipt, now,” Miss Fredericks, Miss Leefolt’s mean old mama, say. They all three in the front seat, Mae Mobley squeezed in the middle with a look so miserable you think she about to get a tetanus shot. Poor girl. Miss Fredericks supposed to stay two weeks this time.

“Don’t forget the turkey, now,” Miss Leefolt say. “And two cans of cranberry sauce.”

I smile. I only been cooking white Thanksgivings since Calvin Coolidge was President.

“Quit squirming, Mae Mobley,” Miss Fredericks snap, “or I’ll pinch you.”

“Miss Leefolt, lemme take her in the store with me. Help me with my shopping.”

Miss Fredericks about to protest, but Miss Leefolt say, “Take her,” and fore I know it, Baby Girl done wormed her way over Miss Fredericks’ lap and is climbing out the window in my arms like I am the Lord Savior. I pull her up on my hip and they drive off toward Fortification Street, and Baby Girl and me, we giggle like a couple a schoolgirls.

I push open the metal door, get a cart, and put Mae Mobley up front, stick her legs through the holes. Long as I got my white uniform on, I’m allowed to shop in this Jitney. I miss the old days, when you just walk out to Fortification Street and there be the farmers with they wheelbarrows calling out, “Sweet potatoes, butter beans, string beans, okra. Fresh cream, buttermilk, yellow cheese, eggs.” But the Jitney ain’t so bad. Least they got the good air-condition.

“Alrighty, Baby Girl. Less see what we need.”

In produce, I pick out six sweet potatoes, three handfuls a string beans. I get a smoked ham hock from the butcher. The store is bright, lined up neat. Nothing like the colored Piggly Wiggly with sawdust on the floor. It’s mostly white ladies, smiling, got they hair already fixed and sprayed for tomorrow. Four or five maids is shopping, all in they uniforms.

“Purple stuff!” Mae Mobley say and I let her hold the can a cranberry. She smile at it like it’s a old friend. She love the purple stuff. In dry goods, I heave the two-pound bag a salt in the cart, to brine the turkey in. I count the hours on my hands, ten, eleven, twelve. If I’m on soak the bird for fourteen hours in the salt water, I’ll put it in the bucket around three this afternoon. Then I’ll come in to Miss Leefolt’s at five tomorrow morning and cook the turkey for the next six hours. I already baked two pans a cornbread, left it to stale on the counter today to give it some crunch. I got a apple pie ready to bake, gone do my biscuits in the morning.

“Ready for tomorrow, Aibileen?” I turn and see Franny Coots behind me. She go to my church, work for Miss Caroline on Manship. “Hey, cutie, look a them fat legs,” she say to Mae Mobley. Mae Mobley lick the cranberry can.

Franny bend her head down, say, “You hear what happen to Louvenia Brown’s grandson this morning?”

“Robert?” I say. “Who do the mowing?”

“Use the white bathroom at Pinchman Lawn and Garden. Say they wasn’t a sign up saying so. Two white mens chased him and beat him with a tire iron.”

Oh no. Not Robert. “He . . . is he . . . ?”

Franny shake her head. “They don’t know. He up at the hospital. I heard he blind.”

“God, no.” I close my eyes. Louvenia, she is the purest, kindest person they is. She raised Robert after her own daughter died.

“Poor Louvenia. I don’t know why the bad have to happen to the goodest ones,” Franny say.

THAT AFTERNOON, I work like a crazy woman, chopping onions and celery, mixing up my dressing, ricing sweet potatoes, stringing the beans, polishing silver. I heard folks is heading to Louvenia Brown’s tonight at five-thirty to pray for Robert, but by the time I lift that twenty-pound turkey in the brine, I can’t barely raise my arms.

I don’t finish cooking till six o’clock that night, two hours later than usual. I know I ain’t gone have the strength to go knock on Louvenia’s door. I’ll have to do it tomorrow after I’m done cleaning up the turkey. I waddle myself from the bus stop, hardly able to keep my eyes open. I turn the corner on Gessum. A big white Cadillac’s parked in front a my house. And there be Miss Skeeter in a red dress and red shoes, setting on my front steps like a bullhorn.

I walk real slow through my yard, wondering what it’s gone be now. Miss Skeeter stand up, holding her pocketbook tight like it might get snatched. White peoples don’t come round my neighborhood less they toting the help to and fro, and that is just fine with me. I spend all day long tending to white peoples. I don’t need em looking in on me at home.

