THAT AFTERNOON 22 page

Do kindly make the check out to the Jackson League Chapter.

Sincerely,

Hilly Holbrook

President and Chairman of Appropriations

ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Miss Celia’s still under the covers. I do my work in the kitchen, try to appreciate the fact that she’s not hanging around with me in here. But I can’t enjoy it because the phone’s been ringing all morning, and for the first time since I started, Miss Celia won’t pick it up. After the tenth time, I can’t listen to it anymore and finally just grab it and say hello.

I go in her bedroom, tell her, “Mister Johnny on the phone.”

“What? He’s not supposed to know that I know that he knows about you.”

I let out a big sigh to show I don’t give a fat rat about that lie anymore. “He called me at home. The jig is up, Miss Celia.”

Miss Celia shuts her eyes. “Tell him I’m asleep.”

I pick up the bedroom line and look Miss Celia hard in the eye and tell him she’s in the shower.

“Yessir, she doing alright,” I say and narrow my eyes at her.

I hang up the phone and glare down at Miss Celia.

“He want to know how you doing.”

“I heard.”

“I lied for you, you know.”

She puts the pillow back over her head.

By the next afternoon, I can’t stand it another minute. Miss Celia’s still in the same spot she’s been all week. Her face is thin and that Butterbatch is greasy-looking. The room is starting to smell too, like dirty people. I bet she hasn’t bathed since Friday.

“Miss Celia,” I say.

Miss Celia looks at me, but doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak.

“Mister Johnny gone be home tonight and I told him I’d look after you. What’s he gone think if he find you laid up in that old nasty nightthing you got on?”

I hear Miss Celia sniffle, then hiccup, then start to cry full-on. “None of this would’ve happened if I’d just stayed where I belonged. He should’ve married proper. He should’ve married . . . Hilly.”

“Come on, Miss Celia. It ain’t—”

“The way Hilly looked at me . . . like I was nothing. Like I was trash on the side of the road.”

“But Miss Hilly don’t count. You can’t judge yourself by the way that woman see you.”

“I’m not right for this kind of life. I don’t need a dinner table for twelve people to sit at. I couldn’t get twelve people to come over if I begged.”

I shake my head at her. Complaining again cause she has too much.

“Why does she hate me so much? She doesn’t even know me,” Miss Celia cries. “And it’s not just Johnny, she called me a liar, accused me of getting her that . . . pie.” She bangs her fists against her knees. “I never would a thrown up if it wasn’t for that.”

“What pie?”

“H-H-Hilly won your pie. And she accused me of signing her up for it. Playing some . . . trick on her.” She wails and sobs. “Why would I do that? Write her name down on a list?”

It comes to me real slow what’s going on here. I don’t know who signed up Hilly for that pie, but I sure know why she’d eat alive anybody she thought did it.

I glance over at the door. That voice in my head says, Walk away, Minny. Just ease on out a here. But I look at Miss Celia bawling into her old nightgown, and I get a guilt thick as Yazoo clay.

“I can’t do this to Johnny anymore. I’ve already decided, Minny. I’m going back,” she sobs. “Back to Sugar Ditch.”

“You gone leave your husband just cause you throwed up at some party?” Hang on, I think, my eyes opening wide. Miss Celia can’t leave Mister Johnny—where in the heck would that leave me?

Miss Celia cries down harder at the reminder. I sigh and watch her, wondering what to do.

Lord, I reckon it’s time. Time I told her the one thing in the world I never want to tell anybody. I’m going to lose my job either way, so I might as well take the chance.

“Miss Celia . . .” I say and I sit down in the yellow armchair in the corner. I’ve never sat anywhere in this house but in the kitchen and her bathroom floor, but today calls for extreme measures.

“I know why Miss Hilly got so mad,” I say. “About the pie, I mean.”

Miss Celia blows a hard, loud honk into a tissue. She looks at me.

“I did something to her. It was Terrible. Awful.” My heart starts thumping just thinking about it. I realize I can’t sit in this chair and tell her this story at the same time. I get up and walk to the end of the bed.

“What?” she sniffs. “What happened, Minny?”

