The Help (35 page)

Stuart moves closer to me. He smells like pine trees and fired tobacco, expensive soap the likes of which my family’s never known. “Mama’d have a fit, Stuart, plus I have all this other stuff to do . . .” But God, he smells good. He’s looking at me like he wants to eat me up and I shiver under the blast of Cadillac air.

“You sure?” he whispers and he kisses me then, on the mouth, not so politely as before. His hand is still on the upper quarter of my thigh and I find myself wondering again if he was like this with his fiancée, Patricia. I don’t even know if they went to bed together. The thought of them touching makes me feel sick and I pull back from him.

“I just . . . I can’t,” I say. “You know I couldn’t tell Mama the truth . . .”

He lets out a long sorry sigh and I love that look on his face, that disappointment. I understand now why girls resist, just for that sweet look of regret. “Don’t lie to her,” he says. “You know I hate lies.”

“Will you call me from the hotel?” I ask.

“I will,” he says. “I’m sorry I have to leave so soon. Oh, and I almost forgot, in three weeks, Saturday night. Mother and Daddy want y’all to come have supper.”

I sit up straighter. I’ve never met his parents before. “What do you mean . . . y’all?”

“You and your parents. Come into town, meet my family.”

“But . . . why all of us?”

He shrugs. “My parents want to meet them. And I want them to meet you.”

“But . . .”

“I’m sorry, baby,” he says and pushes my hair behind my ear, “I have to go. Call you tomorrow night?”

I nod. He climbs out into the heat and drives off, waving to Daddy walking up the dusty lane.

I’m left alone in the Cadillac to worry. Supper at the state senator’s house. With Mother there asking a thousand questions. Looking desperate on my behalf. Bringing up cotton trust funds.

 

 

 

THREE EXCRUCIATINGLY LONG, hot nights later, with still no word from Yule May or any other maids, Stuart comes over, straight from his meeting on the coast. I’m sick of sitting at the typewriter typing nothing but newsletters and Miss Myrna. I run down the steps and he hugs me like it’s been weeks.

Stuart’s sunburned beneath his white shirt, the back wrinkled from driving, the sleeves rolled up. He wears a perpetual, almost devilish smile. We both sit straight up on opposite sides of the relaxing room, staring at each other. We’re waiting for Mother to go to bed. Daddy went to sleep when the sun went down.

Stuart’s eyes hang on mine while Mother waxes on about the heat, how Carlton’s finally met “the one.”

“And we’re thrilled about dining with your parents, Stuart. Please do tell your mother I said so.”

“Yes ma’am. I sure will.”

He smiles over at me again. There are so many things I love about him. He looks me straight in the eye when we talk. His palms are callused but his nails are clean and trimmed. I love the rough feeling on my neck. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it’s nice to have someone to go to weddings and parties with. Not to have to endure the look in Raleigh Leefolt’s eyes when he sees that I’m tagging along again. The sullen daze when he has to carry my coat with Elizabeth’s, fetch me a drink too.

Then there is Stuart at the house. From the minute he walks in, I am protected, exempt. Mother won’t criticize me in front of him, for fear he might notice my flaws himself. She won’t nag me in front of him because she knows that I’d act badly, whine. Short my chances. It’s all a big game to Mother, to show only one side of me, that the real me shouldn’t come out until after it’s “too late.”

Finally, at half past nine, Mother smoothes her skirt, folds a blanket slowly and perfectly, like a cherished letter. “Well, I guess it’s time for bed. I’ll let you young people alone. Eugenia?” She eyes me. “Not too late, now?”

I smile sweetly. I am twenty-three goddamn years old. “Of course not, Mama.”

She leaves and we sit, staring, smiling.

Waiting.

Mother pads around the kitchen, closes a window, runs some water. A few seconds pass and we hear the clack-click of her bedroom door shutting. Stuart stands and says, “Come
here
,” and he’s on my side of the room in one stride and he claps my hands to his hips and kisses my mouth like I am the drink he’s been dying for all day and I’ve heard girls say it’s like melting, that feeling. But I think it’s like rising, growing even taller and seeing sights over a hedge, colors you’ve never seen before.

