Kathryn Stockett - The Help

“Alright,” I sigh.

“I’m just dying to see It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Won’t this be fun,” Hilly says. “You and me and William and Stuart.”

It strikes me as suspicious, the way she’s arranged the names. As if the point were for William and Stuart to be together instead of me and Stuart. I know I’m being paranoid. But everything makes me wary now. Two nights ago, as soon as I crossed over the colored bridge, I was stopped by a policeman. He shone his flashlight in the truck, let it shine on the satchel. He asked for my license and where I was going. “I’m taking a check to my maid . . . Constantine. I forgot to pay her.” Another cop pulled up, came to my window. “Why did you stop me?” I asked, my voice sounding about ten pitches too high. “Did something happen?” I asked. My heart was slamming against my chest. What if they looked in my satchel?

“Some Yankee trash stirring up trouble. We’ll catch em, ma’am,” he said, patting his billy club. “Do your business and get back over the bridge.”

When I got to Aibileen’s street, I parked even farther down the block. I walked around to her back door instead of using the front. I shook so bad for the first hour, I could hardly read the questions I’d written for Minny.

Hilly gives the five-minute-till bang with her gavel. I make my way to my chair, lug my satchel onto my lap. I tick through the contents, suddenly conscious of the Jim Crow booklet I stole from the library. In fact, my satchel holds all the work we’ve done—Aibileen and Minny’s interviews, the book outline, a list of potential maids, a scathing, unmailed response I wrote to Hilly’s bathroom initiative—everything I can’t leave at home for fear Mother will snoop through my things. I keep it all in a side zip-pocket with a flap over it. It bulges unevenly.

“Skeeter, those poplin pants are just the cutest thing, why haven’t I seen those before?” Carroll Ringer says a few chairs away and I look up at her and smile, thinking Because I wouldn’t dare wear old clothes to a meeting and neither would you. Clothing questions irritate me after so many years of Mother hounding me.

I feel a hand on my other shoulder and turn to find Hilly with her finger in my satchel, right on the booklet. “Do you have the notes for next week’s newsletter? Are these them?” I hadn’t even seen her coming.

“No, wait!” I say and ease the booklet back into my papers. “I need to . . . to correct one thing. I’ll bring them to you a little later.”

I take a deep breath.

At the podium, Hilly looks at her watch, toying with the gavel like she’s just dying to bang it. I push my satchel under my chair. Finally, the meeting begins.

I record the PSCA news, who’s on the trouble list, who’s not brought in their cans. The calendar of events is full of committee meetings and baby showers, and I shift around in my wooden chair, hoping the meeting will end soon. I have to get Mother’s car back to her by three.

It’s not until a quarter till, an hour and a half later, that I rush out of the hot room toward the Cadillac. I’ll be on the trouble list for leaving early, but Jesus Christ, what’s worse, the wrath of Mother or the wrath of Hilly?

I WALK INTO THE HOUSE five minutes early, humming “Love Me Do,” thinking I ought to go buy a short skirt like Jenny Foushee wore today. She said she’d gotten it up in New York City at Bergdorf Goodman’s. Mother would keel over if I showed up with a skirt above the knee when Stuart picks me up on Saturday.

“Mama, I’m home,” I call down the hallway.

I pull a Co-Cola from the fridge, sigh and smile, feeling good, strong. I head to the front door for my satchel, ready to thread together more of Minny’s stories. I can tell she is itching to talk about Celia Foote, but she always stops after a minute of it and changes the subject. The phone rings and I answer it, but it’s for Pascagoula. I take a message on the pad. It’s Yule May, Hilly’s maid.

“Hey, Yule May,” I say, thinking what a small town this is. “I’ll give her the message when she gets back.” I lean a minute against the counter, wishing Constantine was here like it used to be. How I’d love to share every single thing about my day with her.

I sigh and finish my Coke and then go to the front door for my satchel. It’s not there. I go outside and look in the car but it’s not there either. Huh, I think and head up the stairs, feeling less pink now and more of a pale yellow. Did I go upstairs yet? I scour my room, but it’s nowhere to be found. Finally, I stand still in my quiet bedroom, a slow tingle of panic working its way up my spine. The satchel, it has everything in it.

Mother, I think and I dash downstairs and look in the relaxing room. But suddenly I realize it’s not Mother who has it—the answer has come to me, numbing my entire body. I left my satchel at the League House. I was in such a hurry to get Mother’s car home. And even as the phone is ringing, I already know it is Hilly on the end of that line.

I grab the phone from the wall. Mother calls goodbye from the front door.

“Hello?”

“How could you leave this heavy thing behind?” Hilly asks. Hilly never has had a problem with going through other people’s things. In fact, she enjoys it.

“Mother, wait a second!” I holler from the kitchen.

“Good Lord, Skeeter, what’s in here?” Hilly says. I’ve got to catch Mother, but Hilly’s voice is muffled, like she’s bending down, opening it.

“Nothing! Just . . . all those Miss Myrna letters, you know.”

“Well, I’ve lugged it back to my house so come on by and get it when you can.”

Mother is starting the car outside. “Just . . . keep it there. I’ll be by as soon as I can get there.”

I race outside but Mother’s already down the lane. I look over and the old truck’s gone too, toting cotton seed somewhere in the fields. The dread in my stomach is flat and hard and hot, like a brick in the sun.

Down by the road, I watch the Cadillac slow, then jerk to a stop. Then it goes again. Then stops. Then slowly reverses and zigzags its way back up the hill. By the grace of a god I never really liked, much less believed in, my mother is actually coming back.

“I can’t believe I forgot Sue Anne’s casserole dish . . .”

I jump in the front passenger seat, wait until she climbs back into the car. She puts her hands on the wheel.

“Drive me by Hilly’s? I need to pick something up.” I press my hand to my forehead. “Oh God, hurry, Mother. Before I’m too late.”

Mother’s car hasn’t moved. “Skeeter, I have a million things to do today—”

The panic is rising up in my throat. “Mama, please, just drive . . .”

But the Deville sits in the gravel, ticking like a time bomb.

“Now look,” Mother says, “I have some personal errands to run and I just don’t think it’s a good time to have you tagging along.”

“It’ll take you five minutes. Just drive, Mama!”

Mother keeps her white-gloved hands on the steering wheel, her lips pressed together.

“I happen to have something confidential and important to do today.”

I can’t imagine my mother has anything more important to do than what I’m staring down the throat of. “What? A Mexican’s trying to join the DAR? Somebody got caught reading the New American Dictionary ?”

Mother sighs, says, “Fine,” and moves the gear shift carefully into drive. “Alright, here we go.” We roll down the lane at about one-tenth of a mile an hour, putting along so the gravel won’t knock at the paint job. At the end of the lane, she puts on her blinker like she’s doing brain surgery and creeps the Cadillac out onto the County Road. My fists are clenched. I press my imaginary accelerator. Every time’s Mother’s first time to drive.