THAT AFTERNOON 10 page

“Just not ready. Not after what happened.”

I stare at him. “You want me to guess?”

“Me and Patricia van Devender. We got engaged last year and then . . . I thought you knew.”

He sinks down in a rocking chair. I don’t sit next to him. But I don’t tell him to leave either.

“What, she ran off with someone else?”

“Shoot.” He drops his head down into his hands, mumbles, “That’d be a goddamn Mardi Gras party compared to what happened.”

I don’t let myself say to him what I’d like to, that he probably deserved whatever she did, but he’s just too pathetic-looking. Now that all his good ole boy, tough bourbon talk has evaporated, I wonder if he’s this pathetic all the time.

“We’d been dating since we were fifteen. You know how it is, when you’ve been steady with somebody that long.”

And I don’t know why I admit this, except that I simply have nothing to lose. “Actually, I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I’ve never dated anybody.”

He looks up at me, kind of laughs. “Well, that must be it, then.”

“Be what?” I steel myself, recalling fertilizer and tractor references.

“You’re . . . different. I’ve never met anybody that said exactly what they were thinking. Not a woman, anyway.”

“Believe me, I had a lot more to say.”

He sighs. “When I saw your face, out there by the truck . . . I’m not that guy. I’m really not such a jerk.”

I look away, embarrassed. It’s just starting to hit me what he said, that even though I’m different, maybe it’s not in a strange way or an abnormal, tall-girl way. But maybe in a good way.

“I came by to see if you’d like to come downtown with me for supper. We could talk,” he says and stands up. “We could... I don’t know, listen to each other this time.”

I stand there, shocked. His eyes are blue and clear and fixed on me like my answer might really mean something to him. I take in a deep breath, about to say yes—I mean, why would I of all people refuse—and he bites his bottom lip, waiting.

And then I think about how he treated me like I was nothing. How he got shit-dog drunk he was so miserable to be stuck with me. I think about how he told me I smelled like fertilizer. It took me three months to stop thinking about that comment.

“No,” I blurt out. “Thank you. But I really can’t imagine anything worse.”

He nods, looks down at his feet. Then he goes down the porch steps.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the door to his car open. “That’s what I came to say and, well, I guess I said it.”

I stand on the porch, listening to the hollow sounds of the evening, gravel under Stuart’s shifting feet, dogs moving in the early darkness. For a second, I remember Charles Gray, my only kiss in a lifetime. How I’d pulled away, somehow sure the kiss hadn’t been intended for me.

Stuart gets in his car and his door clicks shut. He props his arm up so his elbow pokes through the open window. But he keeps his eyes turned down.

“Just give me a minute,” I holler out to him. “Let me get my sweater.”

NO ONE TELLS us, girls who don’t go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens. Mother climbs all the way to the third floor and stands over me in my bed, but I act like I’m still asleep. Because I just want to remember it awhile.

We’d driven to the Robert E. Lee for dinner last night. I’d thrown on a light blue sweater and a slim white skirt. I’d even let Mother brush out my hair, trying to drown out her nervous, complicated instructions.

“And don’t forget to smile. Men don’t want a girl who’s moping around all night, and don’t sit like some squaw Indian, cross your—”

“Wait, my legs or my ank—”

“Your ankles. Don’t you remember anything from Missus Rheimer’s etiquette class? And just go ahead and lie and tell him you go to church every Sunday, and whatever you do, do not crunch your ice at the table, it’s awful. Oh, and if the conversation starts to lag, you tell him about our second cousin who’s a city councilman in Kosciusko . . .”

As she brushed and smoothed and brushed and smoothed, Mother kept asking how I’d met him and what happened on our last date, but I managed to scoot out from under her and dash down the stairs, shaking with wonder and nervousness of my own. By the time Stuart and I walked into the hotel and sat down and put our napkins in our lap, the waiter said they’d be closing soon. All they’d serve us was dessert.

Then Stuart had gotten quiet.

