Miss Skeeter

Chapter 19

It is 1963. The Space Age they’re calling it. A man has circled the earth in a rocketship. They’ve invented a pill so married women don’t have to get pregnant. A can of beer opens with a single finger instead of a can opener. Yet my parents’ house is still as hot as it was in 1899, the year Great-grandfather built it.

“Mama, please,” I beg, “when are we going to get air-conditioning?”

“We have survived this long without electric cool and I have no intentions of setting one of those tacky contraptions in my window.”

And so, as July wanes on, I am forced from my attic bedroom to a cot on the screened back porch. When we were kids, Constantine used to sleep out here with Carlton and me in the summer, when Mama and Daddy went to out-of-town weddings. Constantine slept in an old-fashioned white nightgown up to her chin and down to her toes even though it’d be hot as Hades. She used to sing to us so we’d go to sleep. Her voice was so beautiful I couldn’t understand how she’d never had lessons. Mother had always told me a person can’t learn anything without proper lessons. It’s just unreal to me that she was here, right here on this porch, and now she’s not. And no one will tell me a thing. I wonder if I’ll ever see her again.

Next to my cot, now, my typewriter sits on a rusted, white enamel washtable. Underneath is my red satchel. I take Daddy’s hankie and wipe my forehead, press salted ice to my wrists. Even on the back porch, the Avery Lumber Company temperature dial rises from 89 to 96 to a nice round 100 degrees. Luckily, Stuart doesn’t come over during the day, when the heat is at its worst.

I stare at my typewriter with nothing to do, nothing to write. Minny’s stories are finished and typed already. It’s a wretched feeling. Two weeks ago, Aibileen told me that Yule May, Hilly’s maid, might help us, that she shows a little more interest every time Aibileen talks to her. But with Medgar Evers’s murder and colored people getting arrested and beat by the police, I’m sure she’s scared to death by now.

Maybe I ought to go over to Hilly’s and ask Yule May myself. But no, Aibileen’s right, I’d probably scare her even more and ruin any chance we have.

Under the house, the dogs yawn, whine in the heat. One lets out a half-hearted woof as Daddy’s field workers, five Negroes, pull up in a truckbed. The men jump from the tailgate, hoofing up dust when they hit the dirt. They stand a moment, dead-faced, stupefied. The foreman drags a red cloth across his black forehead, his lips, his neck. It is so recklessly hot, I don’t know how they can stand baking out there in the sun.

In a rare breeze, my copy of Life magazine flutters. Audrey Hepburn smiles on the cover, no sweat beading on her upper lip. I pick it up and finger the wrinkled pages, flip to the story on the Soviet Space Girl. I already know what’s on the next page. Behind her face is a picture of Carl Roberts, a colored schoolteacher from Pelahatchie, forty miles from here. “In April, Carl Roberts told Washington reporters what it means to be a black man in Mississippi, calling the governor ‘a pathetic man with the morals of a streetwalker.’ Roberts was found cattle-branded and hung from a pecan tree.”

They’d killed Carl Roberts for speaking out, for talking. I think about how easy I thought it would be, three months ago, to get a dozen maids to talk to me. Like they’d just been waiting, all this time, to spill their stories to a white woman. How stupid I’d been.

When I can’t take the heat another second, I go sit in the only cool place on Longleaf. I turn on the ignition and roll up the windows, pull my dress up around my underwear and let the bi-level blow on me full blast. As I lean my head back, the world drifts away, tinged by the smell of Freon and Cadillac leather. I hear a truck pull up into the front drive but I don’t open my eyes. A second later, my passenger door opens.

“Damn, it feels good in here.”

I push my dress down. “What are you doing here?”

Stuart shuts the door, kisses me quickly on the lips. “I only have a minute. I have to head down to the coast for a meeting.”

“For how long?”

“Three days. I’ve got to catch some fella on the Mississippi Oil and Gas Board. I wish I’d known about it sooner.”

He reaches out and takes my hand and I smile. We’ve been going out twice a week for two months now if you don’t count the horror date. I guess that’s considered a short time to other girls. But it’s the longest thing that’s ever happened to me, and right now it feels like the best.

“Wanna come?” he says. “To Biloxi? Right now?”

“Right now,” he says and puts his cool palm on my leg. As always, I jump a little. I look down at his hand, then up to make sure Mother’s not spying on us.

“Come on, it’s too damn hot here. I’m staying at the Edgewater, right on the beach.”

I laugh and it feels good after all the worrying I’ve done these past weeks. “You mean, at the Edgewater… together? In the same room?”

He nods. “Think you can get away?”

Elizabeth would be mortified by the thought of sharing a room with a man before she was married, Hilly would tell me I was stupid to even consider it. They’d held on to their virginity with the fierceness of children refusing to share their toys. And yet, I consider it.

Stuart moves closer to me. He smells like pine trees and fired tobacco, expensive soap the likes of which my family’s never known. “Mama’d have a fit, Stuart, plus I have all this other stuff to do…” But God, he smells good. He’s looking at me like he wants to eat me up and I shiver under the blast of Cadillac air.

