Kathryn Stockett - The Help

“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 everything !” she screech. I guess Mae Mobley hear her through the window cause she look over at us, frozen. Smile fades. After a second, she start wiping the mud off her face real slow.

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.”

“Miss Taylor says kids that are colored can’t go to my school cause they’re not smart enough.”

I come round the counter then. Lift her chin up and smooth back her funny-looking hair. “You think I’m dumb?”

“No,” she whispers hard, like she means it so much. She look sorry she said it.

“What that tell you about Miss Taylor, then?”

She blink, like she listening good.

“Means Miss Taylor ain’t right all the time,” I say.

She hug me around my neck, say, “You’re righter than Miss Taylor.” I tear up then. My cup is spilling over. Those is new words to me.

AT FOUR O’CLOCK THAT AFTERNOON, I walk as fast as I can from the bus stop to the Church a the Lamb. I wait inside, watch out the window. After ten minutes a trying to breathe and drumming my fingers on the sill, I see the car pull up. White lady gets out and I squint my eyes. This lady looks like one a them hippies I seen on Miss Leefolt’s tee-vee. She got on a short white dress and sandals. Her hair’s long without no spray on it. The weight of it’s worked out the curl and frizz. I laugh into my hand, wishing I could run out there and give her a hug. I ain’t been able to see Miss Skeeter in person in six months, since we finished Miss Stein’s edits and turned in the final copy.

Miss Skeeter pull a big brown box out the back seat, then carries it up to the church door, like she dropping off old clothes. She stop a second and look at the door, but then she get in her car and drive away. I’m sad she had to do it this way but we don’t want a blow it fore it even starts.

Soon as she gone, I run out and tote the box inside and grab out a copy and I just stare. I don’t even try not to cry. Be the prettiest book I ever seen. The cover is a pale blue, color a the sky. And a big white bird—a peace dove—spreads its wings from end to end. The title Help is written across the front in black letters, in a bold fashion. The only thing that bothers me is the who-it-be-by part. It say by Anonymous. I wish Miss Skeeter could a put her name on it, but it was just too much of a risk.

Tomorrow, I’m on take early copies to all the women whose stories we put in. Miss Skeeter gone carry a copy up to the State Pen to Yule May. In a way, she’s the reason the other maids even agreed to help. But I hear Yule May probably won’t get the box. Them prisoners don’t get but one out a ten things sent to em cause the lady guards take it for theyselves. Miss Skeeter say she gone deliver copies ten more times to make sure.

I carry that big box home and take out one copy and put the box under my bed. Then I run over to Minny’s house. Minny six months pregnant but you can’t even tell yet. When I get there, she setting at the kitchen table drinking a glass a milk. Leroy asleep in the back and Benny and Sugar and Kindra is shelling peanuts in the backyard. The kitchen’s quiet. I smile, hand Minny her copy.

She eye it. “I guess the dove bird looks okay.”

“Miss Skeeter say the peace dove be the sign for better times to come. Say folks is wearing em on they clothes out in California.”

“I don’t care bout no peoples in California,” Minny say, staring at that cover. “All I care about is what the folks in Jackson, Mississippi, got to say about it.”

“Copies gone show up in the bookstores and the libraries tomorrow. Twenty-five hundred in Mississippi, other half all over the United States.” That’s a lot more than what Miss Stein told us before, but since the freedom rides started and them civil rights workers disappeared in that station wagon here in Mississippi, she say folks is paying more attention to our state.

“How many copies going to the white Jackson library?” Minny ask. “Zero?”

I shake my head with a smile. “Three copies. Miss Skeeter told me on the phone this morning.”

Even Minny look stunned. Just two months ago the white library started letting colored people in. I been in twice myself.

Minny open the book and she start reading it right there. Kids come in and she tell them what to do and how to do it without even looking up. Eyes don’t even stop moving across the page. I already done read it many a time, working on it over the past year. But Minny always said she don’t want a read it till it come out in the hardboard. Say she don’t want a spoil it.