The help

[ملکه برفی]

there."

"Oh, isn't that dreadful!" Lou Anne beams.

The picture shows wall-to-wall shag carpet and low, streamlined sofas, egg-shaped chairs and televisions that look like flying saucers. In Hilly's parlor, a portrait of a Confederate general hangs eight feet tall. It is as prominent as if he were a grandfather and not a third cousin removed.

"That's it. Trudy's house looks just like that," Elizabeth says. I've been so wrapped up in the interview with Aibileen, I'd almost forgotten Elizabeth's trip last week to see her older sister. Trudy married a banker and they moved to Hollywood. Elizabeth went out there for four days to see her new house.

"Well, that's just bad taste, is what it is," Hilly says. "No offense to your family, Elizabeth."

"What was Hollywood like?" Lou Anne asks.

"Oh, it was like a dream. And Trudy's house--T.V. sets in every room. That same crazy space-age furniture you could hardly even sit in. We went to all these fancy restaurants, where the movie stars eat, and drank martinis and burgundy wine. And one night Max Factor himself came over to the table, spoke to Trudy like they're just old friends"--she shakes her head-"like they were just passing by in the grocery store." Elizabeth sighs.

"Well, if you ask me, you're still the prettiest in the family," Hilly says. "Not that Trudy's unattractive, but you're the one with the poise and the real style."

Elizabeth smiles at this, but then drifts back to frowning. "Not to mention she has live-in help, every day, every hour. I hardly had to see Mae Mobley at all."

all."

I cringe at this comment, but no one else seems to notice. Hilly's watching her maid, Yule May, refill our tea glasses. She's tall, slender, almost regal-looking and has a much better figure than Hilly. Seeing her makes me worry about Aibileen. I've called Aibileen's house twice this week, but there wasn't any answer. I'm sure she's avoiding me. I guess I'll have to go to Elizabeth's house to talk to her whether Elizabeth likes it or not.

"I was thinking next year we might do a Gone With the Wind theme for the Benefit," Hilly says, "maybe rent the old Fairview Mansion?"

"What a great idea!" Lou Anne says.

"Oh Skeeter," Hilly says, "I know you just hated missing it this year." I nod, give a pitiful frown. I'd pretended to have the flu to avoid going alone.

"I'll tell you one thing," Hilly says, "I won't be hiring that rock-and-roll band again, playing all that fast dance music . . ."

Elizabeth taps my arm. She has her handbag in her lap. "I almost forgot to give this to you. From Aibileen, for the Miss Myrna thing? I told her though, y'all cannot

powwow on this today, not after all that time she missed in January."

I open the folded piece of paper. The words are in blue ink, in a lovely cursive hand.

I know how to make the teapot stop rattling.

"And who in the world cares about how to make a teapot not rattle?" Elizabeth says. Because of course she read it.

It takes me two seconds and a drink of iced tea to understand. "You wouldn't believe how hard it is," I tell her.

TWO DAYS LATER, I sit in my parents' kitchen, waiting for dusk to fall. I give in and light another cigarette even though last night the surgeon general came on the television set and shook his finger at everybody, trying to convince us that smoking will kill us. But Mother once told me tongue kissing would turn me blind and I'm starting to think it's all just a big plot between the surgeon general and Mother to make

between the surgeon general and Mother to make sure no one ever has any fun.

At eight o'clock that same night, I'm stumbling down Aibileen's street as discreetly as one can carrying a fifty-pound Corona typewriter. I knock softly, already dying for another cigarette to calm my nerves. Aibileen answers and I slip inside. She's wearing the same green dress and stiff black shoes as last time.

I try to smile, like I'm confident it will work this time, despite the idea she explained over the phone. "Could we . . . sit in the kitchen this time?" I ask. "Would you mind?"

"Alright. Ain't nothing to look at, but come on back."

The kitchen is about half the size of the living room, and warmer. It smells like tea and lemons. The blackand-white linoleum floor has been scrubbed thin. There's just enough counter for the china tea set.

I set the typewriter on a scratched red table under the window. Aibileen starts to pour the hot water into the teapot.

"Oh, none for me, thanks," I say and reach in my bag. "I brought us some Co-Colas if you want one." I've tried to come up with ways to make Aibileen more

comfortable. Number One: don't make her feel like she has to serve me.

"Well, ain't that nice. I usually don't take my tea till later anyway." She brings over an opener and two glasses. I drink mine straight from the bottle and, seeing this, she pushes the glasses aside, does the same.

I called Aibileen after Elizabeth gave me the note, and listened hopefully as Aibileen told me her idea--for her to write her own words down and then show me what's she's written. I tried to act excited. But I know I'll have to rewrite everything she's written, wasting even more time. I thought it might make it easier if she could see it in typeface instead of me reading it and telling her it can't work this way.

We smile at each other. I take a sip of my Coke, smooth my blouse. "So . . ." I say.

Aibileen has a wire-ringed notebook in front of her. "Want me to . . . just go head and read?"

"Sure," I say.

We both take deep breaths and she begins reading in a slow, steady voice.

"My first white baby to ever look after was named Alton Carrington Speers. It was 1924 and I'd just turned fifteen years old. Alton was a long, skinny baby with hair fine as silk on a corn . . ."

I begin typing as she reads, her words rhythmic, pronounced more clearly than her usual talk. "Every window in that filthy house was painted shut on the inside, even though the house was big with a wide green lawn. I knew the air was bad, felt sick myself . . ."

"Hang on," I say. I've typed wide greem. I blow on the typing fluid, retype it. "Okay, go ahead."

"When the mama died, six months later," she reads, "of the lung disease, they kept me on to raise Alton until they moved away to Memphis. I loved that baby and he loved me and that's when I knew I was good at making children feel proud of themselves . . ."

I hadn't wanted to insult Aibileen when she told me her idea. I tried to urge her out of it, over the phone. "Writing isn't that easy. And you wouldn't have time for this anyway, Aibileen, not with a full-time job."

"Can't be much different than writing my prayers every night."

It was the first interesting thing she'd told me about herself since we'd started the project, so I'd grabbed the shopping pad in the pantry. "You don't say your prayers, then?"

"I never told nobody that before. Not even Minny. Find I can get my point across a lot better writing em down."

"So this is what you do on the weekends?" I asked. "In your spare time?" I liked the idea of capturing her life outside of work, when she wasn't under the eye of Elizabeth Leefolt.

"Oh no, I write a hour, sometimes two ever day. Lot a ailing, sick peoples in this town."

I was impressed. That was more than I wrote on some days. I told her we'd try it just to get the project going again.

