THAT AFTERNOON 7 page

“Lord,” I say as soon as I’m settled in.

“I know. Somebody got to tell her.” Aibileen fans her face with her hanky. It was Kiki Brown’s morning for cleaning and the whole church is gaudied up with her lemon smell-good she makes and tries to sell for twenty-five cents a bottle. We have a sign-up sheet for cleaning the church. Ask me, Kiki Brown ought to sign a little less and the men ought to sign a lot more. Far as I know, no man has signed that sheet once.

Besides the smell, the church looks pretty good. Kiki shined the pews to where you could pick your teeth looking at them. The Christmas tree’s already up, next to the altar, full of tinsel and a shiny gold star on top. Three windows of the church have stained glass—the birth of Christ, Lazarus raised from the dead, and the teaching of those fool Pharisees. The other seven are filled with regular clear panes. We’re still raising money for those.

“How Benny’s asthma?” Aibileen asks.

“Had a little spell yesterday. Leroy dropping him and the rest a the kids by in a while. Let’s hope the lemon don’t kill him.”

“Leroy.” Aibileen shakes her head and laughs. “Tell him I said he better behave. Or I put him on my prayer list.”

“I wish you would. Oh Lord, hide the food.”

Hoity-toity Bertrina Bessemer waddles toward us. She leans over the pew in front of us, smilling with a big, tacky blue-bird hat on. Bertrina, she’s the one who called Aibileen a fool for all those years.

“Minny,” Bertrina says, “I sure was glad to hear about your new job.”

“Thank you, Bertrina.”

“And Aibileen, I thank you for putting me on your prayer list. My angina sure is better now. I call you this weekend and we catch up.”

Aibileen smiles, nods. Bertrina waddles off to her pew.

“Maybe you ought a be a little pickier who you pray for,” I say.

“Aw, I ain’t mad at her no more,” says Aibileen. “And look a there, she done lost some weight.”

“She telling everybody she lost forty pounds,” I say.

“Lord a mercy.”

“Only got two hundred more to go.”

Aibileen tries not to smile, acts like she’s waving away the lemon smell.

“So what you want me to come early for?” I ask. “You miss me or something?”

“Naw, it’s no big deal. Just something somebody said.”

“What?”

Aibileen takes a breath, looks around for anybody listening. We’re like royalty here. Folks are always hemming in on us.

“You know that Miss Skeeter?” she asks.

“I told you I did the other day.”

She quiets her voice, says, “Well, remember how I slipped up and told her about Treelore writing colored things down?”

“I remember. She want a sue you for that?”

“No, no. She nice. But she had the gall to ask if me and some a my maid friends might want a put down on paper what it’s like to tend for white people. Say she writing a book.”

“Say what?”

Aibileen nods, raises her eyebrows. “Mm-hmm.”

“Phhh. Well, you tell her it’s a real Fourth of July picnic. It’s what we dream a doing all weekend, get back in they houses to polish they silver,” I say.

“I told her, let the regular old history books tell it. White people been representing colored opinions since the beginning a time.”

“That’s right. You tell her.”

“I did. I tell her she crazy,” Aibileen says. “I ask her, what if we told the truth? How we too scared to ask for minimum wage. How nobody gets paid they Social Security. How it feel when your own boss be calling you . . .” Aibileen shakes her head. I’m glad she doesn’t say it.

“How we love they kids when they little . . .” she says and I see Aibileen’s lip tremble a little. “And then they turn out just like they mamas.”

I look down and see Aibileen’s gripping her black pocketbook like it’s the only thing she has left in this world. Aibileen, she moves on to another job when the babies get too old and stop being color-blind. We don’t talk about it.

“Even if she is changing all the names a the help and the white ladies,” she sniff.

“She crazy if she think we do something dangerous as that. For her.”

“We don’t want a bring all that mess up.” Aibileen wipes her nose with a hankie. “Tell people the truth.”

“No, we don’t,” I say, but I stop. It’s something about that word truth. I’ve been trying to tell white women the truth about working for them since I was fourteen years old.

