THAT AFTERNOON 13 page

“That is not enough!” Jessup say, banging his fist on his hand. “They shot him in the back like a dog!”

“Jessup.” Deacon raise his hand. “Tonight is for prayer. For the family. For the lawyers on the case. I understand your anger, but, son—”

“Prayer? You mean y’all just gonna sit around and pray about it?”

He look around at all a us in our chairs.

“Y’all think prayer’s going to keep white people from killing us?”

No one answer, not even the Deacon. Jessup just turn and leave. We all hear his feet stomping up the stairs and then over our heads out the church.

The room is real quiet. Deacon Thoroughgood got his eyes locked a few inches above our heads. It’s strange. He ain’t a man not to look you in the eye. Everbody staring at him, everbody wondering what he thinking so that he can’t look in our faces. Then I see Yule May shaking her head, real small, but like she mean it and I reckon the Deacon and Yule May is thinking the same thing. They thinking about what Jessup ask. And Yule May, she just answering the question.

THE MEETING Ends around eight o’clock. The ones who got kids go on, others get ourselves coffee from the table in the back. They ain’t much chatter. People quiet. I take a breath, go to Yule May standing at the coffee urn. I just want to get this lie off that’s stuck on me like a cocklebur. I ain’t gone ask nobody else at the meeting. Ain’t nobody gone buy my stinky smell-good tonight.

Yule May nod at me, smile polite. She about forty and tall and thin. She done kept her figure nice. She still wearing her white uniform and it fit trim on her waist. She always wear earrings, tiny gold loops.

“I hear the twins is going to Tougaloo College next year. Congratulations.”

“We hope so. We’ve still got a little more to save. Two at once’s a lot.”

“You went to a good bit a college yourself, didn’t you?”

She nod, say, “Jackson College.”

“I loved school. The reading and the writing. Cept the rithmatic. I didn’t take to that.”

Yule May smiles. “The English was my favorite too. The writing.”

“I been . . . writing some myself.”

Yule May look me in the eye and I can tell then she know what I’m about to say. For a second, I can see the shame she swallow ever day, working in that house. The fear. I feel embarrassed to ask her.

But Yule May say it before I have to. “I know about the stories you’re working on. With that friend of Miss Hilly’s.”

“It’s alright, Yule May. I know you can’t do it.”

“It’s just... a risk I can’t afford to take right now. We so close to getting enough money together.”

“I understand,” I say and I smile, let her know she off the hook. But Yule May don’t move away.

“The names . . . you’re changing them, I heard?”

This the same question everbody ask, cause they curious.

“That’s right. And the name a the town, too.”

She look down at the floor. “So I’d tell my stories about being a maid and she’d write them down? Edit them or . . . something like that?”

I nod. “We want a do all kind a stories. Good things and bad. She working with . . . another maid right now.”

Yule May lick her lips, look like she imagining it, telling what it’s like to work for Miss Hilly.

“Could we . . . talk about this some more? When I have more time?”

“A course,” I say, and I see, in her eyes, she ain’t just being nice.

“I’m sorry, but Henry and the boys are waiting on me,” she says. “But may I call you? And talk in private?”

“Anytime. Whenever you feel like it.”

She touch my arm and look me straight in the eyes again. I can’t believe what I see. It’s like she been waiting on me to ask her all this time.

Then she gone out the door. I stand in the corner a minute, drinking coffee too hot for the weather. I laugh and mutter to myself, even though everbody gone think I’m even crazier for it.

MINNY

chapter 17

GO ON OUT A HERE SO I CAN DO MY CLEANING.”

Miss Celia draws the covers up around her chest like she’s afraid I might jerk her out of bed. Nine months here and I still don’t know if she’s sick in the body or fried up her wits with the hair coloring. She does look better than when I started. Her tummy’s got a little fat on it, her cheeks aren’t so hollow as they were, out here starving her and Mister Johnny to death.

For a while, Miss Celia was working in the backyard all the time but now that crazy lady’s back to sitting around the bed again. I used to be glad she stayed holed up in her room. Now that I’ve met Mister Johnny, though, I’m ready to work. And damn it, I’m ready to get Miss Celia in shape too.

