cook pumpkins in the summer, you don’t cook peaches in the fal . You can’t find it sel ing on the side a the road, it ain’t in. Let’s just do us a nice pecan pie instead.”
“And Johnny loved those pralines you did. He thought I was the smartest girl he’d ever met when I gave him those.”
I turn back to my dough so she can’t see my face. Twice in a minute she’s managed to irritate me. “Anything else you want Mister Johnny to
think you did?” Besides being scared out of my wits, I am sick and tired of passing off my cooking for somebody else’s. Except my kids, my
cooking’s the only thing I’m proud of.
“No, that’s al .” Miss Celia smiles, doesn’t notice I’ve stretched my pie crust to where five holes rip through. Just twenty-four more days of this
shit. I am praying to the Lord and the devil on the side that Mister Johnny doesn’t come home before then.
EVERY OTHER DAY, I hear Miss Celia on the phone in her room, cal ing and cal ing the society ladies. The Benefit was three weeks ago and here she is
already gunning up for next year. She and Mister Johnny didn’t go or I would’ve heard plenty about it.
I didn’t work the Benefit this year, first time in a decade. The money’s pretty good, but I just couldn’t risk running into Miss Hil y.
“Could you tel her Celia Foote cal ed again? I left her a message a few days back…”
Miss Celia’s voice is chipper, like she’s peddling something on the tee vee. Every time I hear it, I want to jerk the phone out of her hand, tel
her to quit wasting her time. Because never mind she looks like a hussy. There’s a bigger reason why Miss Celia doesn’t have any friends and I
knew it the minute I saw that picture of Mister Johnny. I’ve served enough bridge club luncheons to know something about every white woman in this
town. Mister Johnny dumped Miss Hil y for Miss Celia back in col ege, and Miss Hil y never got over him.
I WALK IN THE CHURCH on Wednesday night. It’s not but half ful since it’s only a quarter to seven and the choir doesn’t start singing until seven thirty. But Aibileen asked me to come early so here I am. I’m curious what she has to say. Plus Leroy was in a good mood and playing with the kids so I
figure, if he wants them, he can have them.
I see Aibileen in our usual pew, left side, fourth from the front, right by the window fan. We’re prime members and we deserve a prime spot.
She’s got her hair smoothed back, a little rol of pencil curls around her neck. She’s wearing a blue dress with big white buttons that I’ve never seen before. Aibileen has white lady clothes out the wazoo. White ladies love giving her their old stuff. As usual, she looks plump and respectable, but for al her prim and proper, Aibileen can stil tel a dirty joke that’l make you tinkle in your pants.
I walk up the aisle, see Aibileen frown at something, creasing her forehead. For a second I can see the fifteen-odd years between us. But
then she smiles and her face goes young and fat again.
“Lord,” I say as soon as I’m settled in.
“I know. Somebody got to tel her.” Aibileen fans her face with her hanky. It was Kiki Brown’s morning for cleaning and the whole church is
gaudied up with her lemon smel -good she makes and tries to sel for twenty-five cents a bottle. We have a sign-up sheet for cleaning the church.
Ask me, Kiki Brown ought to sign a little less and the men ought to sign a lot more. Far as I know, no man has signed that sheet once.
Besides the smel , the church looks pretty good. Kiki shined the pews to where you could pick your teeth looking at them. The Christmas
tree’s already up, next to the altar, ful of tinsel and a shiny gold star on top. Three windows of the church have stained glass—the birth of Christ,
Lazarus raised from the dead, and the teaching of those fool Pharisees. The other seven are fil ed with regular clear panes. We’re stil raising
money for those.
“How Benny’s asthma?” Aibileen asks.
“Had a little spel yesterday. Leroy dropping him and the rest a the kids by in a while. Let’s hope the lemon don’t kil him.”
“Leroy.” Aibileen shakes her head and laughs. “Tel him I said he better behave. Or I put him on my prayer list.”