Aibileen takes a breath, a swallow of Coke, and reads on.

She backtracks to her first job at thirteen, cleaning the Francis the First silver service at the governor's mansion. She reads how on her first morning, she made a mistake on the chart where you filled in the

number of pieces so they'd know you hadn't stolen anything.

"I come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month's worth a light bill for. I guess that's when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it."

Aibileen looks up to see what I think. I stop typing. I'd expected the stories to be sweet, glossy. I realize I might be getting more than I'd bargained for. She reads on.

". . . so I go on and get the chiffarobe straightened out and before I know it, that little white boy done cut his fingers clean off in that window fan I asked her to take out ten times. I never seen that much red come out a person and I grab the boy, I grab them four fingers. Tote him to the colored hospital cause I didn't know where the white one was. But when I got there, a colored man stop me and say, Is this boy white?" The typewriter keys are clacking like hail on a roof. Aibileen is reading faster and I am ignoring my mistakes, stopping her only to put in another page. Every eight seconds, I fling the carriage aside.

"And I say, Yessuh, and he say, Is them his white fingers? And I say, Yessuh, and he say, Well, you better tell em he your high yellow cause that colored doctor won't operate on a white boy in a Negro hospital. And then a white policeman grab me and he say, Now you look a here--"

She stops. Looks up. The clacking ceases.

"What? The policeman said look a here what?"

"Well, that's all I put down. Had to catch the bus for work this morning."

I hit the return and the typewriter dings. Aibileen and I look each other straight in the eye. I think this might actually work.

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chapter 12

EVERY OTHER NIGHT for the next two weeks, I tell Mother I'm off to feed the hungry at the Canton Presbyterian Church, where we, fortunately, know not a soul. Of course she'd rather I go down to the First Presbyterian, but Mother's not one to argue with Christian works and she nods approvingly, tells me on the side to make sure I wash my hands thoroughly with soap afterward.

Hour after hour, in Aibileen's kitchen, she reads her writing and I type, the details thickening, the babies' faces sliding into focus. At first, I'm disappointed that Aibileen is doing most of the writing, with me just editing. But if Missus Stein likes it, I'll be writing the other maids' stories and that will be more than enough work. If she likes it... I find myself saying this over and over in my head, hoping it might make it so.

Aibileen's writing is clear, honest. I tell her so.

"Well, look who I been writing to." She chuckles. "Can't lie to God."

Before I was born, she actually picked cotton for a week at Longleaf, my own family's farm. Once she lapses into talking about Constantine without my even asking.

"Law, that Constantine could sing. Like a purebred

angel standing in the front a the church. Give everbody chills, listening to that silky voice a hers and when she wouldn't sing no more after she had to give her baby to--" She stops. Looks at me.

She says, "Anyway."

I tell myself not to press her. I wish I could hear everything she knows about Constantine, but I'll wait until we've finished her interviews. I don't want to put anything between us now.

"Any word from Minny yet?" I ask. "If Missus Stein likes it," I say, practically chanting the familiar words, "I just want to have the next interview set up and ready."

Aibileen shakes her head. "I asked Minny three times and she still say she ain't gone do it. I spec it's time I believed her."

I try not to show my worry. "Maybe you could ask some others? See if they're interested?" I am positive that Aibileen would have better luck convincing someone than I would.

Aibileen nods. "I got some more I can ask. But how long you think it's gone take for this lady to tell you if she like it?"

I shrug. "I don't know. If we mail it next week, maybe we'll hear from her by mid-February. But I can't say for sure."

Aibileen presses her lips together, looks down at her pages. I see something that I haven't noticed before. Anticipation, a glint of excitement. I've been so wrapped up in my own self, it hasn't occurred to me that Aibileen might be as thrilled as I am that an editor in New York is going to read her story. I smile and take a deep breath, my hope growing stronger.

On our fifth session, Aibileen reads to me about the day Treelore died. She reads about how his broken body was thrown on the back of a pickup by the white foreman. "And then they dropped him off at the colored hospital. That's what the nurse told me, who was standing outside. They rolled him off the truck bed and the white men drove away." Aibileen doesn't cry, just lets a parcel of time pass while I stare at the typewriter, she at the worn black tiles.

On the sixth session, Aibileen says, "I went to work for Miss Leefolt in 1960. When Mae Mobley two weeks old," and I feel I've passed through a leaden gate of confidence. She describes the building of the garage bathroom, admits she is glad it is there now. It's easier than listening to Hilly complain about sharing a toilet with the maid. She tells me that I once

commented that colored people attend too much church. That stuck with her. I cringe, wondering what else I've said, never suspecting the help was listening or cared.

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One night she says, "I was thinking . . ." But then she stops.

I look up from the typewriter, wait. It took Aibileen vomiting on herself for me to learn to let her take her time.

"I's thinking I ought to do some reading. Might help me with my own writing."

"Go down to the State Street Library. They have a whole room full of Southern writers. Faulkner, Eudora Welty--"

Aibileen gives me a dry cough. "You know colored folks ain't allowed in that library."

I sit there a second, feeling stupid. "I can't believe I forgot that." The colored library must be pretty bad. There was a sit-in at the white library a few years ago and it made the papers. When the colored crowd showed up for the sit-in trial, the police department simply stepped back and turned the German shepherds loose. I look at Aibileen and am reminded,

once again, the risk she's taking talking to me. "I'll be glad to pick the books up for you," I say.

Aibileen hurries to the bedroom and comes back with a list. "I better mark the ones I want first. I been on the waiting list for To Kill a Mockingbird at the Carver Library near bout three months now. Less see . . ."

I watch as she puts checkmarks next to the books: The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, poems by Emily Dickinson (any), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

"I read some a that back in school, but I didn't get to finish." She keeps marking, stopping to think which one she wants next.

"You want a book by . . . Sigmund Freud?"

"Oh, people crazy." She nods. "I love reading about how the head work. You ever dream you fall in a lake? He say you dreaming about your own self being born. Miss Frances, who I work for in 1957, she had all them books."

On her twelfth title, I have to know. "Aibileen, how long have you been wanting to ask me this? If I'd check these books out for you?"

"A while." She shrugs. "I guess I's afraid to mention it."

"Did you . . . think I'd say no?"

"These is white rules. I don't know which ones you following and which ones you ain't."

We look at each other a second. "I'm tired of the rules," I say.

Aibileen chuckles and looks out the window. I realize how thin this revelation must sound to her.

