Minny

Chapter 24

I’m at the kitchen sink waiting for Miss Celia to come home. The rag I’ve been pulling on is in shreds. That crazy woman woke up this morning, squoze into the tightest pink sweater she has, which is saying something, and hollered, “I’m going to Elizabeth Leefolt’s. Right now, while I got the nerve, Minny.” Then she drove off in her Bel Aire convertible with her skirt hanging out the door.

I was just jittery until the phone rang. Aibileen was hiccupping she was so upset. Not only did Miss Celia tell the ladies that Minny Jackson is working for her, she informed them that Miss Leefolt was the one who “recommended” me. And that was all the story Aibileen heard. It’ll take those cackling hens about five minutes to figure this out.

So now, I have to wait. Wait to find out if, Number One, my best friend in the entire world gets fired for getting me a job. And Number Two, if Miss Hilly told Miss Celia those lies that I’m a thief. And Number Two and a half, if Miss Hilly told Miss Celia how I got back at her for telling those lies that I’m a thief. I’m not sorry for the Terrible Awful Thing I done to her. But now that Miss Hilly put her own maid in jail to rot, I wonder what that lady’s going to do to me.

It’s not until ten after four, an hour past my time to leave, that I see Miss Celia’s car pull in. She jiggles up the walk like she’s got something to say. I hitch up my hose.

“Minny, it’s so late!” she yells.

“What happened with Miss Leefolt?” I’m not even trying to be coy. I want to know.

“Go, please! Johnny’s coming home any minute.” She’s pushing me to the washroom where I keep my things.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she says, but for once, I don’t want to go home, I want to hear what Miss Hilly said about me. Hearing your maid’s a thief is like hearing your kid’s teacher’s a twiddler. You don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, you just get the hell rid of em.

But Miss Celia won’t tell me anything. She’s shooing me out so she can keep up her charade, so twisted it’s like kudzu. Mister Johnny knows about me. Miss Celia knows Mister Johnny knows about me. But Mister Johnny doesn’t know that Miss Celia knows he knows. And because of that ridiculousness, I have to leave at four-oh-ten and worry about Miss Hilly for the entire night.

* * *

The next morning before work, Aibileen calls my house.

“I call poor Fanny early this morning cause I know you been stewing about it all night.” Poor Fanny’s Miss Hilly’s new maid. Ought to call her Fool Fanny for working there. “She heard Miss Leefolt and Miss Hilly done decided you made the whole recommendation thing up so Miss Celia would give you the job.”

Whew. I let out a long breath. “Glad you ain’t gone get in trouble,” I say. Still, now Miss Hilly calling me a liar and a thief.

“Don’t you worry bout me,” Aibileen says. “You just keep Miss Hilly from talking to your boss lady.”

When I get to work, Miss Celia’s rushing out to go buy a dress for the Benefit next month. She says she wants to be the first person in the store. It’s not like the old days when she was pregnant. Now she can’t wait to get out the door.

I stomp out to the backyard and wipe down the lawn chairs. The birds all twitter up in a huff when they see me coming, making the camellia bush rattle. Last spring Miss Celia was always nagging at me to take those flowers home. But I know camellias. You bring a bunch inside, thinking how it’s so fresh it looks like it’s moving and as soon as you go down for a sniff, you see you’ve brought an army full of spider mites in the house.

I hear a stick break, then another, behind the bushes. I prickle inside, hold still. We’re out in the middle of nowhere and nobody would hear us call for miles. I listen, but I don’t hear anything else. I tell myself it’s just the old dregs of waiting for Mister Johnny. Or maybe I’m paranoid because I worked with Miss Skeeter last night on the book. I’m always jittery after talking to her.

Finally, I go back to cleaning pool chairs, picking up Miss Celia’s movie magazines and tissues the slob leaves out here. The phone rings inside. I’m not supposed to answer the phone what with Miss Celia trying to keep up the big fat lie with Mister Johnny. But she’s not here and it might be Aibileen with more news. I go inside, lock the door behind me.

“Miss Celia residence.” Lord, I hope it’s not Miss Celia calling.

“This is Hilly Holbrook speaking. Who is this?”

My blood whooshes down from my hair to my feet. I’m an empty, bloodless shell for about five seconds.

I lower my voice, make it deep like a stranger. “This Doreena. Miss Celia’s help.” Doreena? Why I use my sister’s name!