“What . . . do you want, Skeeter?” he’d asked and I’d sort of tensed up then, hoping he wasn’t planning on getting drunk again.

“I’ll have a Co-Cola. Lots of ice.”

“No.” He smiled. “I mean . . . in life. What do you want?”

I took a deep breath, knowing what Mother would advise me to say: fine, strong kids, a husband to take care of, shiny new appliances to cook tasty yet healthful meals in. “I want to be a writer,” I said. “A journalist. Maybe a novelist. Maybe both.”

He lifted his chin and looked at me then, right in the eye.

“I like that,” he said, and then he just kept staring. “I’ve been thinking about you. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you’re”—he smiled—“tall.”

Pretty?

We ate strawberry soufflés and had one glass of Chablis apiece. He talked about how to tell if there’s oil underneath a cotton field and I talked about how the receptionist and I were the only females working for the paper.

“I hope you write something really good. Something you believe in.”

“Thank you. I . . . hope so too.” I don’t say anything about Aibileen or Missus Stein.

I haven’t had the chance to look at too many men’s faces up close and I noticed how his skin was thicker than mine and a gorgeous shade of toast; the stiff blond hairs on his cheeks and chin seemed to be growing before my eyes. He smelled like starch. Like pine. His nose wasn’t so pointy after all.

The waiter yawned in the corner but we both ignored him and stayed and talked some more. And by the time I was wishing I’d washed my hair this morning instead of just bathed and was practically doubled over with gratefulness that I’d at least brushed my teeth, out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body—my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.

On a MONDAY AFTERNOON, a few weeks after my date with Stuart, I stop by the library before going to the League meeting. Inside, it smells like grade school—boredom, paste, Lysoled vomit. I’ve come to get more books for Aibileen and check if anything’s ever been written about domestic help.

“Well hey there, Skeeter!”

Jesus. It’s Susie Pernell. In high school, she could’ve been voted most likely to talk too much. “Hey . . . Susie. What are you doing here?”

“I’m working here for the League committee, remember? You really ought to get on it, Skeeter, it’s real fun! You get to read all the latest magazines and file things and even laminate the library cards.” Susie poses by the giant brown machine like she’s on The Price Is Right television show.

“How new and exciting.”

“So, what may I help you find today, ma’am? We have murder mysteries, romance novels, how-to makeup books, how-to hair books,” she pauses, jerks out a smile, “rose gardening, home decorating—”

“I’m just browsing, thanks.” I hurry off. I’ll fend for myself in the stacks. There is no way I can tell her what I’m looking for. I can already hear her whispering at the League meetings, I knew there was something not right about that Skeeter Phelan, hunting for those Negro materials...

I search through card catalogues and scan the shelves, but find nothing about domestic workers. In nonfiction, I spot a single copy of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. I grab it, excited to deliver it to Aibileen, but when I open it, I see the middle section has been ripped out. Inside, someone has written NIGGER BOOK in purple crayon. I am not as disturbed by the words as by the fact that the handwriting looks like a third grader’s. I glance around, push the book in my satchel. It seems better than putting it back on the shelf.

In the Mississippi History room, I search for anything remotely resembling race relations. I find only Civil War books, maps, and old phone books. I stand on tiptoe to see what’s on the high shelf. That’s when I spot a booklet, laid sideways across the top of the Mississippi River Valley Flood Index. A regular-sized person would never have seen it. I slide it down to glance at the cover. The booklet is thin, printed on onionskin paper, curling, bound with staples. “Compilation of Jim Crow Laws of the South,” the cover reads. I open the noisy cover page.

The booklet is simply a list of laws stating what colored people can and cannot do, in an assortment of Southern states. I skim the first page, puzzled why this is here. The laws are neither threatening nor friendly, just citing the facts:

No person shall require any white female to nurse in wards or rooms in which negro men are placed.

It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void.

No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls.

The officer in charge shall not bury any colored persons upon ground used for the burial of white persons.

Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.