“I hope you don’t mind me coming by,” she say. “I just . . . I didn’t know where else we could talk.”

I set down on the step and ever knob on my spine hurt. Baby Girl so nervous around her Granmama, she wet all over me and I smell like it. The street’s full a folks walking to sweet Louvenia’s to pray for Robert, kids playing ball in the street. Everbody looking over at us thinking I must be getting fired or something.

“Yes ma’am,” I sigh. “What can I do for you?”

“I have an idea. Something I want to write about. But I need your help.”

I let all my breath out. I like Miss Skeeter, but come on. Sure, a phone call would a been nice. She never would a just shown up on some white lady’s step without calling. But no, she done plopped herself down like she got ever right to barge in on me at home.

“I want to interview you. About what it’s like to work as a maid.”

A red ball roll a few feet in my yard. The little Jones boy run across the street to get it. When he see Miss Skeeter, he stop dead. Then he run and snatch it up. He turn and dash off like he scared she gone get him.

“Like the Miss Myrna column?” I say, flat as a pan. “Bout cleaning?”

“Not like Miss Myrna. I’m talking about a book,” she say and her eyes is big. She excited. “Stories about what it’s like to work for a white family. What it’s like to work for, say . . . Elizabeth.”

I turn and look at her. This what she been trying to ask me the past two weeks in Miss Leefolt kitchen. “You think Miss Leefolt gone agree to that? Me telling stories about her?”

Miss Skeeter’s eyes drop down some. “Well, no. I was thinking we wouldn’t tell her. I’ll have to make sure the other maids will agree to keep it secret, too.”

I scrunch up my forehead, just starting to get what she’s asking. “Other maids?”

“I was hoping to get four or five. To really show what it’s like to be a maid in Jackson.”

I look around. We out here in the wide open. Don’t she know how dangerous this could be, talking about this while the whole world can see us? “Exactly what kind a stories you think you gone hear?”

“What you get paid, how they treat you, the bathrooms, the babies, all the things you’ve seen, good and bad.”

She looks excited, like this is some kind a game. For a second, I think I might be more mad than I am tired.

“Miss Skeeter,” I whisper, “do that not sound kind a dangerous to you?”

“Not if we’re careful—”

“Shhh, please. Do you know what would happen to me if Miss Leefolt find out I talked behind her back?”

“We won’t tell her, or anyone.” She lowers her voice some, but not enough. “These will be private interviews.”

I just stare at her. Is she crazy? “Did you hear about the colored boy this morning? One they beat with a tire iron for accidentally using the white bathroom?”

She just look at me, blink a little. “I know things are unstable but this is—”

“And my cousin Shinelle in Cauter County? They burn up her car cause she went down to the voting station.”

“No one’s ever written a book like this,” she say, finally whispering, finally starting to understand, I guess. “We’d be breaking new ground. It’s a brand-new perspective.”

I spot a flock a maids in they uniforms walking by my house. They look over, see me setting with a white woman on my front step. I grit my teeth, already know my phone gone be ringing tonight.

“Miss Skeeter,” and I say it slow, try to make it count, “I do this with you, I might as well burn my own house down.”

Miss Skeeter start biting her nail then. “But I’ve already . . .” She shut her eyes closed tight. I think about asking her, Already what, but I’m kind a scared to hear what she gone say. She reach in her pocketbook, pull out a scrap a paper and write her telephone number on it.

“Please, will you at least think about it?”

I sigh, stare out at the yard. Gentle as I can, I say, “No ma’am.”

She set the scrap a paper between us on the step, then she get in her Cadillac. I’m too tired to get up. I just stay there, watch while she roll real slow down the road. The boys playing ball clear the street, stand on the side frozen, like it’s a funeral car passing by.

MISS SKEETER

chapter 8

I DRIVE DOWN Gessum Avenue in Mama’s Cadillac. Up ahead, a little colored boy in overalls watches me, wide-eyed, gripping a red ball. I look into my rearview mirror. Aibileen is still on her front steps in her white uniform. She hadn’t even looked at me when she said No ma’am. She just kept her eyes set on that yellow patch of grass in her yard.

I guess I thought it would be like visiting Constantine, where friendly colored people waved and smiled, happy to see the little white girl whose daddy owned the big farm. But here, narrow eyes watch me pass by. When my car gets close to him, the little colored boy turns and scats behind a house a few down from Aibileen’s. Half-a-dozen colored people are gathered in the front yard of the house, holding trays and bags. I rub my temples. I try to think of something more that might convince Aibileen.