“Doreena. I thought Minny Jackson was Miss Foote’s maid.”

“She… quit.”

“Is that right? Let me speak to Missus Foote.”

“She… out a town. Down at the coast. For a – a —” My mind’s pedaling a thousand miles an hour trying to come up with details.

“Well, when is she coming back?”

“Looong time.”

“Well, when she gets back, you tell her I called. Hilly Holbrook, Emerson three-sixty-eight-forty?”

“Yes ma’am. I tell her.” In about a hundred years.

I hold on to the counter edge, wait for my heart to stop hammering. It’s not that Miss Hilly can’t find me. I mean, she could just look up Minny Jackson on Tick Road in the phone book and get my address. And it’s not like I couldn’t tell Miss Celia what happened, tell her I’m not a thief. Maybe she’d believe me after all. But it’s the Terrible Awful that ruins it all.

Four hours later, Miss Celia walks in with five big boxes stacked on top of each other. I help her tote them back to her bedroom and then I stand very still outside her door to hear if she’ll call up the society ladies like she does every day. Sure enough, I hear her pick up the phone. But she just hangs it back up again. The fool’s listening for the dial tone again, in case someone tries to call.

Even though it’s the third week of October, the summer beats on with the rhythm of a clothes dryer. The grass in Miss Celia’s yard is still a full-blown green. The orange dahlias are still smiling drunk up at the sun. And every night, the damn mosquitoes come out for their blood hunt, my sweat pads went up three cents a box, and my electric fan is broke dead on my kitchen floor.

On this October morning, three days after Miss Hilly called, I walk into work half an hour early. I’ve got Sugar seeing the kids to school. The coffee grinds go in the fancy percolator, the water goes in the pot. I lean my bottom against the counter. Quiet. It’s what I’ve been waiting for all night long.

The Frigidaire picks up a hum where it left off. I put my hand on it to feel its vibration.

“You’re awful early, Minny.”

I open the refrigerator and bury my head inside. “Morning,” I say from the crisper. All I can think is, Not yet.

I fiddle with some artichokes, the cold spines prickling my hand. Bent over like this, my head pounds even harder. “I’m on fix you and Mister Johnny a roast and I’m on… fix some…” But the words go all high-pitched on me.

“Minny, what happened?” Miss Celia has made her way around the refrigerator door without me even realizing it. My face bunches up. The cut on my eyebrow breaks open again, the hot blood stinging like a razor. Usually my bruises don’t show.

“Honey, set down. Did you take a spill?” She props her hand on the hip of her pink nightgown. “Did you trip on the fan cord again?”

“I’m fine,” I say, trying to turn so she can’t see me. But Miss Celia’s moving with me, bug-eyeing the cut like she’s never seen anything so awful. I had a white lady tell me once that blood looks redder on a colored person. I take a wad of cotton from my pocket, hold it to my face.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “I banged it in the bathtub.”

“Minny, that thing’s bleeding. I think you need you some stitches. Let me get Doctor Neal over here.” She grabs the phone from the wall, then bangs it back. “Oh, he’s up at the hunting camp with Johnny. I’ll call Doctor Steele, then.”

“Miss Celia, I don’t need no doctor.”

“You need medical attention, Minny,” she says, picking the phone back up.

Do I really have to say it? I grit my teeth to get it out. “Them doctors ain’t gone work on no colored person, Miss Celia.”

She hangs the phone up again.

I turn and face the sink. I keep thinking, This ain’t nobody’s business, just do your work, but I haven’t had a minute’s sleep. Leroy screamed at me all night, threw the sugar bowl upside my head, threw my clothes out on the porch. I mean, when he’s drinking the Thunderbird, it’s one thing, but… oh. The shame is so heavy I think it might pull me to the floor. Leroy, he wasn’t on the Thunderbird this time. This time he beat me stone-cold sober.

“Go on out a here, Miss Celia, let me get some work done,” I say because I just need some time alone. At first, I thought Leroy had found out about my working with Miss Skeeter. It was the only reason I could come up with while he was beating me with his hand. But he didn’t say a thing about it. He was just beating me for the pure pleasure of it.

“Minny?” Miss Celia says, eyeing the cut again. “Are you sure you did that in the bathtub?”

I run the water just to get some noise in the room. “I told you I did and I did. Alright?”