FOR FOUR DAYS STRAIGHT, I sit at my typewriter in my bedroom. Twenty of my typed pages, full of slashes and red-circled edits, become thirty-one on thick Strathmore white. I write a short biography of Sarah Ross, the name Aibileen chose, after her sixthgrade teacher who died years ago. I include her age, what her parents did for a living. I follow this with Aibileen's own stories, just as she wrote them, simple,

straightforward.

On day three, Mother calls up the stairs to ask what in the world I'm doing up there all day and I holler down, Just typing up some notes from the Bible study. Just writing down all the things I love about Jesus. I hear her tell Daddy, in the kitchen after supper, "She's up to something." I carry my little white baptism Bible around the house, to make it more believable.

I read and re-read and then take the pages to Aibileen in the evenings and she does the same. She smiles and nods over the nice parts where everyone gets along fine but on the bad parts she takes off her black reading glasses and says, "I know I wrote it, but you really want to put that in about the--"

And I say, "Yes, I do." But I am surprised myself by what's in these stories, of separate colored refrigerators at the governor's mansion, of white women throwing two-year-old fits over wrinkled napkins, white babies calling Aibileen "Mama."

At three a.m., with only two white correction marks on what is now twenty-seven pages, I slide the manuscript into a yellow envelope. Yesterday, I made a long-distance phone call to Missus Stein's office. Her secretary, Ruth, said she was in a meeting. She took down my message, that the interview is on its way. There was no call back from Missus Stein today.

I hold the envelope to my heart and almost weep from exhaustion, doubt. I mail it at the Canton P. O. the next morning. I come home and lie down on my old iron bed, worrying over what will happen . . . if she likes it. What if Elizabeth or Hilly catches us at what we're doing? What if Aibileen gets fired, sent to jail? I feel like I'm falling down a long spiral tunnel. God, would they beat her the way they beat the colored boy who used the white bathroom? What am I doing? Why am I putting her at such risk?

I go to sleep. I have nightmares for the next fifteen hours straight.

IT's a QUARTER PAST ONE and Hilly and Elizabeth and I are sitting at Elizabeth's dining room table waiting on Lou Anne to show up. I've had nothing to eat today except Mother's sexual-correction tea and I feel nauseous, jumpy. My foot is wagging under the table. I've been like this for ten days, ever since I mailed Aibileen's stories to Elaine Stein. I called once and Ruth said she passed it on to her four days ago, but still I've heard nothing.

"Is this not just the rudest thing you've ever heard of ?" Hilly looks at her watch and scowls. This is Lou Anne's second time to be late. She won't last long in our group with Hilly around.

Aibileen walks in the dining room and I do my best not to look at her for too long. I am afraid Hilly or Elizabeth will see something in my eyes.

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"Stop jiggling your foot, Skeeter. You're shaking the whole entire table," Hilly says.

Aibileen moves around the room in her easy, whiteuniformed stride, not showing even a hint of what we've done. I guess she's grown deft at hiding her feelings.

Hilly shuffles and deals out a hand of gin rummy. I try to concentrate on the game, but little facts keep jumping in my head every time I look at Elizabeth. About Mae Mobley using the garage bathroom, how Aibileen can't keep her lunch in the Leefolts' refrigerator. Small details I'm privy to now.

Aibileen offers me a biscuit from a silver tray. She fills my iced tea like we are the strangers we were meant to be. I've been to her house twice since I mailed the package to New York, both times to trade out her library books. She still wears the green dress with

black piping when I come over. Sometimes she'll slip off her shoes under the table. Last time, she pulled out a pack of Montclairs and smoked right there with me in the room and that was kind of something, the casualness of it. I had one too. Now she is clearing away my crumbs with the sterling silver scraper I gave to Elizabeth and Raleigh for their wedding.

"Well, while we wait, I have some news," Elizabeth says and I recognize the look on her face already, the secretive nod, one hand on her stomach.

"I'm pregnant." She smiles, her mouth trembling a little.

"That's great," I say. I put down my cards and touch her arm. She truly looks like she might cry. "When are you due?"

"October."

"Well, it's about time," Hilly says, giving her a hug. "Mae Mobley's practically grown."

Elizabeth lights a cigarette, sighs. She looks down at her cards. "We're all real excited."

While we play a few practice hands, Hilly and

Elizabeth talk about baby names. I try to contribute to the conversation. "Definitely Raleigh, if it's a boy," I add. Hilly talks about William's campaign. He's running for state senate next year, even though he has no political experience. I'm grateful when Elizabeth tells Aibileen to go ahead and serve lunch.

When Aibileen comes back in with the gelatin salad, Hilly straightens in her chair. "Aibileen, I have an old coat for you and a sack of clothes from Missus Walters' house." She dabs her mouth with her napkin. "So you come on out to the car after lunch and pick it all up, alright?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Don't forget now. I can't worry with bringing them by again."

"Oh now isn't that nice of Miss Hilly, Aibileen?" Elizabeth nods. "You go on and get those clothes right after we're done."

"Yes ma'am."

Hilly raises her voice about three octaves higher when she talks to colored people. Elizabeth smiles like she's talking to a child, although certainly not her own.

I am starting to notice things.

By the time Lou Anne Templeton shows up, we've finished our shrimp and grits and are just starting on dessert. Hilly is amazingly forgiving. Lou Anne was late, after all, because of a League duty.

Afterward, I tell Elizabeth congratulations again, walk out to my car. Aibileen is outside collecting her gently used coat from 1942 and old clothes that, for some reason, Hilly won't give to her own maid, Yule May. Hilly strides over to me, hands me an envelope.

"For the newsletter next week. You'll be sure and get it in for me?"

I nod and Hilly walks back to her car. Just as Aibileen opens the front door to go back in the house, she glances back my way. I shake my head, mouth the word Nothing. She nods and goes on in the house.

That night, I work on the newsletter, wishing I was working on the stories instead. I go through the notes from the last League meeting, and come across Hilly's envelope. I open it. It is one page, written in Hilly's fat, curly pen:

Hilly Holbrook introduces the Home Help Sanitation Initiative. A disease preventative measure. Low-cost bathroom installation in your garage or shed, for homes without such an important fixture.

Ladies, did you know that:

* 99% of all colored diseases are carried in the urine

* Whites can become permanently disabled by nearly all of these diseases because we lack immunities coloreds carry in their darker pigmentation

* Some germs carried by whites can also be harmful to coloreds too Protect yourself. Protect your children. Protect your help.

From the Holbrooks, we say, You're welcome!

THE PHONE rings in THE kitchen and I practically fall over myself racing to it. But Pascagoula has already answered it.

"Miss Charlotte residence."

I stare her down, watch as tiny Pascagoula nods, says, "Yes ma'am, she here," and hands me the phone.

