MISS SKEETER

chapter 33

MY EYES POP OPEN. My chest is pumping. I’m sweating. The greenvined wallpaper is snaking up the walls. What woke me? What was that?

I get out of bed and listen. It didn’t sound like Mother. It was too high-pitched. It was a scream, like material ripping into two shredded pieces.

I sit back on the bed and press my hand to my heart. It’s still pounding. Nothing is going as planned. People know the book is about Jackson. I can’t believe I forgot what a slow goddamn reader Hilly is. I’ll bet she’s telling people she’s read more than she has. Now things are spinning out of control, a maid named Annabelle was fired, white women are whispering about Aibileen and Louvenia and who knows who else. And the irony is, I’m gnawing my hands waiting for Hilly to speak up when I’m the only one in this town who doesn’t care what she has to say anymore.

What if the book was a horrible mistake?

I take a deep, painful breath. I try to think of the future, not the present. A month ago, I mailed out fifteen résumés to Dallas, Memphis, Birmingham, and five other cities, and once again, New York. Missus Stein told me I could list her as a reference, which is probably the only notable thing on the page, having a recommendation from someone in publishing. I added the jobs I’ve held for the past year:

Weekly Housekeeping Columnist for the Jackson Journal Newspaper

Editor of the Junior League of Jackson Newsletter

Author of Help, a controversial book about colored housekeepers and

their white employers, Harper & Row

I didn’t really include the book, I just wanted to type it out once. But now, even if I did get a job offer in a big city, I can’t abandon Aibileen in the middle of this mess. Not with things going so badly.

But God, I have to get out of Mississippi. Besides Mother and Daddy, I have nothing left here, no friends, no job I really care about, no Stuart. But it’s not just out of here. When I addressed my résumé to the New York Post, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker magazine, I felt that surge again, the same I’d felt in college, of how much I want to be there. Not Dallas, not Memphis—New York City, where writers are supposed to live. But I’ve heard nothing back from any of them. What if I never leave? What if I’m stuck. Here. Forever?

I lie down and watch the first rays of sun coming through the window. I shiver. That ripping scream, I realize, was me.

I’m STANDING IN BRENT’S Drug Store picking out Mother’s Lustre Cream and a Vinolia soap bar, while Mr. Roberts works on her prescription. Mother says she doesn’t need the medicine anymore, that the only cure for cancer is having a daughter who won’t cut her hair and wears dresses too high above the knee even on Sunday, because who knows what tackiness I’d do to myself if she died.

I’m just grateful Mother’s better. If my fifteen-second engagement to Stuart is what spurred Mother’s will to live, the fact that I’m single again fueled her strength even more. She was clearly disappointed by our breakup, but then bounced back superbly. Mother even went so far as to set me up with a third cousin removed, who is thirty-five and beautiful and clearly homosexual. “Mother,” I’d said when he left after supper, for how could she not see it? “He’s . . .” but I’d stopped. I’d patted her hand instead. “He said I wasn’t his type.”

Now I’m hurrying to get out of the drugstore before anyone I know comes in. I should be used to my isolation by now, but I’m not. I miss having friends. Not Hilly, but sometimes Elizabeth, the old, sweet Elizabeth back in high school. It got harder when I finished the book and I couldn’t even visit Aibileen anymore. We decided it was too risky. I miss going to her house and talking to her more than anything.

Every few days, I speak to Aibileen on the phone, but it’s not the same as sitting with her. Please, I think when she updates me on what’s going on around town, please let some good come out of this. But so far, nothing. Just girls gossiping and treating the book like a game, trying to guess who is who and Hilly accusing the wrong people. I was the one who assured the colored maids we wouldn’t be found out, and I am the one responsible for this.

The front bell tinkles. I look over and in walk Elizabeth and Lou Anne Templeton. I slip back into beauty creams, hoping they don’t see me. But then I peek over the shelves to look. They’re heading for the lunch counter, huddled together like schoolgirls. Lou Anne’s wearing her usual long sleeves in the summer heat and her constant smile. I wonder if she knows she’s in the book.