She gives me a suspicious look and points her finger at me. “Alright, but I’m fixing you a cup of coffee and I want you to just take the day off, okay?” Miss Celia goes to the coffee percolator, pours two cups, but then stops. Looks at me kind of surprised.

“I don’t know how you take your coffee, Minny.”

I roll my eyes. “Same as you.”

She drops two sugars into both mugs. She gives me my coffee and then she just stands, staring out the back window with her jaw set tight. I start washing last night’s dishes, wishing she’d just leave me be.

“You know,” she says kind of low, “You can talk to me about anything, Minny.”

I keep washing, feel my nose start to flare.

“I’ve seen some things, back when I lived in Sugar Ditch. In fact…”

I look up, about to give it to her for getting in my business, but Miss Celia says in a funny voice, “We’ve got to call the police, Minny.”

I put my coffee cup down so hard it splashes. “Now look a here, I don’t want no police getting involved —”

She points out the back window. “There’s a man, Minny! Out there!”

I turn to where’s she’s looking. A man – a naked man – is out by the azaleas. I blink to see if it’s real. He’s tall, mealy-looking and white. He’s standing with his back to us, about fifteen feet away. His brown tangled hair is long like a hobo. Even from the back I can tell he’s touching himself.

“Who is he?” Miss Celia whispers. “What’s he doing here?”

The man turns to face front, almost like he heard us. Both our jaws drop. He’s holding it out like he’s offering us a po’boy sandwich.

“Oh… God,” Miss Celia says.

His eyes search the window. They land right on mine, staring a dark line across the lawn. I shiver. It’s like he knows me, Minny Jackson. He’s staring with his lip curled like I deserved every bad day I’ve ever lived, every night I haven’t slept, every blow Leroy’s ever given. Deserved it and more.

And his fist starts punching his palm with a slow rhythm. Punch. Punch. Punch. Like he knows exactly what he’s going to do with me. I feel the throb in my eye start again.

“We’ve got to call the police!” whispers Miss Celia. Her wide eyes dart to the phone on the other side of the kitchen, but she doesn’t move an inch.

“It’ll take em forty-five minutes just to find the house,” I say. “He could break the door down by then!”

I run to the back door, flip the lock on. I dart to the front door and lock it, ducking down when I pass the back window. I stand up on my tiptoes, peek through the little square window on the back door. Miss Celia peeks around the side of the big window.

The naked man’s walking real slow up toward the house. He comes up the back steps. He tries the doorknob and I watch it jiggle, feeling my heart whapping against my ribs. I hear Miss Celia on the phone, saying, “Police? We’re getting intruded! There’s a man! A naked man trying to get in the —”

I jump back from the little square window just in time for the rock to smash through, feel the sprinkle of shards hit my face. Through the big window, I see the man backing up, like he’s trying to see where to break in next. Lord, I’m praying, I don’t want to do this, don’t make me have to do this…

Again, he stares at us through the window. And I know we can’t just sit here like a duck dinner, waiting for him to get in. All he has to do is break a floor-to-ceiling window and step on in.

Lord, I know what I have to do. I have to go out there. I have to get him first.

“You stand back, Miss Celia,” I say and my voice is shaking. I go get Mister Johnny’s hunting knife, still in the sheath, from the bear. But the blade’s so short, he’ll have to be awful close for me to cut him, so I get the broom too. I look out and he’s in the middle of the yard, looking up at the house. Figuring things out.

I open the back door and slip out. Across the yard, the man smiles at me, showing a mouth with about two teeth. He stops punching and goes back to stroking himself, smoothly, evenly now.

“Lock the door,” I hiss behind me. “Keep it locked.” I hear the click.

I tuck the knife in the belt of my uniform, make sure it’s tight. And I grip the broom with both hands.

“You get on out a here, you fool!” I yell. But the man doesn’t move. I take a few steps closer. And then so does he and I hear myself praying, Lord protect me from this naked white man…

“I got me a knife!” I holler. I take some more steps and he does too. When I get seven or eight feet from him, I’m panting. We both stare.

“Why, you’re a fat nigger,” he calls in a strange, high voice and gives himself a long stroke.

I take a deep breath. And then I rush forward and swing with the broom. Whoosh! I’ve missed him by inches and he dances away. I lunge again and the man runs toward the house. He heads straight for the back door, where Miss Celia’s face is in the window.

