THAT AFTERNOON 27 page

Mister Johnny looks whiter than that old albino man that lives behind Miss Walters.

“Minny, bring me a glass of water, please?” he says and I get a real bad feeling.

I get him the water and take it to him. When I set the glass down on the napkin, Mister Johnny stands up. He gives me a long, heavy look. Lord, here it comes.

“I told him about the baby,” Miss Celia whispers. “All the babies.”

“Minny, I would’ve lost her if it hadn’t of been for you,” he says, grabbing hold of my hands. “Thank God you were here.”

I look over at Miss Celia and she looks dead in the eyes. I already know what that doctor told her. I can see it, that there won’t ever be any babies born alive. Mister Johnny squeezes my hands, then he goes to her. He gets down on his kneecaps and lays his head down in her lap. She smoothes his hair over and over.

“Don’t leave. Don’t ever leave me, Celia,” he cries.

“Tell her, Johnny. Tell Minny what you said to me.”

Mister Johnny lifts his head. His hair’s all mussed and he looks up at me. “You’ll always have a job here with us, Minny. For the rest of your life, if you want.”

“Thank you, sir,” I say and I mean it. Those are the best words I could hear today.

I reach for the door, but Miss Celia says, real soft, “Stay in here awhile. Will you, Minny?”

So I lean my hand on the sideboard because the baby’s getting heavy on me. And I wonder how it is that I have so much when she doesn’t have any. He’s crying. She’s crying. We are three fools in the dining room crying.

“I’m TELLING YOU,” I tell Leroy in the kitchen, two days later. “You punch the button and the channel change and you don’t even have to get up from your chair.”

Leroy’s eyes don’t move from his paper. “That don’t make no sense, Minny.”

“Miss Celia got it, called Space Command. A box bout half the size of a bread loaf.”

Leroy shakes his head. “Lazy white people. Can’t even get up to turn a knob.”

“I reckon people gone be flying to the moon pretty soon,” I say. I’m not even listening to what’s coming out of my mouth. I’m listening for the scream again. When is that lady going to finish?

“What’s for supper?” Leroy says.

“Yeah, Mama, when we gone eat?” Kindra says.

I hear a car pull in the driveway. I listen and the spoon slips down into the pot of beans. “Cream-a-Wheat.”

“I ain’t eating no Cream-a-Wheat for supper!” Leroy says.

“I had that for breakfast!” Kindra cries.

“I mean—ham. And beans.” I go slam the back door and turn the latch. I look out the window again. The car is backing out. It was just turning around.

Leroy gets up and flings the back door open again. “It’s hot as hell in here!” He comes to the stove where I’m standing. “What’s wrong with you?” he asks, about an inch from my face.

“Nothing,” I say and move back a little. Usually, he doesn’t mess with me when I’m pregnant. But he moves closer. He squeezes my arm hard.

“What’d you do this time?”

“I—I didn’t do nothing,” I say. “I’m just tired.”

He tightens his grip on my arm. It’s starting to burn. “You don’t get tired. Not till the tenth month.”

“I didn’t do nothing, Leroy. Just go set and lemme get to supper.”

He lets go, giving me a long look. I can’t meet his eyes.

AIBILEEN

chapter 31

EVER TIME Miss Leefolt go out shopping or in the yard or even to the bathroom, I check her bedside table where she put the book. I act like I’m dusting, but what I really be doing is checking to see if that First Presbyterian Bible bookmark’s moved any deeper in the pages. She’s been reading it for five days now and I flip it open today and she still on Chapter One, page fourteen. She got two hundred and thirty-five pages left. Law, she read slow.

Still, I want to tell her, you reading about Miss Skeeter, don’t you know? About her growing up with Constantine. And I’m scared to death, but I want to tell her, keep reading, lady, cause Chapter Two gone be about you.

I am nervous as a cat seeing that book in her house. All week long I been tiptoeing around. One time Li’l Man come up from behind and touch me on the leg and I near bout jump out a my workshoes. Especially on Thursday, when Miss Hilly come over. They set at the dining room table and work on the Benefit. Ever once in a while they look up and smile, ask me to fetch a mayonnaise sandwich or some ice tea.

Twice Miss Hilly come in the kitchen and call her maid, Ernestine. “Are you done soaking Heather’s smock dress like I told you to? Uh-huh, and have you dusted the half-tester canopy? Oh you haven’t, well go on and do that right away.”

I go in to collect they plates and I hear Miss Hilly say, “I’m up to Chapter Seven,” and I freeze, the plates in my hand clattering. Miss Leefolt look up and wrinkle her nose at me.

But Miss Hilly, she shaking her finger at Miss Leefolt. “And I think they’re right, it just feels like Jackson.”

“You do?” Miss Leefolt ask.

Miss Hilly lean down and whisper. “I bet we even know some of these Nigra maids.”