I read through four of the twenty-five pages, mesmerized by how many laws exist to separate us. Negroes and whites are not allowed to share water fountains, movie houses, public restrooms, ballparks, phone booths, circus shows. Negroes cannot use the same pharmacy or buy postage stamps at the same window as me. I think about Constantine, the time my family took her to Memphis with us and the highway had mostly washed out, but we had to drive straight on through because we knew the hotels wouldn’t let her in. I think about how no one in the car would come out and say it. We all know about these laws, we live here, but we don’t talk about them. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them written down.

Lunch counters, the state fair, pool tables, hospitals. Number forty-seven I have to read twice, for its irony.

The Board shall maintain a separate building on separate grounds for the instruction of all blind persons of the colored race.

After several minutes, I make myself stop. I start to put the booklet back, telling myself I’m not writing a book about Southern legislation, this is a waste of my time. But then I realize, like a shell cracking open in my head, there’s no difference between these government laws and Hilly building Aibileen a bathroom in the garage, except ten minutes’ worth of signatures in the state capital.

On the last page, I see the pica type that reads Property of Mississippi Law Library. The booklet was returned to the wrong building. I scratch my revelation on a piece of paper and tuck it inside the booklet: Jim Crow or Hilly’s bathroom plan—what’s the difference? I slip it in my bag. Susie sneezes behind the desk across the room.

I head for the doors. I have a League meeting in thirty minutes. I give Susie an extra friendly smile. She’s whispering into the phone. The stolen books in my bag feel like they’re pulsing with heat.

“Skeeter,” Susie hisses from the desk, eyes wide. “Did I really hear you have been seeing Stuart Whitworth?” She puts a bit too much emphasis on the you for me to keep up my smile. I act like I don’t hear her and walk out into the bright sunshine. I’ve never stolen a thing in my life before today. I’m a little satisfied it was on Susie’s watch.

Our PLACES Of COMFORT ARE expectedly different, my friends and I. Elizabeth’s is hunched over her sewing machine trying to make her life look seamless, store-bought. Mine is at my typewriter writing pithy things I’ll never have the guts to say out loud. And Hilly’s is behind a podium telling sixty-five women that three cans apiece isn’t enough to feed all those PSCAs. The Poor Starving Children of Africa, that is. Mary Joline Walker, however, thinks three is plenty.

“And isn’t it kind of expensive, carting all this tin across the world to Ethiopia?” Mary Joline asks. “Doesn’t it make more sense just to send them a check?”

The meeting has not officially started, but Hilly’s already behind her podium. There’s a franticness in her eyes. This isn’t our normal evening time, but an extra afternoon session Hilly’s called. In June, many of the members are going out of town for summer vacations. Then, in July, Hilly leaves for her annual trip down to the coast for three weeks. It’s going to be hard for her to trust an entire town to operate properly without her here.

Hilly rolls her eyes. “You cannot give these tribal people money, Mary Joline. There is no Jitney 14 Grocery in the Ogaden Desert. And how would we know if they’re even feeding their kids with it? They’re likely to go to the local voodoo tent and get a satanic tattoo with our money.”

“Alright.” Mary Joline teeters off, flat-faced, brainwashed-looking. “I guess you know best.” It is this bug-eyed effect Hilly has on people that makes her such a successful League president.

I make my way across the crowded meeting room, feeling the warmth of attention, as if a beam of light is shining down on my head. The room is full of cake-eating, Tab-drinking, cigarette-smoking women all about my age. Some are whispering to each other, glancing my way.

“Skeeter,” Liza Presley says before I make it past the coffee urns, “did I hear you were at the Robert E. Lee a few weeks ago?”

“Is that right? Are you really seeing Stuart Whitworth?” says Frances Greenbow.

Most of the questions are not unkind, not like Susie’s at the library. Still, I shrug, try not to notice how when a regular girl gets asked out, it’s information, but when Skeeter Phelan gets asked out, it’s news.