“Nigger can’t catch me! Nigger too fat to run!”

He makes it to the steps and I panic that he’s going to try and bust down the door, but then he flips around and runs along the sideyard, holding that gigantic flopping po’boy in his hand.

“You get out a here!” I scream after him, feeling a sharp pain, knowing my cut’s ripping wider.

I rush him hard from the bushes to the pool, heaving and panting. He slows at the edge of the water and I get close and land a good swing on his rear, thwak! The stick snaps and the brush-end flies off.

“Didn’t hurt!” He jiggles his hand between his legs, hitching up his knees. “Have a little pecker pie, nigger? Come on, get you some pecker pie!”

I dive around him back to the middle of the yard, but the man is too tall and too fast and I’m getting slower. My swings are flying wild and soon I’m hardly even jogging. I stop, lean over, breathing hard, the short broken-off broom in my hand. I look down and the knife – it is gone.

As soon as I look back up, whaaam! I stagger. The ringing comes harsh and loud, making me totter. I cover my ear but the ringing gets louder. He’s punched me on the same side as the cut.

He comes closer and I close my eyes, knowing what’s about to happen to me, knowing I’ve got to move away but I can’t. Where is the knife? Does he have the knife? The ringing’s like a nightmare.

“You get out a here before I kill you,” I hear, like it’s in a tin can. My hearing’s half gone and I open my eyes. There’s Miss Celia in her pink satin nightgown. She’s got a fire poker in her hand, heavy, sharp.

“White lady want a taste a pecker pie, too?” He flops his penis around at her and she steps closer to the man, slow, like a cat. I take a deep breath while the man jumps left, then right, laughing and chomping his toothless gums. But Miss Celia just stands still.

After a few seconds he frowns, looks disappointed that Miss Celia isn’t doing anything. She’s not swinging or frowning or hollering. He looks over at me. “What about you? Nigger too tired to —”

Crack!

The man’s jaw goes sideways and blood bursts out of his mouth. He wobbles around, turns, and Miss Celia whacks the other side of his face too. Like she just wanted to even him up.

The man stumbles forward, looking nowhere in particular. Then he falls face flat.

“Lordy, you… you got him…” I say, but in the back of my head, there’s this voice asking me, real calm, like we’re just having tea out here, Is this really happening? Is a white woman really beating up a white man to save me? Or did he shake my brain pan loose and I’m over there dead on the ground…

I try to focus my eyes. Miss Celia, she’s got a snarl on her lips. She raises her rod and ka-wham! across the back of his knees.

This ain’t happening, I decide. This is just too damn strange.

Ka-wham! She hits him across his shoulders, making a ugh sound every time.

“I – I said you got him now, Miss Celia,” I say. But evidently, Miss Celia doesn’t think so. Even with my ears ringing, it sounds like chicken bones cracking. I stand up straighter, make myself focus my eyes before this turns into a homicide. “He down, he down, Miss Celia,” I say. “Fact, he” – I struggle to catch the poker – “he might be dead.”

I finally catch it and she lets go and the poker flies into the yard. Miss Celia steps back from him, spits in the grass. Blood’s spattered across her pink satin nightgown. The fabric’s stuck to her legs.

“He ain’t dead,” Miss Celia says.

“He close,” I say.

“Did he hit you hard, Minny?” she asks, but she’s staring down at him. “Did he hurt you bad?”

I can feel blood running down my temple but I know it’s from the sugar bowl cut that’s split open again. “Not as bad as you hurt him,” I say.

The man groans and we both jump back. I grab the poker and the broom handle from the grass. I don’t give her either one.

He rolls halfway over. His face is bloody on both sides, his eyes are swelling shut. His jaw’s been knocked off its hinge and somehow he still brings himself to his feet. And then he starts to walk away, a pathetic wobbly thing. He doesn’t even look back at us. We just stand there and watch him hobble through the prickly boxwood bushes and disappear in the trees.

“He ain’t gone get far,” I say, and I keep my grip on that poker. “You whooped him pretty good.”

“You think?” she says.

I give her a look. “Like Joe Louis with a tire iron.”

She brushes a clump of blond hair out of her face, looks at me like it kills her that I got hit. Suddenly I realize I ought to thank her, but truly, I’ve got no words to draw from. This is a brand-new invention we’ve come up with.