“You sure?” he whispers and he kisses me then, on the mouth, not so politely as before. His hand is still on the upper quarter of my thigh and I find myself wondering again if he was like this with his fiancée, Patricia. I don’t even know if they went to bed together. The thought of them touching makes me feel sick and I pull back from him.

“I just… I can’t,” I say. “You know I couldn’t tell Mama the truth…”

He lets out a long sorry sigh and I love that look on his face, that disappointment. I understand now why girls resist, just for that sweet look of regret. “Don’t lie to her,” he says. “You know I hate lies.”

“Will you call me from the hotel?” I ask.

“I will,” he says. “I’m sorry I have to leave so soon. Oh, and I almost forgot, in three weeks, Saturday night. Mother and Daddy want y’all to come have supper.”

I sit up straighter. I’ve never met his parents before. “What do you mean… y’all?”

“You and your parents. Come into town, meet my family.”

“But… why all of us?”

He shrugs. “My parents want to meet them. And I want them to meet you.”

“But…”

“I’m sorry, baby,” he says and pushes my hair behind my ear, “I have to go. Call you tomorrow night?”

I nod. He climbs out into the heat and drives off, waving to Daddy walking up the dusty lane.

I’m left alone in the Cadillac to worry. Supper at the state senator’s house. With Mother there asking a thousand questions. Looking desperate on my behalf. Bringing up cotton trust funds.

Three excruciatingly long, hot nights later, with still no word from Yule May or any other maids, Stuart comes over, straight from his meeting on the coast. I’m sick of sitting at the typewriter typing nothing but newsletters and Miss Myrna. I run down the steps and he hugs me like it’s been weeks.

Stuart’s sunburned beneath his white shirt, the back wrinkled from driving, the sleeves rolled up. He wears a perpetual, almost devilish smile. We both sit straight up on opposite sides of the relaxing room, staring at each other. We’re waiting for Mother to go to bed. Daddy went to sleep when the sun went down.

Stuart’s eyes hang on mine while Mother waxes on about the heat, how Carlton’s finally met “the one.”

“And we’re thrilled about dining with your parents, Stuart. Please do tell your mother I said so.”

“Yes ma’am. I sure will.”

He smiles over at me again. There are so many things I love about him. He looks me straight in the eye when we talk. His palms are callused but his nails are clean and trimmed. I love the rough feeling on my neck. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it’s nice to have someone to go to weddings and parties with. Not to have to endure the look in Raleigh Leefolt’s eyes when he sees that I’m tagging along again. The sullen daze when he has to carry my coat with Elizabeth’s, fetch me a drink too.

Then there is Stuart at the house. From the minute he walks in, I am protected, exempt. Mother won’t criticize me in front of him, for fear he might notice my flaws himself. She won’t nag me in front of him because she knows that I’d act badly, whine. Short my chances. It’s all a big game to Mother, to show only one side of me, that the real me shouldn’t come out until after it’s “too late.”

Finally, at half past nine, Mother smoothes her skirt, folds a blanket slowly and perfectly, like a cherished letter. “Well, I guess it’s time for bed. I’ll let you young people alone. Eugenia?” She eyes me. “Not too late, now?”

I smile sweetly. I am twenty-three goddamn years old. “Of course not, Mama.”

She leaves and we sit, staring, smiling.

Waiting.

Mother pads around the kitchen, closes a window, runs some water. A few seconds pass and we hear the clack-click of her bedroom door shutting. Stuart stands and says, “Come here,” and he’s on my side of the room in one stride and he claps my hands to his hips and kisses my mouth like I am the drink he’s been dying for all day and I’ve heard girls say it’s like melting, that feeling. But I think it’s like rising, growing even taller and seeing sights over a hedge, colors you’ve never seen before.

I have to make myself pull away. I have things to say. “Come here. Sit down.”

We sit side by side on the sofa. He tries to kiss me again, but I back my head away. I try not to look at the way his sunburn makes his eyes so blue. Or the way the hairs on his arms are golden, bleached.

“Stuart —” I swallow, ready myself for the dreaded question. “When you were engaged, were your parents disappointed? When whatever happened with Patricia… happened?”

Immediately a stiffness forms around his mouth. He eyes me. “Mother was disappointed. They were close.”

Already I regret having brought it up, but I have to know. “How close?”

He glances around the room. “Do you have anything in the house? Bourbon?”

I go to the kitchen and pour him a glass from Pascagoula’s cooking bottle, top it off with plenty of water. Stuart made it clear the first time he showed up on my porch his fiancée was a bad subject. But I need to know what this thing was that happened. Not just because I’m curious. I’ve never been in a relationship. I need to know what constitutes breaking up forever. I need to know how many rules you can break before you’re thrown out, and what those rules even are in the first place.

“So they were good friends?” I ask. I’ll be meeting his mother in two weeks. Mother’s already set on our shopping trip to Kennington’s tomorrow.

He takes a long drink, frowns. “They’d get in a room and swap notes on flower arrangements and who married who.” All traces of his mischievous smile are gone now. “Mother was pretty shook up. After it… fell apart.”

“So… she’ll be comparing me to Patricia?”

Stuart blinks at me a second. “Probably.”

“Great. I can hardly wait.”