“You really think so?” Miss Leefolt ask and my body go cold. I can barely move a foot toward the kitchen. “I’ve only read a little . . .”

“I do. And you know what?” Miss Hilly smile real sneaky-like. “I’m going to figure out every last one of these people.”

THE NEXT MORNING, I’m near about hyperventilating at the bus stop thinking about what Miss Hilly gone do when she get to her part, wondering if Miss Leefolt done read Chapter Two yet. And when I walk in her house, there Miss Leefolt is reading my book at the kitchen table. She hand me Li’l Man from her lap without even taking her eyes off the page. Then she wander off to the back reading and walking at the same time. All a sudden, she can’t get enough of it now that Miss Hilly done taken a interest in it.

Few minutes later, I go back to her bedroom to get the dirty clothes. Miss Leefolt’s in the bathroom, so I open the book at the bookmark. She already on Chapter Six, Winnie’s chapter. This where the white lady get the old-timer disease and call the police department ever morning cause a colored woman just walked in her house. That means Miss Leefolt read her part and just kept on going.

I’m scared but I can’t help but roll my eyes. I bet Miss Leefolt ain’t got no idea it be about herself. I mean, thank the Lord, but still. She probably shaking her head in bed last night, reading bout this awful woman who don’t know how to love her own child.

Soon as Miss Leefolt go to her hair appointment, I call Minny. All we do lately is run up our white lady’s phone bill.

“You heard anything?” I ask.

“No, nothing. Miss Leefolt finish yet?” she ask.

“No, but she made it to Winnie last night. Miss Celia still ain’t bought a copy?”

“That lady don’t look at nothing but trash. I’m coming,” Minny holler. “The fool’s stuck in the hair dryer hood again. I told her not to put her head in there when she got them big rollers in.”

“Call me if you hear anything,” I say. “I do the same.”

“Something’s gone happen soon, Aibileen. It’s got to.”

THAT AFTERNOON, I stomp up to the Jitney to pick up some fruit and cottage cheese for Mae Mobley. That Miss Taylor done it again. Baby Girl get out the carpool today, walked straight to her room and throwed herself on her bed. “What’s wrong, Baby? What happen?”

“I colored myself black,” she cried.

“What you mean?” I asked. “With the markers you did?” I picked up her hand but she didn’t have no ink on her skin.

“Miss Taylor said to draw what we like about ourselves best.” I saw then a wrinkled, sad-looking paper in her hand. I turned it over and sure enough, there’s my baby white girl done colored herself black.

“She said black means I got a dirty, bad face.” She plant her face in her pillow and cried something awful.

Miss Taylor. After all the time I spent teaching Mae Mobley how to love all people, not judge by color. I feel a hard fist in my chest because what person out there don’t remember they first-grade teacher? Maybe they don’t remember what they learn, but I’m telling you, I done raised enough kids to know, they matter.

At least the Jitney’s cool. I feel bad I forgot to buy Mae Mobley’s snack this morning. I hurry so she won’t have to set with her mama for too long. She done hid her paper under her bed so her mama wouldn’t see it.

In the can food section, I get two cans a tunafish. I walk over to find the green Jell-O powder and there’s sweet Louvenia in her white uniform looking at peanut butter. I’ll think a Louvenia as Chapter Seven for the rest a my life.

“How’s Robert doing?” I ask, patting her arm. Louvenia work all day for Miss Lou Anne and then come home ever afternoon and take Robert to blind school so he can learn to read with his fingers. And I have never heard Louvenia complain once.

“Learning to get around.” She nod. “You alright? Feel okay?”

“Just nervous. You heard anything at all?”

She shake her head. “My boss been reading it, though.” Miss Lou Anne’s in Miss Leefolt’s bridge club. Miss Lou Anne was real good to Louvenia when Robert got hurt.

We walk down the aisle with our handbaskets. There be two white ladies talking by the graham crackers. They kind a familiar looking, but I don’t know they names. Soon as we get close, they hush up and look at us. Funny how they ain’t smiling.

“Scuse me,” I say and move on past. When we not but a foot away, I hear one say, “That’s the Nigra waits on Elizabeth . . .” A cart rattles past us, blocking the words.

“I bet you’re right,” the other one say. “I bet that’s her . . .”

Me and Louvenia keep walking real quiet, looking dead ahead. I feel prickles up my neck, hearing the ladies’ heels clack away. I know Louvenia heard better than I did, cause her ears is ten years younger than mine. At the end a the aisle we start to go in different directions, but then we both turn to look at each other.

Did I hear right? I say with my eyes.

You heard right, Louvenia’s say back.

Please, Miss Hilly, read. Read like the wind.

MINNY

chapter 32

ANOTHER DAY PASSES, and still I can hear Miss Hilly’s voice talking the words, reading the lines. I don’t hear the scream. Not yet. But she’s getting close.

