THAT AFTERNOON 14 page

On THE FIRST THURSDAY of July, at twelve noon, Miss Celia gets up from the bed for her cooking lesson. She’s dressed in a white sweater so tight it’d make a hooker look holy. I swear her clothes get tighter every week.

We settle in our places, me at the stovetop, her on her stool. I’ve hardly spoken word one to her since I found those bottles last week. I’m not mad. I’m irate. But I have sworn every day for the past six days that I would follow Mama’s Rule Number One. To say something would mean I cared about her and I don’t. It’s not my business or my concern if she’s a lazy, drunk fool.

We lay the battered raw chicken on the rack. Then I have to remind the ding-dong for the bobillionth time to wash her hands before she kills us both.

I watch the chicken sizzle, try to forget she’s there. Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life. I almost forget I’m working for a drunk. When the batch is done, I put most of it in the refrigerator for supper that night. The rest goes on a plate for our lunch. She sits down across from me at the kitchen table, as usual.

“Take the breast,” she says, her blue eyes bugging out at me. “Go ahead.”

“I eat the leg and the thigh,” I say, taking them from the plate. I thumb through the Jackson Journal to the Metro section. I pop up the spine of my newspaper in front of my face so I don’t have to look at her.

“But they don’t have hardly any meat on them.”

“They good. Greasy.” I keep reading, trying to ignore her.

“Well,” she says, taking the breast, “I guess that makes us perfect chicken partners then.” And after a minute she says, “You know, I’m lucky to have you as a friend, Minny.”

I feel thick, hot disgust rise up in my chest. I lower my paper and just look at her. “No ma’am. We ain’t friends.”

“Well . . . sure we are.” She smiles, like she’s doing me a big favor.

“No, Miss Celia. We ain’t.”

She blinks at me with her fake eyelashes. Stop it, Minny, my insides tell me. But I already know I can’t. I know by the fists in my hands that I can’t hold this in another minute.

“Is it . . .” She looks down at her chicken. “Because you’re colored? Or because you don’t . . . want to be friends with me?”

“So many reasons, you white and me colored just fall somewhere in between.”

She’s not smiling at all now. “But . . . why?”

“Because when I tell you I’m late on my light bill, I ain’t asking you for money,” I say.

“Oh Minny—”

“Because you don’t even give me the courtesy a telling your husband I’m working here. Because you in this house twenty-four hours a day driving me insane.”

“You don’t understand, I can’t. I can’t leave.”

“But all that is nothing compared to what I know now.”

Her face goes a shade paler under her makeup.

“All this time, there I was thinking you were dying a the cancer or sick in the head. Poor Miss Celia, all day long.”

“I know it’s been hard . . .”

“Oh, I know you ain’t sick. I seen you with them bottles upstairs. And you ain’t fooling me another second.”

“Bottles? Oh God, Minny, I—”

“I ought to pour them things down the drain. I ought to tell Mister Johnny right now—”

She stands up, knocking her chair over. “Don’t you dare tell—”

“You act like you want kids but you drinking enough to poison a elephant!”

“If you tell him, I’ll fire you, Minny!” She’s got tears in her eyes. “If you touch those bottles, I’ll fire you right now!”

But the blood’s running too hot in my head to stop now. “Fire me? Who else gone come out here and work in secret while you hang around the house drunk all day?”

“You think I can’t fire you? You finish your work today, Minny!” She’s boo-hooing and pointing her finger at me. “You eat your chicken and then you go home!”

She picks up her plate with the white meat and charges through the swinging door. I hear it clatter down on the long fancy dining room table, the chair legs scraping against the floor. I sink down in my seat because my knees are shaking, and stare down at my chicken.

I just lost another damn job.

I WAKE up SATURDAY MORNING at seven a.m. to a clanging headache and a raw tongue. I must’ve bitten down on it all night long.

Leroy looks at me through one eye because he knows something’s up. He knew it last night at supper and smelled it when he walked in at five o’clock this morning.