Elizabeth’s got her hair poufed up in front and she’s covered the back in a scarf, the yellow scarf I gave her for her twenty-third birthday. I stand there a minute, letting myself feel how strange this all is, watching them, knowing what I know. She has read up to Chapter Ten, Aibileen told me last night, and still doesn’t have the faintest idea that she’s reading about herself and her friends.

“Skeeter?” Mr. Roberts calls out from his landing above the register. “Your mama’s medicine’s ready.”

I walk to the front of the store, and have to pass Elizabeth and Lou Anne at the lunch counter. They keep their backs to me, but I can see their eyes in the mirror, following me. They look down at the same time.

I pay for the medicine and Mother’s tubes and goo and work my way back through the aisles. As I try to escape along the far side of the store, Lou Anne Templeton steps from behind the hairbrush rack.

“Skeeter,” she says. “You have a minute?”

I stand there blinking, surprised. No one’s asked me for even a second, much less a minute, in over eight months. “Um, sure,” I say, wary.

Lou Anne glances out the window and I see Elizabeth heading for her car, a milkshake in hand. Lou Anne motions me closer, by the shampoos and detanglers.

“Your mama, I hope she’s still doing better?” Lou Anne asks. Her smile is not quite as beaming as usual. She pulls at the long sleeves of her dress, even though a fine sweat covers her forehead.

“She’s fine. Still . . . in remission.”

“I’m so glad.” She nods and we stand there awkwardly, looking at each other. Lou Anne takes a deep breath. “I know we haven’t talked in a while but,” she lowers her voice, “I just thought you should know what Hilly’s saying. She’s saying you wrote that book... about the maids.”

“I heard that book was written anonymously,” is my quick answer, not sure I even want to act like I’ve read it. Even though everyone in town’s reading it. All three bookstores are sold out and the library has a two-month waiting list.

She holds up her palm, like a stop sign. “I don’t want to know if it’s true. But Hilly . . .” She steps closer to me. “Hilly Holbrook called me the other day and told me to fire my maid Louvenia.” Her jaw tightens and she shakes her head.

Please. I hold my breath. Please don’t say you fired her.

“Skeeter, Louvenia . . .” Lou Anne looks me in the eye, says, “she’s the only reason I can get out of bed sometimes.”

I don’t say anything. Maybe this is a trap Hilly’s set.

“And I’m sure you think I’m just some dumb girl . . . that I agree with everything Hilly says.” Tears come up in her eyes. Her lips are trembling. “The doctors want me to go up to Memphis for... shock treatment . . .” She covers her face but a tear slips through her fingers. “For the depression and the . . . the tries,” she whispers.

I look down at her long sleeves and I wonder if that’s what she’s been hiding. I hope I’m not right, but I shudder.

“Of course, Henry says I need to shape up or ship out.” She makes a marching motion, trying to smile, but it falls quickly and the sadness flickers back into her face.

“Skeeter, Louvenia is the bravest person I know. Even with all her own troubles, she sits down and talks to me. She helps me get through my days. When I read what she wrote about me, about helping her with her grandson, I’ve never been so grateful in my life. It was the best I’d felt in months.”

I don’t know what to say. This is the only good thing I’ve heard about the book and I want her to tell me more. I guess Aibileen hasn’t heard this yet, either. But I’m worried too because, clearly, Lou Anne knows.

“If you did write it, if Hilly’s rumor is true, I just want you to know, I will never fire Louvenia. I told Hilly I’d think about it, but if Hilly Holbrook ever says that to me again, I will tell her to her face she deserved that pie and more.”

“How do—what makes you think that was Hilly?” Our protection—our insurance, it’s gone if the pie secret is out.

“Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. But that’s the talk.” Lou Anne shakes her head. “Then this morning I heard Hilly’s telling everybody the book’s not even about Jackson. Who knows why.”

I suck in a breath, whisper, “Thank God.”

“Well, Henry’ll be home soon.” She pulls her handbag up on her shoulder and stands up straighter. The smile comes back on her face like a mask.

