Kathryn Stockett - The Help

“I’m . . . fine.”

“While you in there, I’m on go head and change these sheets.”

“No, I want you to go on,” she says through the door. “Go on home for the day, Minny.”

I stand there and tap my foot on her yellow rug. I don’t want to go on home. It’s Tuesday, change-the-damn-sheets day. If I don’t do it today, that makes Wednesday change-the-damn-sheets day too.

“What Mister Johnny gone do if he come home and the house’s a mess?”

“He’s at the deer camp tonight. Minny, I need you to bring me the phone over—” her voice breaks into a trembly wail. “Drag it on over and fetch my phone book that’s setting in the kitchen.”

“You sick, Miss Celia?”

But she doesn’t answer so I go get the book and stretch the phone over to the bathroom door and tap on it.

“Just leave it there.” Miss Celia sounds like she’s crying now. “I want you to go on home now.”

“But I just gots—”

“I said go home, Minny!”

I step back from that closed door. Heat rises up my face. And it stings, not because I haven’t been yelled at before. I just haven’t been yelled at by Miss Celia yet.

THE NEXT MORNING, Woody Asap on Channel Twelve is waving his white scaly hands all over the state map. Jackson, Mississippi, is frozen like an ice pop. First it rained, then it froze, then anything with more than a half-inch extending broke off to the ground by this morning. Tree branches, power lines, porch awnings collapsed like they’d plumb given up. Outside’s been dunked in a shiny clear bucket of shellac.

My kids glue their sleepy faces to the radio and when the box says the roads are frozen and school is closed, they all jump around and whoop and whistle and run outside to look at the ice with nothing on but their long johns.

“Get back in this house and put some shoes on!” I holler out the door. Not one of them does. I call Miss Celia to tell her I can’t drive in the ice and to find out if she’s got power out there. After she yelled at me like I was a nigger in the road yesterday, you’d think I wouldn’t give a hoot about her.

When I call, I hear, “Yeeello.”

My heart hiccups.

“Who is this? Who’s calling here?”

Real careful I hang up that phone. I guess Mister Johnny’s not working today either. I don’t know how he made it home with the storm. All I know is, even on a day off, I can’t escape the fear of that man. But in eleven days, that’s all going to be over.

MOST OF THE TOWN THAWS in a day. Miss Celia’s not in bed when I walk in. She’s sitting at the white kitchen table staring out the window with an ugly look on her face like her poor fancy life is just too hot a hell to live in. It’s the mimosa tree she’s eyeing out there. It took the ice pretty hard. Half of the branches broke off and all the spindly leaves are brown and soggy.

“Morning, Minny,” she says, not even looking my way.

But I just nod. I have nothing to say to her, not after the way she treated me day before yesterday.

“We can finally cut that old ugly thing down now,” says Miss Celia.

“Go ahead. Cut em all down.” Just like me, cut me down for no reason at all.

Miss Celia gets up and comes over to the sink where I’m standing. She grabs hold of my arm. “I’m sorry I hollered at you like I did.” Tears brim up in her eyes when she says it.

“Mm-hmm.”

“I was sick and I know that’s no excuse, but I was feeling real poor and . . .” She starts sobbing then, like the worst thing she’s ever done in her life is yell at her maid.

“Alright,” I say. “Ain’t nothing to boo-hoo over.”

And then she hugs me tight around the neck until I kind of pat her on the back and peel her off. “Go on, set down,” I say. “I’ll fix you some coffee.”

I guess we all get a little snippy when we’re not feeling good.

BY THE NEXT MONDAY, the leaves on that mimosa tree have turned black like it burned instead of froze. I come in the kitchen ready to tell her how many days we have left, but Miss Celia’s staring at that tree, hating it with her eyes the same way she hates the stove. She’s pale, won’t eat anything I put in front of her.

All day, instead of laying up in bed, she works on decorating the ten-foot Christmas tree in the foyer, making my life a vacuuming hell with all the needles flying around. Then she goes in the backyard, starts clipping the rose bushes and digging the tulip bulbs. I’ve never seen her move that much, ever. She comes in for her cooking lesson afterward with dirt under her nails but she’s still not smiling.

“Six more days before we tell Mister Johnny,” I say.

She doesn’t say anything for a while, then her voice comes out flat as a pan. “Are you sure I have to? I was thinking maybe we could wait.”

I stop where I am, with buttermilk dripping off my hands. “Ask me how sure I am again.”

“Alright, alright.” And then she goes outside again to take up her new favorite pastime, staring down that mimosa tree with the axe in her hand. But she never takes a chop.

Wednesday night all I can think is just ninety-six more hours. Knowing I might not have a job after Christmas gnaws at my stomach. I’ll have a lot more to worry about than just being shot dead. Miss Celia’s supposed to tell him on Christmas Eve, after I leave, before they go over to Mister Johnny’s mama’s house. But Miss Celia’s acting so strange, I wonder if she’s going to try and back out. No ma’am, I say to myself all day. I intend to stay on her like hair on soap.

When I walk in Thursday morning though, Miss Celia’s not even home. I can’t believe she’s actually left the house. I sit at the table and pour myself a cup of coffee.

I look out at the backyard. It’s bright, sunny. That black mimosa tree sure is ugly. I wonder why Mister Johnny doesn’t just go ahead and cut that thing down.

I lean in a little closer to the windowsill. “Well look a there.” Down around the bottom, some green fronds are still hanging on, perking up a little in the sun.

“That old tree just playing possum.”

I pull a pad out of my pocketbook where I keep a list of what needs to be tended to, not for Miss Celia, but my own groceries, Christmas presents, things for my kids. Benny’s asthma has gotten a little better but Leroy came home last night smelling like Old Crow again. He pushed me hard and I bumped my thigh on the kitchen table. He comes home like that tonight, I’ll fix him a knuckle sandwich for supper.

I sigh. Seventy-two more hours and I’m a free woman. Maybe fired, maybe dead after Leroy finds out, but free.

I try to concentrate on the week. Tomorrow’s heavy cooking and I’ve got the church supper Saturday night and the service on Sunday. When am I going to clean my own house? Wash my own kids’ clothes? My oldest girl, Sugar, is sixteen and pretty good about keeping things neat, but I like to help her out on the weekends the way my mama never helped me. And Aibileen. She called me again last night, asked if I’d help her and Miss Skeeter with the stories. I love Aibileen, I do. But I think she’s making a king-sized mistake trusting a white lady. And I told her, too. She’s risking her job, her safety. Not to mention why anyone would want to help a friend of Miss Hilly’s.

Lord, I better get on with my work.

I pineapple the ham and get it in the oven. Then I dust the shelves in the hunting room, vacuum the bear while he stares at me like I’m a snack. “Just you and me today,” I tell him. As usual he doesn’t say much. I get my rag and my oil soap, work my way up the staircase, polishing each spoke on the banister as I go. When I make it to the top, I head into bedroom number one.

I clean upstairs for about an hour. It’s chilly up here, no bodies to warm it up. I work my arm back and forth, back and forth across everything wood. Between the second and third bedrooms, I go downstairs to Miss Celia’s room before she comes back.