The Help (19 page)

“Could you tell her Celia Foote called again? I left her a message a few days back . . .”

Miss Celia’s voice is chipper, like she’s peddling something on the tee-vee. Every time I hear it, I want to jerk the phone out of her hand, tell her to quit wasting her time. Because never mind she looks like a hussy. There’s a bigger reason why Miss Celia doesn’t have any friends and I knew it the minute I saw that picture of Mister Johnny. I’ve served enough bridge club luncheons to know something about every white woman in this town. Mister Johnny dumped Miss Hilly for Miss Celia back in college, and Miss Hilly never got over him.

 

 

 

I Walk in THE CHURCH on Wednesday night. It’s not but half full since it’s only a quarter to seven and the choir doesn’t start singing until seven thirty. But Aibileen asked me to come early so here I am. I’m curious what she has to say. Plus Leroy was in a good mood and playing with the kids so I figure, if he wants them, he can have them.

I see Aibileen in our usual pew, left side, fourth from the front, right by the window fan. We’re prime members and we deserve a prime spot. She’s got her hair smoothed back, a little roll of pencil curls around her neck. She’s wearing a blue dress with big white buttons that I’ve never seen before. Aibileen has white lady clothes out the wazoo. White ladies love giving her their old stuff. As usual, she looks plump and respectable, but for all her prim and proper, Aibileen can still tell a dirty joke that’ll make you tinkle in your pants.

I walk up the aisle, see Aibileen frown at something, creasing her forehead. For a second I can see the fifteen-odd years between us. But then she smiles and her face goes young and fat again.

“Lord,” I say as soon as I’m settled in.

“I know. Somebody got to tell her.” Aibileen fans her face with her hanky. It was Kiki Brown’s morning for cleaning and the whole church is gaudied up with her lemon smell-good she makes and tries to sell for twenty-five cents a bottle. We have a sign-up sheet for cleaning the church. Ask me, Kiki Brown ought to sign a little less and the men ought to sign a lot more. Far as I know, no man has signed that sheet once.

Besides the smell, the church looks pretty good. Kiki shined the pews to where you could pick your teeth looking at them. The Christmas tree’s already up, next to the altar, full of tinsel and a shiny gold star on top. Three windows of the church have stained glass—the birth of Christ, Lazarus raised from the dead, and the teaching of those fool Pharisees. The other seven are filled with regular clear panes. We’re still raising money for those.

“How Benny’s asthma?” Aibileen asks.

“Had a little spell yesterday. Leroy dropping him and the rest a the kids by in a while. Let’s hope the lemon don’t kill him.”

“Leroy.” Aibileen shakes her head and laughs. “Tell him I said he better behave. Or I put him on my prayer list.”

“I wish you would. Oh Lord, hide the food.”

Hoity-toity Bertrina Bessemer waddles toward us. She leans over the pew in front of us, smilling with a big, tacky blue-bird hat on. Bertrina, she’s the one who called Aibileen a fool for all those years.

“Minny,” Bertrina says, “I sure was glad to hear about your new job.”

“Thank you, Bertrina.”

“And Aibileen, I thank you for putting me on your prayer list. My angina sure is better now. I call you this weekend and we catch up.”

Aibileen smiles, nods. Bertrina waddles off to her pew.

“Maybe you ought a be a little pickier who you pray for,” I say.

“Aw, I ain’t mad at her no more,” says Aibileen. “And look a there, she done lost some weight.”

“She telling everybody she lost forty pounds,” I say.

“Lord a mercy.”

“Only got two hundred more to go.”

Aibileen tries not to smile, acts like she’s waving away the lemon smell.

“So what you want me to come early for?” I ask. “You miss me or something?”

“Naw, it’s no big deal. Just something somebody said.”

“What?”

Aibileen takes a breath, looks around for anybody listening. We’re like royalty here. Folks are always hemming in on us.

“You know that Miss Skeeter?” she asks.

“I told you I did the other day.”

She quiets her voice, says, “Well, remember how I slipped up and told her about Treelore writing colored things down?”

“I remember. She want a sue you for that?”

“No, no. She nice. But she had the gall to ask if me and some a my maid friends might want a put down on paper what it’s like to tend for white people. Say she writing a book.”