A WEEK AGO, Pascagoula knocked on my bedroom door.

“There’s a long distance phone call for you, Miss Skeeter. From a Miss . . . Stern, she say?”

“Stern?” I thought out loud. Then I straightened. “Do you mean . . . Stein?”

“I . . . I reckon it could a been Stein. She talk kind a hard-sounding.”

I rushed past Pascagoula, down the stairs. For some stupid reason, I kept smoothing my frizzy hair down as if it were a meeting and not a phone call. In the kitchen, I grabbed the phone dangling against the wall.

Three weeks earlier, I’d typed out the letter on Strathmore white. Three pages outlining the idea, the details, and the lie. Which was that a hardworking and respected colored maid has agreed to let me interview her and describe in specifics what it’s like to work for the white women of our town. Weighing it against the alternative, that I planned to ask a colored woman for help, saying she’d already agreed to it seemed infinitely more attractive.

I stretched the cord into the pantry, pulled the string on the single bare bulb. The pantry is shelved floor to ceiling with pickles and soup jars, molasses, put-up vegetables, and preserves. This was my old high school trick to get some privacy.

“Hello? This is Eugenia speaking.”

“Please hold, I’ll put the call through.” I heard a series of clicks and then a far, far away voice, almost as deep as a man’s, say, “Elaine Stein.”

“Hello? This is Skeet—Eugenia Phelan in Mississippi?”

“I know, Miss Phelan. I called you.” I heard a match strike, a short, sharp inhale. “I received your letter last week. I have some comments.”

“Yes ma’am.” I sank down onto a tall tin can of King Biscuit flour. My heart thumped as I strained to hear her. A phone call from New York truly sounded as crackly as a thousand miles away ought to.

“What gave you this idea? About interviewing domestic housekeepers. I’m curious.”

I sat paralyzed a second. She offered no chatting or hello, no introduction of herself. I realized it was best to answer her as instructed. “I was . . . well, I was raised by a colored woman. I’ve seen how simple it can be and—and how complex it can be between the families and the help.” I cleared my throat. I sounded stiff, like I was talking to a teacher.

“Continue.”

“Well,” I took a deep breath, “I’d like to write this showing the point of view of the help. The colored women down here.” I tried to picture Constantine’s face, Aibileen’s. “They raise a white child and then twenty years later the child becomes the employer. It’s that irony, that we love them and they love us, yet . . .” I swallowed, my voice trembling. “We don’t even allow them to use the toilet in the house.”

Again there was silence.

“And,” I felt compelled to continue, “everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.” Sweat dripped down my chest, blotting the front of my cotton blouse.

“So you want to show a side that’s never been examined before,” Missus Stein said.

“Yes. Because no one ever talks about it. No one talks about anything down here.”

Elaine Stein laughed like a growl. Her accent was tight, Yankee. “Miss Phelan, I lived in Atlanta. For six years with my first husband.”

I latched on to this small connection. “So . . . you know what it’s like then.”

“Enough to get me out of there,” she said, and I heard her exhale her smoke. “Look, I read your outline. It’s certainly... original, but it won’t work. What maid in her right mind would ever tell you the truth?”

I could see Mother’s pink slippers pass by the door. I tried to ignore them. I couldn’t believe Missus Stein was already calling my bluff. “The first interviewee is . . . eager to tell her story.”

“Miss Phelan,” Elaine Stein said, and I knew it wasn’t a question, “this Negro actually agreed to talk to you candidly? About working for a white family? Because that seems like a hell of a risk in a place like Jackson, Mississippi.”

I sat blinking. I felt the first fingers of worry that Aibileen might not be as easy to convince as I’d thought. Little did I know what she would say to me on her front steps the next week.

“I watched them try to integrate your bus station on the news,” Missus Stein continued. “They jammed fifty-five Negroes in a jail cell built for four.”

I pursed my lips. “She has agreed. Yes, she has.”

“Well. That is impressive. But after her, you really think other maids will talk to you? What if the employers find out?”

“The interviews would be conducted secretly. Since, as you know, things are a little dangerous down here right now.” The truth was, I had very little idea how dangerous things were. I’d spent the past four years locked away in the padded room of college, reading Keats and Eudora Welty and worrying over term papers.

“A little dangerous?” She laughed. “The marches in Birmingham, Martin Luther King. Dogs attacking colored children. Darling, it’s the hottest topic in the nation. But, I’m sorry, this will never work. Not as an article, because no Southern newspaper would publish it. And certainly not as a book. A book of interviews would never sell.”