“You driving me crazy hanging around this house twenty-five hours a day. Get. Go chop down that poor mimosa tree you hate so much,” I say, because Mr. Johnny never did chop that thing down.

But when Miss Celia doesn’t move from that mattress, I know it’s time to pull out the big guns. “When you gone tell Mister Johnny about me?” Because that always gets her moving. Sometimes I just ask it for my own entertainment.

I can’t believe the charade has gone on this long, with Mister Johnny knowing about me, and Miss Celia walking around like a ding-a-ling, like she’s still pulling her trick. It was no surprise when the Christmas deadline came and she begged for more time. Oh I railed her about it, but then the fool started boo-hooing so I let her off the hook just so she’d shut up, told her it was her Christmas present. She ought to get a stocking chock full of coal for all the lies she’s told.

Thank the Lord Miss Hilly hasn’t showed up here to play bridge, even though Mister Johnny tried to set it up again just two weeks ago. I know because Aibileen told me she heard Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt laughing about it. Miss Celia got all serious, asking me what to cook if they come over. Ordered a book in the mail to learn the game, Bridge for the Beginner. Ought to call it Bridge for the Brainless. When it came this morning in the mailbox, she didn’t read it for two seconds before she asked, “Will you teach me to play, Minny? This bridge book doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

“I don’t know how to play no bridge,” I said.

“Yes, you do.”

“How you know what I can do?” I started banging pots around, irritated just by the looks of that stupid red cover. I finally got Mister Johnny out the way and now I have to worry about Miss Hilly coming over and ratting me out. She’ll tell Miss Celia what I did for sure. Shoot. I’d fire my own self for what I did.

“Because Missus Walters told me you used to practice with her on Saturday mornings.”

I started scrubbing the big pot. My knuckles hit the sides, making a clanging noise.

“Playing cards is the devil’s game,” I said. “And I got too much to do already.”

“But I’ll get all flustered with those girls over here trying to teach me. Won’t you just show me a little?”

“No.”

Miss Celia hummed out a little sigh. “It’s cause I’m such a bad cook, isn’t it? You think I can’t learn anything now.”

“What you gone do if Miss Hilly and them ladies tell your husband you got a maid out here? Ain’t that gone blow your cover?”

“I’ve already worked that out. I’ll tell Johnny I’m bringing in some help for the day so it’ll look proper and all for the other ladies.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Then I’ll tell him I like you so much I want to hire you full-time. I mean, I could tell him that . . . in a few months.”

I started to sweat then. “When you think them ladies is coming over for your bridge party?”

“I’m just waiting for Hilly to call me back. Johnny told her husband I’d be calling. I left her two messages, so I’m sure she’ll call me back anytime now.”

I stand there trying to think of something to stop this from happening. I look at the phone, pray it never rings again.

THE NEXT MORNING, when I get in for work, Miss Celia comes out of her bedroom. I think she’s about to sneak upstairs, which she’s started to do again, but then I hear her on the kitchen telephone asking for Miss Hilly. I get a sick, sick feeling.

“I was just calling again to see about getting a bridge game together!” she says all cheerful and I don’t move until I know it’s Yule May, Hilly’s maid, she’s talking to and not Miss Hilly herself. Miss Celia spells out her telephone number like a floor-mopping jingle, “Emerson two-sixty-six-oh-nine!”

And half a minute later, she’s calling up another name from the back of that stupid paper, like she’s gotten into the habit of doing every other day. I know what that thing is, it’s the newsletter from the Ladies League, and from the looks of it she found it in the parking lot of that ladies’ club. It’s rough as sandpaper and wilted, like it sat through a rainstorm after blowing out of somebody’s pocketbook.

So far, not one of those girls has ever called her back, but every time that phone rings, she jumps on it like a dog on a coon. It’s always Mister Johnny.

“Alright...just...tell her I called again,” Miss Celia says into the phone.

