After Midnight.” When I pull into Hilly’s driveway, they’re on “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray.” Her plane crashed this morning and everyone from New York to Mississippi to Seattle is in mourning, singing her songs. I park the Cadillac and stare out at Hilly’s rambling white house. It’s been four days since Aibileen vomited in the middle of our interview and I’ve heard nothing from her.
I go inside. The bridge table is set up in Hilly’s antebellum-style parlor with its deafening grandfather clock and gold swag curtains. Everyone is seated—Hilly, Elizabeth, and Lou Anne Templeton, who has replaced Missus Walters. Lou Anne is one of those girls who wears a big eager smile—
Hilly holds up a
“Oh, isn’t that dreadful!” Lou Anne beams.
The picture shows wall-to-wall shag carpet and low, streamlined sofas, egg-shaped chairs and televisions that look like flying saucers. In Hilly’s parlor, a portrait of a Confederate general hangs eight feet tall. It is as prominent as if he were a grandfather and not a third cousin removed.
“That’s it. Trudy’s house looks just like that,” Elizabeth says. I’ve been so wrapped up in the interview with Aibileen, I’d almost forgotten Elizabeth’s trip last week to see her older sister. Trudy married a banker and they moved to Hollywood. Elizabeth went out there for four days to see her new house.
“Well, that’s just bad taste, is what it is,” Hilly says. “No offense to your family, Elizabeth.”
“What was Hollywood like?” Lou Anne asks.
“Oh, it was like a dream. And Trudy’s house—T.V. sets in every room. That same crazy space-age furniture you could hardly even sit in. We went to all these fancy restaurants, where the movie stars eat, and drank martinis and burgundy wine. And one night Max Factor himself came over to the table, spoke to Trudy like they’re just old friends”—she shakes her head—“like they were just passing by in the grocery store.” Elizabeth sighs.
“Well, if you ask me, you’re still the prettiest in the family,” Hilly says. “Not that Trudy’s unattractive, but you’re the one with the poise and the real style.”
Elizabeth smiles at this, but then drifts back to frowning. “Not to mention she has live-in help, every day, every
I cringe at this comment, but no one else seems to notice. Hilly’s watching her maid, Yule May, refill our tea glasses. She’s tall, slender, almost regal-looking and has a much better figure than Hilly. Seeing her makes me worry about Aibileen. I’ve called Aibileen’s house twice this week, but there wasn’t any answer. I’m sure she’s avoiding me. I guess I’ll have to go to Elizabeth’s house to talk to her whether Elizabeth likes it or not.
“I was thinking next year we might do a
“What a great idea!” Lou Anne says.
“Oh Skeeter,” Hilly says, “I know you just hated missing it this year.” I nod, give a pitiful frown. I’d pretended to have the flu to avoid going alone.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Hilly says, “I won’t be hiring that rock-and-roll band again, playing all that fast dance music . . .”
Elizabeth taps my arm. She has her handbag in her lap. “I almost forgot to give this to you. From Aibileen, for the Miss Myrna thing? I told her though, y’all cannot powwow on this today, not after all that time she missed in January.”
I open the folded piece of paper. The words are in blue ink, in a lovely cursive hand.
“And who in the world cares about how to make a teapot not rattle?” Elizabeth says. Because of course she read it.
It takes me two seconds and a drink of iced tea to understand. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is,” I tell her.
TWO DAYS LATER, I sit in my parents’ kitchen, waiting for dusk to fall. I give in and light another cigarette even though last night the surgeon general came on the television set and shook his finger at everybody, trying to convince us that smoking will kill us. But Mother once told me tongue kissing would turn me blind and I’m starting to think it’s all just a big plot between the surgeon general and Mother to make sure no one ever has any fun.
At eight o’clock that same night, I’m stumbling down Aibileen’s street as discreetly as one can carrying a fifty-pound Corona typewriter. I knock softly, already dying for another cigarette to calm my nerves. Aibileen answers and I slip inside. She’s wearing the same green dress and stiff black shoes as last time.
I try to smile, like I’m confident it will work this time, despite the idea she explained over the phone. “Could we . . . sit in the kitchen this time?” I ask. “Would you mind?”
“Alright. Ain’t nothing to look at, but come on back.”
The kitchen is about half the size of the living room, and warmer. It smells like tea and lemons. The black- and-white linoleum floor has been scrubbed thin. There’s just enough counter for the china tea set.
I set the typewriter on a scratched red table under the window. Aibileen starts to pour the hot water into the teapot.
“Oh, none for me, thanks,” I say and reach in my bag. “I brought us some Co-Colas if you want one.” I’ve tried to come up with ways to make Aibileen more comfortable. Number One: don’t make her feel like she has to serve me.
“Well, ain’t that nice. I usually don’t take my tea till later anyway.” She brings over an opener and two glasses. I drink mine straight from the bottle and, seeing this, she pushes the glasses aside, does the same.
I called Aibileen after Elizabeth gave me the note, and listened hopefully as Aibileen told me her idea—for her to write her own words down and then show me what’s she’s written. I tried to act excited. But I know I’ll have to rewrite everything she’s written, wasting even more time. I thought it might make it easier if she could see it in typeface instead of me reading it and telling her it can’t work this way.
We smile at each other. I take a sip of my Coke, smooth my blouse. “So . . .” I say.
Aibileen has a wire-ringed notebook in front of her. “Want me to . . . just go head and read?”
“Sure,” I say.
We both take deep breaths and she begins reading in a slow, steady voice.
“My first white baby to ever look after was named Alton Carrington Speers. It was 1924 and I’d just turned fifteen years old. Alton was a long, skinny baby with hair fine as silk on a corn . . .”
I begin typing as she reads, her words rhythmic, pronounced more clearly than her usual talk. “Every window in that filthy house was painted shut on the inside, even though the house was big with a wide green lawn. I knew the air was bad, felt sick myself . . .”
“Hang on,” I say. I’ve typed
“When the mama died, six months later,” she reads, “of the lung disease, they kept me on to raise Alton until they moved away to Memphis. I loved that baby and he loved me and that’s when I knew I was good at making children feel proud of themselves . . .”
I hadn’t wanted to insult Aibileen when she told me her idea. I tried to urge her out of it, over the phone. “Writing isn’t that easy. And you wouldn’t have time for this anyway, Aibileen, not with a full-time job.”
“Can’t be much different than writing my prayers every night.”
It was the first interesting thing she’d told me about herself since we’d started the project, so I’d grabbed the shopping pad in the pantry. “You don’t say your prayers, then?”
“I never told nobody that before. Not even Minny. Find I can get my point across a lot better writing em down.”
“So this is what you do on the weekends?” I asked. “In your spare time?” I liked the idea of capturing her life outside of work, when she wasn’t under the eye of Elizabeth Leefolt.
“Oh no, I write a hour, sometimes two ever day. Lot a ailing, sick peoples in this town.”
I was impressed. That was more than I wrote on some days. I told her we’d try it just to get the project