“Mother’s just… protective is all. She’s worried I’ll get hurt again.” He looks off.

“Where is Patricia now? Does she still live here or —”

“No. She’s gone. Moved to California. Can we talk about something else now?”

I sigh, fall back against the sofa.

“Well, do your parents at least know what happened? I mean, am I allowed to know that?” Because I feel a flash of anger that he won’t tell me something as important as this.

“Skeeter, I told you, I hate talking…” But then he grits his teeth, lowers his voice. “Dad only knows part of it. Mother knows the real story, so do Patricia’s parents. And of course her.” He throws back the rest of the drink. “She knows what she did, that’s for goddamn sure.”

“Stuart, I only want to know so I don’t do the same thing.”

He looks at me and tries to laugh but it comes out more like a growl. “You would never in a million years do what she did.”

“What? What did she do?”

“Skeeter.” He sighs and sets his glass down. “I’m tired. I better just go on home.”

* * *

I walk into the steamy kitchen the next morning, dreading the day ahead. Mother is in her room getting ready for our shopping trip to outfit us both for supper at the Whitworths’. I have on blue jeans and an untucked blouse.

“Morning, Pascagoula.”

“Morning, Miss Skeeter. You want your regular breakfast?”

“Yes, please,” I say.

Pascagoula is small and quick on her feet. I told her last June how I liked my coffee black and toast barely buttered and she never had to ask again. She’s like Constantine that way, never forgetting things for us. It makes me wonder how many white women’s breakfasts she has ingrained in her brain. I wonder how it would feel to spend your whole life trying to remember other people’s preferences on toast butter and starch amounts and sheet changing.

She sets my coffee down in front of me. She doesn’t hand it to me. Aibileen told me that’s not how it’s done, because then your hands might touch.

I don’t remember how Constantine used to do it.

“Thank you,” I say, “very much.”

She blinks at me a second, smiles weakly. “You… welcome.” I realize this the first time I’ve ever thanked her sincerely. She looks uncomfortable.

“Skeeter, you ready?” I hear Mother call from the back. I holler that I am. I eat my toast and hope we can get this shopping trip over quickly. I am ten years too old to have my mother still picking out clothes for me. I look over and notice Pascagoula watching me from the sink. She turns away when I look at her.

I skim the Jackson Journal sitting on the table. My next Miss Myrna column won’t come out until next Monday, unlocking the mystery of hard-water stains. Down in the national news section, there’s an article on a new pill, the “Valium” they’re calling it, “to help women cope with everyday challenges.” God, I could use about ten of those little pills right now.

I look up and am surprised to see Pascagoula standing right next to me.

“Are you… do you need something, Pascagoula?” I ask.

“I need to tell you something, Miss Skeeter. Something bout that —”

“You cannot wear dungarees to Kennington’s,” Mother says from the doorway. Like vapor, Pascagoula disappears from my side. She’s back at the sink, stretching a black rubber hose from the faucet to the dishwasher.

“You go upstairs and put on something appropriate.”

“Mother, this is what I’m wearing. What’s the point of getting dressed up to buy new clothes?”

“Eugenia, please let’s don’t make this any harder than it is.”

Mother goes back to her bedroom, but I know this isn’t the end of it. The whoosh of the dishwasher fills the room. The floor vibrates under my bare feet and the rumble is soothing, loud enough to cover a conversation. I watch Pascagoula at the sink.

“Did you need to tell me something, Pascagoula?” I ask.

Pascagoula glances at the door. She’s just a slip of a person, practically half of me. Her manner is so timid, I lower my head when I talk to her. She comes a little closer.

“Yule May my cousin,” Pascagoula says over the whir of the machine. She’s whispering, but there’s nothing timid about her tone now.

“I… didn’t know that.”

“We close kin and she come out to my house ever other weekend to check on me. She told me what it is you doing.” She narrows her eyes and I think she’s about to tell me to leave her cousin alone.

“I… we’re changing the names. She told you that, right? I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”

“She tell me Saturday she gone help you. She try to call Aibileen but couldn’t get her. I’d a tole you earlier but…” Again she glances at the doorway.

I’m stunned. “She is? She will?” I stand up. Despite my better thinking, I can’t help but ask. “Pascagoula, do you… want to help with the stories too?”

She gives me a long, steady look. “You mean tell you what it’s like to work for… your mama?”

We look at each other, probably thinking the same thing. The discomfort of her telling, the discomfort of me listening.

“Not Mother,” I say quickly. “Other jobs, ones you’ve had before this.”

“This my first job working domestic. I use to work at the Old Lady Home serving lunch. Fore it move out to Flowood.”

“You mean Mother didn’t mind this being your first house job?”

Pascagoula looks at the red linoleum floor, timid again. “Nobody else a work for her,” she says. “Not after what happen with Constantine.”

I place my hand carefully on the table. “What did you think about… that?”

Pascagoula’s face turns blank. She blinks a few times, clearly outsmarting me. “I don’t know nothing about it. I just wanted to tell you what Yule May say.” She goes to the refrigerator, opens it and leans inside.

I let out a long, deep breath. One thing at a time.