But it’s true. I am seeing Stuart Whitworth and have been for three weeks now. Twice at the Robert E. Lee if you include the disaster date, and three more times sitting on my front porch for drinks before he drove home to Vicksburg. My father even stayed up past eight o’clock to speak to him. “Night, son. You tell the Senator we sure do appreciate him stomping out that farm tax bill.” Mother’s been trembling, torn between the terror that I’ll screw it up and glee that I actually like men.

The white spotlight of wonder follows me as I make my way to Hilly. Girls are smiling and nodding at me.

“When will y’all see each other again?” This is Elizabeth now, twisting a napkin, eyes wide like she’s staring at a car accident. “Did he say?”

“Tomorrow night. As soon as he can drive over.”

“Good.” Hilly’s smile is a fat child’s at the Seale-Lily Ice Cream window. The button on her red suitcoat bulges. “We’ll make it a double date, then.”

I don’t answer. I don’t want Hilly and William coming along. I just want to sit with Stuart, have him look at me and only me. Twice, when we were alone, he brushed my hair back when it fell in my eyes. He might not brush my hair back if they’re around.

“William’ll telephone Stuart tonight. Let’s go to the picture show.”

“Alright,” I sigh.

“I’m just dying to see It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Won’t this be fun,” Hilly says. “You and me and William and Stuart.”

It strikes me as suspicious, the way she’s arranged the names. As if the point were for William and Stuart to be together instead of me and Stuart. I know I’m being paranoid. But everything makes me wary now. Two nights ago, as soon as I crossed over the colored bridge, I was stopped by a policeman. He shone his flashlight in the truck, let it shine on the satchel. He asked for my license and where I was going. “I’m taking a check to my maid . . . Constantine. I forgot to pay her.” Another cop pulled up, came to my window. “Why did you stop me?” I asked, my voice sounding about ten pitches too high. “Did something happen?” I asked. My heart was slamming against my chest. What if they looked in my satchel?

“Some Yankee trash stirring up trouble. We’ll catch em, ma’am,” he said, patting his billy club. “Do your business and get back over the bridge.”

When I got to Aibileen’s street, I parked even farther down the block. I walked around to her back door instead of using the front. I shook so bad for the first hour, I could hardly read the questions I’d written for Minny.

Hilly gives the five-minute-till bang with her gavel. I make my way to my chair, lug my satchel onto my lap. I tick through the contents, suddenly conscious of the Jim Crow booklet I stole from the library. In fact, my satchel holds all the work we’ve done—Aibileen and Minny’s interviews, the book outline, a list of potential maids, a scathing, unmailed response I wrote to Hilly’s bathroom initiative—everything I can’t leave at home for fear Mother will snoop through my things. I keep it all in a side zip-pocket with a flap over it. It bulges unevenly.

“Skeeter, those poplin pants are just the cutest thing, why haven’t I seen those before?” Carroll Ringer says a few chairs away and I look up at her and smile, thinking Because I wouldn’t dare wear old clothes to a meeting and neither would you. Clothing questions irritate me after so many years of Mother hounding me.

I feel a hand on my other shoulder and turn to find Hilly with her finger in my satchel, right on the booklet. “Do you have the notes for next week’s newsletter? Are these them?” I hadn’t even seen her coming.

“No, wait!” I say and ease the booklet back into my papers. “I need to... to correct one thing. I’ll bring them to you a little later.”

I take a deep breath.

At the podium, Hilly looks at her watch, toying with the gavel like she’s just dying to bang it. I push my satchel under my chair. Finally, the meeting begins.

I record the PSCA news, who’s on the trouble list, who’s not brought in their cans. The calendar of events is full of committee meetings and baby showers, and I shift around in my wooden chair, hoping the meeting will end soon. I have to get Mother’s car back to her by three.

It’s not until a quarter till, an hour and a half later, that I rush out of the hot room toward the Cadillac. I’ll be on the trouble list for leaving early, but Jesus Christ, what’s worse, the wrath of Mother or the wrath of Hilly?