I hear her hang it up real soft. If I cared, which I don’t, I’d tell her those ladies ain’t worth it. “Those ladies ain’t worth it, Miss Celia,” I hear myself saying. But she acts like she can’t hear me. She goes back to the bedroom and closes the door.

I think about knocking, seeing if she needs anything. But I’ve got more important things to worry about than if Miss Celia’s won the damn popularity contest. What with Medgar Evers shot on his own doorstep and Felicia clammering for her driver’s license, now that she’s turned fifteen—she’s a good girl but I got pregnant with Leroy Junior when I wasn’t much older than her and a Buick had something to do with it. And on top of all that, now I’ve got Miss Skeeter and her stories to worry about.

AT THE End Of JUNE, a heat wave of a hundred degrees moves in and doesn’t budge. It’s like a hot water bottle plopped on top of the colored neighborhood, making it ten degrees worse than the rest of Jackson. It’s so hot, Mister Dunn’s rooster walks in my door and squats his red self right in front of my kitchen fan. I come in to find him looking at me like I ain’t moving nowhere, lady. He’d rather get beat with a broom than go back out in that nonsense.

Out in Madison County, the heat officially makes Miss Celia the laziest person in the U. S. of A. She won’t even get the mail out the box anymore, I have to do it. It’s even too hot for Miss Celia to sit out at the pool. Which is a problem for me.

See, I think if God had intended for white people and colored people to be this close together for so much of the day, he would’ve made us color-blind. And while Miss Celia’s grinning and “good morning” and “glad to see”-ing me, I’m wondering, how did she get this far in life without knowing where the lines are drawn? I mean, a floozy calling the society ladies is bad enough. But she has sat down and eaten lunch with me every single day since I started working here. I don’t mean in the same room, I mean at the same table. That little one up under the window. Every white woman I’ve ever worked for ate in the dining room as far away from the colored help as they could. And that was fine with me.

“But why? I don’t want to eat in there all by myself when I could eat in here with you,” Miss Celia said. I didn’t even try to explain it to her. There are so many things Miss Celia is just plain ignorant about.

Every other white woman also knows that there is a time of the month when you do not to talk to Minny. Even Miss Walters knew when the Min-O-Meter was running hot. She’d smell the caramel cooking and cane herself right out the door. Wouldn’t even let Miss Hilly come over.

Last week, the sugar and butter had filled Miss Celia’s whole house with the smell of Christmas even though it was the crying shame of June. I was tense, as usual, turning my sugar to caramel. I asked her three times, very politely, if I couldn’t do this by myself, but she wanted to be in there with me. Said she was getting lonely being in her bedroom all the day long.

I tried to ignore her. Problem was, I have to talk to myself when I make a caramel cake or else I get too jittery.

I said, “Hottest day in June history. A hundred and four outside.”

And she said, “Do you have air-conditioning? Thank goodness we have it here cause I grew up without it and I know what it’s like being hot.”

And I said, “Can’t afford no air-conditioning. Them things eat current like a boll weevil on cotton.” And I started stirring hard because the brown was just forming on the top and that’s when you’ve really got to watch it and I say, “We already late on the light bill,” because I’m not thinking straight and do you know what she said? She said, “Oh, Minny, I wish I could loan you the money, but Johnny’s been asking all these funny questions lately,” and I turned to inform her that every time a Negro complained about the cost of living didn’t mean she was begging for money, but before I could say a word, I’d burned up my damn caramel.

AT SUNDAY CHURCH SERVICE, Shirley Boon gets up in front of the congregation. With her lips flapping like a flag, she reminds us that the “Community Concerns” meeting is Wednesday night, to discuss a sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter on Amite Street. Big nosy Shirley points her finger at us and says, “The meeting is at seven so be on time. No excuses!” She reminds me of a big, white, ugly schoolteacher. The kind that nobody ever wants to marry.

“You coming on Wednesday?” asks Aibileen. We’re walking home in the three o’clock heat. I’ve got my funeral fan in my fist. I’m waving it so fast it looks like it’s got a motor on it.

“I ain’t got time,” I say.

“You gone make me go by myself again? Come on, I’m on bring some gingerbread and some—”

“I said I can’t go.”