* * *

Shopping with Mother isn’t as unbearable as usual, probably because I’m in such a good mood from hearing about Yule May. Mother sits in a chair in the dressing lounge and I choose the first Lady Day suit I try on, light blue poplin with a round-collar jacket. We leave it at the store so they can take down the hem. I’m surprised when Mother doesn’t try on anything. After only half an hour, she says she’s tired, so I drive us back to Longleaf. Mother goes straight to her room to nap.

When we get home, I call Elizabeth’s house, my heart pounding, but Elizabeth picks up the phone. I don’t have the nerve to ask for Aibileen. After the satchel scare, I promised myself I’d be more careful.

So I wait until that night, hoping Aibileen’s home. I sit on my can of flour, fingers working a bag of dry rice. She answers on the first ring.

“She’ll help us, Aibileen. Yule May said yes!”

“Say what? When you find out?”

“This afternoon. Pascagoula told me. Yule May couldn’t reach you.”

“Law, my phone was disconnected cause I’s short this month. You talk to Yule May?”

“No, I thought it would be better if you talked to her first.”

“What’s strange is I call over to Miss Hilly house this afternoon from Miss Leefolt’s, but she say Yule May don’t work there no more and hang up. I been asking around but nobody know a thing.”

“Hilly fired her?”

“I don’t know. I’s hoping maybe she quit.”

“I’ll call Hilly and find out. God, I hope she’s alright.”

“And now that my phone’s back on, I keep trying to call Yule May.”

I call Hilly’s house four times but the phone just rings. Finally I call Elizabeth’s and she tells me Hilly’s gone to Port Gibson for the night. That William’s father is ill.

“Did something happen… with her maid?” I ask as casually as I can.

“You know, she mentioned something about Yule May, but then she said she was late and had to pack up the car.”

I spend the rest of the night on the back porch, rehearsing questions, nervous about what stories Yule May might tell about Hilly. Despite our disagreements, Hilly is still one of my closest friends. But the book, now that it is going again, is more important than anything.

I lay on the cot at midnight. The crickets sing outside the screen. I let my body sink deep into the thin mattress, against the springs. My feet dangle off the end, dance nervously, relishing relief for the first time in months. It’s not a dozen maids, but it’s one more.

* * *

The next day, I’m sitting in front of the television set watching the twelve o’clock news. Charles Warring is reporting, telling me that sixty American soldiers have been killed in Vietnam. It’s so sad to me. Sixty men, in a place far away from anyone they loved, had to die. I think it’s because of Stuart that this bothers me so, but Charles Warring looks eerily thrilled by it all.

I pick up a cigarette and put it back down. I’m trying not to smoke, but I’m nervous about tonight. Mother’s been nagging me about my smoking and I know I should stop, but it’s not like it’s going to kill me. I wish I could ask Pascagoula more about what Yule May said, but Pascagoula called this morning and said she had a problem and wouldn’t be coming in until this afternoon.

I can hear Mother out on the back porch, helping Jameso make ice cream. Even in the front of the house, I can hear the rumbly noise of ice cracking, the salt crunching. The sound is delicious, makes me wish for some now, but it won’t be ready for hours. Of course, no one makes ice cream at twelve noon on a hot day, it’s a night chore, but Mother has it in her mind that she’s going to make peach ice cream and the heat be damned.

I go out on the back porch and look. The big silver ice-cream maker is cold and sweating. The porch floor vibrates. Jameso’s sitting on an upsidedown bucket, knees on either side of the machine, turning the wooden crank with gloved hands. Steam rises from the well of dry ice.

“Has Pascagoula come in yet?” Mama asks, feeding more cream into the machine.

“Not yet,” I say. Mother is sweating. She pushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ll pour the cream awhile, Mama. You look hot.”

“You won’t do it right. I have to do it,” she says and shoos me back inside.

On the news, now Roger Sticker is reporting in front of the Jackson post office with the same stupid grin as the war reporter. “…this modern postal addressing system is called a Z-Z-ZIP code, that’s right, I said Z-Z-ZIP code, that’s five numbers to be written along the bottom of your envelope…”

He’s holding up a letter, showing us where to write the numbers. A man in overalls with no teeth says, “Ain’t nobody gonna use them there numbers. Folks is still trying to get used to using the tellyphone.”

I hear the front door close. A minute passes and Pascagoula comes in the relaxing room. “Mother’s out on the back porch,” I tell her but Pascagoula doesn’t smile, doesn’t even look up at me. She just hands me a small envelope. “She was gone mail it but I told her I just carry it to you.” The front of the envelope is addressed to me, no return name on it. Certainly no ZIP code. Pascagoula walks off toward the back porch. I open the letter. The handwriting is in black pen, written on the straight blue lines of school paper:

Dear Miss Skeeter,

I want you to know how sorry I am that I won’t be able to help you with your stories. But now I can’t and I want to be the one to tell you why. As you know, I used to wait on a friend of yours. I didn’t like working for her and I wanted to quit many times but I was afraid to. I was afraid I might never get another job once she’d had her say.

