Aibileen

Chapter 29

The heat done seeped into everything. For a week now it’s been a hundred degrees and ninety-nine percent humidity. Get any wetter, we be swimming. Can’t get my sheets to dry on the line, my front door won’t close it done swell up so much. Sho nuff couldn’t get a meringue to whip. Even my church wig starting to frizz.

This morning, I can’t even get my stockings on. My legs is too swollen. I figure I just do it when I get to Miss Leefolt’s, in the air-condition. It must be record heat, cause I been tending to white folks for forty-one years and this the first time in history I ever went to work without no stockings on.

But Miss Leefolt’s house be hotter than my own. “Aibileen, go on and get the tea brewed and… salad plates… wipe them down now…” She ain’t even come in the kitchen today. She in the living room and she done pull a chair next to the wall vent, so what’s left a the air-condition blowing up her slip. That’s all she got on, her full slip and her earrings. I wait on white ladies who walk right out the bedroom wearing nothing but they personality, but Miss Leefolt don’t do like that.

Ever once in a while, that air-condition motor go phheeewww. Like it just giving up. Miss Leefolt call the repairman twice now and he say he coming, but I bet he ain’t. Too hot.

“And don’t forget… that silver thingamajig – cornichon server, it’s in the…”

But she give up before she finish, like it’s too hot to even tell me what to do. And you know that be hot. Seem like everbody in town got the heat-crazies. Go out on the street and it feel real still, eerie, like right before a tornado hit. Or maybe it’s just me, jittery cause a the book. It’s coming out on Friday.

“You think we ought a cancel bridge club?” I ask her from the kitchen. Bridge club changed to Mondays now and the ladies gone be here in twenty minutes.

“No. Everything’s… already done,” she say, but I know she ain’t thinking straight.

“I’ll try to whip the cream again. Then I got to go in the garage. Get my stockings on.”

“Oh don’t worry about it, Aibileen. It’s too hot for stockings.” Miss Leefolt finally get up from that wall vent, drag herself on in the kitchen, flapping a Chow-Chow Chinese Restaurant fan. “Oh God, it must be fifteen degrees hotter in the kitchen than it is in the dining room!”

“Oven a be off in a minute. Kids gone out back to play.”

Miss Leefolt look out the window at the kids playing in the sprinkler. Mae Mobley down to just her underpants, Ross – I call him Li’l Man – he in his diaper. He ain’t even a year old yet and already he walking like a big boy. He never even crawled.

“I don’t see how they can stand it out there,” Miss Leefolt say.

Mae Mobley love playing with her little brother, looking after him like she his mama. But Mae Mobley don’t get to stay home with us all day no more. My Baby Girl go to the Broadmoore Baptist Pre-School ever morning. Today be Labor Day, though, a holiday for the rest a the world, so no class today. I’m glad too. I don’t know how many days I got left with her.

“Look at them out there,” Miss Leefolt say and I come over to the window where she standing. The sprinkler be blooming up into the treetops, making them rainbows. Mae Mobley got Li’l Man by the hands and they standing under the sprinkles with they eyes closed like they being baptized.

“They are really something special,” she say, sighing, like she just now figuring this out.

“They sure is,” I say and I spec we bout shared us a moment, me and Miss Leefolt, looking out the window at the kids we both love. It makes me wonder if things done changed just a little. It is 1964 after all. Downtown, they letting Negroes set at the Woolworth counter.

I get a real heartsick feeling then, wondering if I gone too far. Cause after the book come out, if folks find out it was us, I probably never get to see these kids again. What if I don’t even get to tell Mae Mobley goodbye, and that she a fine girl, one last time? And Li’l Man? Who gone tell him the story a the Green Martian Luther King?

I already been through all this with myself, twenty times over. But today it’s just starting to feel so real. I touch the window pane like I be touching them. If she find out… oh, I’m gone miss these kids.