All I can say is, “You looked mighty… sure a yourself.”

“I used to be a good fighter.” She looks out along the boxwoods, wipes off her sweat with her palm. “If you’d known me ten years ago…”

She’s got no goo on her face, her hair’s not sprayed, her nightgown’s like an old prairie dress. She takes a deep breath through her nose and I see it. I see the white-trash girl she was ten years ago. She was strong. She didn’t take no shit from nobody.

Miss Celia turns and I follow her back to the house. I see the knife in the rosebush and snatch it up. Lord, if that man had gotten hold of this, we’d be dead. In the guest bathroom, I clean the cut, cover it with a white bandage. The headache is bad. When I come out, I hear Miss Celia on the phone, talking to the Madison County police.

I wash my hands, wonder how an awful day could turn even worse. It seems like at some point you’d just run out of awful. I try to get my mind on real life again. Maybe I’ll stay at my sister Octavia’s tonight, show Leroy I’m not going to put up with it anymore. I go in the kitchen, put the beans on to simmer. Who am I fooling? I already know I’ll end up at home tonight.

I hear Miss Celia hang up with the police. And then I hear her perform her usual pitiful check, to make sure the line is free.

* * *

That afternoon, I do a terrible thing. I drive past Aibileen walking home from the bus stop. Aibileen waves and I pretend I don’t even see my own best friend on the side of the road in her bright white uniform.

When I get to my house, I fix an icepack for my eye. The kids aren’t home yet and Leroy’s asleep in the back. I don’t know what to do about anything, not Leroy, not Miss Hilly. Never mind I got boxed in the ear by a naked white man this morning. I just sit and stare at my oily yellow walls. Why can’t I ever get these walls clean?

“Minny Jackson. You too good to give old Aibileen a ride?”

I sigh and turn my sore head so she can see.

“Oh,” she says.

I look back at the wall.

“Aibileen,” I say and hear myself sigh. “You ain’t gone believe my day.”

“Come on over. I make you some coffee.”

Before I walk out, I peel that glaring bandage off, slip it in my pocket with my icepack. On some folks around here, a cut-up eye wouldn’t even get a comment. But I’ve got good kids, a car with tires, and a refrigerator freezer. I’m proud of my family and the shame of the eye is worse than the pain.

I follow Aibileen through the sideyards and backyards, avoiding the traffic and the looks. I’m glad she knows me so well.

In her little kitchen, Aibileen puts the coffeepot on for me, the tea kettle for herself.

“So what you gone do about it?” Aibileen asks and I know she means the eye. We don’t talk about me leaving Leroy. Plenty of black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump, but it’s just not something the colored woman do. We’ve got the kids to think about.

“Thought about driving up to my sister’s. But I can’t take the kids, they got school.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with the kids missing school a few days. Not if you protecting yourself.”

I fasten the bandage back, hold the icepack to it so the swelling won’t be so bad when my kids see me tonight.

“You tell Miss Celia you slip in the bathtub again?”

“Yeah, but she know.”

“Why, what she say?” Aibileen ask.

“It’s what she did.” And I tell Aibileen all about how Miss Celia beat the naked man with the fire poker this morning. Feels like ten years ago.

“That man a been black, he be dead in the ground. Police would a had a all-points alert for fifty-three states,” Aibileen say.

“All her girly, high-heel ways and she just about kill him,” I say.

Aibileen laughs. “What he call it again?”

“Pecker pie. Crazy Whitfield fool.” I have to keep myself from smiling because I know it’ll make the cut split open again.

“Law, Minny, you have had some things happen to you.” “How come she ain’t got no problem defending herself from that crazy man? But she chase after Miss Hilly like she just begging for abuse?” I say this even though Miss Celia getting her feelings hurt is the least of my worries right now. It just feels kind of good to talk about someone else’s screwed-up life.

“Almost sounds like you care,” Aibileen says, smiling.

“She just don’t see em. The lines. Not between her and me, not between her and Hilly.”

Aibileen takes a long sip of her tea. Finally I look at her. “What you so quiet for? I know you got a opinion bout all this.”

“You gone accuse me a philosophizing.”

“Go ahead,” I say. “I ain’t afraid a no philosophy.”

“It ain’t true.”

“Say what?”

“You talking about something that don’t exist.”

I shake my head at my friend. “Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.”