Aibileen nods, says, “Alright then.” She keeps walking.

“Benny . . . might get the asthma again. I don’t want a leave him.”

“Mm-hmm,” Aibileen says. “You’n tell me the real reason when you ready.”

We turn on Gessum, walk around a car that’s plumb died of heat stroke in the road. “Oh, fore I forget, Miss Skeeter wants to come over early Tuesday night,” Aibileen says. “Bout seven. You make it then?”

“Lord,” I say, getting irritated all over again. “What am I doing? I must be crazy, giving the sworn secrets a the colored race to a white lady.”

“It’s just Miss Skeeter, she ain’t like the rest.”

“Feel like I’m talking behind my own back,” I say. I’ve met with Miss Skeeter at least five times now. It’s not getting any easier.

“You want a stop coming?” Aibileen asks. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to.” I don’t answer her.

“You still there, M?” she says.

“I just . . . I want things to be better for the kids,” I say. “But it’s a sorry fact that it’s a white woman doing this.”

“Come to the community meeting with me on Wednesday. We talk more about it then,” Aibileen says with a little smile.

I knew Aibileen wouldn’t drop it. I sigh. “I got in trouble, alright?”

“With who?”

“Shirley Boon,” I say. “Last meeting everybody was holding hands and praying they gone let blacks in the white bathroom and talking about how they gone set down on a stool at Woolworth’s and not fight back and they all smiling like this world gone be a shiny new place and I just . . . I popped. I told Shirley Boon her ass won’t fit on no stool at Woolworth’s anyway.”

“What Shirley say?”

I pull out my teacher lady voice. “‘If you can’t say nothing nice, then you ought not say nothing at all.’”

When we get to her house, I look over at Aibileen. She’s holding down a laugh so hard she’s gone purple.

“It ain’t funny,” I say.

“I am glad you’re my friend, Minny Jackson.” And she gives me a big hug until I roll my eyes and tell her I have to go.

I keep walking and turn at the corner. I didn’t want Aibileen to know that. I don’t want anybody to know how much I need those Skeeter stories. Now that I can’t come to the Shirley Boon meetings anymore, that’s pretty much all I’ve got. And I am not saying the Miss Skeeter meetings are fun. Every time we meet, I complain. I moan. I get mad and throw a hot potato fit. But here’s the thing: I like telling my stories. It feels like I’m doing something about it. When I leave, the concrete in my chest has loosened, melted down so I can breathe for a few days.

And I know there are plenty of other “colored” things I could do besides telling my stories or going to Shirley Boon’s meetings—the mass meetings in town, the marches in Birmingham, the voting rallies upstate. But truth is, I don’t care that much about voting. I don’t care about eating at a counter with white people. What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver.

AT HOME THAT NIGHT, I get the butter beans simmering, the ham in the skillet.

“Kindra, get everbody in here,” I say to my six-year-old. “We ready to eat.”

“Suuuuppperrrrr,” Kindra yells, not moving an inch from where she’s standing.

“You go get your daddy the proper way,” I yell. “What I tell you about yelling in my house?”

Kindra rolls her eyes at me like she’s just been asked to do the stupidest thing in the world. She stamps her feet down the hall. “Suuupperrr! ”

“Kindra! ”

The kitchen is the only room in the house we can all fit in together. The rest are set up as bedrooms. Me and Leroy’s room is in the back, next to that is a little room for Leroy Junior and Benny, and the front living room’s been turned into a bedroom for Felicia, Sugar, and Kindra. So all that leaves is the kitchen. Unless it’s crazy cold outside, our back door stays open with the screen shut to keep out the flies. All the time there’s the roar of kids and cars and neighbors and dogs barking.

Leroy comes in and sits at the table next to Benny, who’s seven. Felicia fills up the glasses with milk or water. Kindra carries a plate of beans and ham to her daddy and comes back to the stove for more. I hand her another plate.

“This one for Benny,” I say.

“Benny, get up and help your mama,” Leroy says.

“Benny got the asthma. He don’t need to be doing nothing.” But my sweet boy gets up anyway, takes the plate from Kindra. My kids know how to work.

