The Help

if I hadn’t done what I did.”

Miss Celia just stares at me.

“But I want you to know, if you leave Mister Johnny, then Miss Hilly done won the whole ball game. Then she done beat me, she beat you . . .” I shake my head, thinking about Yule May in jail, and Miss Skeeter without any friends left. “There ain’t many people left in this town that she ain’t beat.”

Miss Celia’s quiet awhile. Then she looks over at me and starts to say something, but she shuts her mouth back.

Finally, she just says, “Thank you. For . . . telling me that.”

She lays back down. But before I close the door, I can see her eyes are wide smack open.

THE NEXT MORNING, I find Miss Celia’s finally managed to get herself out of bed, wash her hair, and put all that makeup on again. It’s cold outside so she’s back in one of her tight sweaters.

“Glad to have Mister Johnny back home?” I ask. Not that I care, but what I do want to know is if she’s still fiddling with the idea of leaving.

But Miss Celia doesn’t say much. There’s a tiredness in her eyes. She’s not so quick to smile at every little thing. She points her finger out the kitchen window. “I think I’ll plant a row of rosebushes. Along the back of the property.”

“When they gone bloom?”

“We should see something by next spring.”

I take this as a good sign, that she’s planning for the future. I figure somebody running off wouldn’t go to the trouble to plant flowers that won’t bloom until next year.

For the rest of the day, Miss Celia works in the flower garden, tending to the mums. The next morning I come in and find Miss Celia at the kitchen table. She’s got the newspaper out, but she’s staring out at that mimosa tree. It’s rainy and chilly outside.

“Morning, Miss Celia.”

“Hey, Minny.” Miss Celia just sits, looking out at that tree, fiddling with a pen in her hand. It’s started to rain.

“What you want for lunch today? We got a roast beef or some a this chicken pie left over . . .” I lean in the refrigerator. I’ve got to make a decision about Leroy, tell him how it is. Either you quit beating on me, or I’m gone. And I’m not taking the kids either. Which ain’t true, about the kids, but that ought to scare him more than anything.

“I don’t want anything.” Miss Celia stands up, slips off one red high heel, then the other. She stretches her back, still staring out the window at that tree. She cracks her knuckles. And then she walks out the back door.

I see her on the other side of the glass and then I see the axe. I get a little spooked because nobody likes to see a crazy lady with an axe in her hand. She swings it hard through the air, like a bat. A practice chop.

“Lady, you done lost it this time.” The rain is pouring down all over Miss Celia, but she doesn’t care. She starts chopping at that tree. Leaves are sprinkling down all over her, sticking in her hair.

I set the platter of roast beef down on the kitchen table and watch, hoping this doesn’t turn into something. She bunches her mouth up, wipes the rain from her eyes. Instead of getting tired, every chop comes a little harder.

“Miss Celia, come on out the rain,” I holler. “Let Mister Johnny do that when he get home.”

But she’s nothing doing. She’s made it halfway through that trunk and the tree’s starting to sway a little, drunk as my daddy. Finally I just plop down in the chair where Miss Celia was reading, wait for her to finish the job. I shake my head and look down at the newspaper. That’s when I see Miss Hilly’s note tucked underneath it and Miss Celia’s check for two hundred dollars. I look a little closer. Along the bottom of the check, in the little space for the notes, Miss Celia’s written the words in pretty cursive handwriting: For Two-Slice Hilly.

I hear a groan and see the tree crash to the ground. Leaves and dead fronds fly through the air, sticking all over her Butterbatch.

MISS SKEETER

Chapter 27

I STARE AT THE PHONE in the kitchen. No one’s called here in so long, it’s like a dead thing mounted to the wall. There’s a terrible quiet looming everywhere—at the library, at the drugstore where I pick up Mother’s medicine, on High Street where I buy typewriter ink, in our own house. President Kennedy’s assassination, less than two weeks ago, has struck the world dumb. It’s like no one wants to be the first to break the silence. Nothing seems important enough.

On the rare occasion that the phone does ring lately, it’s Doctor Neal, calling with more bad test results, or a relative checking on Mother. And yet, I still think Stuart sometimes, even though it’s been five months since he’s called. Even though I finally broke down and told Mother we’d broken up. Mother looked shocked, as I suspected she would, but thankfully, just sighed.

I take a deep breath, dial zero, and close myself up in the pantry. I tell the local operator the long distance number and wait.

“Harper and Row, Publishers, how may I connect you?”

“Elaine Stein’s office, please.”

I wait for her secretary to come on the line, wishing I’d done this earlier. But it felt wrong to call the week of Kennedy’s death and I heard on the news most offices were closed. Then it was Thanksgiving week and when I called, the switchboard told me no one was answering in her office at all, so now I’m calling more than a week later than I’d planned.

“Elaine Stein.”

I blink, surprised it’s not her secretary. “Missus Stein, I’m sorry, this is—Eugenia Phelan. In Jackson, Mississippi.”

“Yes . . . Eugenia.” She sighs, evidently irritated that she took the chance to answer her own phone.

“I was calling to let you know that the manuscript will be ready right after the new year. I’ll be mailing it to you the second week of January.” I smile, having delivered my rehearsed lines perfectly.

There is silence, except for an exhale of cigarette smoke. I shift on the flour can. “I’m . . . the one writing about the colored women? In Mississippi?”

“Yes, I remember,” she says, but I can’t tell if she really does. But then she says, “You’re the one who applied for the senior position. How is that project going?”

“It’s almost finished. We just have two more interviews to complete and I was wondering if I should send it directly to your attention or to your secretary.”

“Oh no, January is not acceptable.”

“Eugenia? Are you in the house?” I hear Mother call.

I cover the phone. “Just a minute, Mama,” I call back, knowing if I don’t, she’ll barge in here.

“The last editor’s meeting of the year is on December twenty-first,” Missus Stein continues. “If you want a chance at getting this read, I’ve got to have it in my hands by then. Otherwise it goes in The Pile. You don’t want to be in The Pile, Miss Phelan.”

“But . . . you told me January . . .” Today is December second. That only gives me nineteen days to finish the entire thing.

“December twenty-first is when everyone leaves for vacation and then in the new year we’re deluged with projects from our own list of authors and journalists. If you’re a nobody, as you are, Miss Phelan, before the twenty-first is your window. Your only window.”