“We don’t want a change nothing around here,” Aibileen says and we’re both quiet, thinking about all the things we don’t want to change. But then Aibileen narrows her eyes at me, asks, “What. You don’t think it’s a crazy idea?”

“I do, I just . . .” And that’s when I see it. We’ve been friends for sixteen years, since the day I moved from Greenwood to Jackson and we met at the bus stop. I can read Aibileen like the Sunday paper. “You thinking about it, ain’t you,” I say. “You want a talk to Miss Skeeter.”

She shrugs and I know I’m right. But before Aibileen can confess, Reverend Johnson comes and sits down in the pew behind us, leans between our shoulders. “Minny, I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to tell you congratulations on your new job.”

I smooth my dress down. “Why, thank you, Reverend Minister.”

“You must of been on Aibileen’s prayer list,” he says, patting Aibileen on the shoulder.

“Sure was. I told Aibileen, at this rate, she needs to start charging.”

The Reverend laughs. He gets up and treads slowly to the pulpit. Everything goes still. I can’t believe Aibileen wants to tell Miss Skeeter the truth.

Truth.

It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that’s been burning me up all my life.

Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.

Reverend Johnson raises his hands and speaks in a soft, deep voice. The choir behind him begins to hum “Talking to Jesus” and we all stand up. In half a minute I’m sweating.

“Think you might be interested? In talking to Miss Skeeter?” whispers Aibileen.

I look back and there’s Leroy with the kids, late as usual. “Who, me?” I say and my voice is loud against the soft music. I tamp it down, but not by much.

“Ain’t no way I’m gonna do something crazy as that.”

FOR NO REASON but to irritate me, we get a heat wave in December. In forty degrees, I sweat like iced tea in August and here I woke up this morning to eighty-three on the dial. I’ve spent half my life trying not to sweat so much: Dainty Lady sweat cream, frozen potatoes in my pockets, ice pack tied to my head (I actually paid a doctor for that fool advice), and I still soak my sweat pads through in five minutes. I tote my Fairley Funeral Home fan every place I go. Works good and it was free.

Miss Celia takes to the week of warm weather, though, and actually goes outside and sits by the pool in these tacky white sunglasses and a fuzzy bathrobe. Thank the Lord she’s out of the house. At first I thought maybe she was sick in the body, but now I’m wondering if she’s sick in the head. I don’t mean the talking to yourself variety you see in old ladies like Miss Walters where you know it’s just the old timers disease, but the capital C crazy where you get hauled to Whitfield in a straitjacket.

I catch her slipping upstairs to the empty bedrooms almost every day now. I hear her sneaky little feet walking down the hall, passing over that little squeak in the floor. I don’t think much of it—heck, it’s her house. But then one day, she does it again, and then again, and it’s the fact that she’s so darn sneaky about it, waiting until I turn on the Hoover or get busy on a cake, that makes me suspicious. She spends about seven or eight minutes up there and then pokes her little head around to make sure I don’t see her come down again.

“Don’t go getting in her business,” Leroy says. “You just make sure she tells her mister you cleaning his house.” Leroy’s been on the damn Crow the past couple of nights, drinking behind the power plant after his shift. He’s no fool. He knows if I’m dead, that paycheck won’t be showing up on its own.

After she makes her trip upstairs, Miss Celia comes to the kitchen table instead of going back to bed. I wish she’d get on out of here. I’m pulling chicken off the bone. I’ve got the broth boiling and the dumplings already cut. I don’t want her trying to help with this.

“Just thirteen more days before you tell Mister Johnny about me,” I say, and like I knew she would, Miss Celia gets up from the kitchen table and heads for her bedroom. But before she makes it out the door she mutters, “Do you have to remind me of that fact every day of my life?”

I stand up straighter. That’s the first time Miss Celia’s ever gotten cross with me. “Mm-hmm,” I tell her, not even looking up because I will remind her until Mister Johnny’s shook my hand and said nice to meet you, Minny.