They all set at the table except me. Three children are home tonight. Leroy Junior, who’s a senior at Lenier High, is bagging groceries at the Jitney 14. That’s the white grocery store over in Miss Hilly’s neighborhood. Sugar, my oldest girl, in tenth grade, babysits for our neighbor Tallulah who works late. When Sugar’s finished, she’ll walk home and drive her daddy to the late shift at the pipe-fitting plant, then pick up Leroy Junior from the grocery. Leroy Senior will get a ride from the plant at four in the morning with Tallulah’s husband. It all works out.

Leroy eats, but his eyes are on the Jackson Journal next to his plate. He’s not exactly known for his sweet nature when he wakes up. I glance over from the stove and see the sit-in at Brown’s Drug Store is the front-page news. It’s not Shirley’s group, it’s people from Greenwood. A bunch of white teenagers stand behind the five protesters on their stools, jeering and jabbing, pouring ketchup and mustard and salt all over their heads.

“How they do that?” Felicia points at the picture. “Sit there without fighting back?”

“That’s what they supposed to do,” says Leroy.

“I feel like spitting looking at that picture,” I say.

“We talk about it later.” Leroy folds the paper in quarters and tucks it under his thigh.

Felicia says to Benny, not quiet enough, “Good thing Mama wasn’t up on one a them stools. Else none a them white folks had any teeth left.”

“And Mama be in the Parchman jail,” says Benny for everybody to hear.

Kindra props her arm on her hip. “Nuh-uh. Ain’t nobody putting my mama in jail. I beat those white people with a stick till they bleed.”

Leroy points his finger at every one of them. “I don’t want to hear a word about it outside this house. It’s too dangerous. You hear me, Benny? Felicia?” Then he points his finger at Kindra. “You hear me?”

Benny and Felicia nod their heads, look down at their plates. I’m sorry I started all this and give Kindra the keep-it-shut look. But Little Miss Something slaps her fork down on the table, climbs out of her chair. “I hate white people! And I’m on tell everbody if I want to!”

I chase her down the hall. When I catch her, I potato sack her back to the table.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Felicia says because she’s the kind that’s going to take the blame for everyone every time. “And I look after Kindra. She don’t know what she saying.”

But Leroy smacks his hand on the table. “Nobody’s getting in that mess! Y’all hear me?” And he stares his children down. I turn to the stove so he can’t see my face. Lord help me if he finds out what I’m doing with Miss Skeeter.

All THE NEXT WEEK, I hear Miss Celia on her bedroom phone, leaving messages at Miss Hilly’s house, Elizabeth Leefolt’s house, Miss Parker’s house, both Caldwell sisters, and ten other society ladies. Even Miss Skeeter’s house, which I don’t like one bit. I told Miss Skeeter myself: Don’t even think about calling her back. Don’t tangle up this web any more than it already is.

The irritating part is, after Miss Celia makes these stupid calls and hangs up the phone, she picks that receiver right back up. She listens for a dial tone in case the line doesn’t go free.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with that phone,” I say. She just keeps smiling at me like she’s been doing for a month now, like she’s got a pocketful of paper money.

“Why you in such a good mood?” I finally ask her. “Mister Johnny being sweet or something?” I’m loading up my next “When you gone tell” but she beats me to it.

“Oh, he’s being sweet alright,” she says. “And it’s not gonna be much longer until I tell him about you.”

“Good,” I say and I mean it. I am sick of this lying game. I imagine how she must smile at Mister Johnny when she hands him my pork chops, how that nice man has to act like he’s so proud of her when he knows it’s me doing the cooking. She’s making a fool of herself, a fool of her nice husband, and a liar out of me.

“Minny, would you mind fetching the mail for me?” she asks even though she’s sitting here all dressed and I’ve got butter on my hands and a wash in the machine and a motor blender going. She’s like a Philistine on a Sunday, the way she won’t take but so many steps a day. Except every day’s Sunday around here.

