LITMIR.BIZ

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say, taking a little puff a her cigarette, “not having her use the one in the house. I bid three spades.”

      “That’s exactly why I’ve designed the Home Help Sanitation Initiative,” Miss Hilly say. “As a disease-preventative measure.”

      I’m surprised by how tight my throat get. It’s a shame[8] I learned to keep down a long time ago.

      Miss Skeeter look real confused. “The Home… the what?”

      “A bill that requires every white home to have a separate bathroom for the colored help. I’ve even notified the surgeon general of Mississippi to see if he’ll endorse the idea. I pass.”

      Miss Skeeter, she frowning at Miss Hilly. She set her cards down faceup and say real matter-a-fact, “Maybe we ought to just build you a bathroom outside, Hilly.”

      And Law, do that room get quiet.

      Miss Hilly say, “I don’t think you ought to be joking around about the colored situation. Not if you want to stay on as editor of the League, Skeeter Phelan.”

      Miss Skeeter kind a laugh, but I can tell she don’t think it’s funny. “What, you’d… kick me out? For disagreeing with you?”

      Miss Hilly raise a eyebrow. “I will do whatever I have to do to protect our town. Your lead, Mama.”

      I go in the kitchen and don’t come out again till I hear the door close after Miss Hilly’s behind.

      When I know Miss Hilly gone, I put Mae Mobley in her playpen, drag the garbage bin out to the street cause the truck’s coming by today. At the top a the driveway, Miss Hilly and her crazy mama near bout back over me in they car, then yell out all friendly how sorry they is. I walk in the house, glad I ain’t got two new broken legs.

      When I go in the kitchen, Miss Skeeter’s in there. She leaning against the counter, got a serious look on her face, even more serious than usual. “Hey, Miss Skeeter. I get you something?”

      She glance out at the drive where Miss Leefolt’s talking to Miss Hilly through her car window. “No, I’m just… waiting.”

      I dry a tray with a towel. When I sneak a look over, she’s still got her worried eyes on that window. She don’t look like other ladies, being she so tall. She got real high cheekbones. Blue eyes that turn down, giving her a shy way about her. It’s quiet, except for the little radio on the counter, playing the gospel station. I wish she’d go on out a here.

      “Is that Preacher Green’s sermon you’re playing on the radio?” she ask.

      “Yes ma’am, it is.”

      Miss Skeeter kind a smile. “That reminds me so much of my maid growing up.”

      “Oh I knew Constantine,” I say.

      Miss Skeeter move her eyes from the window to me. “She raised me, did you know that?”

      I nod, wishing I hadn’t said nothing[9]. I know too much about that situation.

      “I’ve been trying to get an address for her family in Chicago,” she say, “but nobody can tell me anything.”

      “I don’t have it either, ma’am.”

      Miss Skeeter move her eyes back to the window, on Miss Hilly’s Buick. She shake her head, just a little. “Aibileen, that talk in there… Hilly’s talk, I mean…”

      I pick up a coffee cup, start drying it real good with my cloth.

      “Do you ever wish you could… change things?” she asks.

      And I can’t help myself. I look at her head-on. Cause that’s one a the stupidest questions I ever heard. She got a confused, disgusted look on her face, like she done salted her coffee instead a sugared it.

      I turn back to my washing, so she don’t see me rolling my eyes. “Oh no, ma’am, everthing’s fine.”

      “But that talk in there, about the bathroom —” and smack on that word, Miss Leefolt walk in the kitchen.

      “Oh, there you are, Skeeter.” She look at us both kind a funny. “I’m sorry, did I… interrupt something?” We both stand there, wondering what she might a heard.

      “I have to run,” Miss Skeeter says. “See you tomorrow, Elizabeth.” She open the back door, say, “Thanks, Aibileen, for lunch,” and she gone.

      I go in the dining room, start clearing the bridge table. And just like I knew she would, Miss Leefolt come in behind me wearing her upset smile. Her neck’s sticking out like she fixing to ask me something. She don’t like me talking to her friends when she ain’t around, never has. Always wanting to know what we saying. I go right on past her into the kitchen. I put Baby Girl in her high chair and start cleaning the oven.

      Miss Leefolt follow me in there, eyeball a bucket a Crisco, put it down. Baby Girl hold her arms out for her mama to pick her up, but Miss Leefolt open a cabinet, act like she don’t see. Then she slam it close, open another one. Finally she just stand there. I’m down on my hands and knees. Pretty soon my head’s so far in that oven I look like I’m trying to gas myself.

      “You and Miss Skeeter looked like you were talking awful serious about something.”

      “No ma’am, she just… asking do I want some old clothes,” I say and it sound like I’m down in a well-hole. Grease already working itself up my arms. Smell like a underarm in here. Don’t take no time fore sweat’s running down my nose and ever time I scratch at it, I get a plug a crud on my face. Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked. Tonight I just know I’m on have that dream I’m stuck inside and the gas gets turned on. But I keep my head in that awful place cause I’d rather be anywhere sides answering Miss Leefolt’s questions about what Miss Skeeter was trying to say to me. Asking do I want to change things.

      After while, Miss Leefolt huff and go out to the carport. I figure she looking at where she gone build me my new colored bathroom.

      Chapter 2

      You’d never know it living here, but Jackson, Mississippi, be filled with two hundred thousand peoples. I see them numbers in the paper and I got to wonder, where do them peoples live? Underground? Cause I know just about ever-body on my side a the bridge and plenty a white families too, and that sure don’t add up to be no two hundred thousand.

      Six days a week, I take the bus across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to where Miss Leefolt and all her white friends live, in a neighborhood call Belhaven. Right next to Belhaven be the downtown and the state capital. Capitol building is real big, pretty on the outside but I never been in it. I wonder what they pay to clean that place.

      Down the road from Belhaven is white Woodland Hills, then Sherwood Forest, which is miles a big live oaks with the moss hanging down. Nobody living in it yet, but it’s there for when the white folks is ready to move somewhere else new. Then it’s the country, out where Miss Skeeter live on the Long-leaf cotton plantation. She don’t know it, but I picked cotton out there in 1931, during the Depression[10], when we didn’t have nothing to eat but state cheese.

      So Jackson’s just one white neighborhood after the next and more springing up down the road. But the colored part a town, we one big anthill, surrounded by state land that ain’t for sale. As our numbers get bigger, we can’t spread out. Our part a town just gets thicker.

      I get on the number six bus that afternoon, which goes from Belhaven to Farish Street. The bus today is nothing but maids heading home in our white uniforms. We all chatting and smiling at each other like we own it – not cause we mind if they’s white people on here, we sit anywhere we want to now thanks to Miss Parks[11] – just cause it’s a friendly feeling.

      I spot Minny in the back center seat. Minny short and big, got shiny black curls. She setting with her legs splayed, her thick arms crossed.

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