But then I look over and see Miss Celia still standing there. She’s holding on to the doorframe. Her face has gone flat white, like cheap wall paint.

“You been fooling with the raw chicken again?”

“No, I’m . . . just tired.”

But the pricks of sweat on her makeup—that now’s gone gray—tell me she’s not fine. I help her to bed and bring her the Lady-a-Pinkam to drink. The pink label has a picture of a real proper lady on it with a turban on her head, smiling like she feels better. I hand Miss Celia the spoon to measure it out, but that tacky woman just drinks it straight from the bottle.

Afterward, I wash my hands. Whatever it is she’s got, I hope it ain’t catching.

THE DAY AFTER Miss CELIA’S face goes funny is change-the-damn-sheets day and the day I hate the most. Sheets are just too personal a thing for folks who aren’t kin to be fooling with. They are full of hair and scabs and snot and the signs of jelly-rolling. But it’s the blood stains that are the worst. Scrubbing those out with my bare hands, I gag over the sink. That goes for blood anywhere and anything with a suspicious resemblance. A stepped-on strawberry can hang me over the toilet bowl for the rest of the day.

Miss Celia knows about Tuesdays and usually she moves out to the sofa so I can do my work. A cold front started in this morning, so she can’t go out to the swimming pool, and they say the weather’s going to get worse. But at nine, then ten, then eleven the bedroom door’s still closed. Finally, I knock.

“Yes?” she says. I open the door.

“Morning, Miss Celia.”

“Hey, Minny.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

Not only is Miss Celia still in bed, she’s curled up on top of the covers in her nightgown without a drop of her makeup on.

“I got to get them sheets washed and ironed and then I got to get to this old chiffarobe you done let go dry as Texas. And then we cooking—”

“No learning lesson today, Minny.” She isn’t smiling either, like she usually does when she sees me.

“You feeling bad?”

“Fetch me some water, will you?”

“Yes’m.” I go in the kitchen and fill up a glass from the sink. She must be feeling bad because she’s never asked me to serve her anything before.

When I walk back in the bedroom though, Miss Celia’s not in bed and the bathroom door’s closed. Now why’d she ask me to go get her water if she’s got the means to get up and go to the bathroom? At least she’s out of my way. I pick Mister Johnny’s pants up off the floor, toss them over my shoulder. Ask me, this woman doesn’t take enough exercise, sitting around the house all day. Oh now, Minny, don’t go on that way. If she’s sick, she’s sick.

“You sick?” I holler outside the bathroom door.

“I’m . . . fine.”

“While you in there, I’m on go head and change these sheets.”

“No, I want you to go on,” she says through the door. “Go on home for the day, Minny.”

I stand there and tap my foot on her yellow rug. I don’t want to go on home. It’s Tuesday, change-the-damn-sheets day. If I don’t do it today, that makes Wednesday change-the-damn-sheets day too.

“What Mister Johnny gone do if he come home and the house’s a mess?”

“He’s at the deer camp tonight. Minny, I need you to bring me the phone over—” her voice breaks into a trembly wail. “Drag it on over and fetch my phone book that’s setting in the kitchen.”

“You sick, Miss Celia?”

But she doesn’t answer so I go get the book and stretch the phone over to the bathroom door and tap on it.

“Just leave it there.” Miss Celia sounds like she’s crying now. “I want you to go on home now.”

“But I just gots—”

“I said go home, Minny!”

I step back from that closed door. Heat rises up my face. And it stings, not because I haven’t been yelled at before. I just haven’t been yelled at by Miss Celia yet.

THE NEXT MORNING, Woody Asap on Channel Twelve is waving his white scaly hands all over the state map. Jackson, Mississippi, is frozen like an ice pop. First it rained, then it froze, then anything with more than a half-inch extending broke off to the ground by this morning. Tree branches, power lines, porch awnings collapsed like they’d plumb given up. Outside’s been dunked in a shiny clear bucket of shellac.

My kids glue their sleepy faces to the radio and when the box says the roads are frozen and school is closed, they all jump around and whoop and whistle and run outside to look at the ice with nothing on but their long johns.