I look over and see Miss Leefolt’s eyes done wandered down to my bare legs. I think she curious, you know. I bet she ain’t never seen bare black legs up close before. But then, I see she frowning. She look up at Mae Mobley, give her that same hateful frown. Baby Girl done smeared mud and grass all across her front. Now she decorating her brother with it like he a pig in a sty and I see that old disgust Miss Leefolt got for her own daughter. Not for Li’l Man, just Mae Mobley. Saved up special for her.

“She’s ruining the yard!” Miss Leefolt say.

“I go get em. I take care —”

“And I can’t have you serving us like that, with your – your legs showing!”

“I tole you —”

“Hilly’s going to be here in five minutes and she’s messed up everything!” she screech. I guess Mae Mobley hear her through the window cause she look over at us, frozen. Smile fades. After a second, she start wiping the mud off her face real slow.

I put a apron on cause I got to hose them kids off. Then I’m on go in the garage, get my stockings on. Book coming out in four days. Ain’t a minute too soon.

* * *

We been living in anticipation. Me, Minny, Miss Skeeter, all the maids with stories in the book. Feel like we been waiting for some invisible pot a water to boil for the past seven months. After bout the third month a waiting, we just stopped talking about it. Got us too excited.

But for the past two weeks, I’ve had a secret joy and a secret dread both rattling inside a me that make waxing floors go even slower and washing underwear a uphill race. Ironing pleats turns into a eternity, but what can you do. We all pretty sure nothing’s gone be said about it right at first. Just like Miss Stein told Miss Skeeter, this book ain’t gone be no best-seller and to keep our “expectations low.” Miss Skeeter say maybe don’t spec nothing at all, that most Southern peoples is “repressed.” If they feel something, they might not say a word. Just hold they breath and wait for it to pass, like gas.

Minny say, “I hope she hold her breath till she explode all over Hinds County.” She mean Miss Hilly. I wish Minny was wishing for change in the direction a kindness, but Minny is Minny, all the time.

* * *

“You want you a snack, Baby Girl?” I ask when she get home from school on Thursday. Oh, she a big girl! Already four years old. She tall for her age – most folks think she five or six. Skinny as her mama is, Mae Mobley still chubby. And her hair ain’t looking too good. She decide to give herself a haircut with her construction paper scissors and you know how that turn out. Miss Leefolt had to take her down to the grown-up beauty parlor but they couldn’t do a whole lot with it. It still be short on one side with almost nothing in front.

I fix her a little something low-calorie to eat cause that’s all Miss Leefolt let me give her. Crackers and tunafish or Jell-O without no whip cream.

“What you learn today?” I ask even though she ain’t in real school, just the pretend kind. Other day, when I ask her, she say, “Pilgrims. They came over and nothing would grow so they ate the Indians.”

Now I knew them Pilgrims didn’t eat no Indians. But that ain’t the point. Point is, we got to watch what get up in these kids’ heads. Ever week, she still get her Aibileen lesson, her secret story. When Li’l Man get big enough to listen, I’m on tell him too. I mean, if I still got a job here. But I don’t think it’s gone be the same with Li’l Man. He love me, but he wild, like a animal. Come and hug on my knees so hard then off he shoots to look after something else. But even if I don’t get to do this for him, I don’t feel too bad. What I know is, I got it started and that baby boy, even though he can’t talk a word yet, he listen to everthing Mae Mobley say.

Today when I ask what she learn, Mae Mobley just say, “Nothing,” and stick her lip out.

“How you like your teacher?” I ask her.

“She’s pretty,” she say.

“Good,” I say. “You pretty too.”

“How come you’re colored, Aibileen?”

Now I’ve gotten this question a few times from my other white kids. I used to just laugh, but I want to get this right with her. “Cause God made me colored,” I say. “And there ain’t another reason in the world.”

“Miss Taylor says kids that are colored can’t go to my school cause they’re not smart enough.”

I come round the counter then. Lift her chin up and smooth back her funny-looking hair. “You think I’m dumb?”

“No,” she whispers hard, like she means it so much. She look sorry she said it.

“What that tell you about Miss Taylor, then?”