“I wish you would. Oh Lord, hide the food.”
Hoity-toity Bertrina Bessemer waddles toward us. She leans over the pew in front of us, smiling with a big, tacky blue-bird hat on. Bertrina,
she’s the one who cal ed Aibileen a fool for al those years.
“Minny,” Bertrina says, “I sure was glad to hear about your new job.”
“Thank you, Bertrina.”
“And Aibileen, I thank you for putting me on your prayer list. My angina sure is better now. I cal you this weekend and we catch up.”
Aibileen smiles, nods. Bertrina waddles off to her pew.
“Maybe you ought a be a little pickier who you pray for,” I say.
“Aw, I ain’t mad at her no more,” says Aibileen. “And look a there, she done lost some weight.”
“She tel ing everybody she lost forty pounds,” I say.
“Lord a mercy.”
“Only got two hundred more to go.”
Aibileen tries not to smile, acts like she’s waving away the lemon smel .
“So what you want me to come early for?” I ask. “You miss me or something?”
“Naw, it’s no big deal. Just something somebody said.”
“What?”
Aibileen takes a breath, looks around for anybody listening. We’re like royalty here. Folks are always hemming in on us.
“You know that Miss Skeeter?” she asks.
“I told you I did the other day.”
She quiets her voice, says, “Wel , remember how I slipped up and told her about Treelore writing colored things down?”
“I remember. She want a sue you for that?”
“No, no. She nice. But she had the gal to ask if me and some a my maid friends might want a put down on paper what it’s like to tend for
white people. Say she writing a book.”
“Say what?”
Aibileen nods, raises her eyebrows. “Mm-hmm.”
“Phhh. Wel , you tel her it’s a real Fourth of July picnic. It’s what we dream a doing al weekend, get back in they houses to polish they silver,”
I say.
“I told her, let the regular old history books tel it. White people been representing colored opinions since the beginning a time.”
“That’s right. You tel her.”
“I did. I tel her she crazy,” Aibileen says. “I ask her, what if we told the truth? How we too scared to ask for minimum wage. How nobody gets
paid they Social Security. How it feel when your own boss be cal ing you…” Aibileen shakes her head. I’m glad she doesn’t say it.
“How we love they kids when they little…” she says and I see Aibileen’s lip tremble a little. “And then they turn out just like they mamas.”
I look down and see Aibileen’s gripping her black pocketbook like it’s the only thing she has left in this world. Aibileen, she moves on to
another job when the babies get too old and stop being color-blind. We don’t talk about it.
“Even if she is changing al the names a the help and the white ladies,” she sniff.
“She crazy if she think we do something dangerous as that. For her.”
“We don’t want a bring al that mess up.” Aibileen wipes her nose with a hankie. “Tel people the truth.”
“No, we don’t,” I say, but I stop. It’s something about that word truth. I’ve been trying to tel white women the truth about working for them since I was fourteen years old.
“We don’t want a change nothing around here,” Aibileen says and we’re both quiet, thinking about al the things we don’t want to change. But
then Aibileen narrows her eyes at me, asks, “What. You don’t think it’s a crazy idea?”
“I do, I just…” And that’s when I see it. We’ve been friends for sixteen years, since the day I moved from Greenwood to Jackson and we met
at the bus stop. I can read Aibileen like the Sunday paper. “You thinking about it, ain’t you,” I say. “You want a talk to Miss Skeeter.”
She shrugs and I know I’m right. But before Aibileen can confess, Reverend Johnson comes and sits down in the pew behind us, leans
between our shoulders. “Minny, I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to tel you congratulations on your new job.”
I smooth my dress down. “Why, thank you, Reverend Minister.”
“You must of been on Aibileen’s prayer list,” he says, patting Aibileen on the shoulder.
“Sure was. I told Aibileen, at this rate, she needs to start charging.”