“Oh,” I heard myself say. I closed my eyes, feeling all the excitement drain out of me. I heard myself say again, “Oh.”

“I called because, frankly, it’s a good idea. But . . . there’s no possible way to take it to print.”

“But . . . what if . . .” My eyes started darting around the pantry, looking for something to bring back her interest. Maybe I should talk about it as an article, maybe a magazine, but she said no—

“Eugenia, who are you talking to in there?” Mother’s voice cut though the crack. She inched the door open and I yanked it closed again. I covered the receiver, hissed, “I’m talking to Hilly, Mother—”

“In the pantry? You’re like a teenager again—”

“I mean—” Missus Stein let out a sharp tsk. “I suppose I could read what you get. God knows, the book business could use some rattling.”

“You’d do that? Oh Missus Stein . . .”

“I’m not saying I’m considering it. But... do the interview and I’ll let you know if it’s worth pursuing.”

I stuttered a few unintelligible sounds, finally coming out with, “Thank you. Missus Stein, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Call Ruth, my secretary, if you need to get in touch.” And she hung up.

I lug an Old SATCHEL to bridge club at Elizabeth’s on Wednesday. It is red. It is ugly. And for today, at least, it is a prop.

It’s the only bag in Mother’s house I could find large enough to carry the Miss Myrna letters. The leather is cracked and flaking, the thick shoulder strap leaves a brown mark on my blouse where the leather stain is rubbing off. It was my Grandmother Claire’s gardening bag. She used to carry her garden tools around the yard in it and the bottom is still lined with sunflower seeds. It matches absolutely nothing I own and I don’t care.

“Two weeks,” Hilly says to me, holding up two fingers. “He’s coming.” She smiles and I smile back. “I’ll be right back,” I say and I slip into the kitchen, carrying my satchel with me.

Aibileen is standing at the sink. “Afternoon,” she says quietly. It was a week ago that I visited her at her house.

I stand there a minute, watching her stir the iced tea, feeling the discomfort in her posture, her dread that I might be about to ask for her help on the book again. I pull a few housekeeping letters out and, seeing this, Aibileen’s shoulders relax a little. As I read her a question about mold stains, she pours a little tea in a glass, tastes it. She spoons more sugar in the pitcher.

“Oh, fore I forget, I got the answer on that water ring question. Minny say just rub you a little mayonnaise on it.” Aibileen squeezes half a lemon in the tea. “Then go on and throw that no-good husband out the door.” She stirs, tastes. “Minny don’t take too well to husbands.”

“Thanks, I’ll put that down,” I say. As casually as I can, I pull an envelope from my bag. “And here. I’ve been meaning to give you this.”

Aibileen stiffens back into her cautious pose, the one she had when I walked in. “What you got there?” she says without reaching for it.

“For your help,” I say quietly. “I’ve put away five dollars for every article. It’s up to thirty-five dollars now.”

Aibileen’s eyes move quickly back to her tea. “No thank you, ma’am.”

“Please take it, you’ve earned it.”

I hear chairs scraping on wood in the dining room, Elizabeth’s voice.

“Please, Miss Skeeter. Miss Leefolt have a fit if she find you giving me cash,” Aibileen whispers.

“She doesn’t have to know.”

Aibileen looks up at me. The whites of her eyes are yellowed, tired. I know what she’s thinking.

“I already told you, I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that book, Miss Skeeter.”

I set the envelope on the counter, knowing I’ve made a terrible mistake.

“Please. Find you another colored maid. A young’un. Somebody... else.”

“But I don’t know any others well enough.” I am tempted to bring up the word friends, but I’m not that naïve. I know we’re not friends.

Hilly’s head pops through the door. “Come on, Skeeter, I’m fixing to deal,” and she disappears.

“I’m begging you,” Aibileen says, “put that money away so Miss Leefolt don’t see it.”

I nod, embarrassed. I tuck the envelope in my bag, knowing we’re worse off than ever. It’s a bribe, she thinks, to get her to let me interview her. A bribe disguised as goodwill and thanks. I’d been waiting to give her the money anyway, once it added up to something, but it’s true, my timing today had been deliberately planned. And now I’ve scared her off for good.

“Darling, just try it on your head. It cost eleven dollars. It must be good.”

Mother has me cornered in the kitchen. I glance at the door to the hall, the door to the side porch. Mother comes closer, the thing in hand, and I’m distracted by how thin her wrists look, how frail her arms are carrying the heavy gray machine. She pushes me down into a chair, not so frail after all, and squeezes a noisy, farty tube of goo on my head. Mother’s been chasing me with the Magic Soft & Silky Shinalator for two days now.