She blink, like she listening good.

“Means Miss Taylor ain’t right all the time,” I say.

She hug me around my neck, say, “You’re righter than Miss Taylor.” I tear up then. My cup is spilling over. Those is new words to me.

* * *

At four o’clock that afternoon, I walk as fast as I can from the bus stop to the Church a the Lamb. I wait inside, watch out the window. After ten minutes a trying to breathe and drumming my fingers on the sill, I see the car pull up. White lady gets out and I squint my eyes. This lady looks like one a them hippies I seen on Miss Leefolt’s tee-vee. She got on a short white dress and sandals. Her hair’s long without no spray on it. The weight of it’s worked out the curl and frizz. I laugh into my hand, wishing I could run out there and give her a hug. I ain’t been able to see Miss Skeeter in person in six months, since we finished Miss Stein’s edits and turned in the final copy.

Miss Skeeter pull a big brown box out the back seat, then carries it up to the church door, like she dropping off old clothes. She stop a second and look at the door, but then she get in her car and drive away. I’m sad she had to do it this way but we don’t want a blow it fore it even starts.

Soon as she gone, I run out and tote the box inside and grab out a copy and I just stare. I don’t even try not to cry. Be the prettiest book I ever seen. The cover is a pale-blue, color a the sky. And a big white bird – a peace dove – spreads its wings from end to end. The title Help is written across the front in black letters, in a bold fashion. The only thing that bothers me is the who-it-be-by part. It say by Anonymous. I wish Miss Skeeter could a put her name on it, but it was just too much of a risk.

Tomorrow, I’m on take early copies to all the women whose stories we put in. Miss Skeeter gone carry a copy up to the State Pen to Yule May. In a way, she’s the reason the other maids even agreed to help. But I hear Yule May probably won’t get the box. Them prisoners don’t get but one out a ten things sent to em cause the lady guards take it for theyselves. Miss Skeeter say she gone deliver copies ten more times to make sure.

I carry that big box home and take out one copy and put the box under my bed. Then I run over to Minny’s house. Minny six months pregnant but you can’t even tell yet. When I get there, she setting at the kitchen table drinking a glass a milk. Leroy asleep in the back and Benny and Sugar and Kindra is shelling peanuts in the backyard. The kitchen’s quiet. I smile, hand Minny her copy.

She eye it. “I guess the dove bird looks okay.”

“Miss Skeeter say the peace dove be the sign for better times to come. Say folks is wearing em on they clothes out in California.”

“I don’t care bout no peoples in California,” Minny say, staring at that cover. “All I care about is what the folks in Jackson, Mississippi, got to say about it.”

“Copies gone show up in the bookstores and the libraries tomorrow. Twenty-five hundred in Mississippi, other half all over the United States.” That’s a lot more than what Miss Stein told us before, but since the freedom rides started and them civil rights workers disappeared in that station wagon here in Mississippi, she say folks is paying more attention to our state.

“How many copies going to the white Jackson library?” Minny ask. “Zero?”

I shake my head with a smile. “Three copies. Miss Skeeter told me on the phone this morning.”

Even Minny look stunned. Just two months ago the white library started letting colored people in. I been in twice myself.

Minny open the book and she start reading it right there. Kids come in and she tell them what to do and how to do it without even looking up. Eyes don’t even stop moving across the page. I already done read it many a time, working on it over the past year. But Minny always said she don’t want a read it till it come out in the hardboard. Say she don’t want a spoil it.

I set there with Minny awhile. Time to time she grin. Few times she laugh. And more an once she growl. I don’t ask what for. I leave her to it and head home. After I write all my prayers, I go to bed with that book setting on the pillow next to me.

* * *

The next day at work, all I can think about is how stores is putting my book on the shelves. I mop, I iron, I change diapers, but I don’t hear a word about it in Miss Leefolt’s house. It’s like I ain’t even written a book. I don’t know what I spected – some kind a stirring – but it’s just a regular old hot Friday with flies buzzing on the screen.