"This is Eugenia," I say quickly. Daddy's in the fields and Mother's at a doctor's appointment in town, so I stretch the black, twisting phone cord to the kitchen table.

"Elaine Stein here."

I breathe deep. "Yes ma'am. Did you receive my package?"

"I did," she says and then breathes into the phone a few seconds.

"This Sarah Ross. I like her stories. She likes to kvetch without complaining too much."

I nod. I don't know what kvetch means, but I think it

I nod. I don't know what kvetch means, but I think it must be good.

"But I still stand by my opinion that a book of interviews . . . ordinarily wouldn't work. It's not fiction, but it's not nonfiction either. Perhaps it's anthropological but that's a ghastly category to be in."

"But you . . . liked it?"

"Eugenia," she says, exhaling her cigarette smoke into the phone. "Have you seen the cover of Life magazine this week?"

I haven't seen the cover of my Life magazine in a month, I've been so busy.

"Martin Luther King, dear. He just announced a march on D.C. and invited every Negro in America to join him. Every white person, for that matter. This many Negro and white people haven't worked together since Gone With the Wind."

"Yes, I did hear about the . . . marching . . . event," I lie. I cover my eyes, wishing I'd read the paper this week. I sound like an idiot.

"My advice to you is, write it and write it fast. The

march is in August. You should have it written by New Year's."

I gasp. She's telling me to write it! She's telling me . . . "Are you saying you'll publish it? If I can write it by--"

"I said nothing of the sort," she snaps. "I will read it. I look at a hundred manuscripts a month and reject nearly all of them."

"Sorry, I just . . . I'll write it," I say. "I'll have it finished in January."

"And four or five interviews won't be enough for a book. You'll need a dozen, maybe more. You have more interviews set up, I assume?"

I press my lips together. "Some . . . more."

"Good. Then get going. Before this civil rights thing blows over."

THAT EVENING, I go to Aibileen's. I hand her three more books from her list. My back hurts from leaning over the typewriter. This afternoon, I wrote down everyone I know who has a maid (which is everyone I know), and their maid's name. But some of the names I can't remember.

"Thank you, oh Law, look at this." She smiles and flips to the first page of Walden, looks like she wants to start reading it right there.

"I spoke to Missus Stein this afternoon," I say.

Aibileen's hands freeze on the book. "I knew something was wrong. I seen it on your face."

I take a deep breath. "She said she likes your stories very much. But . . . she won't say if she'll publish it until we've written the whole thing." I try to look optimistic. "We have to be finished just after the new year."

"But that's good news, ain't it?"

I nod, try to smile.

"January," Aibileen whispers and she gets up and leaves the kitchen. She comes back with a Tom's candy wall calendar. She sets it down on the table, flips through the months.

"Seem a long ways off now, but January ain't but . . . two . . . four . . . six... ten pages away. Gone be here

[ملکه برفی]

before we know it." She grins.

"She said we have to interview at least twelve maids for her to consider it," I say. The strain in my voice is starting to really come through.

"But . . . you ain't got any other maids to talk to, Miss Skeeter."

I clench my hands. I close my eyes. "I don't have anyone I can ask, Aibileen," I say, my voice rising. I've spent the last four hours poring over this very fact. "I mean, who is there? Pascagoula? If I talk to her, Mama will find out. I'm not the one who knows the other maids."

Aibileen's eyes drop from mine so fast I want to cry. Damn it, Skeeter. Any barrier that had eroded between us these past few months, I've just built back up in a matter of seconds. "I'm sorry," I say quickly. "I'm sorry I raised my voice."

"No, no, it's alright. That was my job, to get the others."

"What about . . . Lou Anne's maid," I say quietly, pulling out my list. "What's her name . . . Louvenia? Do you know her?"

Aibileen nods. "I asked Louvenia." Her eyes are still on her lap. "Her grandson the one got blinded. She say she real sorry, but she have to keep her mind on him."

"And Hilly's maid, Yule May? You've asked her?"

"She say she too busy trying to get her boys into college next year."

"Any other maids that go to your church? Have you asked them?"

Aibileen nods. "They all got excuses. But really, they just too scared."

"But how many? How many have you asked?"

Aibileen picks up her notebook, flips though a few pages. Her lips move, counting silently.

"Thirty-one," Aibileen says.

I let out my breath. I didn't know I'd been holding it.

"That's . . . a lot," I say.

Aibileen finally meets my look. "I didn't want a tell you," she says and her forehead wrinkles. "Until we heard from the lady . . ." She takes off her glasses. I see the deep worry in her face. She tries to hide it with a trembling smile.

"I'm on ask em again," she says, leaning forward.

"Alright," I sigh.

She swallows hard, nods rapidly to make me understand how much she means it. "Please, don't give up on me. Let me stay on the project with you."

I close my eyes. I need a break from seeing her worried face. How could I have raised my voice to her? "Aibileen, it's alright. We're . . . together on this."

A FEW DAYS LATER, I sit in the hot kitchen, bored, smoking a cigarette, something I can't seem to stop

doing lately. I think I might be "addicted." That's a word Mister Golden likes to use. The idjits are all addicts. He calls me in his office every once in a while, scans the month's articles with a red pencil, marking and slashing and grunting.

"That's fine," he'll say. "You fine?"

"I'm fine," I say.

"Fine, then." Before I leave, the fat receptionist hands me my ten-dollar check and that's pretty much it for my Miss Myrna job.

The kitchen is hot, but I have to get out of my room, where all I do is worry because no other maids have agreed to work with us. Plus, I have to smoke in here because it's about the only room in the house without a ceiling fan to blow ashes everywhere. When I was ten, Daddy tried to install one in the tin kitchen ceiling without asking Constantine. She'd pointed to it like he'd parked the Ford on the ceiling.

"It's for you, Constantine, so you don't get so hot being up in the kitchen all the time."

"I ain't working in no kitchen with no ceiling fan, Mister Carlton."

"Sure you will. I'm just hooking up the current to it now."

Daddy climbed down the ladder. Constantine filled a pot with water. "Go head," she sighed. "Turn it on then."

Daddy flipped the switch. In the seconds it took to really get going, cake flour blew up from the mixing bowl and swirled around the room, recipes flapped off the counter and caught fire on the stovetop. Constantine snatched the burning roll of parchment paper, quickly dipped it in the bucket of water. There's still a hole where the ceiling fan hung for ten minutes.

In the newspaper, I see State Senator Whitworth pointing to an empty lot of land where they plan to build a new city coliseum. I turn the page. I hate being reminded of my date with Stuart Whitworth.