You probably don’t know that after I finished high school, I went on to college. I would’ve graduated except I decided to get married. It’s one of my few regrets in life, not getting my college degree. I have twin boys that make it all worthwhile, though. For ten years, my husband and I have saved our money to send them to Tougaloo College, but as hard as we worked, we still didn’t have enough for both. My boys are equally as smart, equally eager for an education. But we only had the money for one and I ask you, how do you choose which of your twin sons should go to college and which should take a job spreading tar? How do you tell one that you love him just as much as the other, but you’ve decided he won’t be the one to get a chance in life? You don’t. You find a way to make it happen. Any way at all.

I suppose you could look at this as a confession letter. I stole from that woman. An ugly ruby ring, hoping it would cover the rest of the tuition.

Something she never wore and I felt she owed me for everything I’d been through working for her. Of course now, neither of my boys will be going to college. The court fine is nearly as much as we had saved.

Sincerely,

Yule May Crookle

Women’s Block 9

Mississippi State Penitentiary

The penitentiary. I shudder. I look around for Pascagoula but she’s left the room. I want to ask her when this happened, how it happened so goddamn fast? What can be done? But Pascagoula’s gone outside to help Mother. We can’t talk out there. I feel sick, nauseous. I switch off the television.

I think about Yule May, sitting in a jail cell writing this letter. I bet I even know what ring Yule May’s talking about – Hilly’s mother gave it to her for her eighteenth birthday. Hilly had it appraised a few years ago and found out it wasn’t even a ruby, just a garnet, hardly worth anything. Hilly never wore it again. My hands turn to fists.

The sound of the ice cream churning outside sounds like bones crunching. I go to the kitchen to wait for Pascagoula, to get answers. I’ll tell Daddy. I’ll see if there’s anything he can do. If he knows any lawyers who would be willing to help her.

* * *

I walk up Aibileen’s steps at eight o’clock that night. This was supposed to be our first interview with Yule May and even though I know that’s not going to happen, I’ve decided to come anyway. It’s raining and blowing hard and I hold my raincoat tight around me and the satchel. I kept thinking I’d call Aibileen to talk about the situation, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I practically dragged Pascagoula upstairs so Mother wouldn’t see us talking and asked her everything. “Yule May had her a real good lawyer,” Pascagoula said. “But everbody saying the judge wife be good friends with Miss Holbrook and how a regular sentence be six months for petty stealing, but Miss Holbrook, she get it pushed up to four years. That trial was done fore it even started.”

“I could ask Daddy. He could try and get her a… white lawyer.”

Pascagoula shakes her head, says, “He was a white lawyer.”

I knock on Aibileen’s door, feel a rush of shame. I shouldn’t be thinking about my own problems when Yule May is in jail, but I know what this means for the book. If the maids were afraid to help us yesterday, I’m sure they’re terrified today.

The door opens and a Negro man stands there looking at me, his white clerical collar gleaming. I hear Aibileen say, “It’s okay, Reverend.” He hesitates, but then moves back for me to come in.

I step inside and see at least twenty people packed in the tiny living room and hallway. I cannot see the floor. Aibileen’s brought out the kitchen chairs, but most people stand. I spot Minny in the corner, still in her uniform. I recognize Lou Anne Templeton’s maid, Louvenia, next to her, but everyone else is a stranger.

“Hey, Miss Skeeter,” whispers Aibileen. She’s still in her white uniform and white orthopedic shoes.

“Should I…” I point behind me. “I’ll come back later,” I whisper.

Aibileen shakes her head. “Something awful happen to Yule May.”

“I know,” I say. The room is quiet except for a few coughs. A chair creaks. Hymn books are stacked on the small wooden table.

“I just find out today,” Aibileen says. “She arrested on Monday, in the pen on Tuesday. They say the whole trial took fifteen minutes.”

“She sent me a letter,” I say. “She told me about her sons. Pascagoula gave it to me.”

“She tell you she only short seventy-five dollars for that tuition? She ask Miss Hilly for a loan, you know. Say she’d pay her back some ever week, but Miss Hilly say no. That a true Christian don’t give charity to those who is well and able. Say it’s kinder to let them learn to work things out theyselves.”

God, I can just imagine Hilly giving that goddamn speech. I can hardly look Aibileen in the face.

“The churches got together though. They gone send both them boys to college.”

The room is dead quiet, except for Aibileen and my whispering. “Do you think there’s anything I can do? Any way I can help? Money or…”

“No. Church already set up a plan to pay the lawyer. To keep him on for when she come up for parole.” Aibileen lets her head hang. I’m sure it’s out of grief for Yule May, but I suspect she also knows the book is over. “They gone be seniors by the time she get out. Court give her four years and a five hundred dollar fine.”

“I’m so sorry, Aibileen,” I say. I glance around at the people in the room, their heads bowed as if looking at me might burn them. I look down.

“She evil, that woman!” Minny barks from the other side of the sofa and I flinch, hoping she doesn’t mean me.

“Hilly Holbrook been sent up here from the devil to ruirn as many lives as she can!” Minny wipes her nose across her sleeve.

“Minny, it’s alright,” the reverend says. “We’ll find something we can do for her.” I look at the drawn faces, wondering what that thing could possibly be.

The room goes unbearably quiet again. The air is hot and smells like burned coffee. I feel a profound singularity, here, in a place where I’ve almost grown comfortable. I feel the heat of dislike and guilt.

