“I loved school. The reading and the writing. Cept the rithmatic. I didn’t take to that.”
Yule May smiles. “The English was my favorite too. The writing.”
“I been . . . writing some myself.”
Yule May look me in the eye and I can tell then she know what I’m about to say. For a second, I can see the shame she swallow ever day, working in that house. The fear. I feel embarrassed to ask her.
But Yule May say it before I have to. “I know about the stories you’re working on. With that friend of Miss Hilly’s.”
“It’s alright, Yule May. I know you can’t do it.”
“It’s just . . . a risk I can’t afford to take right now. We so close to getting enough money together.”
“I understand,” I say and I smile, let her know she off the hook. But Yule May don’t move away.
“The names . . . you’re changing them, I heard?”
This the same question everbody ask, cause they curious.
“That’s right. And the name a the town, too.”
She look down at the floor. “So I’d tell my stories about being a maid and she’d write them down? Edit them or . . . something like that?”
I nod. “We want a do all kind a stories. Good things and bad. She working with . . . another maid right now.”
Yule May lick her lips, look like she imagining it, telling what it’s like to work for Miss Hilly.
“Could we . . . talk about this some more? When I have more time?”
“A course,” I say, and I see, in her eyes, she ain’t just being nice.
“I’m sorry, but Henry and the boys are waiting on me,” she says. “But may I call you? And talk in private?”
“Anytime. Whenever you feel like it.”
She touch my arm and look me straight in the eyes again. I can’t believe what I see. It’s like she been waiting on me to ask her all this time.
Then she gone out the door. I stand in the corner a minute, drinking coffee too hot for the weather. I laugh and mutter to myself, even though everbody gone think I’m even crazier for it.
MINNY
Chapter 17
“GO ON OUT A HERE SO I CAN DO MY CLEANING.”
Miss Celia draws the covers up around her chest like she’s afraid I might jerk her out of bed. Nine months here and I still don’t know if she’s sick in the body or fried up her wits with the hair coloring. She does look better than when I started. Her tummy’s got a little fat on it, her cheeks aren’t so hollow as they were, out here starving her and Mister Johnny to death.
For a while, Miss Celia was working in the backyard all the time but now that crazy lady’s back to sitting around the bed again. I used to be glad she stayed holed up in her room. Now that I’ve met Mister Johnny, though, I’m ready to
“You driving me crazy hanging around this house twenty-five hours a day. Get. Go chop down that poor mimosa tree you hate so much,” I say, because Mr. Johnny never did chop that thing down.
But when Miss Celia doesn’t move from that mattress, I know it’s time to pull out the big guns. “When you gone tell Mister Johnny about me?” Because that always gets her moving. Sometimes I just ask it for my own entertainment.
I can’t believe the charade has gone on this long, with Mister Johnny knowing about me, and Miss Celia walking around like a ding-a-ling, like she’s still pulling her trick. It was no surprise when the Christmas deadline came and she begged for more time. Oh I railed her about it, but then the fool started boo-hooing so I let her off the hook just so she’d shut up, told her it was her Christmas present. She ought to get a stocking chock full of coal for all the lies she’s told.
Thank the Lord Miss Hilly hasn’t showed up here to play bridge, even though Mister Johnny tried to set it up again just two weeks ago. I know because Aibileen told me she heard Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt laughing about it. Miss Celia got all serious, asking me what to cook if they come over. Ordered a book in the mail to learn the game,
“I don’t know how to play no bridge,” I said.
“Yes, you do.”
“How you know what I can do?” I started banging pots around, irritated just by the looks of that stupid red cover. I finally got Mister Johnny out the way and now I have to worry about Miss Hilly coming over and ratting me out. She’ll tell Miss Celia what I did for sure. Shoot. I’d fire my own self for what I did.
“Because Missus Walters told me you used to practice with her on Saturday mornings.”
I started scrubbing the big pot. My knuckles hit the sides, making a clanging noise.
“Playing cards is the devil’s game,” I said. “And I got too much to do already.”
“But I’ll get all flustered with those girls over here trying to teach me. Won’t you just show me a little?”
“No.”
Miss Celia hummed out a little sigh. “It’s cause I’m such a bad cook, isn’t it? You think I can’t learn anything now.”
“What you gone do if Miss Hilly and them ladies tell your husband you got a maid out here? Ain’t that gone blow your cover?”
“I’ve already worked that out. I’ll tell Johnny I’m bringing in some help for the day so it’ll look proper and all for the other ladies.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Then I’ll tell him I like you so much I want to hire you full-time. I mean, I could tell him that . . . in a few months.”
I started to sweat then. “When you think them ladies is coming over for your bridge party?”
“I’m just waiting for Hilly to call me back. Johnny told her husband I’d be calling. I left her two messages, so I’m sure she’ll call me back anytime now.”
I stand there trying to think of something to stop this from happening. I look at the phone, pray it never rings again.
THE NEXT MORNING, when I get in for work, Miss Celia comes out of her bedroom. I think she’s about to sneak upstairs, which she’s started to do again, but then I hear her on the kitchen telephone asking for Miss Hilly. I get a sick, sick feeling.
“I was just calling again to see about getting a bridge game together!” she says all cheerful and I don’t move until I know it’s Yule May, Hilly’s maid, she’s talking to and not Miss Hilly herself. Miss Celia spells out her telephone number like a floor-mopping jingle, “Emerson two-sixty-six-oh-nine!”
And half a minute later, she’s calling up another name from the back of that stupid paper, like she’s gotten into the habit of doing every other day. I know what that thing is, it’s the newsletter from the Ladies League, and from the looks of it she found it in the parking lot of that ladies’ club. It’s rough as sandpaper and wilted, like it sat through a rainstorm after blowing out of somebody’s pocketbook.
So far, not one of those girls has ever called her back, but every time that phone rings, she jumps on it like a dog on a coon. It’s always Mister Johnny.
“Alright . . . just . . . tell her I called again,” Miss Celia says into the phone.