Aibileen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain’t.”

“I know they there cause you get punished for crossing em,” I say. “Least I do.”

“Lot a folks think if you talk back to you husband, you crossed the line. And that justifies punishment. You believe in that line?”

I scowl down at the table. “You know I ain’t studying no line like that.”

“Cause that line ain’t there. Except in Leroy’s head. Lines between black and white ain’t there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the society ladies too.”

Thinking about Miss Celia coming out with that fire poker when she could’ve hid behind the door, I don’t know. I get a twinge. I want her to understand how it is with Miss Hilly. But how do you tell a fool like her?

“So you saying they ain’t no line between the help and the boss either?”

Aibileen shakes her head. “They’s just positions, like on a checkerboard. Who work for who don’t mean nothing.”

“So I ain’t crossing no line if I tell Miss Celia the truth, that she ain’t good enough for Hilly?” I pick my cup up. I’m trying hard to get this, but my cut’s thumping against my brain. “But wait, if I tell her Miss Hilly’s out a her league… then ain’t I saying they is a line?”

Aibileen laughs. She pats my hand. “All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”

“Hmph.” I put the ice to my head again. “Well, maybe I’ll try to tell her. Before she goes to the Benefit and makes a big pink fool a herself.”

“You going this year?” Aibileen asks.

“If Miss Hilly gone be in the same room as Miss Celia telling her lies about me, I want a be there. Plus Sugar wants to make a little money for Christmas. Be good for her to start learning party serving.”

“I be there too,” says Aibileen. “Miss Leefolt done asked me three months ago would I do a lady-finger cake for the auction.”

“That old bland thing again? Why them white folks like the lady-fingers so much? I can make a dozen cakes taste better’n that.”

“They think it be real European.” Aibileen shakes her head. “I feel bad for Miss Skeeter. I know she don’t want a go, but Miss Hilly tell her if she don’t, she lose her oficer job.”

I drink down the rest of Aibileen’s good coffee, watch the sun sink. The air turns cooler through the window.

“I guess I got to go,” I say, even though I’d rather spend the rest of my life right here in Aibileen’s cozy little kitchen, having her explain the world to me. That’s what I love about Aibileen, she can take the most complicated things in life and wrap them up so small and simple, they’ll fit right in your pocket.

“You and the kids want a come stay with me?”

“No.” I untack the bandage, slip it back in my pocket. “I want him to see me,” I say, staring down at my empty coffee cup. “See what he done to his wife.”

“Call me on the phone if he gets rough. You hear me?”

“I don’t need no phone. You’ll hear him screaming for mercy all the way over here.”

* * *

The thermometer by Miss Celia’s kitchen window sinks down from seventy-nine to sixty to fifty-five in less than an hour. At last, a cold front’s moving in, bringing cool air from Canada or Chicago or somewhere. I’m picking the lady peas for stones, thinking about how we’re breathing the same air those Chicago people breathed two days ago. Wondering if, for no good reason I started thinking about Sears and Roebuck or Shake ’n Bake, would it be because some Illinoian had thought it two days ago. It gets my mind off my troubles for about five seconds.

It took me a few days, but I finally came up with a plan. It’s not a good one, but at least it’s something. I know that every minute I wait is a chance for Miss Celia to call up Miss Hilly. I wait too long and she’ll see her at the Benefit next week. It makes me sick thinking about Miss Celia running up to those girls like they’re best friends, the look on her made-up face when she hears about me. This morning, I saw the list by Miss Celia’s bed. Of what else she needs to do for the Benefit: Get fingernails done. Get tuxedo Martinized and pressed. Call Hilly Holbrook.

“Minny, does this new hair color look cheap?”

I just look at her.

“Tomorrow I am marching down to Fanny Mae’s and getting it recolored.” She’s sitting at the kitchen table and holds up a handful of sample strips, splayed out like playing cards. “What do you think? Butterbatch or Marilyn Monroe?”

“Why you don’t like you own natural color?” Not that I have any idea what that might be. But it’s sure not the brass-bell or the sickly white on those cards in her hand.

“I think this Butterbatch is a little more festive, for the holidays and all. Don’t you?”

“If you want your head to look like a Butterball turkey.”

Miss Celia giggles. She thinks I’m kidding. “Oh and I have to show you this new fingernail polish.” She scrambles in her purse, finds a bottle of something so pink it looks like you could eat it. She opens the bottle and starts painting on her nails.