The bald reverend wipes his eyes with a handkerchief. “Thank you, Aibileen, for having us in your home for prayer.” People begin to stir, telling each other good night with solemn nods. Handbags are picked up, hats are put on heads. The reverend opens the door, letting in the damp outside air. A woman with curly gray hair and a black coat follows close behind him, but then stops in front of me where I’m standing with my satchel.

Her raincoat falls open a little to reveal a white uniform.

“Miss Skeeter,” she says, without a smile, “I’m on help you with the stories.”

I turn and look at Aibileen. Her eyebrows go up, her mouth opens. I turn back to the woman but she is already walking out the door.

“I’m on help you, Miss Skeeter.” This is another woman, tall and lean, with the same quiet look as the first.

“Um, thank… you,” I say.

“I am too, Miss Skeeter. I’m on help you.” A woman in a red coat walks by quickly, doesn’t even meet my eyes.

After the next one, I start counting. Five. Six. Seven. I nod back at them, can say nothing but thank you. Thank you. Yes, thank you, to each one. My relief is bitter, that it took Yule May’s internment to bring us to this.

Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. No one is smiling when they tell me they want to help. The room clears out, except for Minny. She stands in the far corner, arms clamped across her chest. When everyone is gone, she looks up and meets my gaze for hardly a second then jerks her eyes to the brown curtains, pinned tight across the window. But I see it, the flicker on her mouth, a hint of softness beneath her anger. Minny has made this happen.

* * *

With everyone traveling, our group hasn’t played bridge in a month. On Wednesday, we meet at Lou Anne Templeton’s house, greet with hand patting and good-to-see-yous.

“Lou Anne, you poor thing, in those long sleeves in this heat. Is it the eczema again?” Elizabeth asks because Lou Anne’s wearing a gray wool dress in the heat of summer.

Lou Anne looks at her lap, clearly embarrassed. “Yes, it’s getting worse.”

But I cannot stand to touch Hilly when she reaches out to me. When I back away from her hug, she acts like she doesn’t notice. But during the game, she keeps looking at me with narrowed eyes.

“What are you going to do?” Elizabeth asks Hilly. “You’re welcome to bring the children over any time, but… well…” Before bridge club, Hilly dropped Heather and William at Elizabeth’s for Aibileen to look after while we play bridge. But I already know the message in Elizabeth’s sour smile: she worships Hilly, but Elizabeth does not care to share her help with anybody.

“I knew it. I knew that girl was a thief the day she started.” As Hilly tells us the story of Yule May, she makes a big circle with her finger to indicate a huge stone, the unimaginable worth of the “ruby.”

“I caught her taking the milk after it expired and that’s how it starts, you know, first it’s washing powder, then they work their way up to towels and coats. Before you know it, they’re taking the heirlooms, hocking them for liquor pints. God knows what else she took.”

I fight the urge to snap each of her flapping fingers in half, but I hold my tongue. Let her think everything is fine. It is safer for everyone.

After the game, I rush home to prepare for Aibileen’s that night, relieved there’s not a soul in the house. I quickly flip through Pascagoula’s messages for me – Patsy my tennis partner, Celia Foote, whom I hardly know. Why would Johnny Foote’s wife be calling me? Minny’s made me swear I’ll never call her back, and I don’t have the time to wonder. I have to get ready for the interviews.

* * *

I sit at Aibileen’s kitchen table at six o’clock that night. We’ve arranged for me to come over nearly every night until we’re finished. Every two days, a different colored woman will knock on Aibileen’s back door and sit at the table with me, tell me her stories. Eleven maids have agreed to talk to us, not counting Aibileen and Minny. That puts us at thirteen and Missus Stein asked for a dozen, so I think we’re lucky. Aibileen stands in the back of the kitchen, listening. The first maid’s name is Alice. I don’t ask for last names.

I explain to Alice that the project is a collection of true stories about maids and their experiences waiting on white families. I hand her an envelope with forty dollars from what I’ve saved from the Miss Myrna column, my allowance, money Mother has forced into my hands for beauty parlor appointments I never went to.

“There’s a good chance it may never be published,” I tell each individually, “and even if it is, there will be very little money from it.” I look down the first time I say this, ashamed, I don’t know why. Being white, I feel it’s my duty to help them.

“Aibileen been clear on that,” several say. “That ain’t why I’m doing this.”

I repeat back to them what they’ve already decided among themselves. That they need to keep their identities secret from anyone outside the group. Their names will be changed on paper; so will the name of the town and the families they’ve worked for. I wish I could slip in, as the last question, “By the way, did you know Constantine Bates?” but I’m pretty sure Aibileen would tell me it’s a bad idea. They’re scared enough as it is.

“Now, Eula, she gone be like prying a dead clam open.” Aibileen preps me before each interview. She’s as afraid as I am that I’ll scare them off before it even starts. “Don’t get frustrated if she don’t say much.”

Eula, the dead clam, starts talking before she’s even sat in the chair, before I can explain anything, not stopping until ten o’clock that night.