The Reverend laughs. He gets up and treads slowly to the pulpit. Everything goes stil . I can’t believe Aibileen wants to tel Miss Skeeter the
truth.
Truth.
It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that’s been burning me up al my life.
Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.
Reverend Johnson raises his hands and speaks in a soft, deep voice. The choir behind him begins to hum “Talking to Jesus” and we al
stand up. In half a minute I’m sweating.
“Think you might be interested? In talking to Miss Skeeter?” whispers Aibileen.
I look back and there’s Leroy with the kids, late as usual. “Who, me?” I say and my voice is loud against the soft music. I tamp it down, but
not by much.
“Ain’t no way I’m gonna do something crazy as that.”
FOR NO REASON but to irritate me, we get a heat wave in December. In forty degrees, I sweat like iced tea in August and here I woke up this morning to
eighty-three on the dial. I’ve spent half my life trying not to sweat so much: Dainty Lady sweat cream, frozen potatoes in my pockets, ice pack tied to my head (I actual y paid a doctor for that fool advice), and I stil soak my sweat pads through in five minutes. I tote my Fairley Funeral Home fan
every place I go. Works good and it was free.
Miss Celia takes to the week of warm weather, though, and actual y goes outside and sits by the pool in these tacky white sunglasses and a
fuzzy bathrobe. Thank the Lord she’s out of the house. At first I thought maybe she was sick in the body, but now I’m wondering if she’s sick in the
head. I don’t mean the talking to yourself variety you see in old ladies like Miss Walters where you know it’s just the old-timers disease, but the
capital C crazy where you get hauled to Whitfield in a straitjacket.
I catch her slipping upstairs to the empty bedrooms almost every day now. I hear her sneaky little feet walking down the hal , passing over
that little squeak in the floor. I don’t think much of it—heck, it’s her house. But then one day, she does it again, and then again, and it’s the fact that she’s so darn sneaky about it, waiting until I turn on the Hoover or get busy on a cake, that makes me suspicious. She spends about seven or eight minutes up there and then pokes her little head around to make sure I don’t see her come down again.
“Don’t go getting in her business,” Leroy says. “You just make sure she tel s her mister you cleaning his house.” Leroy’s been on the damn
Crow the past couple of nights, drinking behind the power plant after his shift. He’s no fool. He knows if I’m dead, that paycheck won’t be showing
up on its own.
After she makes her trip upstairs, Miss Celia comes to the kitchen table instead of going back to bed. I wish she’d get on out of here. I’m
pul ing chicken off the bone. I’ve got the broth boiling and the dumplings already cut. I don’t want her trying to help with this.
“Just thirteen more days before you tel Mister Johnny about me,” I say, and like I knew she would, Miss Celia gets up from the kitchen table
and heads for her bedroom. But before she makes it out the door she mutters, “Do you have to remind me of that fact every day of my life?”
I stand up straighter. That’s the first time Miss Celia’s ever gotten cross with me. “Mm-hmm,” I tel her, not even looking up because I wil
remind her until Mister Johnny’s shook my hand and said nice to meet you, Minny.
But then I look over and see Miss Celia stil standing there. She’s holding on to the doorframe. Her face has gone flat white, like cheap wal
paint.
“You been fooling with the raw chicken again?”
“No, I’m…just tired.”
But the pricks of sweat on her makeup—that now’s gone gray—tel me she’s not fine. I help her to bed and bring her the Lady-a-Pinkam to
drink. The pink label has a picture of a real proper lady on it with a turban on her head, smiling like she feels better. I hand Miss Celia the spoon to measure it out, but that tacky woman just drinks it straight from the bottle.
Afterward, I wash my hands. Whatever it is she’s got, I hope it ain’t catching.
THE DAY AFTER MISS CELIA’S face goes funny is change-the-damn-sheets day and the day I hate the most. Sheets are just too personal a thing for folks
who aren’t kin to be fooling with. They are ful of hair and scabs and snot and the signs of jel y-rol ing. But it’s the bloodstains that are the worst.
