Kathryn Stockett - The Help

“Was she already working for my mother then?”

“She’d been with your mama a few years. That’s where she met the father, Connor. He worked on your farm, lived back there in Hotstack.” Aibileen shakes her head. “We was all surprised Constantine would go and . . . get herself in the family way. Some folks at church wasn’t so kind about it, especially when the baby come out white. Even though the father was black as me.”

“I’m sure Mother wasn’t too pleased, either.” Mother, I’m sure, knew all about it. She’s always kept tabs on all the colored help and their situations—where they live, if they’re married, how many children they have. It’s more of a control thing than a real interest. She wants to know who’s walking around her property.

“Was it a colored orphanage or a white one?” Because I am thinking, I am hoping, maybe Constantine just wanted a better life for her child. Maybe she thought she’d be adopted by a white family and not feel so different.

“Colored. White ones wouldn’t take her, I heard. I guess they knew . . . maybe they seen that kind a thing before.

“When Constantine went to the train station with Lulabelle to take her up there, I heard white folks was staring on the platform, wanting to know why a little white girl was going in the colored car. And when Constantine left her at the place up in Chicago . . . four is . . . pretty old to get given up. Lulabelle was screaming. That’s what Constantine told somebody at our church. Said Lula was screaming and thrashing, trying to get her mama to come back to her. But Constantine, even with that sound in her ears . . . she left her there.”

As I listen, it starts to hit me, what Aibileen is telling me. If I hadn’t had the mother I have, I might not have thought it. “She gave her up because she was . . . ashamed? Because her daughter was white?”

Aibileen opens her mouth to disagree, but then she closes it, looks down. “A few years later, Constantine wrote the orphanage, told em she made a mistake, she wanted her girl back. But Lula been adopted already. She was gone. Constantine always said giving her child away was the worst mistake she’d ever made in her life.” Aibileen leans back in her chair. “And she said if she ever got Lulabelle back, she’d never let her go.”

I sit quietly, my heart aching for Constantine. I am starting to dread what this has to do with my mother.

“Bout two years ago, Constantine get a letter from Lulabelle. I reckon she was twenty-five by then, and it said her adoptive parents give her the address. They start writing to each other and Lulabelle say she want a come down and stay with her awhile. Constantine, Law, she so nervous she couldn’t walk straight. Too nervous to eat, wouldn’t even take no water. Kept throwing it up. I had her on my prayer list.”

Two years ago. I was up at school then. Why didn’t Constantine tell me in her letters what was going on?

“She took all her savings and bought new clothes for Lulabelle, hair things, had the church bee sew her a new quilt for the bed Lula gone sleep in. She told us at prayer meeting, What if she hate me? She’s gone ask me why I give her away and if I tell her the truth . . . she’ll hate me for what I done. ”

Aibileen looks up from her cup of tea, smiles a little. “She tell us, I can’t wait for Skeeter to meet her, when she get back home from school. I forgot about that. I didn’t know who Skeeter was, back then.”

I remember my last letter from Constantine, that she had a surprise for me. I realize now, she’d wanted to introduce me to her daughter. I swallow back tears coming up in my throat. “What happened when Lulabelle came down to see her?”

Aibileen slides the envelope across the table. “I reckon you ought a read that part at home.”

AT HOME, I GO UPSTAIRS. Without even stopping to sit down, I open Aibileen’s letter. It is on notebook paper, covering the front and back, written in cursive pencil.

Afterward, I stare at the eight pages I’ve already written about walking to Hotstack with Constantine, the puzzles we worked on together, her pressing her thumb in my hand. I take a deep breath and put my hands on the typewriter keys. I can’t waste any more time. I have to finish her story.

I write about what Aibileen told me, that Constantine had a daughter and had to give her up so she could work for our family—the Millers I call us, after Henry, my favorite banned author. I don’t put in that Constantine’s daughter was high yellow; I just want to show that Constantine’s love for me began with missing her own child. Perhaps that’s what made it so unique, so deep. It didn’t matter that I was white. While she was wanting her own daughter back, I was longing for Mother not to be disappointed in me.

For two days, I write all the way through my childhood, my college years, where we sent letters to each other every week. But then I stop and listen to Mother coughing downstairs. I hear Daddy’s footsteps, going to her. I light a cigarette and stub it out, thinking, Don’t start up again. The toilet water rushes through the house, filled with a little more of my mother’s body. I light another cigarette and smoke it down to my fingers. I can’t write about what’s in Aibileen’s letter.

That afternoon, I call Aibileen at home. “I can’t put it in the book,” I tell her. “About Mother and Constantine. I’ll end it when I go to college. I just . . .”

“Miss Skeeter—”

“I know I should. I know I should be sacrificing as much as you and Minny and all of you. But I can’t do that to my mother.”

“No one expects you to, Miss Skeeter. Truth is, I wouldn’t think real high a you if you did.”

THE NEXT EVENING, I go to the kitchen for some tea.

“Eugenia? Are you downstairs?”

I tread back to Mother’s room. Daddy’s not in bed yet. I hear the television on out in the relaxing room. “I’m here, Mama.”

She is in bed at six in the evening, the white bowl by her side. “Have you been crying? You know how that ages your skin, dear.”

I sit in the straight cane chair beside her bed. I think about how I should begin. Part of me understands why Mother acted the way she did, because really, wouldn’t anyone be angry about what Lulabelle did? But I need to hear my mother’s side of the story. If there’s anything redeeming about my mother that Aibileen left out of the letter, I want to know.

“I want to talk about Constantine,” I say.

“Oh Eugenia,” Mother chides and pats my hand. “That was almost two years ago.”

“Mama,” I say and make myself look into her eyes. Even though she is terribly thin and her collarbone is long and narrow beneath her skin, her eyes are still as sharp as ever. “What happened? What happened with her daughter?”

Mother’s jaw tightens and I can tell she’s surprised that I know about her. I wait for her to refuse to talk about it, as before. She takes a deep breath, moves the white bowl a little closer to her, says, “Constantine sent her up to Chicago to live. She couldn’t take care of her.”

I nod and wait.

“They’re different that way, you know. Those people have children and don’t think about the consequences until it’s too late.”

They, those people. It reminds me of Hilly. Mother sees it on my face, too.

“Now you look, I was good to Constantine. Oh, she talked back plenty of times and I put up with it. But Skeeter, she didn’t give me a choice this time.”

“I know, Mother. I know what happened.”

“Who told you? Who else knows about this?” I see the paranoia rising in Mother’s eyes. It is her greatest fear coming true, and I feel sorry for her.

“I will never tell you who told me. All I can say is, it was no one . . . important to you,” I say. “I can’t believe you would do that, Mother.”