“When I asked for a raise they gave it to me. When I needed a house, they bought me one. Doctor Tucker came over to my house himself and picked a bullet out my husband’s arm because he was afraid Henry’d catch something at the colored hospital. I have worked for Doctor Tucker and Miss Sissy for forty-four years. They been so good to me. I wash her hair ever Friday. I never seen that woman wash her own hair.” She stops for the first time all night, looks lonesome and worried. “If I die before her, I don’t know what Miss Sissy gone do about getting her hair washed.”

I try not to smile too eagerly. I don’t want to look suspicious. Alice, Fanny Amos, and Winnie are shy, need coaxing, keep their eyes down to their laps. Flora Lou and Cleontine let the doors fly open and the words tumble out while I type as fast as I can, asking them every five minutes to please, please, slow down. Many of the stories are sad, bitter. I expected this. But there are a surprising number of good stories too. And all of them, at some point, look back at Aibileen as if to ask, Are you sure? Can I really tell a white woman this?

“Aibileen? What’s gone happen if… this thing get printed and people find out who we are?” shy Winnie asks. “What you think they do to us?”

Our eyes form a triangle in the kitchen, one looking at the other. I take a deep breath, ready to assure her of how careful we’re being.

“My husband cousin… they took her tongue out. A while back it was. For talking to some Washington people about the Klan. You think they gone take our tongues? For talking to you?”

I don’t know what to say. Tongues… God, this hadn’t exactly crossed my mind. Only jail and perhaps fake charges or fines. “I… we’re being extremely careful,” I say but it comes out thin and unconvincing. I look at Aibileen, but she is looking worried too.

“We won’t know till the time comes, Winnie,” Aibileen says softly. “Won’t be like what you see on the news, though. A white lady do things different than a white man.”

I look at Aibileen. She’s never shared with me the specifics of what she thinks would happen. I want to change the subject. It won’t do us any good to discuss it.

“Naw.” Winnie shakes her head. “I reckon not. Fact, a white lady might do worse.”

* * *

“Where are you going?” Mother calls from the relaxing room. I have my satchel and the truck keys. I keep heading for the door.

“To the movies,” I call.

“You went to the movies last night. Come here, Eugenia.”

I backtrack, stand in the doorway. Mother’s ulcers have been acting up. At supper she’s been eating nothing but chicken broth, and I feel bad for her. Daddy went to bed an hour ago, but I can’t stay here with her. “I’m sorry, Mother, I’m late. Do you want me to bring you anything?”

“What movie and with whom? You’ve been out almost every night this week.”

“Just… some girls. I’ll be home by ten. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she sighs. “Go on, then.”

I head to the car, feeling guilty because I’m leaving Mother alone when she’s not feeling well. Thank God Stuart’s in Texas because I doubt I could lie to him so easily. When he came over three nights ago, we sat out on the porch swing listening to the crickets. I was so tired from working late the night before, I could barely keep my eyes open, but I didn’t want him to leave. I lay with my head in his lap. I reached up and rubbed my hand against the bristles on his face.

“When’re you going to let me read something you’ve written?” he asked.

“You can read the Miss Myrna column. I did a great piece on mildew last week.”

He smiled, shook his head. “No, I mean I want to read what you’re thinking. I’m pretty sure it’s not about housekeeping.”

I wondered then, if he knew I was hiding something from him. It scared me that he might find out about the stories, and thrilled me that he was even interested.

“When you’re ready. I won’t push you,” he said.

“Maybe sometime I’ll let you,” I said, feeling my eyes close.

“Go to sleep, baby,” he said, stroking my hair back from my face. “Let me just sit here with you for a while.”

With Stuart out of town for the next six days, I can concentrate solely on the interviews. I head to Aibileen’s every night as nervous as the first time. The women are tall, short, black like asphalt or caramel brown. If your skin is too white, I’m told, you’ll never get hired. The blacker the better. The talk turns mundane at times, with complaints of low pay, hard hours, bratty children. But then there are stories of white babies dying in arms. That soft, empty look in their still blue eyes.

“Olivia she was called. Just a tiny baby, with her tiny hand holding on to my finger, breathing so hard,” Fanny Amos says, our fourth interview. “Her mama wasn’t even home, gone to the store for mentholatum. It was just me and the daddy. He wouldn’t let me put her down, told me to hold her till the doctor get there. Baby grew cold in my arms.”

There is undisguised hate for white women, there is inexplicable love. Faye Belle, palsied and gray-skinned, cannot remember her own age. Her stories unfold like soft linen. She remembers hiding in a steamer trunk with a little white girl while Yankee soldiers stomped through the house. Twenty years ago, she held that same white girl, by then an old woman, in her arms while she died. Each proclaimed their love as best friends. Swore that death could not change this. That color meant nothing. The white woman’s grandson still pays Faye Belle’s rent. When she’s feeling strong, Faye Belle sometimes goes over and cleans up his kitchen.