“Say what?”

Aibileen nods, raises her eyebrows. “Mm-hmm.”

“Phhh. Well, you tell her it’s a real Fourth of July picnic. It’s what we dream a doing all weekend, get back in they houses to polish they silver,” I say.

“I told her, let the regular old history books tell it. White people been representing colored opinions since the beginning a time.”

“That’s right. You tell her.”

“I did. I tell her she crazy,” Aibileen says. “I ask her, what if we told the truth? How we too scared to ask for minimum wage. How nobody gets paid they Social Security. How it feel when your own boss be calling you . . .” Aibileen shakes her head. I’m glad she doesn’t say it.

“How we love they kids when they little . . .” she says and I see Aibileen’s lip tremble a little. “And then they turn out just like they mamas.”

I look down and see Aibileen’s gripping her black pocketbook like it’s the only thing she has left in this world. Aibileen, she moves on to another job when the babies get too old and stop being color-blind. We don’t talk about it.

“Even if she is changing all the names a the help and the white ladies,” she sniff.

“She crazy if she think we do something dangerous as that. For
her
.”

“We don’t want a bring all that mess up.” Aibileen wipes her nose with a hankie. “Tell people the truth.”

“No, we don’t,” I say, but I stop. It’s something about that word
truth.
I’ve been trying to tell white women the truth about working for them since I was fourteen years old.

“We don’t want a change nothing around here,” Aibileen says and we’re both quiet, thinking about all the things we don’t want to change. But then Aibileen narrows her eyes at me, asks, “What. You don’t think it’s a crazy idea?”

“I do, I just . . .” And that’s when I see it. We’ve been friends for sixteen years, since the day I moved from Greenwood to Jackson and we met at the bus stop. I can read Aibileen like the Sunday paper. “You thinking about it, ain’t you,” I say. “You want a talk to Miss Skeeter.”

She shrugs and I know I’m right. But before Aibileen can confess, Reverend Johnson comes and sits down in the pew behind us, leans between our shoulders. “Minny, I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to tell you congratulations on your new job.”

I smooth my dress down. “Why, thank you, Reverend Minister.”

“You must of been on Aibileen’s prayer list,” he says, patting Aibileen on the shoulder.

“Sure was. I told Aibileen, at this rate, she needs to start charging.”

The Reverend laughs. He gets up and treads slowly to the pulpit. Everything goes still. I can’t believe Aibileen wants to tell Miss Skeeter the truth.

Truth.

It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that’s been burning me up all my life.

Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.

Reverend Johnson raises his hands and speaks in a soft, deep voice. The choir behind him begins to hum “Talking to Jesus” and we all stand up. In half a minute I’m sweating.

“Think you might be interested? In talking to Miss Skeeter?” whispers Aibileen.

I look back and there’s Leroy with the kids, late as usual. “Who, me?” I say and my voice is loud against the soft music. I tamp it down, but not by much.

“Ain’t no way I’m gonna do something crazy as that.”

FOR NO REASON but to irritate me, we get a heat wave in December. In forty degrees, I sweat like iced tea in August and here I woke up this morning to eighty-three on the dial. I’ve spent half my life trying not to sweat so much: Dainty Lady sweat cream, frozen potatoes in my pockets, ice pack tied to my head (I actually paid a doctor for that fool advice), and I still soak my sweat pads through in five minutes. I tote my Fairley Funeral Home fan every place I go. Works good and it was free.

Miss Celia takes to the week of warm weather, though, and actually goes outside and sits by the pool in these tacky white sunglasses and a fuzzy bathrobe. Thank the Lord she’s out of the house. At first I thought maybe she was sick in the body, but now I’m wondering if she’s sick in the head. I don’t mean the talking to yourself variety you see in old ladies like Miss Walters where you know it’s just the old timers disease, but the capital C crazy where you get hauled to Whitfield in a straitjacket.

I catch her slipping upstairs to the empty bedrooms almost every day now. I hear her sneaky little feet walking down the hall, passing over that little squeak in the floor. I don’t think much of it—heck, it’s her house. But then one day, she does it again, and then again, and it’s the fact that she’s so darn
sneaky
about it, waiting until I turn on the Hoover or get busy on a cake, that makes me suspicious. She spends about seven or eight minutes up there and then pokes her little head around to make sure I don’t see her come down again.

