Chapter 29
THE HEAT done seeped into everything. For a week now it’s been a hundred degrees and ninety-nine percent humidity. Get any wetter, we be swimming. Can’t get my sheets to dry on the line, my front door won’t close it done swell up so much. Sho nuff couldn’t get a meringue to whip. Even my church wig starting to frizz.
This morning, I can’t even get my hose on. My legs is too swollen. I figure I just do it when I get to Miss Leefolt’s, in the air-condition. It must be record heat, cause I been tending to white folks for forty-one years and this the first time in history I ever went to work without no hose on.
But Miss Leefolt’s house be hotter than my own. “Aibileen, go on and get the tea brewed and . . . salad plates . . . wipe them down now . . .” She ain’t even come in the kitchen today. She in the living room and she done pull a chair next to the wall vent, so what’s left a the air-condition blowing up her slip. That’s all she got on, her full slip and her earrings. I wait on white ladies who walk right out the bedroom wearing nothing but they personality, but Miss Leefolt don’t do like that.
Ever once in a while, that air-condition motor go
“And don’t forget . . . that silver thingamajig—cornichon server, it’s in the . . .”
But she give up before she finish, like it’s too hot to even tell me what to do. And you know that be hot. Seem like everbody in town got the heat-crazies. Go out on the street and it feel real still, eerie, like right before a tornado hit. Or maybe it’s just me, jittery cause a the book. It’s coming out on Friday.
“You think we ought a cancel bridge club?” I ask her from the kitchen. Bridge club changed to Mondays now and the ladies gone be here in twenty minutes.
“No. Everything’s . . . already done,” she say, but I know she ain’t thinking straight.
“I’ll try to whip the cream again. Then I got to go in the garage. Get my hose on.”
“Oh don’t worry about it, Aibileen. It’s too hot for stockings.” Miss Leefolt finally get up from that wall vent, drag herself on in the kitchen, flapping a Chow-Chow Chinese Restaurant fan. “Oh God, it must be fifteen degrees hotter in the kitchen than it is in the dining room!”
“Oven a be off in a minute. Kids gone out back to play.”
Miss Leefolt look out the window at the kids playing in the sprinkler. Mae Mobley down to just her underpants, Ross—I call him Li’l Man—he in his diaper. He ain’t even a year old yet and already he walking like a big boy. He never even crawled.
“I don’t see how they can stand it out there,” Miss Leefolt say.
Mae Mobley love playing with her little brother, looking after him like she his mama. But Mae Mobley don’t get to stay home with us all day no more. My Baby Girl go to the Broadmoore Baptist Pre-School ever morning. Today be Labor Day, though, a holiday for the rest a the world, so no class today. I’m glad too. I don’t know how many days I got left with her.
“Look at them out there,” Miss Leefolt say and I come over to the window where she standing. The sprinkler be blooming up into the treetops, making them rainbows. Mae Mobley got Li’l Man by the hands and they standing under the sprinkles with they eyes closed like they being baptized.
“They are really something special,” she say, sighing, like she just now figuring this out.
“They sure is,” I say and I spec we bout shared us a moment, me and Miss Leefolt, looking out the window at the kids we both love. It makes me wonder if things done changed just a little. It is 1964 after all. Downtown, they letting Negroes set at the Woolworth counter.
I get a real heartsick feeling then, wondering if I gone too far. Cause after the book come out, if folks find out it was us, I probably never get to see these kids again. What if I don’t even get to tell Mae Mobley goodbye, and that she a fine girl, one last time? And Li’l Man? Who gone tell him the story a the Green Martian Luther King?
I already been through all this with myself, twenty times over. But today it’s just starting to feel so real. I touch the window pane like I be touching them. If she find out . . . oh, I’m gone miss these kids.
I look over and see Miss Leefolt’s eyes done wandered down to my bare legs. I think she curious, you know. I bet she ain’t never seen bare black legs up close before. But then, I see she frowning. She look up at Mae Mobley, give her that same hateful frown. Baby Girl done smeared mud and grass all across her front. Now she decorating her brother with it like he a pig in a sty and I see that old disgust Miss Leefolt got for her own daughter. Not for Li’l Man, just Mae Mobley. Saved up special for her.
“She’s ruining the yard!” Miss Leefolt say.
“I go get em. I take care—”
“And I can’t have you serving us like that, with your—your legs showing!”
“I tole you—”
“Hilly’s going to be here in five minutes and she’s messed up
I put a apron on cause I got to hose them kids off. Then I’m on go in the garage, get my stockings on. Book coming out in four days. Ain’t a minute too soon.
WE BEEN LIVING IN ANTICIPATION. Me, Minny, Miss Skeeter, all the maids with stories in the book. Feel like we been waiting for some invisible pot a water to boil for the past seven months. After bout the third month a waiting, we just stopped talking about it. Got us too excited.
But for the past two weeks, I’ve had a secret joy and a secret dread both rattling inside a me that make waxing floors go even slower and washing underwear a uphill race. Ironing pleats turns into a eternity, but what can you do. We all pretty sure nothing’s gone be said about it right at first. Just like Miss Stein told Miss Skeeter, this book ain’t gone be no best-seller and to keep our “expectations low.” Miss Skeeter say maybe don’t spec nothing at all, that most Southern peoples is “repressed.” If they feel something, they might not say a word. Just hold they breath and wait for it to pass, like gas.
Minny say, “I hope she hold her breath till she explode all over Hinds County.” She mean Miss Hilly. I wish Minny was wishing for change in the direction a kindness, but Minny is Minny, all the time.
“YOU WANT YOU a snack, Baby Girl?” I ask when she get home from school on Thursday. Oh, she a big girl! Already four years old. She tall for her age—most folks think she five or six. Skinny as her mama is, Mae Mobley still chubby. And her hair ain’t looking too good. She decide to give herself a haircut with her construction paper scissors and you know how that turn out. Miss Leefolt had to take her down to the grown-up beauty parlor but they couldn’t do a whole lot with it. It still be short on one side with almost nothing in front.
I fix her a little something low-calorie to eat cause that’s all Miss Leefolt let me give her. Crackers and tunafish or Jell-O without no whip cream.
“What you learn today?” I ask even though she ain’t in real school, just the pretend kind. Other day, when I ask her, she say, “Pilgrims. They came over and nothing would grow so they ate the Indians.”
Now I knew them Pilgrims didn’t eat no Indians. But that ain’t the point. Point is, we got to watch what get up in these kids’ heads. Ever week, she still get her Aibileen lesson, her secret story. When Li’l Man get big enough to listen, I’m on tell him too. I mean, if I still got a job here. But I don’t think it’s gone be the same with Li’l Man. He love me, but he wild, like a animal. Come and hug on my knees so hard then off he shoots to look after something else. But even if I don’t get to do this for him, I don’t feel too bad. What I know is, I got it started and that baby boy, even though he can’t talk a word yet, he listen to everthing Mae Mobley say.
Today when I ask what she learn, Mae Mobley just say, “Nothing,” and stick her lip out.
“How you like your teacher?” I ask her.
“She’s pretty,” she say.
“Good,” I say. “You pretty too.”
“How come you’re colored, Aibileen?”
Now I’ve gotten this question a few times from my other white kids. I used to just laugh, but I want to get this right with her. “Cause God made me colored,” I say. “And there ain’t another reason in the world.”
