The Help

I scrunch up my forehead, just starting to get what she’s asking. “Other maids?”

“I was hoping to get four or five. To really show what it’s like to be a maid in Jackson.”

I look around. We out here in the wide open. Don’t she know how dangerous this could be, talking about this while the whole world can see us? “Exactly what kind a stories you think you gone hear?”

“What you get paid, how they treat you, the bathrooms, the babies, all the things you’ve seen, good and bad.”

She looks excited, like this is some kind a game. For a second, I think I might be more mad than I am tired.

“Miss Skeeter,” I whisper, “do that not sound kind a dangerous to you?”

“Not if we’re careful—”

“Shhh, please. Do you know what would happen to me if Miss Leefolt find out I talked behind her back?”

“We won’t tell her, or anyone.” She lowers her voice some, but not enough. “These will be private interviews.”

I just stare at her. Is she crazy? “Did you hear about the colored boy this morning? One they beat with a tire iron for accidentally using the white bathroom?”

She just look at me, blink a little. “I know things are unstable but this is—”

“And my cousin Shinelle in Cauter County? They burn up her car cause she went down to the voting station.”

“No one’s ever written a book like this,” she say, finally whispering, finally starting to understand, I guess. “We’d be breaking new ground. It’s a brand-new perspective.”

I spot a flock a maids in they uniforms walking by my house. They look over, see me setting with a white woman on my front step. I grit my teeth, already know my phone gone be ringing tonight.

“Miss Skeeter,” and I say it slow, try to make it count, “I do this with you, I might as well burn my own house down.”

Miss Skeeter start biting her nail then. “But I’ve already . . .” She shut her eyes closed tight. I think about asking her, Already what, but I’m kind a scared to hear what she gone say. She reach in her pocketbook, pull out a scrap a paper and write her telephone number on it.

“Please, will you at least think about it?”

I sigh, stare out at the yard. Gentle as I can, I say, “No ma’am.”

She set the scrap a paper between us on the step, then she get in her Cadillac. I’m too tired to get up. I just stay there, watch while she roll real slow down the road. The boys playing ball clear the street, stand on the side frozen, like it’s a funeral car passing by.

MISS SKEETER

Chapter 8

I DRIVE DOWN Gessum Avenue in Mama’s Cadillac. Up ahead, a little colored boy in overalls watches me, wide-eyed, gripping a red ball. I look into my rearview mirror. Aibileen is still on her front steps in her white uniform. She hadn’t even looked at me when she said No ma’am. She just kept her eyes set on that yellow patch of grass in her yard.

I guess I thought it would be like visiting Constantine, where friendly colored people waved and smiled, happy to see the little white girl whose daddy owned the big farm. But here, narrow eyes watch me pass by. When my car gets close to him, the little colored boy turns and scats behind a house a few down from Aibileen’s. Half-a- dozen colored people are gathered in the front yard of the house, holding trays and bags. I rub my temples. I try to think of something more that might convince Aibileen.

A WEEK AGO, Pascagoula knocked on my bedroom door.

“There’s a long distance phone call for you, Miss Skeeter. From a Miss . . . Stern, she say?”

“Stern?” I thought out loud. Then I straightened. “Do you mean . . . Stein?”

“I . . . I reckon it could a been Stein. She talk kind a hard-sounding.”

I rushed past Pascagoula, down the stairs. For some stupid reason, I kept smoothing my frizzy hair down as if it were a meeting and not a phone call. In the kitchen, I grabbed the phone dangling against the wall.

Three weeks earlier, I’d typed out the letter on Strathmore white. Three pages outlining the idea, the details, and the lie. Which was that a hardworking and respected colored maid has agreed to let me interview her and describe in specifics what it’s like to work for the white women of our town. Weighing it against the alternative, that I planned to ask a colored woman for help, saying she’d already agreed to it seemed infinitely more attractive.

I stretched the cord into the pantry, pulled the string on the single bare bulb. The pantry is shelved floor to ceiling with pickles and soup jars, molasses, put-up vegetables, and preserves. This was my old high school trick to get some privacy.

“Hello? This is Eugenia speaking.”

“Please hold, I’ll put the call through.” I heard a series of clicks and then a far, far away voice, almost as deep as a man’s, say, “Elaine Stein.”

“Hello? This is Skeet—Eugenia Phelan in Mississippi?”

“I know, Miss Phelan. I called you.” I heard a match strike, a short, sharp inhale. “I received your letter last week. I have some comments.”

“Yes ma’am.” I sank down onto a tall tin can of King Biscuit flour. My heart thumped as I strained to hear her. A phone call from New York truly sounded as crackly as a thousand miles away ought to.

“What gave you this idea? About interviewing domestic housekeepers. I’m curious.”

I sat paralyzed a second. She offered no chatting or hello, no introduction of herself. I realized it was best to answer her as instructed. “I was . . . well, I was raised by a colored woman. I’ve seen how simple it can be and— and how complex it can be between the families and the help.” I cleared my throat. I sounded stiff, like I was talking to a teacher.

“Continue.”

“Well,” I took a deep breath, “I’d like to write this showing the point of view of the help. The colored women down here.” I tried to picture Constantine’s face, Aibileen’s. “They raise a white child and then twenty years later the child becomes the employer. It’s that irony, that we love them and they love us, yet . . .” I swallowed, my voice trembling. “We don’t even allow them to use the toilet in the house.”

Again there was silence.

“And,” I felt compelled to continue, “everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.” Sweat dripped down my chest, blotting the front of my cotton blouse.

“So you want to show a side that’s never been examined before,” Missus Stein said.

“Yes. Because no one ever talks about it. No one talks about anything down here.”

Elaine Stein laughed like a growl. Her accent was tight, Yankee. “Miss Phelan, I lived in Atlanta. For six years with my first husband.”

I latched on to this small connection. “So . . . you know what it’s like then.”

“Enough to get me out of there,” she said, and I heard her exhale her smoke. “Look, I read your outline. It’s certainly . . . original, but it won’t work. What maid in her right mind would ever tell you the truth?”

I could see Mother’s pink slippers pass by the door. I tried to ignore them. I couldn’t believe Missus Stein was already calling my bluff. “The first interviewee is . . . eager to tell her story.”

“Miss Phelan,” Elaine Stein said, and I knew it wasn’t a question, “this Negro actually agreed to talk to you