“Get back in this house and put some shoes on!” I holler out the door. Not one of them does. I call Miss Celia to tell her I can’t drive in the ice and to find out if she’s got power out there. After she yelled at me like I was a nigger in the road yesterday, you’d think I wouldn’t give a hoot about her.

When I call, I hear, “Yeeello.”

My heart hiccups.

“Who is this? Who’s calling here?”

Real careful I hang up that phone. I guess Mister Johnny’s not working today either. I don’t know how he made it home with the storm. All I know is, even on a day off, I can’t escape the fear of that man. But in eleven days, that’s all going to be over.

MOST Of THE TOWN THAWS in a day. Miss Celia’s not in bed when I walk in. She’s sitting at the white kitchen table staring out the window with an ugly look on her face like her poor fancy life is just too hot a hell to live in. It’s the mimosa tree she’s eyeing out there. It took the ice pretty hard. Half of the branches broke off and all the spindly leaves are brown and soggy.

“Morning, Minny,” she says, not even looking my way.

But I just nod. I have nothing to say to her, not after the way she treated me day before yesterday.

“We can finally cut that old ugly thing down now,” says Miss Celia.

“Go ahead. Cut em all down.” Just like me, cut me down for no reason at all.

Miss Celia gets up and comes over to the sink where I’m standing. She grabs hold of my arm. “I’m sorry I hollered at you like I did.” Tears brim up in her eyes when she says it.

“Mm-hmm.”

“I was sick and I know that’s no excuse, but I was feeling real poor and . . .” She starts sobbing then, like the worst thing she’s ever done in her life is yell at her maid.

“Alright,” I say. “Ain’t nothing to boo-hoo over.”

And then she hugs me tight around the neck until I kind of pat her on the back and peel her off. “Go on, set down,” I say. “I’ll fix you some coffee.”

I guess we all get a little snippy when we’re not feeling good.

BY THE NEXT MONDAY, the leaves on that mimosa tree have turned black like it burned instead of froze. I come in the kitchen ready to tell her how many days we have left, but Miss Celia’s staring at that tree, hating it with her eyes the same way she hates the stove. She’s pale, won’t eat anything I put in front of her.

All day, instead of laying up in bed, she works on decorating the ten-foot Christmas tree in the foyer, making my life a vacuuming hell with all the needles flying around. Then she goes in the backyard, starts clipping the rose bushes and digging the tulip bulbs. I’ve never seen her move that much, ever. She comes in for her cooking lesson afterward with dirt under her nails but she’s still not smiling.

“Six more days before we tell Mister Johnny,” I say.

She doesn’t say anything for a while, then her voice comes out flat as a pan. “Are you sure I have to? I was thinking maybe we could wait.”

I stop where I am, with buttermilk dripping off my hands. “Ask me how sure I am again.”

“Alright, alright.” And then she goes outside again to take up her new favorite pastime, staring down that mimosa tree with the axe in her hand. But she never takes a chop.

Wednesday night all I can think is just ninety-six more hours. Knowing I might not have a job after Christmas gnaws at my stomach. I’ll have a lot more to worry about than just being shot dead. Miss Celia’s supposed to tell him on Christmas Eve, after I leave, before they go over to Mister Johnny’s mama’s house. But Miss Celia’s acting so strange, I wonder if she’s going to try and back out. No ma’am, I say to myself all day. I intend to stay on her like hair on soap.

When I walk in Thursday morning though, Miss Celia’s not even home. I can’t believe she’s actually left the house. I sit at the table and pour myself a cup of coffee.

I look out at the backyard. It’s bright, sunny. That black mimosa tree sure is ugly. I wonder why Mister Johnny doesn’t just go ahead and cut that thing down.

I lean in a little closer to the windowsill. “Well look a there.” Down around the bottom, some green fronds are still hanging on, perking up a little in the sun.

“That old tree just playing possum.”