I have to make myself pull away. I have things to say. “Come here. Sit down.”

We sit side by side on the sofa. He tries to kiss me again, but I back my head away. I try not to look at the way his sunburn makes his eyes so blue. Or the way the hairs on his arms are golden, bleached.

“Stuart—” I swallow, ready myself for the dreaded question. “When you were engaged, were your parents disappointed? When whatever happened with Patricia . . . happened?”

Immediately a stiffness forms around his mouth. He eyes me. “Mother was disappointed. They were close.”

Already I regret having brought it up, but I have to know. “How close?”

He glances around the room. “Do you have anything in the house? Bourbon?”

I go to the kitchen and pour him a glass from Pascagoula’s cooking bottle, top it off with plenty of water. Stuart made it clear the first time he showed up on my porch his fiancée was a bad subject. But I need to know what this thing was that happened. Not just because I’m curious. I’ve never been in a relationship. I need to know what constitutes breaking up forever. I need to know how many rules you can break before you’re thrown out, and what those rules even are in the first place.

“So they were good friends?” I ask. I’ll be meeting his mother in two weeks. Mother’s already set on our shopping trip to Kennington’s tomorrow.

He takes a long drink, frowns. “They’d get in a room and swap notes on flower arrangements and who married who.” All traces of his mischievous smile are gone now. “Mother was pretty shook up. After it . . . fell apart.”

“So . . . she’ll be comparing me to Patricia?”

Stuart blinks at me a second. “Probably.”

“Great. I can hardly wait.”

“Mother’s just...protective is all. She’s worried I’ll get hurt again.” He looks off.

“Where is Patricia now? Does she still live here or—”

“No. She’s gone. Moved to California. Can we talk about something else now?”

I sigh, fall back against the sofa.

“Well, do your parents at least know what happened? I mean, am I allowed to know that?” Because I feel a flash of anger that he won’t tell me something as important as this.

“Skeeter, I told you, I hate talking . . .” But then he grits his teeth, lowers his voice. “Dad only knows part of it. Mother knows the real story, so do Patricia’s parents. And of course
her
.” He throws back the rest of the drink. “She knows what she did, that’s for goddamn sure.”

“Stuart, I only want to know so I don’t do the same thing.”

He looks at me and tries to laugh but it comes out more like a growl. “You would never in a million years do what she did.”

“What? What did she do?”

“Skeeter.” He sighs and sets his glass down. “I’m tired. I better just go on home.”

 

 

 

I Walk in THE STEAMY kitchen the next morning, dreading the day ahead. Mother is in her room getting ready for our shopping trip to outfit us both for supper at the Whitworths’. I have on blue jeans and an untucked blouse.

“Morning, Pascagoula.”

“Morning, Miss Skeeter. You want your regular breakfast?”

“Yes, please,” I say.

Pascagoula is small and quick on her feet. I told her last June how I liked my coffee black and toast barely buttered and she never had to ask again. She’s like Constantine that way, never forgetting things for us. It makes me wonder how many white women’s breakfasts she has ingrained in her brain. I wonder how it would feel to spend your whole life trying to remember other people’s preferences on toast butter and starch amounts and sheet changing.

She sets my coffee down in front of me. She doesn’t hand it to me. Aibileen told me that’s not how it’s done, because then your hands might touch. I don’t remember how Constantine used to do it.

“Thank you,” I say, “very much.”

She blinks at me a second, smiles weakly. “You . . . welcome.” I realize this the first time I’ve ever thanked her sincerely. She looks uncomfortable.

“Skeeter, you ready?” I hear Mother call from the back. I holler that I am. I eat my toast and hope we can get this shopping trip over quickly. I am ten years too old to have my mother still picking out clothes for me. I look over and notice Pascagoula watching me from the sink. She turns away when I look at her.

I skim the
Jackson Journal
sitting on the table. My next Miss Myrna column won’t come out until next Monday, unlocking the mystery of hard-water stains. Down in the national news section, there’s an article on a new pill, the “Valium” they’re calling it, “to help women cope with everyday challenges.” God, I could use about ten of those little pills right now.

I look up and am surprised to see Pascagoula standing right next to me.

“Are you . . . do you need something, Pascagoula?” I ask.