“Miss Hilly, she call me up at home last year, when I’s still working for Miss Walters. To tell me she sending Miss Walters to the old lady home. I got scared, I got five kids to feed. Leroy was already working two shifts.”

I feel a burn rise up in my chest. “Now I know what I did wasn’t Christian. But what kind a person send her own mama to the home to take up with strangers? They’s something bout doing wrong to that woman that make it just seem right.”

Miss Celia sits up in bed, wipes her nose. She looks like she’s paying attention now.

“For three weeks, I be looking for work. Ever day after I get off from Miss Walters’, I went looking. I go over to Miss Child’s house. She pass me up. I go on to the Rawleys’ place, they don’t want me neither. The Riches, the Patrick Smiths, the Walkers, not even those Catholic Thibodeaux with them seven kids. Nobody do.”

“Oh Minny . . .” says Miss Celia. “That’s awful.”

I clench my jaw. “Ever since I was a li’l girl, my mama tell me not to go sass-mouthing. But I didn’t listen and I got knowed for my mouth round town. And I figure that’s what it be, why nobody want to hire me.

“When they was two days left at Miss Walters’s and I still didn’t have no new job, I start getting real scared. With Benny’s asthma and Sugar still in school and Kindra and . . . we was tight on money already. And that’s when Miss Hilly, she come over to Miss Walters’s to talk to me.

“She say, ‘Come work for me, Minny. I pay you twenty-five more cent a day than Mama did.’ A ‘dangling carrot’ she call it, like I was some kind a plow mule.” I feel my fists forming. “Like I’d even consider beating my friend Yule May Crookle out a her job. Miss Hilly think everbody just as two-faced as she is.”

I wipe my hand across my face. I’m sweating. Miss Celia’s listening with her mouth open, looking dazed.

“I tell her ‘No thank you, Miss Hilly.’ And so she say she pay me fifty cent more and I say, ‘No ma’am. No thank you.’ Then she break my back, Miss Celia. She tell me she know bout the Childs and the Rawleys and all them others that turn me down. Said it was cause she’d made sure everbody knew I was a thief. I’ve never stole a thing in my life but she told everbody I did and wasn’t nobody in town gone hire a sass-mouthing thieving Nigra for a maid and I might as well go head and work for her for free.

“And that’s how come I did it.”

Miss Celia blinks at me. “What, Minny?”

“I tell her to eat my shit.”

Miss Celia sits there, still looking dazed.

“Then I go home. I mix up that chocolate custard pie. I puts sugar in it and Baker’s chocolate and the real vanilla my cousin bring me from Mexico.

“I tote it over to Miss Walters’s house, where I know Miss Hilly be setting round, waiting for the home to come and get her mama, so she can sell that house. Go through her silver. Collect her due.

“Soon as I put that pie down on the countertop, Miss Hilly smiles, thinking it’s a peace offering, like that’s my way a showing her I’m real sorry bout what I said. And then I watch her. I watch her eat it myself. Two big pieces. She stuff it in her mouth like she ain’t ever eaten nothing so good. Then she say, ‘I knew you’d change your mind, Minny. I knew I’d get my way in the end.’ And she laugh, kind a prissy, like it was all real funny to her.

“That’s when Miss Walters, she say she getting a mite hungry too and ask for a piece a that pie. I tell her, ‘No ma’am. That one’s special for Miss Hilly.’

“Miss Hilly say, ‘Mama can have some if she wants. Just a little piece, though. What do you put in here, Minny, that makes it taste so good?’

“I say ‘That good vanilla from Mexico’ and then I go head. I tell her what else I put in that pie for her.”

Miss Celia’s still as a stone staring at me, but I can’t meet her eyes now.

“Miss Walters, her mouth fall open. Nobody in that kitchen said anything for so long, I could a made it out the door fore they knew I’s gone. But then Miss Walters start laughing. Laugh so hard she almost fall out the chair. Say, ‘Well, Hilly, that’s what you get, I guess. And I wouldn’t go tattling on Minny either, or you’ll be known all over town as the lady who ate two slices of Minny’s shit.’ ”

I sneak a look up at Miss Celia. She’s staring wide-eyed, disgusted. I start to panic that I told her this. She’ll never trust me again. I walk over to the yellow chair and sit myself down.