I pull a pad out of my pocketbook where I keep a list of what needs to be tended to, not for Miss Celia, but my own groceries, Christmas presents, things for my kids. Benny’s asthma has gotten a little better but Leroy came home last night smelling like Old Crow again. He pushed me hard and I bumped my thigh on the kitchen table. He comes home like that tonight, I’ll fix him a knuckle sandwich for supper.

I sigh. Seventy-two more hours and I’m a free woman. Maybe fired, maybe dead after Leroy finds out, but free.

I try to concentrate on the week. Tomorrow’s heavy cooking and I’ve got the church supper Saturday night and the service on Sunday. When am I going to clean my own house? Wash my own kids’ clothes? My oldest girl, Sugar, is sixteen and pretty good about keeping things neat, but I like to help her out on the weekends the way my mama never helped me. And Aibileen. She called me again last night, asked if I’d help her and Miss Skeeter with the stories. I love Aibileen, I do. But I think she’s making a king-sized mistake trusting a white lady. And I told her, too. She’s risking her job, her safety. Not to mention why anyone would want to help a friend of Miss Hilly’s.

Lord, I better get on with my work.

I pineapple the ham and get it in the oven. Then I dust the shelves in the hunting room, vacuum the bear while he stares at me like I’m a snack. “Just you and me today,” I tell him. As usual he doesn’t say much. I get my rag and my oil soap, work my way up the staircase, polishing each spoke on the banister as I go. When I make it to the top, I head into bedroom number one.

I clean upstairs for about an hour. It’s chilly up here, no bodies to warm it up. I work my arm back and forth, back and forth across everything wood. Between the second and third bedrooms, I go downstairs to Miss Celia’s room before she comes back.

I get that eerie prickle, of being in a house so empty. Where’d she go? After working here all this time and her only leaving three times and always telling me when and where and why she’s leaving, like I care anyway, now she’s gone like the wind. I ought to be happy. I ought to be glad that fool’s out of my hair. But being here by myself, I feel like an intruder. I look down at the little pink rug that covers the bloodstain by the bathroom. Today I was going to take another crack at it. A chill blows through the room, like a ghost passing by. I shiver.

Maybe I won’t work on that bloodstain today.

On the bed the covers, as usual, have been thrown off. The sheets are twisted and turned around the wrong way. It always looks like a wrestling match has gone on in here. I stop myself from wondering. You start to wonder about people in the bedroom, before you know it you’re all wrapped up in their business.

I strip off one of the pillowcases. Miss Celia’s mascara smudged little charcoal butterflies all over it. The clothes on the floor I stuff into the pillowcase to make it easier to carry. I pick up Mister Johnny’s folded pants off the yellow ottoman.

“Now how’m I sposed to know if these is clean or dirty?” I stick them in the sack anyway. My motto on housekeeping: when in doubt, wash it out.

I tote the bag over to the bureau. The bruise on my thigh burns when I bend down to pick up a pair of Miss Celia’s silky stockings.

“Who are you?”

I drop the sack.

Slowly, I back away until my bottom bumps the bureau. He’s standing in the doorway, eyes narrowed. Real slow, I look down at the axe hanging from his hand.

Oh Lord. I can’t get to the bathroom because he’s too close and he’d get in there with me. I can’t make it past him out the door unless I pummel him, and the man has an axe. My head throbs hot I’m so panicked. I’m cornered.

Mister Johnny stares down at me. He swings the axe a little. Tilts his head and smiles.

I do the only thing I can do. I wrinkle my face as mean as I can and pull my lips across my teeth and yell: “You and your axe better get out a my way.”

Mister Johnny looks down at the axe, like he forgot he had it. Then back up at me. We stare at each other a second. I don’t move and I don’t breathe.

He sneaks a look over at the sack I’ve dropped to see what I was stealing. The leg of his khakis is poking out the top. “Now, listen,” I say, and tears spring up in my eyes. “Mister Johnny, I told Miss Celia to tell you about me. I must a asked her a thousand times—”

But he just laughs. He shakes his head. He thinks it’s funny he’s about to chop me up.

