The Help (28 page)

Miss Skeeter sound strange. Tight in the jaw. Lately, she been glowing like a firefly she so in love. My heart start drumming. Still, I don’t jump right in with my questions. I ain’t sure why.

“I asked Corrine who work at the Cooleys. She say no. Then Rhonda, and Rhonda’s sister who wait on the Millers... but both a them say no too.”

“What about Yule May? Have you . . . talked to her recently?”

I wonder then if that’s why Miss Skeeter acting strange. See, I told Miss Skeeter a fib. I told her a month ago I asked Yule May, but I didn’t. It’s not just that I don’t know Yule May well. It’s that she Miss Hilly Holbrook’s maid, and anything having to do with that name make me nervous.

“Not real recent. Maybe . . . I try her again,” I lie, hating it.

Then I get back to jiggling my pencil. Ready to tell her what Miss Hilly said.

“Aibileen,” Miss Skeeter voice gone all shaky, “I have to tell you something.”

Miss Skeeter get quiet and it’s like them eerie seconds before a funnel cloud drop.

“What happen, Miss Skeeter?”

“I . . . left my satchel. At the League. Hilly picked it up.”

I squint my eyes, feel like I ain’t hearing too good. “The red one?”

She don’t reply.

“Aw . . .
Law.
” This all starting to make a sick sense.

“The stories were in a flap pocket. On the side, in another folder. I think all she saw were Jim Crow laws, some . . . booklet I’d picked up at the library but . . . I can’t say for sure.”

“Oh Miss
Skeeter
,” I say and shut my eyes. God help me, God help
Minny
. . .

“I know. I
know
,” Miss Skeeter say and start to cry into the phone.

“Alright. Alright, now.” I try to make myself swallow my anger down. It was a accident, I tell myself. Kicking her ain’t gone do us no good.

But
still.

“Aibileen, I am so
so
sorry.”

There’s a few seconds a nothing but heart-pumping. Real slow and scary, my brain start ticking through the few facts she given me, what I know myself.

“How long ago this happen?” I ask.

“Three days ago. I wanted to find out what she knew before I told you.”

“You talked to Miss Hilly?”

“Just for a second when I picked it up. But I’ve talked to Elizabeth and Lou Anne and probably four other girls who know Hilly. Nobody’s said anything about it. That was... that was why I asked about Yule May,” she say. “I was wondering if she’d heard anything at work.”

I draw in a breath, hating what I have to tell her. “I heard it. Yesterday. Miss Hilly was talking to Miss Leefolt about it.”

Miss Skeeter don’t say nothing. I feel like I’m waiting for a brick to come slamming through my window.

“She talking about Mister Holbrook running for office and how you supporting colored people and she say . . . she read something.” Saying it out loud now, I’m shaking. And still bobbing the pencil between my fingers.

“Did she say anything about maids?” Miss Skeeter ask. “I mean, was she only upset with me or did she mention you or Minny?”

“No, just . . . you.”

“Okay.” Miss Skeeter blow air into the phone. She sound upset, but she don’t know what could happen to me, to Minny. She don’t know about them sharp, shiny utensils a white lady use. About that knock on the door, late at night. That there are white men out there
hungry
to hear about a colored person crossing whites, ready with they wooden bats, matchsticks. Any little thing’ll do.

“I-I can’t say a hundred percent, but . . .” Miss Skeeter say, “if Hilly knew anything about the book or you or
especially
Minny, she’d be spreading it all over town.”

I think on this, wanting so hard to believe her. “It’s true, she do not like Minny Jackson.”

“Aibileen,” Miss Skeeter say, and I hear her start to break down again. That calm-down in her voice is cracking. “We can stop. I understand completely if you want to stop working on it.”

If I say I don’t want a do it anymore, then everthing I been writing and still have to write ain’t gone get to be said.
No,
I think. I
don’t
want a stop. I’m surprised by how loud I think it.

“If Miss Hilly know, she know,” I say. “Stopping ain’t gone save us now.”

 

 

 

I DON’T SEE, hear, or smell Miss Hilly for two days. Even when I ain’t holding a pencil, my fingers is jiggling it, in my pocket, on the kitchen counter, thumping like drumsticks. I got to find out what’s inside Miss Hilly’s head.