That night six maids in the book call my house asking has anybody said anything. We linger on the line like the answer’s gone change if we breathe into the phone long enough.

Miss Skeeter call last. “I went by the Bookworm this afternoon. Stood around awhile, but nobody even picked it up.”

“Eula say she went by the colored bookstore. Same thing.”

“Alright,” she sigh.

But all that weekend and then into the next week, we don’t hear nothing. The same old books set on Miss Leefolt’s nightstand: Frances Benton’s Etiquette, Peyton Place, that old dusty Bible she keep by the bed for show. But Law if I don’t keep glancing at that stack like a stain.

By Wednesday, they still ain’t even a ripple in the water. Not one person’s bought a copy in the white bookstore. The Farish Street store say they done sold about a dozen, which is good. Might a just been the other maids, though, buying for they friends.

On Thursday, day seven, before I even left for work, my phone ring.

“I’ve got news,” Miss Skeeter whisper. I reckon she must be locked up in the pantry again.

“What happen?”

“Missus Stein called and said we’re going to be on the Dennis James show.”

“People Will Talk? The tee-vee show?”

“Our book made the book review. She said it’ll be on Channel Three next Thursday at one o’clock.”

Law, we gone be on WLBT-TV! It’s a local Jackson show, and it come on in color, right after the twelve o’clock news.

“You think the review gone be good or bad?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if Dennis reads the books or just says what they tell him to.”

I feel excited and scared at the same time. Something got to happen after that.

“Missus Stein said somebody must’ve felt sorry for us in the Harper and Row publicity department and made some calls. She said we’re the first book she’s handled with a publicity budget of zero.”

We laugh, but we both sound nervous.

“I hope you get to watch it at Elizabeth’s. If you can’t, I’ll call you and tell you everything they said.”

* * *

On Friday night, a week after the book come out, I get ready to go to the church. Deacon Thomas call me this morning and ask would I come to a special meeting they having, but when I ask what about, he get all in a hurry and say he got to go. Minny say she got the same thing. So I iron up a nice linen dress a Miss Greenlee’s and head to Minny’s house. We gone walk there together.

As usual, Minny’s house be like a chicken coop on fire. Minny be hollering, things be flinging around, all the kids squawking. I see the first hint a Minny’s belly under her dress and I’m grateful she finally showing. Leroy, he don’t hit Minny when she pregnant. And Minny know this so I spec they’s gone be a lot more babies after this one.

“Kindra! Get your butt off that floor!” Minny holler. “Them beans better be hot when your daddy wakes up!”

Kindra – she seven now – she sass-walk her way to the stove with her bottom sticking out and her nose up in the air. Pans go banging all over the place. “Why I got to do dinner? It’s Sugar’s turn!”

“Cause Sugar at Miss Celia’s and you want a live to see third grade.”

Benny come in and squeeze me round the middle. He grin and show me the tooth he got missing, then run off.

“Kindra, turn that flame down fore you burn the house down!”

“We better go, Minny,” I say, cause this could go on all night. “We gone be late.”

Minny look at her watch. Shake her head. “Why Sugar ain’t home yet? Miss Celia ain’t never kept me this late.”

Last week, Minny started bringing Sugar to work. She getting her trained for when Minny have her baby and Sugar gone have to fill in for her. Tonight Miss Celia ask Sugar to work late, say she drive her home.

“Kindra, I don’t want a see so much as a bean setting in that sink when I get back. Clean up good now.” Minny give her a hug. “Benny, go tell Daddy he better get his fool self out a that bed.”

“Aww, Mama, why I —”

“Go on, be brave. Just don’t stand too close when he come to.”

We make it out the door and down to the street fore we hear Leroy hollering at Benny for waking him up. I walk faster so she don’t go back and give Leroy what he good for.

“Glad we going to church tonight,” Minny sigh. We round Farish Street, start up the steps. “Give me a hour a not thinking about it all.”