She rubs the cream in my hair with both hands. I can practically feel the hope in her fingers. A cream will not straighten my nose or take a foot off my height. It won’t add distinction to my almost translucent eyebrows, nor add weight to my bony frame. And my teeth are already perfectly straight. So this is all she has left to fix, my hair.

Mother covers my dripping head with a plastic cap. She fastens a hose from the cap into a square machine.

“How long does this take, Mother?”

She picks up the booklet with a sticky finger. “It says here, ‘Cover with the Miracle Straightening Cap, then turn on the machine and wait for the miraculous—’ ”

“Ten minutes? Fifteen?”

I hear a click, a rising rumble, then feel a slow, intense warmth on my head. But suddenly there’s a pop! The tube is loose from the machine and jerking around like a mad firehose. Mother shrieks, grabs at it and misses. Finally, she snatches it and reattaches it.

She takes a deep breath and picks up the booklet again. “The Miracle Cap must remain on the head for two hours without removal or results—”

“Two hours?”

“I’ll have Pascagoula fix you a glass of tea, dear.” Mother pats me on the shoulder and swishes out through the kitchen door.

For two hours, I smoke cigarettes and read Life magazine. I finish To Kill a Mockingbird. Finally, I pick up the Jackson Journal, pick through it. It’s Friday, so there won’t be a Miss Myrna column. On page four, I read: Boy blinded over segregated bathroom, suspects questioned. It sounds . . . familiar. I remember then. This must be Aibileen’s neighbor.

Twice this week, I’ve gone by Elizabeth’s house hoping she wouldn’t be home, so I could talk to Aibileen, try to find some way to convince her to help me. Elizabeth was hunched over her sewing machine, intent on getting a new dress ready for the Christmas season, and it is yet another green gown, cheap and frail. She must’ve gotten a steal at the bargain bin on green material. I wish I could go down to Kennington’s and charge her something new but just the offer would embarrass her to death.

“So, do you know what you’re wearing for the date?” Hilly’d asked the second time I came by. “Next Saturday?”

I’d shrugged. “I guess I have to go shopping.”

Just then Aibileen brought a tray of coffee out and set it on the table.

“Thank you.” Elizabeth nodded to her.

“Why, thank you, Aibileen,” Hilly said, sugaring her cup. “I tell you, you make the best colored coffee in town.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Aibileen,” Hilly continued, “how do you like your new bathroom out there? It’s nice to have a place of your own, now isn’t it?”

Aibileen stared at the crack in the dining table. “Yes ma’am.”

“You know, Mister Holbrook arranged for that bathroom, Aibileen. Sent the boys over and the equipment, too.” Hilly smiled.

Aibileen just stood there and I wished I wasn’t in the room. Please, I thought, please don’t say thank you.

“Yes ma’am.” Aibileen opened a drawer and reached inside, but Hilly kept looking at her. It was so obvious what she wanted.

Another second passed with no one moving. Hilly cleared her throat and finally Aibileen lowered her head. “Thank you, ma’am,” she whispered. She walked back into the kitchen. It’s no wonder she doesn’t want to talk to me.

At noon, Mother removes the vibrating cap from my head, washes the goo from my hair while I lean back in the kitchen sink. She quickly rolls up a dozen curlers, puts me under her hair dryer hood in her bathroom.

An hour later, I emerge pink and soreheaded and thirsty. Mother stands me in front of the mirror, pulling out curlers. She brushes out the giant circular mounds on my head.

We stare, dumbfounded.

“Ho-ly shit,” I say. All I’m thinking is, The date. The blind date is next weekend.

Mother smiles, shocked. She doesn’t even scold me for cursing. My hair looks great. The Shinalator actually worked.

chapter 9

ON SATURDAY, the day of my date with Stuart Whitworth, I sit for two hours under the Shinalator (results, it seems, only last until the next wash). When I’m dry, I go to Kennington’s and buy the flattest shoes I can find and a slim black crepe dress. I hate shopping, but I’m glad for the distraction, to not have to worry about Missus Stein or Aibileen for an afternoon. I charge the eighty-five dollars to Mother’s account since she’s always begging me to go buy new clothes. (“Something flattering for your size.”) I know Mother would profoundly disapprove of the cleavage the dress enables me to have. I’ve never owned a dress like this.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 802