Miss Leefolt leave Yule May three messages for Miss Hilly, but she always at Mister Holbrook’s office—the “campaign H.Q.” is what Miss Hilly been calling it. Miss Leefolt sigh, hang up the phone like she just don’t know how her brain gone operate without Miss Hilly coming over to push the Think buttons. Ten times Baby Girl ask when little Heather gone come play in the plastic pool again. I reckon they’ll be good friends growing up, with Miss Hilly teaching them both how things is. By that afternoon, we all wandering around the house, jiggling our fingers, wondering when Miss Hilly gone show up again.

After while, Miss Leefolt go to the material store. Say she gone make a cover for something. She don’t know what. Mae Mobley look at me and I reckon we thinking the same thing: that woman’d cover us both up if she could.

 

 

 

I HAVE TO WORK REAL LATE that evening. I feed Baby Girl supper and put her to bed, cause Mister and Miss Leefolt gone to see a picture at the Lamar. Mister Leefolt promise he take her and she hold him to it, even though it’s only the late show left. When they get home, they yawning, crickets is cricking. Other houses, I’d sleep in the maid’s room, but they ain’t one here. I kind a hang around thinking Mister Leefolt gone offer to drive me home, but he just go right to bed.

Outside, in the dark, I walk all the way up to Riverside, about ten minutes away, where they run a late bus for the nighttime water-plant workers. The breeze is good enough keep the mosquitoes off. I sit on the edge a the park, in the grass under the streetlight. Bus come after while. Ain’t but four people on there, two colored, two white, all mens. I don’t know any of em. I take a window seat behind a thin colored fella. He got on a brown suit and a brown hat, be about my age.

We cross the bridge, head in the direction a the colored hospital, where the bus make its turn. I got my prayer book out so I can write some things down. I concentrate on Mae Mobley, try to keep my mind off Miss Hilly.
Show me how to teach Baby Girl to be kind, to love herself; to love others, while I got time with her...

I look up. The bus done stopped in the middle a the road. I lean over into the aisle, see a few blocks up they’s blue lights flashing in the dark, people standing around, a road block.

White driver stare ahead. He turn off the motor and my seat go still, feel strange. He straighten his driver’s hat, hop out the seat. “Y’all stay put. Let me find out what’s going on.”

So we all set there in the quiet, waiting. I hear a dog barking, not a house dog, but the kind that sound like he yelling at you. After a full five minutes, driver get back on the bus, start the motor again. He toot his horn, wave his hand out the window, and start backing up real slow.

“Wha happen up there?” colored man in front a me call to the driver.

Driver don’t answer. He keep backing up. The flashing lights is getting smaller, the dog barking fading off. Driver turn the bus around on Farish Street. At the next corner, he stop. “Colored people off, last stop for you,” he holler in the rearview. “White people lemme know where y’all need to get to. I’ll get you close as I can.”

The colored man look back at me. I guess we both ain’t got a good feeling. He stand up so I do too. I follow him to the front door. It’s eerie quiet, just the sound a our feets.

White man lean up to the driver, say, “What’s going on?”

I follow the colored man down the steps a the bus. Behind me, I hear the driver say, “I don’t know, some nigger got shot. Where you headed?”

The door swish closed. Oh Law, I think, please don’t let this be any a my peoples.

Ain’t a sound on Farish Street, or a person, cept us two. The man look at me. “You alright? You close to home?”

“I be alright. I’m close.” My house is seven blocks from here.

“Want me to walk you?”

I kind a do, but I shake my head. “Naw, thank you. I be fine.”

A news truck whiz by, way down at the intersection the bus turned off of. Big WLBT-TV letters on the side.

“Law, I hope this ain’t as bad as it—” but the man gone. They ain’t a soul now but me. I get that feeling people talk about, right before they get mugged. In two seconds, my stockings is rubbing together so fast I sound like zippers zipping. Up ahead I see three people walking fast like me. All of em turn off, go into houses, shut the door.

I’m real sure I don’t want to be alone another second. I cut between Mule Cato’s house and the back a the auto repair, then through Oney Black’s yard, trip on a hose-pipe in the dark. I feel like a burglar. Can see lights on inside the houses, heads bent down, lights that should be off this time a night. Whatever going on, everbody either talking about it or listening to it.