I Walk INTO THE HOUSE five minutes early, humming “Love Me Do,” thinking I ought to go buy a short skirt like Jenny Foushee wore today. She said she’d gotten it up in New York City at Bergdorf Goodman’s. Mother would keel over if I showed up with a skirt above the knee when Stuart picks me up on Saturday.

“Mama, I’m home,” I call down the hallway.

I pull a Co-Cola from the fridge, sigh and smile, feeling good, strong. I head to the front door for my satchel, ready to thread together more of Minny’s stories. I can tell she is itching to talk about Celia Foote, but she always stops after a minute of it and changes the subject. The phone rings and I answer it, but it’s for Pascagoula. I take a message on the pad. It’s Yule May, Hilly’s maid.

“Hey, Yule May,” I say, thinking what a small town this is. “I’ll give her the message when she gets back.” I lean a minute against the counter, wishing Constantine was here like it used to be. How I’d love to share every single thing about my day with her.

I sigh and finish my Coke and then go to the front door for my satchel. It’s not there. I go outside and look in the car but it’s not there either. Huh, I think and head up the stairs, feeling less pink now and more of a pale yellow. Did I go upstairs yet? I scour my room, but it’s nowhere to be found. Finally, I stand still in my quiet bedroom, a slow tingle of panic working its way up my spine. The satchel, it has everything in it.

Mother, I think and I dash downstairs and look in the relaxing room. But suddenly I realize it’s not Mother who has it—the answer has come to me, numbing my entire body. I left my satchel at the League House. I was in such a hurry to get Mother’s car home. And even as the phone is ringing, I already know it is Hilly on the end of that line.

I grab the phone from the wall. Mother calls goodbye from the front door.

“Hello?”

“How could you leave this heavy thing behind?” Hilly asks. Hilly never has had a problem with going through other people’s things. In fact, she enjoys it.

“Mother, wait a second!” I holler from the kitchen.

“Good Lord, Skeeter, what’s in here?” Hilly says. I’ve got to catch Mother, but Hilly’s voice is muffled, like she’s bending down, opening it.

“Nothing! Just . . . all those Miss Myrna letters, you know.”

“Well, I’ve lugged it back to my house so come on by and get it when you can.”

Mother is starting the car outside. “Just . . . keep it there. I’ll be by as soon as I can get there.”

I race outside but Mother’s already down the lane. I look over and the old truck’s gone too, toting cotton seed somewhere in the fields. The dread in my stomach is flat and hard and hot, like a brick in the sun.

Down by the road, I watch the Cadillac slow, then jerk to a stop. Then it goes again. Then stops. Then slowly reverses and zigzags its way back up the hill. By the grace of a god I never really liked, much less believed in, my mother is actually coming back.

“I can’t believe I forgot Sue Anne’s casserole dish . . .”

I jump in the front passenger seat, wait until she climbs back into the car. She puts her hands on the wheel.

“Drive me by Hilly’s? I need to pick something up.” I press my hand to my forehead. “Oh God, hurry, Mother. Before I’m too late.”

Mother’s car hasn’t moved. “Skeeter, I have a million things to do today—”

The panic is rising up in my throat. “Mama, please, just drive . . .”

But the Deville sits in the gravel, ticking like a time bomb.

“Now look,” Mother says, “I have some personal errands to run and I just don’t think it’s a good time to have you tagging along.”

“It’ll take you five minutes. Just drive, Mama!”

Mother keeps her white-gloved hands on the steering wheel, her lips pressed together.

“I happen to have something confidential and important to do today.”

I can’t imagine my mother has anything more important to do than what I’m staring down the throat of. “What? A Mexican’s trying to join the DAR? Somebody got caught reading the New American Dictionary ?”