Soon as we step in the church foyer, one a the Brown brothers slip behind us and he lock the door. I’m about to ask why, would a got scared if I had the time, but then the thirty-odd peoples in the room start clapping. Minny and me start clapping with em. Figure somebody got into college or something.

“Who we clapping for?” I ask Rachel Johnson. She the Reverend wife.

She laugh and it get quiet. Rachel lean in to me.

“Honey, we clapping for you.” Then she reach down and pull a copy a the book out a her purse. I look around and now everbody got a copy in they hands. All the important officers and church deacons are there.

Reverend Johnson come up to me then. “Aibileen, this is an important time for you and our church.”

“You must a cleaned out the bookstore,” I say, and the crowd laugh real polite-like.

“We want you to know, for your safety, this will be the only time the church recognizes you for your achievement. I know a lot of folks helped with this book, but I heard it couldn’t have been done without you.”

I look over and Minny’s smiling, and I know she in on it too.

“A quiet message has been sent throughout the congregation and all of the community, that if anyone knows who’s in the book or who wrote it, it’s not to be discussed. Except for tonight. I’m sorry” – he smile, shake his head – “but we just couldn’t let this go by without some kind of celebration.”

He hand me the book. “We know you couldn’t put your name in it, so we all signed our own for you.” I open up the front cover and there they is, not thirty or forty names, but hundreds, maybe five hundred, in the front pages, the back pages, along the rim a the inside pages. All the peoples in my church and folks from other churches too. Oh, I just break down then. It’s like two years a doing and trying and hoping all come out at once. Then everbody get in a line and come by and hug me. Tell me I’m brave. I tell em there are so many others that are brave too. I hate to hog all the attention, but I am so grateful they don’t mention no other names. I don’t want em in trouble. I don’t think they even know Minny’s in there.

“There may be some hard times ahead,” Reverend Johnson say to me. “If it comes to that, the Church will help you in every way.”

I cry and cry right there in front a everbody. I look over at Minny, and she laughing. Funny how peoples show they feelings in different ways. I wonder what Miss Skeeter would do if she was here and it kind a makes me sad. I know ain’t nobody in town gone sign a book for her and tell her she brave. Ain’t nobody gone tell her they look after her.

Then the Reverend hands me a box, wrapped in white paper, tied with light blue ribbon, same colors as the book. He lays his hand on it as a blessing. “This one, this is for the white lady. You tell her we love her, like she’s our own family.”

* * *

On Thursday, I wake up with the sun and go to work early. Today’s a big day. I get my kitchen work done fast. One a clock come and I make sure I got my ironing all set up in front a Miss Leefolt’s tee-vee, tuned to Channel Three. Li’l Man taking his nap and Mae Mobley at school.

I try and iron some pleats, but my hands is shaking and they come out all crooked. I spray it wet and start all over, fussing and frowning. Finally, the time comes.

In the box pops Dennis James. He start telling us what we gone discuss today. His black hair is sprayed down so heavy, it don’t even move. He is the fastest-talking Southern man I ever heard. Make me feel like I’m on a roller-coaster way he make his voice go. I’s so nervous I feel like I’m on throw up right here on Mister Raleigh’s church suit.

“…and we’ll end the show with the book review.” After the commercial, he do something on Elvis Presley’s jungle room. Then he do a piece on the new Interstate 55 they gone build, going through Jackson all the way to New Orleans. Then, at 1:22 p.m., a woman come set next to him by the name a Joline French. She say she the local book reviewer.

That very second, Miss Leefolt walk in the house. She all dressed up in her League outfit and her noisy high heels and she head straight for the living room.

“I am so glad that heat wave is over I could jump for joy,” she say.

Mister Dennis chatting bout some book called Little Big Man. I try to agree with her but I feel real stiff in the face all of a sudden. “I’ll – I’ll just turn this thing off.”

“No, keep it on!” say Miss Leefolt. “That’s Joline French on the television set! I better call Hilly and tell her.”

She clomp to the kitchen and get on the phone with Miss Hilly’s third maid in a month. Ernestine ain’t got but one arm. Miss Hilly pickings getting slim.