Pascagoula pads into the kitchen. I watch as she cuts out biscuits with a shot glass that's never shot a thing but short dough. Behind me, the kitchen windows are propped open with Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogues. Pictures of two-dollar hand mixers and mail-order toys flutter in a breeze, swollen and puckered from a decade of rain.

Maybe I should just ask Pascagoula. Maybe Mother won't find out. But who am I kidding? Mother watches her every move and Pascagoula seems afraid of me anyway, like I might tell on her if she does something wrong. It could take years to break through that fear. My best sense tells me, leave Pascagoula out of this.

The phone rings like a fire alarm. Pascagoula clangs her spoon on the bowl and I grab the receiver before she can.

"Minny gone help us," Aibileen whispers.

I slip into the pantry and sit on my flour can. I can't speak for about five seconds. "When? When can she start?"

"Next Thursday. But she got some . . . requirements."

"What are they?"

Aibileen pauses a moment. "She say she don't want your Cadillac anywhere this side a the Woodrow Wilson bridge."

"Alright," I say. "I guess I could... drive the truck in."

"And she say . . . she say you can't set on the same side a the room as her. She want a be able to see you square on at all times."

"I'll . . . sit wherever she wants me to."

Aibileen's voice softens. "She just don't know you, is all. Plus she ain't got a real good history with white ladies."

"Whatever I have to do, I'll do it."

I walk out of the pantry beaming, hang the phone up on the wall. Pascagoula is watching me, the shot glass in one hand, a raw biscuit in the other. She looks down quickly and goes back to her work.

TWO DAYS LATER, I tell Mother I'm going to pick up a new copy of the King James Bible since I've worn mine so thin and all. I also tell her I feel guilty driving the Cadillac what with all those poor starving babies in Africa and I've decided to take the old truck today. She narrows her eyes at me from her porch rocker.

"Where exactly do you plan on buying this new Bible?"

I blink. "The . . . they ordered it for me. At the Canton church."

She nods, watches me the entire time it takes to start the old truck.

I drive to Farish Street with a lawn mower in the back and a rusted-out floorboard. Under my feet, I can see flashes of pavement whiz by. But at least I'm not pulling a tractor.

Aibileen opens the door and I come in. In the back corner of the living room, Minny stands with her arms crossed over her huge bosom. I've met her the few times Hilly allowed Missus Walters to host bridge club. Minny and Aibileen are both still in their white uniforms.

"Hello," I say from my side of the room. "Good to see you again."

"Miss Skeeter." Minny nods. She settles in a wooden chair Aibileen has brought out from the kitchen, and the frame creaks. I sit on the far end of the sofa. Aibileen sits on the other end of the sofa, between us.

I clear my throat, produce a nervous smile. Minny doesn't smile back. She is fat and short and strong. Her skin is blacker than Aibileen's by ten shades, and shiny and taut, like a pair of new patent shoes.

"I already told Minny how we doing the stories," Aibileen says to me. "You helping me write mine. And hers she gone tell you, while you write it down."

"And Minny, everything you say here is in confidence," I say. "You'll get to read everything we--"

"What makes you think colored people need your help?" Minny stands up, chair scraping. "Why you even care about this? You white."

I look at Aibileen. I've never had a colored person speak to me this way.

"We all working for the same thing here, Minny," Aibileen says. "We just talking."

"And what thing is that?" Minny says to me. "Maybe you just want me to tell you all this stuff so I get in trouble." Minny points to the window. "Medgar Evers, the NAACP officer who live five minutes away, they

blew up his carport last night. For talking."

My face is burning red. I speak slowly. "We want to show your perspective . . . so people might understand what it's like from your side. We--we hope it might change some things around here."

"What you think you gone change with this? What law you want to reform so it say you got to be nice to your maid?"

"Now hold on," I say, "I'm not trying to change any laws here. I'm just talking about attitudes and--"

"You know what'll happen if people catch us? Forget the time I accidentally use the wrong changing room down at McRae's women's wear, I'd have guns pointing at my house."

There's a still, tight moment in the room with just the sound of the brown Timex clock ticking on the shelf.

"You don't have to do this, Minny," Aibileen says. "It's alright if you want a change your mind."

Slowly, warily, Minny settles again in her chair. "I do it. I just want a make sure she understand, this ain't no

game we playing here."

I glance at Aibileen. She nods at me. I take a deep breath. My hands are shaking.

I start with the background questions and somehow we back our way into talking about Minny's work. She looks at Aibileen as she talks, like she's trying to forget I'm even in the room. I record everything she says, my pencil scratching as fast as I can move it. We thought it might be less formal than using the typewriter.

"Then they's one job where I work late ever night. And you know what happened?"

"What's . . . that?" I ask, even though she's looking at Aibileen.

"Oh, Minny," she cat-calls, "you the best help we ever had. Big Minny, we gone keep you on forever. Then one day she say she gone give me a week a paid vacation. I ain't had no vacation, paid or unpaid, in my entire life. And when I pull up a week later to go back to work, they gone. Moved to Mobile. She tell somebody she scared I'd find new work before she move. Miss Lazy Fingers couldn't go a day without having a maid waiting on her."

She suddenly stands up, throws her bag on her arm. "I got to go. You giving me the heart palpitations talking bout this." And out she goes, slamming the door behind her.

I look up, wipe the sweat off my temple.

"And that was a good mood," Aibileen says.

[ملکه برفی]

chapter 13

FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, the three of us arrange ourselves in the same seats in Aibileen's small, warm living room. Minny storms in mad, quiets down as she tells Aibileen her story, then rushes out in a rage as fast as she came in. I write down as much as I can.

When Minny lapses into news about Miss Celia--"She sneaking upstairs, think I don't see her, but I know, that crazy lady up to something"--she always stops herself, the way Aibileen does when she speaks of Constantine. "That ain't part a my story. You leave Miss Celia out a this." She watches me until my writing stops.

Besides her furiousness at white people, Minny likes to talk about food. "Let's see, I put the green beans in first, then I go on and get the pork chops going cause, mmm-mmm, I like my chops hot out the pan, you know."

One day, while she's saying, ". . . got a white baby on one arm, green beans in the pot--" she stops. Cocks her jaw at me. Taps her foot.

"Half this stuff don't have nothing to do with colored rights. Ain't but day-to-day business." She eyes me up and down. "Look to me like you just writing life."

I stop my pencil. She's right. I realize that's just what I wanted to do. I tell her, "I hope so." She gets up and says she's got more important things to worry about than what I'm hoping for.