“Miss Hilly thought you knew the story. That you were making fun a her. She never would a pounced on you if I hadn’t done what I did.”

Miss Celia just stares at me.

“But I want you to know, if you leave Mister Johnny, then Miss Hilly done won the whole ball game. Then she done beat me, she beat you . . . ” I shake my head, thinking about Yule May in jail, and Miss Skeeter without any friends left. “There ain’t many people left in this town that she ain’t beat.”

Miss Celia’s quiet awhile. Then she looks over at me and starts to say something, but she shuts her mouth back.

Finally, she just says, “Thank you. For . . . telling me that.”

She lays back down. But before I close the door, I can see her eyes are wide smack open.

THE NEXT MORNING, I find Miss Celia’s finally managed to get herself out of bed, wash her hair, and put all that makeup on again. It’s cold outside so she’s back in one of her tight sweaters.

“Glad to have Mister Johnny back home?” I ask. Not that I care, but what I do want to know is if she’s still fiddling with the idea of leaving.

But Miss Celia doesn’t say much. There’s a tiredness in her eyes. She’s not so quick to smile at every little thing. She points her finger out the kitchen window. “I think I’ll plant a row of rosebushes. Along the back of the property.”

“When they gone bloom?”

“We should see something by next spring.”

I take this as a good sign, that she’s planning for the future. I figure somebody running off wouldn’t go to the trouble to plant flowers that won’t bloom until next year.

For the rest of the day, Miss Celia works in the flower garden, tending to the mums. The next morning I come in and find Miss Celia at the kitchen table. She’s got the newspaper out, but she’s staring out at that mimosa tree. It’s rainy and chilly outside.

“Morning, Miss Celia.”

“Hey, Minny.” Miss Celia just sits, looking out at that tree, fiddling with a pen in her hand. It’s started to rain.

“What you want for lunch today? We got a roast beef or some a this chicken pie left over . . .” I lean in the refrigerator. I’ve got to make a decision about Leroy, tell him how it is. Either you quit beating on me, or I’m gone. And I’m not taking the kids either. Which ain’t true, about the kids, but that ought to scare him more than anything.

“I don’t want anything.” Miss Celia stands up, slips off one red high heel, then the other. She stretches her back, still staring out the window at that tree. She cracks her knuckles. And then she walks out the back door.

I see her on the other side of the glass and then I see the axe. I get a little spooked because nobody likes to see a crazy lady with an axe in her hand. She swings it hard through the air, like a bat. A practice chop.

“Lady, you done lost it this time.” The rain is pouring down all over Miss Celia, but she doesn’t care. She starts chopping at that tree. Leaves are sprinkling down all over her, sticking in her hair.

I set the platter of roast beef down on the kitchen table and watch, hoping this doesn’t turn into something. She bunches her mouth up, wipes the rain from her eyes. Instead of getting tired, every chop comes a little harder.

“Miss Celia, come on out the rain,” I holler. “Let Mister Johnny do that when he get home.”

But she’s nothing doing. She’s made it halfway through that trunk and the tree’s starting to sway a little, drunk as my daddy. Finally I just plop down in the chair where Miss Celia was reading, wait for her to finish the job. I shake my head and look down at the newspaper. That’s when I see Miss Hilly’s note tucked underneath it and Miss Celia’s check for two hundred dollars. I look a little closer. Along the bottom of the check, in the little space for the notes, Miss Celia’s written the words in pretty cursive handwriting: For Two-Slice Hilly.

I hear a groan and see the tree crash to the ground. Leaves and dead fronds fly through the air, sticking all over her Butterbatch.

MISS SKEETER

chapter 27

I STARE AT THE PHONE in the kitchen. No one’s called here in so long, it’s like a dead thing mounted to the wall. There’s a terrible quiet looming everywhere—at the library, at the drugstore where I pick up Mother’s medicine, on High Street where I buy typewriter ink, in our own house. President Kennedy’s assassination, less than two weeks ago, has struck the world dumb. It’s like no one wants to be the first to break the silence. Nothing seems important enough.