She turns for the door, but looks back at me as she opens it. “And I’ll tell you one more thing. Hilly Holbrook’s not getting my vote for League president in January. Or ever again, for that matter.”

On that, she walks out, the bell tinkling behind her.

I linger at the window. Outside, a fine rain has started to fall, misting the glassy cars and slicking the black pavement. I watch Lou Anne slip away in the parking lot, thinking, There is so much you don’t know about a person. I wonder if I could’ve made her days a little bit easier, if I’d tried. If I’d treated her a little nicer. Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’ d thought.

But Lou Anne, she understood the point of the book before she ever read it. The one who was missing the point this time was me.

THAT EVENING, I call Aibileen four times, but her phone line is busy. I hang up and sit for a while in the pantry, staring at the jars of fig preserves Constantine put up before the fig tree died. Aibileen told me that the maids talk all the time about the book and what’s happening. She gets six or seven phone calls a night.

I sigh. It’s Wednesday. Tomorrow I turn in my Miss Myrna column that I wrote six weeks ago. Again, I’ve stockpiled two dozen of them, because I have nothing else to do. After that, there’s nothing left to think about, except worry.

Sometimes, when I’m bored, I can’t help but think what my life would be like if I hadn’t written the book. Monday, I would’ve played bridge. And tomorrow night, I’d be going to the League meeting and turning in the newsletter. Then on Friday night, Stuart would take me to dinner and we’d stay out late and I’d be tired when I got up for my tennis game on Saturday. Tired and content and . . . frustrated.

Because Hilly would’ve called her maid a thief that afternoon, and I would’ve just sat there and listened to it. And Elizabeth would’ve grabbed her child’s arm too hard and I would’ve looked away, like I didn’t see it. And I’d be engaged to Stuart and I wouldn’t wear short dresses, only short hair, or consider doing anything risky like write a book about colored housekeepers, too afraid he’d disapprove. And while I’d never lie and tell myself I actually changed the minds of people like Hilly and Elizabeth, at least I don’t have to pretend I agree with them anymore.

I get out of that stuffy pantry with a panicky feeling. I slip on my man huaraches and walk out into the warm night. The moon is full and there’s just enough light. I forgot to check the mailbox this afternoon and I’m the only one who ever does it. I open it and there’s one single letter. It’s from Harper & Row, so it must be from Missus Stein. I’m surprised she would send something here since I have all the book contracts sent to a box at the post office, just in case. It’s too dark to read, so I tuck it in the back pocket of my blue jeans.

Instead of walking up the lane, I cut through the “orchard,” feeling the soft grass under my feet, stepping around the early pears that have fallen. It is September again and I’m here. Still here. Even Stuart has moved on. An article a few weeks ago about the Senator said that Stuart moved his oil company down to New Orleans so that he can spend time out on the rigs at sea again.

I hear the rumble of gravel. I can’t see the car driving up the lane, though, because for some reason, the headlights aren’t on.

I WATCH HER park the Oldsmobile in front of the house and turn off the engine, but she stays inside. Our front porch lights are on, yellow and flickering with night bugs. She’s leaning over her steering wheel, like she’s trying to see who’s home. What the hell does she want? I watch a few seconds. Then I think, Get to her first. Get to her before she does whatever it is she’s planning.

I walk quietly through the yard. She lights a cigarette, throws the match out the open window into our drive.

I approach her car from behind, but she doesn’t see me.

“Waiting for someone?” I say at the window.

Hilly jumps and drops her cigarette into the gravel. She scrambles out of the car and slams the door closed, backing away from me.

“Don’t you get an inch closer,” she says.

So I stop where I am and just look at her. Who wouldn’t look at her? Her black hair is a mess. A curl on top is floppy, sticking straight up. Half her blouse is untucked, her fat stretching the buttons, and I can see she’s gained more weight. And there’s a . . . sore. It’s in the corner of her mouth, scabby and hot red. I haven’t seen Hilly with one of those since Johnny broke up with her in college.