THE NEXT EVENING, I'm working upstairs in my room, banging the keys on my Corona. Suddenly I hear Mother hit the stairs running. In two seconds she's made it in my room. "Eugenia!" she whispers.

I stand so fast my chair teeters, trying to guard the contents of my typewriter. "Yes ma'am?"

"Now don't panic but there is a man--a very tall man-downstairs to see you."

"Who?"

"He says his name is Stuart Whit worth."

"What?"

"He said y'all spent an evening together awhile back but how can that be, I didn't know anything--"

"Christ."

"Don't take the Lord's name in vain, Eugenia Phelan. Just put some lipstick on."

"Believe me, Mama," I say, putting on lipstick anyway. "Jesus wouldn't like him either."

I brush my hair because I know it's awful. I even wash the typewriter ink and correcting fluid off my hands and elbows. But I won't change clothes, not for him.

Mother gives me a quick up and down in my dungarees and Daddy's old button-up white shirt. "Is he a Greenwood Whitworth or a Natchez?"

"He's the state senator's son."

Mother's jaw drops so far it hits her string of pearls. I go down the stairs, past the assembly of our childhood portraits. Pictures of Carlton line the wall, taken up until about the day before yesterday. Pictures of me stop when I was twelve. "Mother, give us some privacy." I watch as she slowly drags herself back to her room, glancing over her shoulder before she disappears.

I walk out onto the porch, and there he is. Three months after our date, there is Stuart Whitworth

himself, standing on my front porch in khaki pants and a blue coat and a red tie like he's ready for Sunday dinner.

Asshole.

"What brings you here?" I ask. I don't smile though. I'm not smiling at him.

"I just . . . I wanted to drop by."

"Well. Can I get you a drink?" I ask. "Or should I just get you the entire bottle of Old Kentucky?"

He frowns. His nose and forehead are pink, like he's been working in the sun. "Look, I know it was . . . a long while back, but I came out here to say I'm sorry."

"Who sent you--Hilly? William?" There are eight empty rocking chairs on my porch. I don't ask him to sit in any of them.

He looks off at the west cotton field where the sun is dipping into the dirt. He shoves his hands down in his front pockets like a twelve-year-old boy. "I know I was... rude that night, and I've been thinking about it a lot and . . ."

I laugh then. I'm just so embarrassed that he would come out here and have me relive it.

"Now look," he says, "I told Hilly ten times I wasn't ready to go out on any date. I wasn't even close to being ready . . ."

I grit my teeth. I can't believe I feel the heat of tears; the date was months ago. But I remember how secondhand I'd felt that night, how ridiculously fixed up I'd gotten for him. "Then why'd you even show up?"

"I don't know." He shakes his head. "You know how Hilly can be."

I stand there waiting for whatever it is he's here for. He runs a hand through his light brown hair. It is almost wiry it's so thick. He looks tired.

I look away because he's cute in an overgrown boy kind of way and it's not something I want to be thinking right now. I want him to leave--I don't want to feel this awful feeling again, yet I hear myself saying, "What do you mean, not ready?"

"Just not ready. Not after what happened."

I stare at him. "You want me to guess?"

"Me and Patricia van Devender. We got engaged last year and then . . . I thought you knew."

He sinks down in a rocking chair. I don't sit next to him. But I don't tell him to leave either.

"What, she ran off with someone else?"

"Shoot." He drops his head down into his hands, mumbles, "That'd be a goddamn Mardi Gras party compared to what happened."

I don't let myself say to him what I'd like to, that he probably deserved whatever she did, but he's just too pathetic-looking. Now that all his good ole boy, tough bourbon talk has evaporated, I wonder if he's this pathetic all the time.

"We'd been dating since we were fifteen. You know how it is, when you've been steady with somebody that long."

[ملکه برفی]

And I don't know why I admit this, except that I simply have nothing to lose. "Actually, I wouldn't know," I say.

"I've never dated anybody."

He looks up at me, kind of laughs. "Well, that must be it, then."

"Be what?" I steel myself, recalling fertilizer and tractor references.

"You're . . . different. I've never met anybody that said exactly what they were thinking. Not a woman, anyway."

"Believe me, I had a lot more to say."

He sighs. "When I saw your face, out there by the truck . . . I'm not that guy. I'm really not such a jerk."

I look away, embarrassed. It's just starting to hit me what he said, that even though I'm different, maybe it's not in a strange way or an abnormal, tall-girl way. But maybe in a good way.

"I came by to see if you'd like to come downtown with me for supper. We could talk," he says and stands up. "We could... I don't know, listen to each other this time."

I stand there, shocked. His eyes are blue and clear and fixed on me like my answer might really mean something to him. I take in a deep breath, about to say yes--I mean, why would I of all people refuse--and he bites his bottom lip, waiting.

And then I think about how he treated me like I was nothing. How he got shit-dog drunk he was so miserable to be stuck with me. I think about how he told me I smelled like fertilizer. It took me three months to stop thinking about that comment.

"No," I blurt out. "Thank you. But I really can't imagine anything worse."

He nods, looks down at his feet. Then he goes down the porch steps.

"I'm sorry," he says, the door to his car open. "That's what I came to say and, well, I guess I said it."

I stand on the porch, listening to the hollow sounds of the evening, gravel under Stuart's shifting feet, dogs moving in the early darkness. For a second, I remember Charles Gray, my only kiss in a lifetime. How I'd pulled away, somehow sure the kiss hadn't been intended for me.

Stuart gets in his car and his door clicks shut. He props his arm up so his elbow pokes through the open window. But he keeps his eyes turned down.

"Just give me a minute," I holler out to him. "Let me get my sweater."

NO ONE TELLS us, girls who don't go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens. Mother climbs all the way to the third floor and stands over me in my bed, but I act like I'm still asleep. Because I just want to remember it awhile.

We'd driven to the Robert E. Lee for dinner last night. I'd thrown on a light blue sweater and a slim white skirt. I'd even let Mother brush out my hair, trying to drown out her nervous, complicated instructions.

"And don't forget to smile. Men don't want a girl who's moping around all night, and don't sit like some squaw Indian, cross your--"

"Wait, my legs or my ank--"

"Your ankles. Don't you remember anything from Missus Rheimer's etiquette class? And just go ahead and lie and tell him you go to church every Sunday, and whatever you do, do not crunch your ice at the table, it's awful. Oh, and if the conversation starts to lag, you tell him about our second cousin who's a city councilman in Kosciusko . . ."