“Please, Miss Celia, don’t do that mess on the table, it don’t come —”

“Look, isn’t it the thing? And I’ve found two dresses to match it just exactly!”

She scoots off and comes back holding two hot-pink gowns, smiling all over them. They’re long to the floor, covered in sparkles and sequins, slits up the leg. Both hang by straps thin as chickenwire. They are going to tear her up at that party.

“Which one do you like better?” asks Miss Celia.

I point to the one without the low-cut neckline.

“Oh, see now, I would’ve chosen this other one. Listen to the little rattle it makes when I walk.” She swishes the dress from side to side.

I think about her rattling around the party in that thing. Whatever the white version of a juke-joint hussy is, that’s what they’ll be calling her. She won’t even know what’s happening. She’ll just hear the hissing.

“You know, Miss Celia,” I speak kind of slow like it’s just now coming to me. “Instead a calling them other ladies, maybe you should call up Miss Skeeter Phelan. I heard she real nice.”

I asked Miss Skeeter this favor a few days ago, to try and be nice to Miss Celia, steer her away from those ladies. Up to now, I’ve been telling Miss Skeeter not to dare call Miss Celia back. But now, it’s the only option I have.

“I think you and Miss Skeeter would get along just fine,” I say and I crank out a big smile.

“Oh no.” Miss Celia looks at me all wide-eyed, holding up those saloon-looking gowns. “Don’t you know? The League members can’t stand Skeeter Phelan anymore.”

My hands knuckle into fists. “You ever met her?”

“Oh, I heard all about it at Fanny Mae’s setting under the heating hood. They said she’s the biggest embarrassment this town’s ever seen. Said she was the one who put all those toilets on Hilly Holbrook’s front yard. Remember that picture that showed up in the paper a few months ago?”

I grind my teeth together to keep my real words in. “I said, have you ever met her?”

“Well, no. But if all those girls don’t like her, then she must be… well she…” Her words trail off like it’s just hitting her what she’s saying.

Sickedness, disgust, disbelief – it all wraps together in me like a ham roll. To keep myself from finishing that sentence for her, I turn to the sink. I dry my hands to the point of hurting. I knew she was stupid, but I never knew she was a hypocrite.

“Minny?” Miss Celia says behind me.

“Ma’am.”

She keeps her voice quiet. But I hear the shame in it. “They didn’t even ask me in the house. They made me stand out on the steps like a vacuum salesman.”

I turn around and her eyes are down to the floor.

“Why, Minny?” she whispers.

What can I say? Your clothes, your hair, your boobies in the size-nothing sweaters. I remember what Aibileen said about the lines and the kindness. I remember what Aibileen heard at Miss Leefolt’s, of why the League ladies don’t like her. It seems like the kindest reason I can think of.

“Because they know about you getting pregnant that first time. And it makes them mad you getting knocked up and marrying one a their mens.”

“They know about that?”

“And especially since Miss Hilly and Mister Johnny went steady for so long.”

She just blinks at me a second. “Johnny said he used to date her but… was it really for that long?”

I shrug like I don’t know, but I do. When I started working at Miss Walters’ eight years ago, all Miss Hilly talked about was how she and Johnny were going to get married someday.

I say, “I reckon they broke up right around the time he met you.”

I’m waiting for it to hit her, that her social life is doomed. That there’s no sense in calling the League ladies anymore. But Miss Celia looks like she’s doing high math, the way she’s got her brow scrunched up. Then her face starts to clear like she’s figured something out.

“So Hilly… she probably thinks I was fooling around with Johnny while they were still going steady then.”

“Probably. And from what I hear, Miss Hilly still sweet on him. She never got over him.” I’m thinking, any normal person would automatically fie on a woman biding for her husband. But I forgot Miss Celia is not a normal person.

“Well, no wonder she can’t stand me!” she says, grinning with all she’s got. “They don’t hate me, they hate what they think I did.”

“What? They hate you cause they think you white trash!”

“Well, I’m just going to have to explain it to Hilly, let her know I am not a boyfriend stealer. In fact, I’ll tell Hilly on Friday night, when I see her at the Benefit.”

She’s smiling like she just discovered the cure for polio, the way she’s worked out a plan to win Miss Hilly over.