“What’s eating you? Ain’t got trouble at work, do you?” he asks for the third time.

“Nothing eating me except five kids and a husband. Y’all driving me up a wall.”

The last thing I need him to know is that I’ve told off another white lady and lost another job. I put on my purple housedress and stomp to the kitchen. I clean it like it’s never been cleaned.

“Mama, where you going?” yells Kindra. “I’m hungry.”

“I’m going to Aibileen’s. Mama need to be with somebody not pulling on her for five minutes.” I pass Sugar sitting on the front steps. “Sugar, go get Kindra some breakfast.”

“She already ate. Just a half hour ago.”

“Well, she hungry again.”

I walk the two blocks to Aibileen’s house, across Tick Road onto Farish Street. Even though it’s hot as sin and steam’s already rising off the blacktop, kids are throwing balls, kicking cans, skipping rope. “Hey there, Minny,” someone says to me about every fifty feet. I nod, but I don’t get friendly. Not today.

I cut through Ida Peek’s garden. Aibileen’s kitchen door is open. Aibileen’s sitting at her table reading one of those books Miss Skeeter got her from the white library. She looks up when she hears the screen door whine. I guess she can tell I’m angry.

“Lord have mercy, who done what to you?”

“Celia Rae Foote, that’s who.” I sit down across from her. Aibileen gets up and pours me some coffee.

“What she do?”

I tell her about the bottles I found. I don’t know why I hadn’t told her a week and a half ago when I found them. Maybe I didn’t want her to know something so awful about Miss Celia. Maybe I felt bad because Aibileen was the one who got me the job. But now I’m so mad I let it all spill out.

“And then she fired me.”

“Oh, Law, Minny.”

“Say she gone find another maid. But who gone work for that lady? Some nappy-headed country maid already living out there, won’t know squat about serving from the left, clearing from the right.”

“You thought about apologizing? Maybe you go in Monday morning, talk to—”

“I ain’t apologizing to no drunk. I never apologized to my daddy and I sure ain’t apologizing to her.”

We’re both quiet. I throw back my coffee, watch a horsefly buzz against Aibileen’s screen door, knocking with its hard ugly head, whap, whap, whap, until it falls down on the step. Spins around like a crazy fool.

“Can’t sleep. Can’t eat,” I say.

“I tell you, that Celia must be the worst one you ever had to tend to.”

“They all bad. But she the worst of all.”

“Ain’t they? You remember that time Miss Walter make you pay for the crystal glass you broke? Ten dollars out a your pay? Then you find out them glasses only cost three dollars apiece down at Carter’s?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Oh, and you remember that crazy Mister Charlie, the one who always call you nigger to your face like he think it’s funny. And his wife, the one who make you eat lunch outside, even in the middle a January? Even when it snowed that time?”

“Make me cold just thinking bout it.”

“And what—” Aibileen is chuckling, trying to talk at the same time. “What about that Miss Roberta? Way she make you sit at the kitchen table while she try out her new hair dye solution on you?” Aibileen wipes at her eyes. “Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.”

“Ain’t nothing funny bout that. Took me three weeks and twenty-five dollars to get my hair black again.”

Aibileen shakes her head, breathes out a high-keyed “Huhhhhm,” takes a sip of her coffee.

“Miss Celia though,” she says. “Way she treat you? How much she paying you to put up with Mister Johnny and the cooking lessons? Must be less than all of em.”

“You know she paying me double.”

“Oh, that’s right. Well, anyway, with all her friends coming over, specting you to clean up after em all the time.”

I just look at her.

“And them ten kids she got too.” Aibileen presses her napkin to her lips, hides her smile. “Must drive you insane the way they screaming all day, messing up that big old house.”

“I think you done made your point, Aibileen.”

Aibileen smiles, pats me on the arm. “I’m sorry, honey. But you my best friend. And I think you got something pretty good out there. So what if she take a nip or two to get through the day? Go talk to her Monday.”

I feel my face crinkle up. “You think she take me back? After everthing I said?”