She looks me up and down. “What are you, some kind of hippie now? God, your poor mama must be so embarrassed of you.”

“Hilly, why are you here?”

“To tell you I’ve contacted my lawyer, Hibbie Goodman, who happens to be the number one expert on the libel laws in Mississippi, and you are in big trouble, missy. You’re going to jail, you know that?”

“You can’t prove anything, Hilly.” I’ve had this discussion with the legal department of Harper & Row. We were very careful in our obscurity.

“Well, I one-hundred-percent know you wrote it because there isn’t anybody else in town as tacky as you. Taking up with Nigras like that.”

It is truly baffling that we were ever friends. I think about going inside and locking the door. But there’s an envelope in her hand, and that makes me nervous.

“I know there’s been a lot of talk, Hilly, and a lot of rumors—”

“Oh, that talk doesn’t hurt me. Everyone in town knows it’s not Jackson. It’s some town you made up in that sick little head of yours, and I know who helped you, too.”

My jaw tightens. She obviously knows about Minny, and Louvenia I knew already, but does she know about Aibileen? Or the others?

Hilly waves the envelope at me and it crackles. “I am here to inform your mother of what you’ve done.”

“You’re going to tell my mother on me?” I laugh, but the truth is, Mother doesn’t know anything about it. And I want to keep it that way. She’d be mortified and ashamed of me and... I look down at the envelope. What if it makes her sick again?

“I most certainly am.” Hilly walks up the front steps, head held high.

I follow quickly behind Hilly to the front door. She opens it and walks in like it’s her own house.

“Hilly, I did not invite you in here,” I say, grabbing her arm. “You get—”

But then Mother appears from around the corner and I drop my hand.

“Why, Hilly,” Mother says. She is in her bathrobe and her cane wobbles as she walks. “It’s been such a long time, dear.”

Hilly blinks at her several times. I do not know if Hilly is more shocked at how my mother looks, or the other way around. Mother’s once thick brown hair is now snow white and thin. The trembling hand on her cane probably looks skeletonlike to someone who hasn’t seen her. But worst of all, Mother doesn’t have all of her teeth in, only her front ones. The hollows in her cheeks are deep, deathly.

“Missus Phelan, I’m—I’m here to—”

“Hilly, are you ill? You look horrendous,” Mother says.

Hilly licks her lips. “Well I—I didn’t have time to get fixed up before—”

Mother is shaking her head. “Hilly, darling. No young husband wants to come home and see this. Look at your hair. And that . . .” Mother frowns, peering closer at the cold sore. “That is not attractive, dear.”

I keep my eye on the letter. Mother points her finger at me. “I’m calling Fanny Mae’s tomorrow and I’m going to make an appointment for the both of you.”

“Missus Phelan, that’s not—”

“No need to thank me,” Mother says. “It’s the least I can do for you, now that your own dear mother’s not around for guidance. Now, I’m off to bed,” and Mother hobbles toward her bedroom. “Not too late, girls.”

Hilly stands there a second, her mouth hanging open. Finally, she goes to the door and flings it open and walks out. The letter is still in her hand.

“You are in a lifetime of trouble, Skeeter,” she hisses at me, her mouth like a fist. “And those Nigras of yours?”

“Exactly who are you talking about, Hilly?” I say. “You don’t know anything.”

“I don’t, do I? That Louvenia? Oh, I’ve taken care of her. Lou Anne’s all set to go on that one.” The curl on the top of her head bobs as she nods.

“And you tell that Aibileen, the next time she wants to write about my dear friend Elizabeth, uh-huh,” she says, flashing a crude smile. “You remember Elizabeth? She had you in her wedding?”

My nostrils flare. I want to hit her, at the sound of Aibileen’s name.

“Let’s just say Aibileen ought to’ve been a little bit smarter and not put in the L-shaped crack in poor Elizabeth’s dining table.”

My heart stops. The goddamn crack. How stupid could I be to let that slip?

“And don’t think I’ve forgotten Minny Jackson. I have some big plans for that Nigra.”

