Two weeks ago? I almost laugh. Of course Mother was the first to know something so important. I’m happy she’s had so long to enjoy the news.
“And I have something to tell you,” she says. The glow around Mother is unearthly, phosphorescent. It’s from the porch light, but I wonder why I’ve never seen it before. She clasps my hand in the air with the healthy grip of a mother holding her newly engaged daughter. Daddy stirs, then sits straight up.
“What?” he gasps. “Are you sick?”
“No, Carlton. I’m fine. I told you.”
He nods numbly, closes his eyes, and is asleep before he has even lain down again.
“What’s your news, Mama?”
“I’ve had a long talk with your daddy and I have made a decision.”
“Oh God,” I sigh. I can just see her explaining it to Stuart when he asked for my hand. “Is this about the trust fund?”
“No, it’s not that,” she says and I think,
“Now I know you’ve noticed that things have been on the uptick these past few weeks,” she says. “And I know what Doctor Neal says, that it’s some kind of last strength, some nonsense ab—” She coughs and her thin body arches over like a shell. I give her a tissue and she frowns, dabs at her mouth.
“But as I said, I have made a decision.”
I nod, listening, with the same numbness as my father a moment ago.
“I have decided not to die.”
“Oh . . . Mama. God, please . . .”
“Too late,” she says, waving my hand away. “I’ve made my decision and that’s that.”
She slides her palms across each other, as if throwing the cancer away. Sitting straight and prim in her gown, the halo of light glowing around her hair, I can’t keep from rolling my eyes. How dumb of me. Of course Mother will be as obstinate about her death as she has been about every detail of her life.
THE DATE IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1964. I have on a black A-line dress. My fingernails are all bitten off. I will remember every detail of this day, I think, the way people are saying they’ll never forget what kind of sandwich they were eating, or the song on the radio, when they found out Kennedy was shot.
I walk into what has become such a familiar spot to me, the middle of Aibileen’s kitchen. It is already dark outside and the yellow bulb seems very bright. I look at Minny and she looks at me. Aibileen edges between us as if to block something.
“Harper and Row,” I say, “wants to publish it.”
Everyone is quiet. Even the flies stop buzzing.
“You kidding me,” says Minny.
“I spoke to her this afternoon.”
Aibileen lets out a whoop like I’ve never heard come out of her before. “Law, I can’t believe it!” she hollers, and then we are hugging, Aibileen and me, then Minny and Aibileen. Minny looks in my general direction.
“Sit down, y’all!” Aibileen says. “Tell me what she say? What a we do now? Law, I ain’t even got no coffee ready!”
We sit and they both stare at me, leaning forward. Aibileen’s eyes are big. I’ve been waiting at home with the news for four hours. Missus Stein told me, clearly, this is a very small deal. Keep our expectations between low and nonexistent. I feel obligated to communicate this to Aibileen so she doesn’t end up disappointed. I’ve hardly even figured out how I should feel about it myself.
“Listen, she said not to get too excited. That the number of copies they’re going to put out is going to be very,
I wait for Aibileen to frown, but she giggles. She tries to hide it with her hand.
“Probably only a few thousand copies.”
Aibileen presses her hand harder against her lips.
“
Aibileen’s face is turning darker. She giggles again into her knuckles. Clearly she’s not getting this.
“And she said it’s one of the smallest advances she’s ever seen . . .” I am trying to be serious but I can’t because Aibileen is clearly about to burst. Tears are coming up in her eyes.
“How . . . small?” she asks behind her hand.
“Eight hundred dollars,” I say. “Divided thirteen ways.”
Aibileen splits open in laughter. I can’t help but laugh with her. But it makes no sense. A few thousand copies and $61.50 a person?
Tears run down Aibileen’s face and finally she just lays her head on the table. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. It just seem so funny all a sudden.”
Minny rolls her eyes at us. “I
I do my best to tell them the details. I hadn’t acted much better on the phone with Missus Stein. She’d sounded so matter-of-fact, almost uninterested. And what did I do? Did I remain businesslike and ask pertinent questions? Did I thank her for taking on such a risky topic? No, instead of laughing, I started blubbering into the phone, crying like a kid getting a polio shot.
“Calm down, Miss Phelan,” she’d said, “this is hardly going to be a best-seller,” but I just kept crying while she fed me the details. “We’re only offering a four-hundred-dollar advance and then another four hundred dollars when it’s finished . . . are you . . . listening?”
“Ye-yes ma’am.”
“And there’s definitely some editing you have to do. The Sarah section is in the best shape,” she’d said, and I tell Aibileen this through her fits and snorts.
Aibileen sniffs, wipes her eyes, smiles. We finally calm down, drinking coffee that Minny had to get up and put on for us.
“She really likes Gertrude, too,” I say to Minny. I pick up the paper and read the quote I’d written so I wouldn’t forget it. “ ‘Gertrude is every Southern white woman’s nightmare. I adore her.’ ”
For a second, Minny actually looks me in the eye. Her face softens into a childlike smile. “She say that? Bout me?”
Aibileen laughs. “It’s like she know you from five hundred miles away.”
“She said it’ll be at least six months until it comes out. Sometime in August.”
Aibileen is still smiling, completely undeterred by anything I’ve said. And honestly, I’m grateful for this. I knew she’d be excited, but I was afraid she’d be a little disappointed, too. Seeing her makes me realize, I’m not disappointed at all. I’m just happy.
We sit and talk another few minutes, drinking coffee and tea, until I look at my watch. “I told Daddy I’d be home in an hour.” Daddy is at home with Mother. I took a risk and left him Aibileen’s number just in case, telling him I was going to visit a friend named Sarah.
They both walk me to the door, which is new for Minny. I tell Aibileen I’ll call her as soon as I get Missus Stein’s notes in the mail.
“So six months from now, we’ll finally know what’s gone happen,” Minny says, “good, bad, or nothing.”
“It might be nothing,” I say, wondering if anyone will even buy the book.
“Well, I’m counting on good,” Aibileen says.
Minny crosses her arms over her chest. “I better count on bad then. Somebody got to.”
Minny doesn’t look worried about book sales. She looks worried about what will happen when the women of Jackson read what we’ve written about them.
AIBILEEN