“Nobody else gone wait on her. And she know it.”

“Yeah. She dumb.” I sigh. “But she ain’t stupid.”

I go on home. I don’t tell Leroy what’s bothering me, but I think about it all day and all weekend long. I’ve been fired more times than I have fingers. I pray to God I can get my job back on Monday.

chapter 18

ON MONDAY MORNING, I drive to work rehearsing the whole way. I know I mouthed off . . . I walk into her kitchen. And I know I was out of place... I set my bag down in the chair, and . . . and . . . This is the hard part. And I’m sorry.

I brace myself when I hear Miss Celia’s feet padding through the house. I don’t know what to expect, if she’ll be mad or cold or just flat out re-fire me. All I know is, I’m doing the talking first.

“Morning,” she says. Miss Celia’s still in her nightgown. She hasn’t even brushed her hair, much less put the goo on her face.

“Miss Celia, I got to . . . tell you something . . .”

She groans, flattens her hand against her stomach.

“You . . . feel bad?”

“Yeah.” She puts a biscuit and some ham on a plate, then takes the ham back off.

“Miss Celia, I want you to know—”

But she walks right out while I’m talking and I know I am in some kind of trouble.

I go ahead and do my work. Maybe I’m crazy to act like the job’s still mine. Maybe she won’t even pay me for today. After lunch, I turn on Miss Christine on As the World Turns and do the ironing. Usually, Miss Celia comes in and watches with me, but not today. When the program’s over, I wait on her awhile in the kitchen, but Miss Celia doesn’t even come in for her lesson. The bedroom door stays closed, and by two o’clock I can’t think of anything else to do except clean their bedroom. I feel a dread like a frying pan in my stomach. I wish I’d gotten my words in this morning when I had the chance.

Finally, I go to the back of the house, look at that closed door. I knock and there’s no answer. Finally, I take a chance and open it.

But the bed is empty. Now I’ve got the shut bathroom door to contend with.

“I’m on do my work in here,” I call out. There’s no answer, but I know she’s in there. I can feel her behind that door. I’m sweating. I want to get this damn conversation over with.

I go around the room with my laundry sack, stuffing a weekend’s worth of clothes inside. The bathroom door stays closed with no sound. I know that bathroom in there’s a mess. I listen for some life as I pull the sheets up taut on the bed. The pale yellow bolster pillow is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen, packaged on the ends like a big yellow hotdog. I smack it down on the mattress, smooth the bedspread out.

I wipe down the bedside table, stack the Look magazines on her side, the bridge book she ordered. I straighten the books on Mister Johnny’s. He reads a lot. I pick up To Kill a Mockingbird and turn it over.

“Well look a there.” A book with black folks in it. It makes me wonder if, one day, I’ll see Miss Skeeter’s book on a bedside table. Not with my real name in it, that’s for sure.

Finally, I hear a noise, something scruff against the bathroom door. “Miss Celia,” I call out again, “I’m out here. Just want you to know.”

But there’s nothing.

“That ain’t none a my business whatever’s going on in there,” I say to myself. Then I holler, “Just gone do my work and get out a here before Mister Johnny gets home with the pistol.” I’m hoping that’ll draw her out. It doesn’t.

“Miss Celia, they’s some Lady-a-Pinkam under the sink. Drink that up and come out so I can do my work in there.”

Finally, I just stop, stare at the door. Am I fired or am I ain’t? And if I ain’t, then what if she’s so drunk, she can’t hear me? Mister Johnny asked me to look after her. I don’t think this would qualify as looking after if she’s drunk in the bathtub.

“Miss Celia, just say something so I know you still alive in there.”

“I’m fine.”

But she does not sound fine to me.

“It’s almost three o’clock.” I stand in the middle of the bedroom, waiting. “Mister Johnny be home soon.”

I need to know what’s going on in there. I need to know if she’s laid out drunk. And if I ain’t fired, then I need to clean that bathroom so Mister Johnny doesn’t think the secret maid is slacking and fire me a second time.