Aibileen told me what the ladies in the Jitney said yesterday, but we haven’t heard another thing since. I keep dropping things, broke my last measuring cup tonight and Leroy’s eyeing me like he knows. Right now he’s drinking coffee at the table and the kids are draped all over the kitchen doing their homework.

I jump when I see Aibileen standing at the screen door. She puts her finger to her lips and nods to me. Then she disappears.

“Kindra, get the plates, Sugar, watch the beans, Felicia, get Daddy to sign that test, Mama needs some air.” Poof I disappear out the screen door.

Aibileen’s standing on the side of the house in her white uniform.

“What happen?” I ask. Inside I hear Leroy yell, “A Eff? ” He won’t touch the kids. He’ll yell, but that’s what fathers are supposed to do.

“One-arm Ernestine call and say Miss Hilly’s talking all over town about who’s in the book. She telling white ladies to fire they maids and she ain’t even guessing the right ones!” Aibileen looks so upset, she’s shaking. She’s twisting a cloth into a white rope. I’ll bet she doesn’t even realize she carried over her real dinner napkin.

“Who she saying?”

“She told Miss Sinclair to fire Annabelle. So Miss Sinclair fired her and then took her car keys away cause she loaned her half the money to buy the car. Annabelle already paid most of it back but it’s gone.”

“That witch,” I whisper, grinding my teeth.

“That ain’t all, Minny.”

I hear bootsteps in the kitchen. “Hurry, fore Leroy catch us whispering.”

“Miss Hilly told Miss Lou Anne, ‘Your Louvenia’s in here. I know she is and you need to fire her. You ought to send that Nigra to jail.’ ”

“But Louvenia didn’t say a single bad thing about Miss Lou Anne!” I say. “And she got Robert to take care of! What Miss Lou Anne say?”

Aibileen bites her lip. She shakes her head and the tears come down her face.

“She say . . . she gone think about it.”

“Which one? The firing or the jail?”

Aibileen shrug. “Both, I reckon.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say, wanting to kick something. Somebody.

“Minny, what if Miss Hilly don’t ever finish reading it?”

“I don’t know, Aibileen. I just don’t know.”

Aibileen’s eyes jerk up to the door and there’s Leroy, watching us from behind the screen. He stands there, quiet, until I tell Abileen goodbye and come back inside.

AT FIVE-THIRTY THAT MORNING, Leroy falls into bed next to me. I wake up to the squawk of the frame and the stench of the liquor. I grit my teeth, praying he doesn’t try to start a fight. I am too tired for it. Not that I was asleep good anyway, worrying about Aibileen and her news. For Miss Hilly, Louvenia would just be another jail key on that witch’s belt.

Leroy flops around and tosses and turns, never mind his pregnant wife’s trying to sleep. When the fool finally gets settled, I hear his whisper.

“What’s the big secret, Minny?”

I can feel him watching me, feel his liquor breath on my shoulder. I don’t move.

“You know I’ll find out,” he hisses. “I always do.”

In about ten seconds, his breathing slows to almost dead and he throws his hand across me. Thank you for this baby, I pray. Because that’s the only thing that saved me, this baby in my belly. And that is the ugly truth.

I lay there grinding my teeth, wondering, worrying. Leroy, he’s onto something. And God knows what’ll happen to me if he finds out. He knows about the book, everybody does, just not that his wife was a part of it, thank you. People probably assume I don’t care if he finds out—oh I know what people think. They think big strong Minny, she sure can stand up for herself. But they don’t know what a pathetic mess I turn into when Leroy’s beating on me. I’m afraid to hit back. I’m afraid he’ll leave me if I do. I know it makes no sense and I get so mad at myself for being so weak! How can I love a man who beats me raw? Why do I love a fool drinker? One time I asked him, “Why? Why are you hitting me?” He leaned down and looked me right in the face.

“If I didn’t hit you, Minny, who knows what you become.”

I was trapped in the corner of the bedroom like a dog. He was beating me with his belt. It was the first time I’d ever really thought about it.

Who knows what I could become, if Leroy would stop goddamn hitting me.

THE NEXT NIGHT, I make everybody go to bed early, including myself. Leroy’s at the plant until five and I’m feeling too heavy for my time. Lord, maybe it’s twins. I’m not paying a doctor to tell me that bad news. All I know is, this baby’s already bigger than the others when they came out, and I’m only six months.

I fall into a heavy sleep. I’m dreaming I’m at a long wooden table and I’m at a feast. I’m gnawing on a big roasted turkey leg.

I fly upright in my bed. My breath is fast. “Who there?”

My heart’s flinging itself against my chest. I look around my dark bedroom. It’s half-past midnight. Leroy’s not here, thank God. But something woke me for sure.

And then I realize what it was that woke me. I heard what I’ve been waiting on. What we’ve all been waiting on.

I heard Miss Hilly’s scream.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 727