As she brushed and smoothed and brushed and smoothed, Mother kept asking how I'd met him and what happened on our last date, but I managed to scoot out from under her and dash down the stairs, shaking with wonder and nervousness of my own. By the time Stuart and I walked into the hotel and sat down and put our napkins in our lap, the waiter said they'd be closing soon. All they'd serve us was dessert.

Then Stuart had gotten quiet.

"What . . . do you want, Skeeter?" he'd asked and I'd sort of tensed up then, hoping he wasn't planning on getting drunk again.

"I'll have a Co-Cola. Lots of ice."

"No." He smiled. "I mean . . . in life. What do you want?"

I took a deep breath, knowing what Mother would advise me to say: fine, strong kids, a husband to take care of, shiny new appliances to cook tasty yet healthful meals in. "I want to be a writer," I said. "A journalist. Maybe a novelist. Maybe both."

He lifted his chin and looked at me then, right in the eye.

"I like that," he said, and then he just kept staring. "I've been thinking about you. You're smart, you're pretty, you're"--he smiled--"tall."

Pretty?

We ate strawberry souffles and had one glass of Chablis apiece. He talked about how to tell if there's oil underneath a cotton field and I talked about how the receptionist and I were the only females working for the paper.

"I hope you write something really good. Something you believe in."

"Thank you. I . . . hope so too." I don't say anything about Aibileen or Missus Stein.

I haven't had the chance to look at too many men's faces up close and I noticed how his skin was thicker than mine and a gorgeous shade of toast; the stiff blond hairs on his cheeks and chin seemed to be growing before my eyes. He smelled like starch. Like pine. His nose wasn't so pointy after all.

The waiter yawned in the corner but we both ignored him and stayed and talked some more. And by the time I was wishing I'd washed my hair this morning instead of just bathed and was practically doubled over with gratefulness that I'd at least brushed my teeth, out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body--my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.

On a MONDAY AFTERNOON, a few weeks after my date with Stuart, I stop by the library before going to the League meeting. Inside, it smells like grade school--boredom, paste, Lysoled vomit. I've come to get more books for Aibileen and check if anything's ever been written about domestic help.

"Well hey there, Skeeter!"

Jesus. It's Susie Pernell. In high school, she could've been voted most likely to talk too much. "Hey . . . Susie. What are you doing here?"

"I'm working here for the League committee, remember? You really ought to get on it, Skeeter, it's real fun! You get to read all the latest magazines and file things and even laminate the library cards." Susie poses by the giant brown machine like she's on The Price Is Right television show.

[ملکه برفی]

"How new and exciting."

"So, what may I help you find today, ma'am? We have murder mysteries, romance novels, how-to makeup books, how-to hair books," she pauses, jerks out a smile, "rose gardening, home decorating--"

"I'm just browsing, thanks." I hurry off. I'll fend for myself in the stacks. There is no way I can tell her what I'm looking for. I can already hear her whispering at the League meetings, I knew there was something not right about that Skeeter Phelan, hunting for those Negro materials...

I search through card catalogues and scan the shelves, but find nothing about domestic workers. In nonfiction, I spot a single copy of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. I grab it, excited to deliver it to Aibileen, but when I open it, I see the middle section has been ripped out. Inside, someone has written NIGGER BOOK in purple crayon. I am not as disturbed by the words as by the fact that the handwriting looks like a third grader's. I glance around, push the book in my satchel. It seems better than putting it back on the shelf.

In the Mississippi History room, I search for anything remotely resembling race relations. I find only Civil War books, maps, and old phone books. I stand on tiptoe to see what's on the high shelf. That's when I spot a booklet, laid sideways across the top of the Mississippi River Valley Flood Index. A regularsized person would never have seen it. I slide it down to glance at the cover. The booklet is thin, printed on onionskin paper, curling, bound with staples. "Compilation of Jim Crow Laws of the South," the cover reads. I open the noisy cover page.

The booklet is simply a list of laws stating what colored people can and cannot do, in an assortment of Southern states. I skim the first page, puzzled why this is here. The laws are neither threatening nor friendly, just citing the facts:

No person shall require any white female to nurse in wards or rooms in which negro men are placed.

It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void.

No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls.

The officer in charge shall not bury any colored persons upon ground used for the burial of white persons.

Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.

I read through four of the twenty-five pages, mesmerized by how many laws exist to separate us. Negroes and whites are not allowed to share water fountains, movie houses, public restrooms, ballparks, phone booths, circus shows. Negroes cannot use the same pharmacy or buy postage stamps at the same window as me. I think about Constantine, the time my

family took her to Memphis with us and the highway had mostly washed out, but we had to drive straight on through because we knew the hotels wouldn't let her in. I think about how no one in the car would come out and say it. We all know about these laws, we live here, but we don't talk about them. This is the first time I've ever seen them written down.

Lunch counters, the state fair, pool tables, hospitals. Number forty-seven I have to read twice, for its irony.

The Board shall maintain a separate building on separate grounds for the instruction of all blind persons of the colored race.

After several minutes, I make myself stop. I start to put the booklet back, telling myself I'm not writing a book about Southern legislation, this is a waste of my time. But then I realize, like a shell cracking open in my head, there's no difference between these government laws and Hilly building Aibileen a bathroom in the garage, except ten minutes' worth of signatures in the state capital.

On the last page, I see the pica type that reads Property of Mississippi Law Library. The booklet was

returned to the wrong building. I scratch my revelation on a piece of paper and tuck it inside the booklet: Jim Crow or Hilly's bathroom plan--what's the difference? I slip it in my bag. Susie sneezes behind the desk across the room.

I head for the doors. I have a League meeting in thirty minutes. I give Susie an extra friendly smile. She's whispering into the phone. The stolen books in my bag feel like they're pulsing with heat.

"Skeeter," Susie hisses from the desk, eyes wide. "Did I really hear you have been seeing Stuart Whitworth?" She puts a bit too much emphasis on the you for me to keep up my smile. I act like I don't hear her and walk out into the bright sunshine. I've never stolen a thing in my life before today. I'm a little satisfied it was on Susie's watch.

Our PLACES Of COMFORT ARE expectedly different, my friends and I. Elizabeth's is hunched over her sewing machine trying to make her life look seamless, store-bought. Mine is at my typewriter writing pithy things I'll never have the guts to say out loud. And Hilly's is behind a podium telling sixty-five

women that three cans apiece isn't enough to feed all those PSCAs. The Poor Starving Children of Africa, that is. Mary Joline Walker, however, thinks three is plenty.

"And isn't it kind of expensive, carting all this tin across the world to Ethiopia?" Mary Joline asks. "Doesn't it make more sense just to send them a check?"