“Just listen to me, I told her—”

But he’s still chuckling. “Calm down, girl. I’m not going to get you,” he says. “You surprised me, that’s all.”

I’m panting, easing my way toward the bathroom. He still has the axe in his hand, swinging it a little.

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“Minny,” I whisper. I’ve still got five feet to go.

“How long have you been coming, Minny?”

“Not long.” I jiggle my head no.

“How long?”

“Few . . . weeks,” I say. I bite down on my lip. Three months.

He shakes his head. “Now, I know it’s been longer than that.”

I look at the bathroom door. What good would it do to be in a bathroom where the door won’t even lock? When the man’s got an axe to hack the door down with?

“I swear I’m not mad,” he says.

“What about that axe?” I say, my teeth gritted.

He rolls his eyes, then he sets it on the carpet, kicks it to the side.

“Come on, let’s go have us a talk in the kitchen.”

He turns and walks away. I look down at the axe, wondering if I should take it. Just the sight of it scares me. I push it under the bed and follow him.

In the kitchen, I edge myself close to the back door, check the knob to make sure it’s unlocked.

“Minny, I promise. It’s fine that you’re here,” he says.

I watch his eyes, trying to see if he’s lying. He’s a big man, six-two at least. A little paunch in the front, but strong looking. “I reckon you gone fire me, then.”

“Fire you?” He laughs. “You’re the best cook I’ve ever known. Look what you’ve done to me.” He frowns down at his stomach that’s just starting to poke out. “Hell, I haven’t eaten like this since Cora Blue was around. She practically raised me.”

I take a deep breath because his knowing Cora Blue seems to safen things up a little. “Her kids went to my church. I knew her.”

“I sure do miss her.” He turns, opens the refrigerator, stares in, closes it.

“When’s Celia coming back? You know?” Mister Johnny asks.

“I don’t know. I spec she went to get her hair done.”

“I thought for a while there, when we were eating your food, she really did learn how to cook. Until that Saturday, when you weren’t here, and she tried to make hamburgers.”

He leans against the sink board, sighs. “Why doesn’t she want me to know about you?”

“I don’t know. She won’t tell me.”

He shakes his head, looks up at the black mark on the ceiling from where Miss Celia burned up the turkey that time. “Minny, I don’t care if Celia never lifts another finger for the rest of her life. But she says she wants to do things for me herself.” He raises his eyebrows a little. “I mean, do you understand what I was eating before you got here?”

“She learning. Least she . . . trying to learn,” but I kind of snort at this. Some things you just can’t lie about.

“I don’t care if she can cook. I just want her here”—he shrugs—“with me.”

He rubs his brow with his white shirtsleeve and I see why his shirts are always so dirty. And he is sort of handsome. For a white man.

“She just doesn’t seem happy,” he says. “Is it me? Is it the house? Are we too far away from town?”

“I don’t know, Mister Johnny.”

“Then what’s going on?” He props his hands down on the counter behind him, grabs hold. “Just tell me. Is she”—he swallows hard—“is she seeing somebody else?”

I try not to, but I feel kind of sorry for him then, seeing he’s just as confused as I am about all this mess.

“Mister Johnny, this ain’t none a my business. But I can tell you Miss Celia ain’t having no relations outside a this house.”

He nods. “You’re right. That was a stupid thing to ask.”

I eye the door, wondering when Miss Celia’s going to be home. I don’t know what she’d do if she found Mister Johnny here.

“Look,” he says, “don’t say anything about meeting me. I’m going to let her tell me when she’s ready.”

I manage my first real smile. “So you want me to just go on like I been doing?”

“Look after her. I don’t like her in this big house by herself.”

“Yessuh. Whatever you say.”

“I came by today to surprise her. I was going to cut down that mimosa tree she hates so much, then take her into town for lunch. Pick out some jewelry for her Christmas present.” Mister Johnny walks to the window, looks out, and sighs. “I guess I’ll go get lunch in town somewhere.”

“I fix you something. What you want?”

He turns around, grinning like a kid. I start going through the refrigerator, pulling things out.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 678