I clean off my hands and head out to the box, sweat half a gallon on the way. I mean, it’s only ninety-nine degrees outside. There’s a two-foot package sitting next to the mailbox, in the grass. I’ve seen her with these big brown boxes before, figure it’s some kind of beauty cream she’s ordering. But when I pick it up, it’s heavy. Makes a tinkling sound like I’m toting Co-Cola bottles.

“You got something, Miss Celia.” I plop the box on the floor of the kitchen.

I’ve never seen her jump up so fast. In fact, the only thing fast about Miss Celia is the way she dresses. “It’s just my . . .” She mumbles something. She heaves the box all the way to her bedroom and I hear the door slam.

An hour later, I go back in the bedroom to suck the rugs. Miss Celia’s not laying down and she’s not in the bathroom. I know she’s not in the kitchen or the living room or out at the pool and I just dusted fancy parlor number one and number two and vacuumed the bear. Which means she must be upstairs. In the creepy rooms.

Before I got fired for accusing Mr. White Manager of wearing a hair piece, I used to clean the ballrooms at the Robert E. Lee Hotel. Those big, empty rooms with no peoples and the lipsticked napkins and the leftover smell of perfume gave me chills. And so does the upstairs of Miss Celia’s house. There’s even an antique cradle with Mister Johnny’s old baby bonnet and silver rattle that I swear I can hear tinkling sometimes on its own accord. And it’s thinking of that tinkling sound that makes me wonder if those boxes don’t have something to do with her sneaking up to those rooms every other day.

I decide it’s time I go up there and take a look for myself.

I KEEP an EYE On Miss Celia the next day, waiting for her to sneak upstairs so I can see what she’s up to. Around two o’clock, she sticks her head in the kitchen and gives me a funny smile. A minute later, I hear the squeak in the ceiling.

Real easy, I head for the staircase. Even though I tiptoe, the dishes in the sideboard jangle, the floorboards groan. I walk so slowly up the stairs, I can hear my own breathing. At the top, I turn down the long hall. I pass wide open bedroom doors, one, two, three. Door number four, down on the end, is closed except for an inch. I move in a little closer. And through the crack, I spot her.

She’s sitting on the yellow twin bed by the window and she’s not smiling. The package I toted in from the mailbox is open and on the bed are a dozen bottles filled with brown liquid. It’s a slow burn that rises up my bosoms, my chin, my mouth. I know the look of those flat bottles. I nursed a worthless pint drinker for twelve years and when my lazy, life-sucking daddy finally died, I swore to God with tears in my eyes I’d never marry one. And then I did.

And now here I am nursing another goddamn drinker. These aren’t even store-bought bottles, these have a red wax top like my Uncle Toad used to cap his moonshine with. Mama always told me the real alcoholics, like my daddy, drink the homemade stuff because it’s stronger. Now I know she’s as much a fool as my daddy was and as Leroy is when he gets on the Old Crow, only she doesn’t chase me with the frying pan.

Miss Celia picks a bottle up and looks at it like it’s Jesus in there and she can’t wait to get saved. She uncorks it, sips it, and sighs. Then she drinks three hard swallows and lays back on her fancy pillows.

My body starts to shake, watching that ease cross her face. She was so eager to get to her juice, she didn’t even close the damn door. I have to grit my teeth so I don’t scream at her. Finally I force my way back down the stairs.

When Miss Celia comes back downstairs ten minutes later, she sits at the kitchen table, asks me if I’m ready to eat.

“There’s pork chops in the icebox and I’m not eating lunch today,” I say and stomp out of the room.

That afternoon Miss Celia’s in her bathroom sitting on the toilet lid. She’s got the hair dryer on the back tank and the hood pulled over her bleached head. With that contraption on she wouldn’t hear the A-bomb explode.

I go upstairs with my oil rags and I open that cupboard for myself. Two dozen flat whiskey bottles are hidden behind some ratty old blankets Miss Celia must’ve toted with her from Tunica County. The bottles don’t have any labels fastened to them, just the stamp Old KENTUCKY in the glass. Twelve are full, ready for tomorrow. Twelve are empty from last week. Just like all these damn bedrooms. No wonder the fool doesn’t have any kids.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 751