“Don’t go getting in her business,” Leroy says. “You just make sure she tells her mister you cleaning his house.” Leroy’s been on the damn Crow the past couple of nights, drinking behind the power plant after his shift. He’s no fool. He knows if I’m dead, that paycheck won’t be showing up on its own.

After she makes her trip upstairs, Miss Celia comes to the kitchen table instead of going back to bed. I wish she’d get on out of here. I’m pulling chicken off the bone. I’ve got the broth boiling and the dumplings already cut. I don’t want her trying to help with this.

“Just thirteen more days before you tell Mister Johnny about me,” I say, and like I knew she would, Miss Celia gets up from the kitchen table and heads for her bedroom. But before she makes it out the door she mutters, “Do you have to remind me of that fact every day of my life?”

I stand up straighter. That’s the first time Miss Celia’s ever gotten cross with me. “Mm-hmm,” I tell her, not even looking up because I will remind her until Mister Johnny’s shook my hand and said nice to meet you, Minny.

But then I look over and see Miss Celia still standing there. She’s holding on to the doorframe. Her face has gone flat white, like cheap wall paint.

“You been fooling with the raw chicken again?”

“No, I’m . . . just tired.”

But the pricks of sweat on her makeup—that now’s gone gray—tell me she’s not fine. I help her to bed and bring her the Lady-a-Pinkam to drink. The pink label has a picture of a real proper lady on it with a turban on her head, smiling like she feels better. I hand Miss Celia the spoon to measure it out, but that tacky woman just drinks it straight from the bottle.

Afterward, I wash my hands. Whatever it is she’s got, I hope it ain’t catching.

 

 

 

THE DAY AFTER Miss CELIA’S face goes funny is change-the-damn-sheets day and the day I hate the most. Sheets are just too personal a thing for folks who aren’t kin to be fooling with. They are full of hair and scabs and snot and the signs of jelly-rolling. But it’s the blood stains that are the worst. Scrubbing those out with my bare hands, I gag over the sink. That goes for blood anywhere and anything with a suspicious resemblance. A stepped-on strawberry can hang me over the toilet bowl for the rest of the day.

Miss Celia knows about Tuesdays and usually she moves out to the sofa so I can do my work. A cold front started in this morning, so she can’t go out to the swimming pool, and they say the weather’s going to get worse. But at nine, then ten, then eleven the bedroom door’s still closed. Finally, I knock.

“Yes?” she says. I open the door.

“Morning, Miss Celia.”

“Hey, Minny.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

Not only is Miss Celia still in bed, she’s curled up on top of the covers in her nightgown without a drop of her makeup on.

“I got to get them sheets washed and ironed and then I got to get to this old chiffarobe you done let go dry as Texas. And then we cooking—”

“No learning lesson today, Minny.” She isn’t smiling either, like she usually does when she sees me.

“You feeling bad?”

“Fetch me some water, will you?”

“Yes’m.” I go in the kitchen and fill up a glass from the sink. She must be feeling bad because she’s never asked me to serve her anything before.

When I walk back in the bedroom though, Miss Celia’s not in bed and the bathroom door’s closed. Now why’d she ask me to go get her water if she’s got the means to get up and go to the bathroom? At least she’s out of my way. I pick Mister Johnny’s pants up off the floor, toss them over my shoulder. Ask me, this woman doesn’t take enough exercise, sitting around the house all day. Oh now, Minny, don’t go on that way. If she’s sick, she’s sick.

“You sick?” I holler outside the bathroom door.

“I’m . . . fine.”

“While you in there, I’m on go head and change these sheets.”

“No, I want you to go on,” she says through the door. “Go on home for the day, Minny.”

I stand there and tap my foot on her yellow rug. I don’t want to go on home. It’s Tuesday, change-the-damn-sheets day. If I don’t do it today, that makes Wednesday change-the-damn-sheets day too.

“What Mister Johnny gone do if he come home and the house’s a mess?”

“He’s at the deer camp tonight. Minny, I need you to bring me the phone over—” her voice breaks into a trembly wail. “Drag it on over and fetch my phone book that’s setting in the kitchen.”