“Come on, Miss Celia, you mess up the hair coloring again? I helped you fix it last time, remember? We got it back real pretty.”

The knob turns. Slowly, the door opens. Miss Celia’s sitting on the floor, to the right of the door. Her knees are drawn up inside her nightgown.

I step a little closer. From the side, I can see her complexion is the color of fabric softener, a flat milky blue.

I can also see blood in the toilet bowl. A lot of it.

“You got the cramps, Miss Celia?” I whisper. I feel my nostrils flare.

Miss Celia doesn’t turn around. There’s a line of blood along the hem of her white nightgown, like it dipped down into the toilet.

“You want me to call Mister Johnny?” I say. I try, but I can’t stop myself from looking at that red full bowl. Because there’s something else deep down in that red liquid. Something . . . solid-looking.

“No.” Miss Celia says, staring at the wall. “Fetch me . . . my phone book.”

I hurry to the kitchen, snatch the book from the table, rush back. But when I try to hand it to Miss Celia, she waves it away.

“Please, you call,” she says. “Under T, for Doctor Tate. I can’t do it again.”

I skip through the thin pages of the book. I know who Doctor Tate is. He doctors most of the white women I’ve waited on. He also gives his “special treatment” to Elaine Fairley every Tuesday when his wife is at her hair appointment. Taft . . . Taggert . . . Tann. Thank the Lord.

My hands tremble around the rotary dial. A white woman answers. “Celia Foote, on Highway Twenty-Two out Madison County,” I tell her as best I can without yacking on the floor. “Yes ma’am, lots and lots a blood coming out... Do he know how to get here?” She says yes, of course, and hangs up.

“He’s coming?” asks Celia.

“He coming,” I say. Another wave of nausea sneaks up on me. It’ll be a long time until I can scrub that toilet again without gagging.

“You want a Co-Cola? I’m on get you a Co-Cola.”

In the kitchen, I get a bottle of Coca-Cola from the refrigerator. I come back and set it on the tile and back away. As far from that red-filled pot as I can without leaving Miss Celia alone.

“Maybe we should get you up in the bed, Miss Celia. You think you can stand up?”

Miss Celia leans forward, tries to push herself up. I step in to help her and see that the blood has soaked through the seat of her nightgown, stained the blue tile with what looks like red glue, embedded in the grout. Stains that won’t be easy to get up.

Just as I raise her to her feet, Miss Celia slips in a spot of blood, catches the edge of toilet bowl to steady herself. “Let me stay—I want to stay here.”

“Alright then.” I back away, into the bedroom. “Doctor Tate be here real soon. They calling him up at home.”

“Come and set with me, Minny? Please?”

But there’s a waft of warm, wretched air coming off that toilet. After some figuring, I sit with half my bottom in the bathroom, half out. And at eye-level, I can really smell it. It smells like meat, like hamburger defrosting on the counter. I kind of panic when I put that one together.

“Come on out of here, Miss Celia. You need some air.”

“I can’t get the blood on the . . . rug or Johnny will see it.” The veins on Miss Celia’s arm look black under her skin. Her face is getting whiter.

“You getting funny-looking. Drink you a little a this Co-Cola.”

She takes a sip, says, “Oh Minny.”

“How long you been bleeding?”

“Since this morning,” she says and starts crying into the crook of her arm.

“It’s alright, you gone be fine,” I say and I sound real soothing, real confident, but inside my heart is pounding. Sure, Doctor Tate’s coming to help Miss Celia, but what about the thing in the toilet? What am I supposed to do, flush it? What if it gets stuck in the pipes? It’ll have to be fished up. Oh Lord, how am I going to make myself do that?

“There’s so much blood,” she moans, leaning against me. “Why’s there so much blood this time?”

I raise my chin and look, just a little, in the bowl. But I have to look down again quick.

“Don’t let Johnny see it. Oh God, when . . . what time is it?”

“Five to three. We got some time.”

“What should we do about it?” asks Miss Celia.