“Careful, Hilly,” I say through my teeth. “Don’t give yourself away now.” I sound so confident, but inside I’m trembling, wondering what these plans are.

Her eyes fly open. “That was not me WHO ATE THAT PIE!”

She turns and marches to her car. She jerks the door open. “You tell those Nigras they better keep one eye over their shoulders. They better watch out for what’s coming to them.”

MY Hand SHAKES as I dial Aibileen’s number. I take the receiver in the pantry and shut the door. The opened letter from Harper & Row is in my other hand. It feels like midnight, but it’s only eight thirty.

Aibileen answers and I blurt it out. “Hilly came here tonight and she knows.”

“Miss Hilly? Knows what?”

Then I hear Minny’s voice in the background. “Hilly? What about Miss Hilly?”

“Minny’s . . . here with me,” Aibileen says.

“Well, I guess she needs to hear this too,” I say, even though I wish Aibileen could tell her later, without me. As I describe how Hilly showed up here, stormed into the house, I wait while she repeats everything back to Minny. It is worse hearing it in Aibileen’s voice.

Aibileen comes back onto the phone and sighs.

“It was the crack in Elizabeth’s dining room table . . . that’s how Hilly knew for sure.”

“Law, that crack. I can’t believe I put that in.”

“No, I should’ve caught it. I’m so sorry, Aibileen.”

“You think Miss Hilly gone tell Miss Leefolt I wrote about her?”

“She can’t tell her,” Minny hollers. “Then she admitting it’s Jackson.”

I realize how good Minny’s plan was. “I agree,” I say. “I think Hilly’s terrified, Aibileen. She doesn’t know what to do. She said she was going to tell my mother on me.”

Now that the shock of Hilly’s words has passed, I almost laugh at this thought. That’s the least of our worries. If my mother lived through my broken engagement, then she can live through this. I’ll just deal with it when it happens.

“I reckon they’s nothing we can do but wait, then,” Aibileen says, but she sounds nervous. It’s probably not the best time to tell her my other news, but I don’t think I can keep myself from it.

“I got a . . . letter today. From Harper and Row,” I say. “I thought it was from Missus Stein, but it wasn’t.”

“What then?”

“It’s a job offer at Harper’s Magazine in New York. As a . . . copy editor’s assistant. I’m pretty sure Missus Stein got it for me.”

“That’s so good!” Aibileen says, and then, “Minny, Miss Skeeter got a job offer in New York City!”

“Aibileen, I can’t take it. I just wanted to share it with you. I . . .” I’m grateful to at least have Aibileen to tell.

“What you mean, you can’t take it? This what you been dreaming of.”

“I can’t leave now, right when things are getting bad. I’m not going to leave you in this mess.”

“But . . . them bad things gone happen whether you here or not.”

God, to hear her say that, I want to cry. I let out a groan.

“I didn’t mean it like that. We don’t know what’s gone happen. Miss Skeeter, you got to take that job.”

I truly don’t know what to do. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t have even told Aibileen, of course she would tell me to go, but I had to tell someone. I hear her whisper to Minny, “She say she ain’t gone take it.”

“Miss Skeeter,” Aibileen says back on the phone, “I don’t mean to be rubbing no salt on your wound but . . . you ain’t got a good life here in Jackson. Your mama’s better and—”

I hear muffled words and handling of the receiver and suddenly it’s Minny on the phone. “You listen to me, Miss Skeeter. I’m on take care a Aibileen and she gone take care a me. But you got nothing left here but enemies in the Junior League and a mama that’s gone drive you to drink. You done burned ever bridge there is. And you ain’t never gone get another boyfriend in this town and everbody know it. So don’t walk your white butt to New York, run it.”

Minny hangs the phone up in my face, and I sit staring at the dead receiver in one hand and the letter in the other. Really? I think, actually considering it for the first time. Can I really do this?

Minny is right, and Aibileen is too. I have nothing left here except Mother and Daddy and staying here for my parents will surely ruin the relationship we have, but . . .

I lean against the shelves, close my eyes. I’m going. I am going to New York.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 785