“I need to tell you something, Miss Skeeter. Something bout that—”

“You cannot wear dungarees to Kennington’s,” Mother says from the doorway. Like vapor, Pascagoula disappears from my side. She’s back at the sink, stretching a black rubber hose from the faucet to the dishwasher.

“You go upstairs and put on something appropriate.”

“Mother, this is what I’m wearing. What’s the point of getting dressed up to buy new clothes?”

“Eugenia, please let’s don’t make this any harder than it is.”

Mother goes back to her bedroom, but I know this isn’t the end of it. The
whoosh
of the dishwasher fills the room. The floor vibrates under my bare feet and the rumble is soothing, loud enough to cover a conversation. I watch Pascagoula at the sink.

“Did you need to tell me something, Pascagoula?” I ask.

Pascagoula glances at the door. She’s just a slip of a person, practically half of me. Her manner is so timid, I lower my head when I talk to her. She comes a little closer.

“Yule May my
cousin
,” Pascagoula says over the whir of the machine. She’s whispering, but there’s nothing timid about her tone now.

“I . . . didn’t know that.”

“We close kin and she come out to my house ever other weekend to check on me. She told me what it is you doing.” She narrows her eyes and I think she’s about to tell me to leave her cousin alone.

“I . . . we’re changing the names. She told you that, right? I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”

“She tell me Saturday she gone help you. She try to call Aibileen but couldn’t get her. I’d a tole you earlier but . . .” Again she glances at the doorway.

I’m stunned. “She is? She
will
?” I stand up. Despite my better thinking, I can’t help but ask. “Pascagoula, do you . . . want to help with the stories too?”

She gives me a long, steady look. “You mean tell you what it’s like to work for . . . your mama?”

We look at each other, probably thinking the same thing. The discomfort of her telling, the discomfort of me listening.

“Not Mother,” I say quickly. “Other jobs, ones you’ve had before this.”

“This my first job working domestic. I use to work at the Old Lady Home serving lunch. Fore it move out to Flowood.”

“You mean Mother didn’t mind this being your first house job?”

Pascagoula looks at the red linoleum floor, timid again. “Nobody else a work for her,” she says. “Not after what happen with Constantine.”

I place my hand carefully on the table. “What did you think about... that?”

Pascagoula’s face turns blank. She blinks a few times, clearly outsmarting me. “I don’t know nothing about it. I just wanted to tell you what Yule May say.” She goes to the refrigerator, opens it and leans inside.

I let out a long, deep breath. One thing at a time.

 

 

 

SHOPPING WITH MOTHER isn’t as unbearable as usual, probably because I’m in such a good mood from hearing about Yule May. Mother sits in a chair in the dressing lounge and I choose the first Lady Day suit I try on, light blue poplin with a round-collar jacket. We leave it at the store so they can take down the hem. I’m surprised when Mother doesn’t try on anything. After only half an hour, she says she’s tired, so I drive us back to Longleaf. Mother goes straight to her room to nap.

When we get home, I call Elizabeth’s house, my heart pounding, but Elizabeth picks up the phone. I don’t have the nerve to ask for Aibileen. After the satchel scare, I promised myself I’d be more careful.

So I wait until that night, hoping Aibileen’s home. I sit on my can of flour, fingers working a bag of dry rice. She answers on the first ring.

“She’ll help us, Aibileen. Yule May said yes!”

“Say what? When you find out?”

“This afternoon. Pascagoula told me. Yule May couldn’t reach you.”

“Law, my phone was disconnected cause I’s short this month. You talk to Yule May?”

“No, I thought it would be better if you talked to her first.”

“What’s strange is I call over to Miss Hilly house this afternoon from Miss Leefolt’s, but she say Yule May don’t work there no more and hang up. I been asking around but nobody know a thing.”

“Hilly fired her?”

“I don’t know. I’s hoping maybe she quit.”

“I’ll call Hilly and find out. God, I hope she’s alright.”

“And now that my phone’s back on, I keep trying to call Yule May.”

I call Hilly’s house four times but the phone just rings. Finally I call Elizabeth’s and she tells me Hilly’s gone to Port Gibson for the night. That William’s father is ill.