“Ernestine, this is Miss Elizabeth… Oh, she’s not? Well, you tell her the minute she walks in that our sorority sister is on the television set… That’s right, thank you.”

Miss Leefolt rush back in the living room and set on the sofa, but it’s a commercial on. I get to breathing hard. What is she doing? We ain’t never watched the tee-vee together before. And here a all days she front and center like she be watching herself on screen!

All a sudden the Dial soap commercial over. And there be Mister Dennis with my book in his hand! White bird look bigger than life. He holding it up and poking his finger at the word Anonymous. For two seconds I’m more proud than I is scared. I want to yell – That’s my book! That’s my book on the tee-vee! But I got to keep still, like I’m watching something humdrum. I can’t barely breathe!

“…called Help with testimonies from some of Mississippi’s very own housekeepers —”

“Oh, I wish Hilly was home! Who can I call? Look at those cute shoes she’s got on, I bet she got those at the Papagallo Shoppe.”

Please shut up! I reach down and turn it up a little, but then I wish I hadn’t. What if they talk about her? Would Miss Leefolt even recognize her own life?

“…read it last night and now my wife is reading it…” Mister Dennis talking like a auction man, laughing, eyebrows going up and down, pointing at our book. “…and it is truly touching. Enlightening, I’d say, and they used the made-up town of Niceville, Mississippi, but who knows?” He halfway cover his mouth, whisper real loud, “It could be Jackson!”

Say what?

“Now, I’m not saying it is, it could be anywhere, but just in case, you need to go get this book and make sure you aren’t in it! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha —”

I freeze, feel a tingle on my neck. Ain’t nothing in there that say Jackson. Tell me again it could be anywhere, Mister Dennis!

I see Miss Leefolt smiling at her friend on the tee-vee like the fool can see her, Mister Dennis be laughing and talking, but that sorority sister, Miss Joline, got a face on red as a stop sign.

“ – a disgrace to the South! A disgrace to the good Southern women who’ve spent their lives taking care of their help. I know I personally treat my help like family and every one of my friends does the same —”

“Why is she frowning like that on tee-vee?” Miss Leefolt whine at the box. “Joline!” She lean forward and tap-tap-tap her finger on Miss Joline’s forehead. “Don’t frown! You don’t look cute that way!”

“Joline, did you read that ending? About the pie? If my maid, Bessie Mae, is out there listening, Bessie Mae, I have a new respect for what you do every day. And I’ll pass on the chocolate pie from now on! Ha-Ha-Ha —”

But Miss Joline holding up the book like she want to burn it. “Do not buy this book! Ladies of Jackson, do not support this slander with your husbands’ hard-earned —”

“Huh?” Miss Leefolt ask Mister Dennis. And then poof – we on to a Tide commercial.

“What were they talking about?” Miss Leefolt ask me.

I don’t answer. My heart’s pounding.

“My friend Joline had a book in her hand.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What was it called? Help or something like that?”

I press the iron point down in the collar a Mister Raleigh’s shirt. I got to call Minny, Miss Skeeter, find out if they heard this. But Miss Leefolt standing there waiting for my answer and I know she ain’t gone let up. She never do.

“Did I hear them say it was about Jackson?” she say.

I keep right on staring at my iron.

“I think they said Jackson. But why don’t they want us to buy it?”

My hands is shaking. How can this be happening? I keep ironing, trying to make what’s beyond wrinkled smooth.

A second later, the Tide commercial’s over and there’s Dennis James again holding up the book and Miss Joline’s still all red in the face. “That’s all for today,” he say, “but y’all be sure and pick up your copy of Little Big Man and Help from our sponsor, the State Street Bookstore. And see for yourself, is it or is it not about Jackson?” And then the music come on and he holler, “Good day, Mississippi!”

Miss Leefolt look at me and say, “See that? I told you they said it was about Jackson!” and five minutes later, she off to the bookstore to buy herself a copy a what I done wrote about her.