Scrubbing those out with my bare hands, I gag over the sink. That goes for blood anywhere and anything with a suspicious resemblance. A
stepped-on strawberry can hang me over the toilet bowl for the rest of the day.
Miss Celia knows about Tuesdays and usual y she moves out to the sofa so I can do my work. A cold front started in this morning, so she
can’t go out to the swimming pool, and they say the weather’s going to get worse. But at nine, then ten, then eleven the bedroom door’s stil closed.
Final y, I knock.
“Yes?” she says. I open the door.
“Morning, Miss Celia.”
“Hey, Minny.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
Not only is Miss Celia stil in bed, she’s curled up on top of the covers in her nightgown without a drop of her makeup on.
“I got to get them sheets washed and ironed and then I got to get to this old chiffarobe you done let go dry as Texas. And then we cooking—”
“No learning lesson today, Minny.” She isn’t smiling either, like she usual y does when she sees me.
“You feeling bad?”
“Fetch me some water, wil you?”
“Yes’m.” I go in the kitchen and fil up a glass from the sink. She must be feeling bad because she’s never asked me to serve her anything
before.
When I walk back in the bedroom though, Miss Celia’s not in bed and the bathroom door’s closed. Now why’d she ask me to go get her
water if she’s got the means to get up and go to the bathroom? At least she’s out of my way. I pick Mister Johnny’s pants up off the floor, toss them
over my shoulder. Ask me, this woman doesn’t take enough exercise, sitting around the house al day. Oh now, Minny, don’t go on that way. If she’s
sick, she’s sick.
“You sick?” I hol er outside the bathroom door.
“I’m…fine.”
“While you in there, I’m on go head and change these sheets.”
“No, I want you to go on,” she says through the door. “Go on home for the day, Minny.”
I stand there and tap my foot on her yel ow rug. I don’t want to go on home. It’s Tuesday, change-the-damn-sheets day. If I don’t do it today,
that makes Wednesday change-the-damn-sheets day too.
“What Mister Johnny gone do if he come home and the house’s a mess?”
“He’s at the deer camp tonight. Minny, I need you to bring me the phone over—” her voice breaks into a trembly wail. “Drag it on over and
fetch my phone book that’s setting in the kitchen.”
“You sick, Miss Celia?”
But she doesn’t answer so I go get the book and stretch the phone over to the bathroom door and tap on it.
“Just leave it there.” Miss Celia sounds like she’s crying now. “I want you to go on home now.”
“But I just gots—”
“I said go home, Minny!”
I step back from that closed door. Heat rises up my face. And it stings, not because I haven’t been yel ed at before. I just haven’t been yel ed
at by Miss Celia yet.
THE NEXT MORNING, Woody Asap on Channel Twelve is waving his white scaly hands al over the state map. Jackson, Mississippi, is frozen like an ice
pop. First it rained, then it froze, then anything with more than a half-inch extending broke off to the ground by this morning. Tree branches, power
lines, porch awnings col apsed like they’d plumb given up. Outside’s been dunked in a shiny clear bucket of shel ac.
My kids glue their sleepy faces to the radio and when the box says the roads are frozen and school is closed, they al jump around and
whoop and whistle and run outside to look at the ice with nothing on but their long johns.
“Get back in this house and put some shoes on!” I hol er out the door. Not one of them does. I cal Miss Celia to tel her I can’t drive in the ice
and to find out if she’s got power out there. After she yel ed at me like I was a nigger in the road yesterday, you’d think I wouldn’t give a hoot about her.
When I cal , I hear, “Yeeel o.”
My heart hiccups.
“Who is this? Who’s cal ing here?”
Real careful I hang up that phone. I guess Mister Johnny’s not working today either. I don’t know how he made it home with the storm. Al I
know is, even on a day off, I can’t escape the fear of that man. But in