We. God forgive me, but I wish there wasn’t a “we” mixed up in this.

I shut my eyes, say, “I guess one a us is gone have to pull it out.”

Miss Celia turns to me with her red-rimmed eyes. “And put it where?”

I can’t look at her. “I guess . . . in the garbage pail.”

“Please, do it now.” Miss Celia buries her head in her knees like she’s ashamed.

There’s not even a we now. Now it’s will you do it. Will you fish my dead baby out of that toilet bowl.

And what choice do I have?

I hear a whine come out of me. The tile floor is smashing against my fat. I shift, grunt, try to think it through. I mean, I’ve done worse than this, haven’t I? Nothing comes to mind, but there has to be something.

“Please,” Miss Celia says, “I can’t . . . look at it no more.”

“Alright.” I nod, like I know what I’m doing. “I’m on take care a this thing.”

I stand up, try to get practical. I know where I’ll put it—in the white garbage pail next to the toilet. Then throw the whole thing out. But what will I use to get it out with? My hand?

I bite my lip, try to stay calm. Maybe I should just wait. Maybe . . . maybe the doctor will want to take it with him when he comes! Examine it. If I can get Miss Celia off it a few minutes, maybe I won’t have to deal with it at all.

“We look after it in a minute,” I say in that reassuring voice. “How far along you think you was?” I ease closer to the bowl, don’t dare stop talking.

“Five months? I don’t know.” Miss Celia covers her face with a washrag. “I was taking a shower and I felt it pulling down, hurting. So I set on the toilet and it slipped out. Like it wanted out of me.” She starts sobbing again, her shoulders jerking forward over her body.

Carefully, I lower the toilet lid down and settle back on the floor.

“Like it’d rather be dead than stand being inside me another second.”

“Now you look a here, that’s just God’s way. Something ain’t going right in your innards, nature got to do something about it. Second time, you gone catch.” But then I think about those bottles and feel a ripple of anger.

“That was . . . the second time.”

“Oh Lordy.”

“We got married cause I was pregnant,” Miss Celia says, “but it . . . it slipped out too.”

I can’t hold it in another second. “Then why in the heck are you drinking? You know you can’t hold no baby with a pint of whiskey in you.”

“Whiskey?”

Oh please. I can’t even look at her with that “what-whiskey?” look. At least the smell’s not as bad with the lid closed. When is that fool doctor coming?

“You thought I was . . .” She shakes her head. “It’s catch tonic.” She closes her eyes. “From a Choctaw over in Feliciana Parish . . .”

“Choctaw?” I blink. She is stupider than I ever imagined. “You can’t trust them Indians. Don’t you know we poisoned their corn? What if she trying to poison you?”

“Doctor Tate said it’s just molasses and water,” she cries down into her towel. “But I had to try it. I had to.”

Well. I’m surprised by how loose my body goes, how relieved I am by this. “There’s nothing wrong with taking your time, Miss Celia. Believe me, I got five kids.”

“But Johnny wants kids now. Oh Minny.” She shakes her head. “What’s he going to do with me?”

“He gone get over it, that’s what. He gone forget these babies cause mens is real good at that. Get to hoping for the next one.”

“He doesn’t know about this one. Or the one before.”

“You said that’s why he married you.”

“That first time, he knew.” Miss Celia lets out a big sigh. “This time’s really the . . . fourth.”

She stops crying and I don’t have any good things left to say. For a minute, we’re just two people wondering why things are the way they are.

“I kept thinking,” she whispers, “if I was real still, if I brought somebody in to do the house and the cooking, maybe I could hold on to this one.” She cries down into her towel. “I wanted this baby to look just like Johnny.”

“Mister Johnny a good-looking man. Got good hair . . .”

Miss Celia lowers the towel from her face.

I wave my hand in the air, realize what I’ve just done. “I got to get some air. Hot in here.”

“How do you know . . .?”

I look around, try to think of a lie, but finally I just sigh. “He knows. Mister Johnny came home and found me.”