At this point, I am too tired to fight it.

* * *

On Benefit Friday, I work late cleaning that house top to bottom. Then I fry up a plate of pork chops. The way I figure it, the shinier the floors, the clearer the windowpanes, the better my chances are of having a job on Monday. But the smartest thing I can do, if Mister Johnny’s got a say in this, is plant my pork chop in his hand.

He’s not supposed to be home until six tonight, so at four-thirty I wipe the counters one last time, then head to the back where Miss Celia’s been getting ready for the past four hours. I like to do their bed and bathroom last so it’s clean for when Mister Johnny gets home.

“Miss Celia, now what is going on in here?” I mean, she’s got stockings dangling from chairs, pocketbooks on the floor, enough costume jewelry for a whole family of hookers, forty-five pairs of high-heel shoes, underthings, overcoats, panties, brassieres, and a half-empty bottle of white wine on the chifforobe with no coaster under it.

I start picking up all her stupid silky things and piling them on the chair. The least I can do is run the Hoover.

“What time is it, Minny?” Miss Celia says from the bathroom. “Johnny’ll be home at six, you know.”

“Ain’t even five yet,” I say, “but I got to go soon.” I have to pick up Sugar and get us to the party by six-thirty to serve.

“Oh Minny, I’m so excited.” I hear Miss Celia’s dress swishing behind me. “What do you think?”

I turn around. “Oh my Lord.” I might as well be Little Stevie Wonder I am so blinded by that dress. Hot-pink and silver sequins glitter from her extra-large boobies all the way to her hot-pink toes.

“Miss Celia,” I whisper. “Tuck yourself in fore you lose something.”

Miss Celia shimmies the dress up. “Isn’t it gorgeous? Ain’t it just the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen? I feel like I’m a Hollywood movie star.”

She bats her fake-lashed eyes. She is rouged, painted, and plastered with makeup. The Butterbatch hairdo is poufed up around her head like an Easter bonnet. One leg peeks out in a high, thigh-baring slit and I turn away, too embarrassed to look. Everything about her oozes sex, sex, and more sex.

“Where you get them fingernails?”

“At the Beauty Box this morning. Oh Minny, I’m so nervous, I’ve got butterflies.”

She takes a heavy swig from her wineglass, kind of teeters a little in her high heels.

“What you had to eat today?”

“Nothing. I’m too nervous to eat. What about these earrings? Are they dangly enough?”

“Take that dress off, let me fix you some biscuits right quick.”

“Oh no, I can’t have my stomach poking out. I can’t eat anything.”

I head for the wine bottle on the gozillion-dollar chifforobe but Miss Celia gets to it before me, dumps the rest into her glass. She hands me the empty and smiles. I pick up her fur coat she’s got tossed on the floor. She’s getting pretty used to having a maid.

I saw that dress four days ago and I knew it looked hussified – of course she had to pick the one with the low neckline – but I had no idea what would happen when she stuffed herself inside it. She’s popping out like a corn cob in Crisco. With twelve Benefits under my belt, I’ve hardly seen so much as a bare elbow there, much less bosoms and shoulders.

She goes in the bathroom and dabs some more rouge on her gaudy cheeks.

“Miss Celia,” I say, and I close my eyes, praying for the right words. “Tonight, when you see Miss Hilly…”

She smiles into the mirror. “I got it all planned. When Johnny goes to the bathroom, I’m just going to tell her. That they were over with by the time me and Johnny started getting together.”

I sigh. “That ain’t what I mean. It’s… she might say some things about… me.”

“You want me to tell Hilly you said hi?” she says, coming out of the bathroom. “Since you worked all those years for her mama?”

I just stare at her in her hot-pink get-up, so full of wine she’s almost cross-eyed. She burps up a little. There really isn’t any use telling her now, in this state.

“No ma’am. Don’t tell her nothing.” I sigh.

She gives me a hug. “I’ll see you tonight. I’m so glad you’ll be there so I’ll have somebody to talk to.”

“I’ll be in the kitchen, Miss Celia.”

“Oh and I’ve got to find that little doo-hickey pin…” She teeters over to the dresser, yanks out all the things I just put away.

Just stay home, fool, is what I want to say to her, but I don’t. It’s too late. With Miss Hilly at the helm, it is too late for Miss Celia, and Lord knows, it is too late for me.