On the rare occasion that the phone does ring lately, it’s Doctor Neal, calling with more bad test results, or a relative checking on Mother. And yet, I still think Stuart sometimes, even though it’s been five months since he’s called. Even though I finally broke down and told Mother we’d broken up. Mother looked shocked, as I suspected she would, but thankfully, just sighed.

I take a deep breath, dial zero, and close myself up in the pantry. I tell the local operator the long distance number and wait.

“Harper and Row, Publishers, how may I connect you?”

“Elaine Stein’s office, please.”

I wait for her secretary to come on the line, wishing I’d done this earlier. But it felt wrong to call the week of Kennedy’s death and I heard on the news most offices were closed. Then it was Thanksgiving week and when I called, the switchboard told me no one was answering in her office at all, so now I’m calling more than a week later than I’d planned.

“Elaine Stein.”

I blink, surprised it’s not her secretary. “Missus Stein, I’m sorry, this is—Eugenia Phelan. In Jackson, Mississippi.”

“Yes . . . Eugenia.” She sighs, evidently irritated that she took the chance to answer her own phone.

“I was calling to let you know that the manuscript will be ready right after the new year. I’ll be mailing it to you the second week of January.” I smile, having delivered my rehearsed lines perfectly.

There is silence, except for an exhale of cigarette smoke. I shift on the flour can. “I’m . . . the one writing about the colored women? In Mississippi?”

“Yes, I remember,” she says, but I can’t tell if she really does. But then she says, “You’re the one who applied for the senior position. How is that project going?”

“It’s almost finished. We just have two more interviews to complete and I was wondering if I should send it directly to your attention or to your secretary.”

“Oh no, January is not acceptable.”

“Eugenia? Are you in the house?” I hear Mother call.

I cover the phone. “Just a minute, Mama,” I call back, knowing if I don’t, she’ll barge in here.

“The last editor’s meeting of the year is on December twenty-first,” Missus Stein continues. “If you want a chance at getting this read, I’ve got to have it in my hands by then. Otherwise it goes in The Pile. You don’t want to be in The Pile, Miss Phelan.”

“But . . . you told me January . . .” Today is December second. That only gives me nineteen days to finish the entire thing.

“December twenty-first is when everyone leaves for vacation and then in the new year we’re deluged with projects from our own list of authors and journalists. If you’re a nobody, as you are, Miss Phelan, before the twenty-first is your window. Your only window.”

I swallow, “I don’t know if . . .”

“By the way, was that your mother you were speaking to? Do you still live at home?”

I try to think of a lie—she’s just visiting, she’s sick, she’s passing through, because I do not want Missus Stein to know that I’ve done nothing with my life. But then I sigh. “Yes, I still live at home.”

“And the Negro woman who raised you, I’m assuming she’s still there?”

“No, she’s gone.”

“Mmm. Too bad. Do you know what happened to her? It’s just occurred to me, you’ll need a section about your own maid.”

I close my eyes, fighting frustration. “I don’t . . . know, honestly.”

“Well, find out and definitely get that in. It’ll add something personal to all this.”

“Yes ma’am,” I say, even though I have no idea how I’ll finish two maids in time, much less write stories about Constantine. Just the thought of writing about her makes me wish, deeply, that she was here now.

“Goodbye, Miss Phelan. I hope you make the deadline,” she says, but before she hangs up, she mutters, “and for God’s sake, you’re a twenty-four-year-old educated woman. Go get an apartment.”

I GET Off THE PHONE, stunned by the news of the deadline and Missus Stein’s insistence to get Constantine in the book. I know I need to get to work immediately, but I check on Mother in her bedroom. In the past three months, her ulcers have gotten much worse. She’s lost more weight and can’t get through two days without vomiting. Even Doctor Neal looked surprised when I brought her in for her appointment last week.

Mother eyes me up and down from her bed. “Don’t you have bridge club today?”