“What?”

“Yes’m. He tell me not to tell you so you go right on thinking he’s proud a you. He love you so much, Miss Celia. I seen it in his face how much.”

“But . . . how long has he known?”

“A few . . . months.”

“Months? Was he—was he upset that I’d lied?”

“Heck no. He even call me up at home a few weeks later to make sure I didn’t have no plans to quit. Say he afraid he gone starve if I left.”

“Oh Minny,” she cries. “I’m sorry. I’m real sorry about everything.”

“I been in worse situations.” I’m thinking about the blue hair dye. Eating lunch in the freezing cold. And right now. There’s still the baby in the toilet that someone’s going to have to deal with.

“I don’t know what to do, Minny.”

“Doctor Tate tell you to keep trying, then I guess you keep trying.”

“He hollers at me. Says I’m wasting my time in bed.” She shakes her head. “He’s a mean, awful man.”

She presses the towel hard against her eyes. “I can’t do this anymore.” And the harder she cries, the whiter she turns.

I try to feed her a few more sips of Co-Cola but she won’t take it. She can’t hardly lift her hand to wave it away.

“I’m going to . . . be sick. I’m—”

I grab the garbage can, watch as Miss Celia vomits over it. And then I feel something wet on me and I look down and the blood’s coming so fast now, it’s leaked over to where I’m sitting. Everytime she heaves, the blood pushes out of her. I know she losing more than a person can handle.

“Sit up, Miss Celia! Get a good breath, now,” I say, but she’s slumping against me.

“Nuh-uh, you don’t want a lay down. Come on.” I push her back up but she’s gone limp and I feel tears spring up in my eyes because that damn doctor should be here by now. He should’ve sent an ambulance and in the twenty-five years I’ve been cleaning houses nobody ever tells you what to do when your white lady keels over dead on top of you.

“Come on, Miss Celia!” I scream, but she’s a soft white lump next to me, and there is nothing I can do but sit and tremble and wait.

Many minutes pass before the back bell rings. I prop Miss Celia’s head on a towel, take off my shoes so I don’t track the blood over the house, and run for the door.

“She done passed out!” I tell the doctor, and the nurse pushes past me and heads to the back like she knows her way around. She pulls the smelling salts out and puts them under Miss Celia’s nose and Miss Celia jerks her head, lets out a little cry, and opens her eyes.

The nurse helps me get Miss Celia out of her bloody nightgown. She’s got her eyes open but can hardly stand up. I put old towels down in the bed and we lay her down. I go in the kitchen where Doctor Tate’s washing his hands.

“She in the bedroom,” I say. Not the kitchen, you snake. He’s in his fifties, Doctor Tate, and tops me by a good foot and a half. He has real white skin and this long, narrow face that shows no feelings at all. Finally he goes back to the bedroom.

Just before he opens the door, I touch him on the arm. “She don’t want her husband to know. He ain’t gone find out, is he?”

He looks at me like I’m a nigger and says, “You don’t think it’s his business?” He walks into the bedroom and shuts the door in my face.

I go to the kitchen and pace the floor. Half an hour passes, then an hour, and I’m worrying so hard that Mister Johnny’s going to come home and find out, worrying Doctor Tate will call him, worrying they’re going to leave that baby in the bowl for me to deal with, my head’s throbbing. Finally, I hear Doctor Tate open the door.

“She alright?”

“She’s hysterical. I gave her a pill to calm her down.”

The nurse walks around us and out the back door carrying a white tin box. I breathe out for what feels like the first time in hours.

“You watch her tomorrow,” he says and hands me a white paper bag. “Give her another pill if she gets too agitated. There’ll be more bleeding. But don’t call me up unless it’s heavy.”

“You ain’t really gone tell Mister Johnny bout this, are you, Doctor Tate?”

He lets out a sick hiss. “You make sure she doesn’t miss her appointment on Friday. I’m not driving all the way out here just because she’s too lazy to come in.”

He waltzes out and slams the door behind him.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 825