[ملکه برفی]

The meeting has not officially started, but Hilly's already behind her podium. There's a franticness in her eyes. This isn't our normal evening time, but an extra afternoon session Hilly's called. In June, many of the members are going out of town for summer vacations. Then, in July, Hilly leaves for her annual trip down to the coast for three weeks. It's going to be hard for her to trust an entire town to operate properly without her here.

Hilly rolls her eyes. "You cannot give these tribal people money, Mary Joline. There is no Jitney 14 Grocery in the Ogaden Desert. And how would we know if they're even feeding their kids with it? They're likely to go to the local voodoo tent and get a satanic tattoo with our money."

"Alright." Mary Joline teeters off, flat-faced, brainwashed-looking. "I guess you know best." It is this bug-eyed effect Hilly has on people that makes her such a successful League president.

I make my way across the crowded meeting room, feeling the warmth of attention, as if a beam of light is shining down on my head. The room is full of cakeeating, Tab-drinking, cigarette-smoking women all about my age. Some are whispering to each other, glancing my way.

"Skeeter," Liza Presley says before I make it past the coffee urns, "did I hear you were at the Robert E. Lee a few weeks ago?"

"Is that right? Are you really seeing Stuart Whitworth?" says Frances Greenbow.

Most of the questions are not unkind, not like Susie's at the library. Still, I shrug, try not to notice how when a regular girl gets asked out, it's information, but when Skeeter Phelan gets asked out, it's news.

But it's true. I am seeing Stuart Whitworth and have been for three weeks now. Twice at the Robert E. Lee if you include the disaster date, and three more times sitting on my front porch for drinks before he drove home to Vicksburg. My father even stayed up past eight o'clock to speak to him. "Night, son. You tell the Senator we sure do appreciate him stomping out that farm tax bill." Mother's been trembling, torn between the terror that I'll screw it up and glee that I actually like

men.

The white spotlight of wonder follows me as I make my way to Hilly. Girls are smiling and nodding at me.

"When will y'all see each other again?" This is Elizabeth now, twisting a napkin, eyes wide like she's staring at a car accident. "Did he say?"

"Tomorrow night. As soon as he can drive over."

"Good." Hilly's smile is a fat child's at the Seale-Lily Ice Cream window. The button on her red suitcoat bulges. "We'll make it a double date, then."

I don't answer. I don't want Hilly and William coming along. I just want to sit with Stuart, have him look at me and only me. Twice, when we were alone, he brushed my hair back when it fell in my eyes. He might not brush my hair back if they're around.

"William'll telephone Stuart tonight. Let's go to the picture show."

"Alright," I sigh.

"I'm just dying to see It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad

"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.

[ملکه برفی]

"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.

On the County Road, she speeds up to fifteen and grips the wheel like we're doing a hundred and five.

"Mama," I finally say, "just let me drive the car."

She sighs. I'm surprised that she pulls over into the tall grass.

I get out and run around the car while she slides over. I put the car in D and press it to seventy, praying, Please, Hilly, resist the temptation to rummage through my personal business. . . .

"So what's the big secret, what do you have to do today?" I ask.

"I'm . . . I'm going to see Doctor Neal for some tests. It's just routine, but I don't want your daddy to know. You know how upset he gets every time somebody goes to the doctor."

"What kind of tests?"

"It's just an iodine test for my ulcers, same as I have every year. Drop me at the Baptist and then you can take yourself to Hilly's. At least I won't have to worry over parking."

I glance at her to see if there's more to this, but she's sitting straight and starched in her light blue dress, her legs crossed at the ankles. I don't remember her having these tests last year. Even with me being up at school, Constantine would've written to me about them. Mother must've kept them secret.

Five minutes later, at the Baptist Hospital, I come around and help her out of the car.

"Eugenia, please. Just because this is a hospital doesn't mean I'm an invalid."

I open the glass door for her and she walks in, head held high.

"Mother, do you . . . want me to come with you?" I ask, knowing I can't--I have to deal with Hilly, but suddenly I don't want to drop her off here, like this.

"It's routine. Go on to Hilly's and come back in an hour."

hour."

I watch her grow smaller down the long hall, clutching her handbag, knowing I should turn and run. But before I do, I wonder at how frail and inconsequential my mother has become. She used to fill a room by just breathing and now there seems to be . . . less of her. She turns a corner and disappears behind the pale yellow walls. I watch a second longer before I rush back to the car.

A MINUTE and a Half LATER, I'm ringing Hilly's bell. If these were regular times, I'd talk to Hilly about Mama. But I can't distract her. It is the first moment that will tell me everything. Hilly is an exceptional liar, except for the moment right before she speaks.

Hilly opens the door. Her mouth is tight and red. I look down at her hands. They are knotted together like ropes. I've arrived too late.

"Well, that was quick," she says and I follow her inside. My heart is seizing inside my chest. I'm not sure I'm breathing at all.

"There it is, that ugly thing. I hope you don't mind, I had to check something in the minutes from the meeting."

I stare at her, my best friend, trying to see just what she's read in my things. But her smile is professional if not sparkling. The telling moments are gone.

"Can I get you something to sip on?"

"No, I'm fine." Then I add, "Want to hit balls at the club later? It's so gorgeous out."

"William's got a campaign meeting and then we're going to see It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."

I study her. Didn't she ask me, just two hours ago, to double-date to this movie tomorrow night? Slowly, I move down to the end of the dining table, like she might pounce on me if I move too fast. She picks up a sterling fork from the sideboard, thrums her index finger along the tines.

"Yes, um, I heard Spencer Tracy's supposed to be divine," I say. Casually, I tick through the papers in my satchel. Aibileen and Minny's notes are still tucked deep in the side pocket, the flap closed, the latch snapped. But Hilly's bathroom initiative is in the open

center section with the paper where I wrote Jim Crow or Hilly's bathroom plan--what's the difference? Besides this is the draft of the newsletter that Hilly has examined already. But the booklet--the laws--I tick through again--they are gone.

Hilly tilts her head, narrows her eyes at me. "You know, I was just thinking about how Stuart's daddy stood right next to Ross Barnett when they fought that colored boy walking into Ole Miss. They're awfully close, Senator Whitworth and Governor Barnett."

I open my mouth to say something, anything, but then two-year-old William, Jr., totters in.

"There you are." Hilly picks him up, nuzzles his neck. "You are perfect, my perfect boy!" she says. William looks at me and screams.

"Well, enjoy the picture show," I say, going for the front door.

"Alright," she says. I walk down the steps. From her doorway, Hilly waves, flaps William's hand bye-bye. She slams the door before I've even made it to my car