Mother sighs, says, “Fine,” and moves the gear shift carefully into drive. “Alright, here we go.” We roll down the lane at about one-tenth of a mile an hour, putting along so the gravel won’t knock at the paint job. At the end of the lane, she puts on her blinker like she’s doing brain surgery and creeps the Cadillac out onto the County Road. My fists are clenched. I press my imaginary accelerator. Every time’s Mother’s first time to drive.

On the County Road, she speeds up to fifteen and grips the wheel like we’re doing a hundred and five.

“Mama,” I finally say, “just let me drive the car.”

She sighs. I’m surprised that she pulls over into the tall grass.

I get out and run around the car while she slides over. I put the car in D and press it to seventy, praying, Please, Hilly, resist the temptation to rummage through my personal business. . . .

“So what’s the big secret, what do you have to do today?” I ask.

“I’m . . . I’m going to see Doctor Neal for some tests. It’s just routine, but I don’t want your daddy to know. You know how upset he gets every time somebody goes to the doctor.”

“What kind of tests?”

“It’s just an iodine test for my ulcers, same as I have every year. Drop me at the Baptist and then you can take yourself to Hilly’s. At least I won’t have to worry over parking.”

I glance at her to see if there’s more to this, but she’s sitting straight and starched in her light blue dress, her legs crossed at the ankles. I don’t remember her having these tests last year. Even with me being up at school, Constantine would’ve written to me about them. Mother must’ve kept them secret.

Five minutes later, at the Baptist Hospital, I come around and help her out of the car.

“Eugenia, please. Just because this is a hospital doesn’t mean I’m an invalid.”

I open the glass door for her and she walks in, head held high.

“Mother, do you . . . want me to come with you?” I ask, knowing I can’t—I have to deal with Hilly, but suddenly I don’t want to drop her off here, like this.

“It’s routine. Go on to Hilly’s and come back in an hour.”

I watch her grow smaller down the long hall, clutching her handbag, knowing I should turn and run. But before I do, I wonder at how frail and inconsequential my mother has become. She used to fill a room by just breathing and now there seems to be . . . less of her. She turns a corner and disappears behind the pale yellow walls. I watch a second longer before I rush back to the car.

A MINUTE and a Half LATER, I’m ringing Hilly’s bell. If these were regular times, I’d talk to Hilly about Mama. But I can’t distract her. It is the first moment that will tell me everything. Hilly is an exceptional liar, except for the moment right before she speaks.

Hilly opens the door. Her mouth is tight and red. I look down at her hands. They are knotted together like ropes. I’ve arrived too late.

“Well, that was quick,” she says and I follow her inside. My heart is seizing inside my chest. I’m not sure I’m breathing at all.

“There it is, that ugly thing. I hope you don’t mind, I had to check something in the minutes from the meeting.”

I stare at her, my best friend, trying to see just what she’s read in my things. But her smile is professional if not sparkling. The telling moments are gone.

“Can I get you something to sip on?”

“No, I’m fine.” Then I add, “Want to hit balls at the club later? It’s so gorgeous out.”

“William’s got a campaign meeting and then we’re going to see It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

I study her. Didn’t she ask me, just two hours ago, to double-date to this movie tomorrow night? Slowly, I move down to the end of the dining table, like she might pounce on me if I move too fast. She picks up a sterling fork from the sideboard, thrums her index finger along the tines.

“Yes, um, I heard Spencer Tracy’s supposed to be divine,” I say. Casually, I tick through the papers in my satchel. Aibileen and Minny’s notes are still tucked deep in the side pocket, the flap closed, the latch snapped. But Hilly’s bathroom initiative is in the open center section with the paper where I wrote Jim Crow or Hilly’s bathroom plan—what’s the difference? Besides this is the draft of the newsletter that Hilly has examined already. But the booklet—the laws—I tick through again—they are gone.

Hilly tilts her head, narrows her eyes at me. “You know, I was just thinking about how Stuart’s daddy stood right next to Ross Barnett when they fought that colored boy walking into Ole Miss. They’re awfully close, Senator Whitworth and Governor Barnett.”

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 669