“It’s canceled. Elizabeth’s baby is colicky,” I lie. So many lies have been told, the room is thick with them. “How are you feeling?” I ask. The old white enamel bowl is next to her on the bed. “Have you been sick?”

“I’m fine. Don’t wrinkle your forehead like that, Eugenia. It’s not good for your complexion.”

Mother still doesn’t know that I’ve been kicked out of bridge club or that Patsy Joiner got a new tennis partner. I don’t get invited to cocktail parties or baby showers anymore, or any functions where Hilly will be there. Except the League. At meetings, girls are short, to the point with me when discussing newsletter business. I try to convince myself I don’t care. I fix myself at my typewriter and don’t leave most days. I tell myself, that’s what you get when you put thirty-one toilets on the most popular girl’s front yard. People tend to treat you a little differently than before.

IT Was ALMOST FOUR MONTHS ago that the door was sealed shut between Hilly and me, a door made of ice so thick it would take a hundred Mississippi summers to melt it. It’s not as if I hadn’t expected consequences. I just hadn’t thought they’d last so long.

Hilly’s voice over the phone was gravelly sounding, low, like she’d been yelling all morning. “You are sick,” she hissed at me. “Do not speak to me, do not look at me. Do not say hello to my children.”

“Technically it was a typo, Hilly,” was all I could think to say.

“I am going over to Senator Whitworth’s house myself and telling him you, Skeeter Phelan, will be a blight on his campaign in Washington. A wart on the face of his reputation if Stuart ever associates with you again!”

I cringed at the mention of his name, even though we’d been broken up for weeks by then. I could imagine him looking away, not caring what I did anymore.

“You turned my yard into some kind of a sideshow,” Hilly’d said. “Just how long have you been planning to humiliate my family?”

What Hilly didn’t understand was, I hadn’t planned it at all. When I started typing out her bathroom initiative for the newsletter, typing words like disease and protect yourself and you’re welcome!, it was like something cracked open inside of me, not unlike a watermelon, cool and soothing and sweet. I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it. I’d paid Pascagoula’s brothers twenty-five dollars each to put those junkyard pots onto Hilly’s lawn and they were scared, but willing to do it. I remember how dark the night had been. I remember feeling lucky that some old building had been gutted and there were so many toilets at the junkyard to choose from. Twice I’ve dreamed I was back there doing it again. I don’t regret it, but I don’t feel quite as lucky anymore.

“And you call yourself a Christian,” were Hilly’s final words to me and I thought, God. When did I ever do that?

This November, Stooley Whitworth won the senator’s race for Washington. But William Holbrook lost the local election, to take his state seat. I’m quite sure Hilly blames me for this too. Not to mention all that work she’d put into setting me up with Stuart was for nothing.

A FEW HOURS after talking to Missus Stein over the phone, I tiptoe back to check on Mother one last time. Daddy’s already asleep beside her. Mother has a glass of milk on the table. She’s propped up on her pillows but her eyes are closed. She opens them as I’m peeking in.

“Can I get you anything, Mama?”

“I’m only resting because Doctor Neal told me to. Where are you going, Eugenia? It’s nearly seven o’clock.”

“I’ll be back in a little while. I’m just going for a drive.” I give her a kiss, hoping she doesn’t ask any more questions. When I close the door, she’s already fallen asleep.

I drive fast through town. I dread telling Aibileen about the new deadline. The old truck rattles and bangs in the potholes. It’s in fast decline after another hard cotton season. My head practically hits the ceiling because someone’s retied the seat springs too tight. I have to drive with the window down, my arm hanging out so the door won’t rattle. The front window has a new smash in it the shape of a sunset.

I pull up to a light on State Street across from the paper company. When I look over, there’s Elizabeth and Mae Mobley and Raleigh all crammed in the front seat of their white Corvair, headed home from supper somewhere, I guess. I freeze, not daring to look over again, afraid she’ll see me and ask what I’m doing in the truck. I let them drive ahead, watching their tail-lights, fighting a hotness rising in my throat. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to Elizabeth.