Finally, up ahead I see Minny’s kitchen light, back door open, screen door closed. The door make a whine when I push it. Minny setting at the table with all five kids: Leroy Junior, Sugar, Felicia, Kindra, and Benny. I guess Leroy Senior gone to work. They all staring at the big radio in the middle a the table. A wave a static come in with me.

“What is it?” I say. Minny frown, fiddle with the dial. In a second I take in the room: a ham slice curled and red in a skillet. A tin can on the counter, lid open. Dirty plates in the sink. Ain’t Minny’s kitchen at all.

“What happen?” I ask again.

The radio man come into tune, hollering, “—
almost ten years serving as the Field Secretary for the N-double-A-C-P. Still no word from the hospital but wounds are said to be—”

“
Who?
” I say.

Minny stare at me like I ain’t got my head on. “Medgar Evers. Where you been?”

“Medgar Evers? What happen?” I met Myrlie Evers, his wife, last fall, when she visit our church with Mary Bone’s family. She wore this smart red-and-black scarf tied on her neck. I remember how she looked me in the eye, smiled like she was real glad to meet me. Medgar Evers like a celebrity around here, being so high in the NAACP.

“Set down,” Minny say. I set in a wooden chair. They all ghost-faced, staring at the radio. It’s about half the size of a car engine, wood, four knobs on it. Even Kindra quiet in Sugar’s lap.

“KKK shot him. Front a his house. A hour ago.”

I feel a prickle creep up my spine. “Where he live?”

“On Guynes,” Minny say. “The doctors got him at our hospital.”

“I . . . saw,” I say, thinking a the bus. Guynes ain’t but five minutes away from here if you got a car.

Now they’s some unorganized talking on the radio, some people yelling, some fumbling round. I tense up like somebody watching us from outside. Somebody white. The KKK was here, five minutes away, to hunt down a colored man. I want a close that back door.

“I was just informed,”
the announcer say, panting,
“that Medgar Evers is dead.”

“Medgar Evers,”
he sound like he getting pushed around, voices round him,
“I was just told. Has died.”

Oh
Law.

Minny turn to Leroy Junior. Her voice low, steady.

“Take your brothers and your sisters in the bedroom. Get in bed. And stay back there.” It always sound scarier when a hollerer talk soft.

Even though I know Leroy Junior want a stay, he give em a look and they all disappear, quiet, quick. The radio man go quiet too. For a second, that box nothing but brown wood and wires.
“Medgar Evers,”
he say, his voice sound like it’s rolling backwards,
“NAACP Field Secretary, is dead.”
He sigh.
“Medgar Evers is dead.”

I swallow back a mouthful a spit and stare at Minny’s wallpaint that’s gone yellow with bacon grease, baby hands, Leroy’s Pall Malls. No pictures or calendars on Minny’s walls. I’m trying not to think. I don’t want a think about a colored man dying. It’ll make me remember Treelore.

Minny’s hands is in fists. She gritting her teeth. “Shot him right in front a his
children
, Aibileen.”

“We gone pray for the Everses, we gone pray for Myrlie . . .” but it just sound so empty, so I stop.

“Radio say his family run out the house when they heard the shots. Say he bloody, stumbling round, all the kids with blood all over em . . .” She slap her hand on the table, rattling the wood radio.

I hold my breath, but I feel dizzy. I got to be the one who’s strong. I got to keep my friend here from losing it.

“Things ain’t never gone change in this town, Aibileen. We living in hell, we
trapped.
Our
kids
is trapped.”

Radio man get loud again, say, “
. . . policemen everywhere, blocking the road. Mayor Thompson is expected to hold a press conference shortly—
”

I choke then. The tears roll down. It’s all them white peoples that breaks me, standing around the colored neighborhood. White peoples with guns, pointed at colored peoples. Cause who gone protect our peoples? Ain’t no colored policemans.

Minny stare at the door the kids went through. Sweat’s drilling down the sides a her face.

“What they gone do to us, Aibileen? If they catch us . . .”

I take a deep breath. She talking about the stories. “We both know. It be bad.”

“But what would they do? Hitch us to a pickup and drag us behind? Shoot me in my yard front a my kids? Or just starve us to death?”