The Help

I hear her hang it up real soft. If I cared, which I don’t, I’d tell her those ladies ain’t worth it. “Those ladies ain’t worth it, Miss Celia,” I hear myself saying. But she acts like she can’t hear me. She goes back to the bedroom and closes the door.

I think about knocking, seeing if she needs anything. But I’ve got more important things to worry about than if Miss Celia’s won the damn popularity contest. What with Medgar Evers shot on his own doorstep and Felicia clammering for her driver’s license, now that she’s turned fifteen—she’s a good girl but I got pregnant with Leroy Junior when I wasn’t much older than her and a Buick had something to do with it. And on top of all that, now I’ve got Miss Skeeter and her stories to worry about.

AT THE END OF JUNE, a heat wave of a hundred degrees moves in and doesn’t budge. It’s like a hot water bottle plopped on top of the colored neighborhood, making it ten degrees worse than the rest of Jackson. It’s so hot, Mister Dunn’s rooster walks in my door and squats his red self right in front of my kitchen fan. I come in to find him looking at me like I ain’t moving nowhere, lady. He’d rather get beat with a broom than go back out in that nonsense.

Out in Madison County, the heat officially makes Miss Celia the laziest person in the U. S. of A. She won’t even get the mail out the box anymore, I have to do it. It’s even too hot for Miss Celia to sit out at the pool. Which is a problem for me.

See, I think if God had intended for white people and colored people to be this close together for so much of the day, he would’ve made us color-blind. And while Miss Celia’s grinning and “good morning” and “glad to see”-ing me, I’m wondering, how did she get this far in life without knowing where the lines are drawn? I mean, a floozy calling the society ladies is bad enough. But she has sat down and eaten lunch with me every single day since I started working here. I don’t mean in the same room, I mean at the same table. That little one up under the window. Every white woman I’ve ever worked for ate in the dining room as far away from the colored help as they could. And that was fine with me.

“But why? I don’t want to eat in there all by myself when I could eat in here with you,” Miss Celia said. I didn’t even try to explain it to her. There are so many things Miss Celia is just plain ignorant about.

Every other white woman also knows that there is a time of the month when you do not to talk to Minny. Even Miss Walters knew when the Min-O-Meter was running hot. She’d smell the caramel cooking and cane herself right out the door. Wouldn’t even let Miss Hilly come over.

Last week, the sugar and butter had filled Miss Celia’s whole house with the smell of Christmas even though it was the crying shame of June. I was tense, as usual, turning my sugar to caramel. I asked her three times, very politely, if I couldn’t do this by myself, but she wanted to be in there with me. Said she was getting lonely being in her bedroom all the day long.

I tried to ignore her. Problem was, I have to talk to myself when I make a caramel cake or else I get too jittery.

I said, “Hottest day in June history. A hundred and four outside.”

And she said, “Do you have air-conditioning? Thank goodness we have it here cause I grew up without it and I know what it’s like being hot.”

And I said, “Can’t afford no air-conditioning. Them things eat current like a boll weevil on cotton.” And I started stirring hard because the brown was just forming on the top and that’s when you’ve really got to watch it and I say, “We already late on the light bill,” because I’m not thinking straight and do you know what she said? She said, “Oh, Minny, I wish I could loan you the money, but Johnny’s been asking all these funny questions lately,” and I turned to inform her that every time a Negro complained about the cost of living didn’t mean she was begging for money, but before I could say a word, I’d burned up my damn caramel.

AT SUNDAY CHURCH SERVICE, Shirley Boon gets up in front of the congregation. With her lips flapping like a flag, she reminds us that the “Community Concerns” meeting is Wednesday night, to discuss a sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter on Amite Street. Big nosy Shirley points her finger at us and says, “The meeting is at seven so be on time. No excuses!” She reminds me of a big, white, ugly schoolteacher. The kind that nobody ever wants to marry.

“You coming on Wednesday?” asks Aibileen. We’re walking home in the three o’clock heat. I’ve got my funeral fan in my fist. I’m waving it so fast it looks like it’s got a motor on it.

“I ain’t got time,” I say.

“You gone make me go by myself again? Come on, I’m on bring some gingerbread and some—”

“I said I can’t go.”

Aibileen nods, says, “Alright then.” She keeps walking.

“Benny . . . might get the asthma again. I don’t want a leave him.”

“Mm-hmm,” Aibileen says. “You’n tell me the real reason when you ready.”

We turn on Gessum, walk around a car that’s plumb died of heat stroke in the road. “Oh, fore I forget, Miss Skeeter wants to come over early Tuesday night,” Aibileen says. “Bout seven. You make it then?”

“Lord,” I say, getting irritated all over again. “What am I doing? I must be crazy, giving the sworn secrets a the colored race to a white lady.”

“It’s just Miss Skeeter, she ain’t like the rest.”

“Feel like I’m talking behind my own back,” I say. I’ve met with Miss Skeeter at least five times now. It’s not getting any easier.

“You want a stop coming?” Aibileen asks. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to.” I don’t answer her.

“You still there, M?” she says.

“I just . . . I want things to be better for the kids,” I say. “But it’s a sorry fact that it’s a white woman doing this.”

“Come to the community meeting with me on Wednesday. We talk more about it then,” Aibileen says with a little smile.

I knew Aibileen wouldn’t drop it. I sigh. “I got in trouble, alright?”

“With who?”

“Shirley Boon,” I say. “Last meeting everybody was holding hands and praying they gone let blacks in the white bathroom and talking about how they gone set down on a stool at Woolworth’s and not fight back and they all smiling like this world gone be a shiny new place and I just . . . I popped. I told Shirley Boon her ass won’t fit on no stool at Woolworth’s anyway.”

“What Shirley say?”

I pull out my teacher lady voice. “ ‘If you can’t say nothing nice, then you ought not say nothing at all.’ ”

When we get to her house, I look over at Aibileen. She’s holding down a laugh so hard she’s gone purple.

“It ain’t funny,” I say.

“I am glad you’re my friend, Minny Jackson.” And she gives me a big hug until I roll my eyes and tell her I have to go.

I keep walking and turn at the corner. I didn’t want Aibileen to know that. I don’t want anybody to know how much I need those Skeeter stories. Now that I can’t come to the Shirley Boon meetings anymore, that’s pretty much all I’ve got. And I am not saying the Miss Skeeter meetings are fun. Every time we meet, I complain. I moan. I get mad and throw a hot potato fit. But here’s the thing: I like telling my stories. It feels like I’m doing something about it. When I leave, the concrete in my chest has loosened, melted down so I can breathe for a few days.

And I know there are plenty of other “colored” things I could do besides telling my stories or going to Shirley Boon’s meetings—the mass meetings in town, the marches in Birmingham, the voting rallies upstate. But truth is, I don’t care that much about voting. I don’t care about eating at a counter with white people. What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver.

AT HOME THAT NIGHT, I get the butter beans simmering, the ham in the skillet.

“Kindra, get everbody in here,” I say to my six-year-old. “We ready to eat.”