Louvenia is my fifth interview. She is Lou Anne Templeton’s maid and I recognize her from serving me at bridge club. Louvenia tells me how her grandson, Robert, was blinded earlier this year by a white man, because he used a white bathroom. I recall reading about it in the paper as Louvenia nods, waits for me to catch up on my typewriter. There is no anger in her voice at all. I learn that Lou Anne, whom I find dull and vapid and have never paid much mind to, gave Louvenia two weeks off with pay so she could help her grandson. She brought casseroles to Louvenia’s house seven times during those weeks. She rushed Louvenia to the colored hospital when the first call came about Robert and waited there six hours with her, until the operation was over. Lou Anne has never mentioned this to any of us. And I understand completely why she wouldn’t.

Angry stories come out, of white men who’ve tried to touch them. Winnie said she was forced over and over. Cleontine said she fought until his face bled and he never tried again. But the dichotomy of love and disdain living side-by-side is what surprises me. Most are invited to attend the white children’s weddings, but only if they’re in their uniforms. These things I know already, yet hearing them from colored mouths, it is as if I am hearing them for the first time.

* * *

We cannot talk for several minutes after Gretchen’s left.

“Let’s just move on,” Aibileen says. “We don’t got to… count that one.”

Gretchen is Yule May’s first cousin. She attended the prayer meeting for Yule May that Aibileen hosted weeks ago, but she belongs to a different church.

“I don’t understand why she agreed if…” I want to go home. The tendons in my neck have locked tight. My fingers are trembling from typing and from listening to Gretchen’s words.

“I’m sorry, I had no idea she gone do that.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say. I want to ask her how much of what Gretchen said is true. But I can’t. I can’t look Aibileen in the face.

I’d explained the “rules” to Gretchen, just like with the others. Gretchen had leaned back in her chair. I thought she was thinking about a story to tell. But she said, “Look at you. Another white lady trying to make a dollar off of colored people.”

I glanced back at Aibileen, not sure how to respond to this. Was I not clear on the money part? Aibileen tilted her head like she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.

“You think anybody’s ever going to read this thing?” Gretchen laughed. She was trim in her uniform dress. She wore lipstick, the same color pink me and my friends wore. She was young. She spoke evenly and with care, like a white person. I don’t know why, but that made it worse.

“All the colored women you’ve interviewed, they’ve been real nice, haven’t they?”

“Yes,” I’d said. “Very nice.”

Gretchen looked me straight in the eye. “They hate you. You know that, right? Every little thing about you. But you’re so dumb, you think you’re doing them a favor.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “You volunteered —”

“You know the nicest thing a white woman’s ever done for me? Given me the heel on her bread. The colored women coming in here, they’re just playing a big trick on you. They’ll never tell you the truth, lady.”

“You don’t have any idea what the other women have told me,” I said. I was surprised by how dense my anger felt, and how easily it sprang up.

“Say it, lady, say the word you think every time one of us comes in the door. Nigger.”

Aibileen stood up from her stool. “That’s enough, Gretchen. You go on home.”

“And you know what, Aibileen? You are just as dumb as she is,” Gretchen said.

I was shocked when Aibileen pointed to the door and hissed, “You get out a my house.”

Gretchen left, but through the screen door, she slapped me with a look so angry it gave me chills.

* * *

Two nights later, I sit across from Callie. She has curly hair, mostly gray. She is sixty-seven years old and still in her uniform. She is wide and heavy and parts of her hang over the chair. I’m still nervous from the interview with Gretchen.

I wait for Callie to stir her tea. There’s a grocery sack in the corner of Aibileen’s kitchen. It’s full of clothes, and a pair of white pants hangs over the top. Aibileen’s house is always so neat. I don’t know why she never does anything with that sack.

Callie begins talking slowly and I start to type, grateful of her slow pace. She stares off as if she can see a movie screen behind me, playing the scenes she’s describing.

“I worked for Miss Margaret thirty-eight years. She had her a baby girl with the colic and the only thing that stopped the hurting was to hold her. So I made me a wrap. I tied her up on my waist, toted her around all day with me for a entire year. That baby like to break my back. Put ice packs on it ever night and still do. But I loved that girl. And I loved Miss Margaret.”

She takes a sip of her tea while I type her last words. I look up and she continues.

“Miss Margaret always made me put my hair up in a rag, say she know coloreds don’t wash their hair. Counted ever piece a silver after I done the polishing. When Miss Margaret die of the lady problems thirty years later, I go to the funeral. Her husband hug me, cry on my shoulder. When it’s over, he give me a envelope. Inside a letter from Miss Margaret reading, ‘Thank you. For making my baby stop hurting. I never forgot it.’”

Callie takes off her black-rimmed glasses, wipes her eyes.

“If any white lady reads my story, that’s what I want them to know. Saying thank you, when you really mean it, when you remember what someone done for you” – she shakes her head, stares down at the scratched table – “it’s so good.”

Callie looks up at me, but I can’t meet her eyes.

“I just need a minute,” I say. I press my hand on my forehead. I can’t help but think about Constantine. I never thanked her, not properly. It never occurred to me I wouldn’t have the chance.

“You feel okay, Miss Skeeter?” Aibileen asks.

“I’m… fine,” I say. “Let’s keep going.”

Callie goes on to her next story. The yellow Dr. Scholl’s shoebox is on the counter behind her, still full of envelopes. Except for Gretchen, all ten women have asked that the money go toward Yule May’s boys’ education.