After the toilet incident, Elizabeth and I struggled to stay friends. We still talked on the phone occasionally. But she stopped saying more than a hello and a few empty sentences to me at League meetings, because Hilly would see her. The last time I stopped by Elizabeth’s house was a month ago.

“I can’t believe how big Mae Mobley’s gotten,” I’d said. Mae Mobley had smiled shyly, hid behind her mother’s leg. She was taller but still soft with baby fat.

“Growing like a weed,” Elizabeth said, looking out the window, and I thought, what an odd thing to compare your child to. A weed.

Elizabeth was still in her bathrobe, hair rollers in, already tiny again after the pregnancy. Her smile stayed tight. She kept looking at her watch, touching her curlers every few seconds. We stood around the kitchen.

“Want to go to the club for lunch?” I asked. Aibileen swung through the kitchen door then. In the dining room, I caught a glimpse of silver and Battenburg lace.

“I can’t and I hate to rush you out but . . . Mama’s meeting me at the Jewel Taylor Shoppe.” She shot her eyes out the front window again. “You know how Mama hates to wait.” Her smile grew exponentially.

“Oh, I’m sorry, don’t let me keep you.” I patted her shoulder and headed for the door. And then it hit me. How could I be so dumb? It’s Wednesday, twelve o’clock. My old bridge club.

I backed the Cadillac down her drive, sorry that I’d embarrassed her so. When I turned, I saw her face stretched up to the window, watching me leave. And that’s when I realized: she wasn’t embarrassed that she’d made me feel bad. Elizabeth Leefolt was embarrassed to be seen with me.

I park On AIBILEEN’S STREET, several houses down from hers, knowing we need to be even more cautious than ever. Even though Hilly would never come to this part of town, she is a threat to us all now and I feel like her eyes are everywhere. I know the glee she would feel catching me doing this. I don’t underestimate how far she would go to make sure I suffered the rest of my life.

It’s a crisp December night and a fine rain is just starting to fall. Head down, I hurry along the street. My conversation this afternoon with Missus Stein is still racing through my head. I’ve been trying to prioritize everything left to do. But the hardest part is, I have to ask Aibileen, again, about what happened to Constantine. I cannot do a just job on Constantine’s story if I don’t know what’s happened to her. It defeats the point of the book, to put in only part of the story. It wouldn’t be telling the truth.

I hurry into Aibileen’s kitchen. The look on my face must tell her something’s wrong.

“What is it? Somebody see you?”

“No,” I say, pulling papers from my satchel. “I talked to Missus Stein this morning.” I tell her everything I know, about the deadline, about “The Pile.”

“Alright, so . . .” Aibileen is counting days in her head, the same way I have been all afternoon. “So we got two and a half weeks stead a six weeks. Oh Law, that ain’t enough time. We still got to finish writing the Louvenia section and smooth out Faye Belle—and the Minny section, it ain’t right yet . . . Miss Skeeter, we ain’t even got a title yet.”

I put my head in my hands. I feel like I’m slipping underwater. “That’s not all,” I say. “She . . . wants me to write about Constantine. She asked me . . . what happened to her.”

Aibileen sets her cup of tea down.

“I can’t write it if I don’t know what happened, Aibileen. So if you can’t tell me . . . I was wondering if there’s someone else who will.”

Aibileen shakes her head. “I reckon they is,” she says, “but I don’t want nobody else telling you that story.”

“Then . . . will you?”

Aibileen takes off her black glasses, rubs her eyes. She puts them back on and I expect to see a tired face. She’s worked all day and she’ll be working even harder now to try to make the deadline. I fidget in my chair, waiting for her answer.

But she doesn’t look tired at all. She’s sitting up straight and gives me a defiant nod. “I’ll write it down. Give me a few days. I’ll tell you ever thing that happened to Constantine.”

I WORK FOR FIFTEEN HOURS straight on Louvenia’s interview. On Thursday night, I go to the League meeting. I’m dying to get out of the house, antsy from nerves, jittery about the deadline. The Christmas tree is starting to smell too rich, the spiced oranges sickly decadent. Mother is always cold and my parents’ house feels like I’m soaking in a vat of hot butter.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 625