The Help

I no longer feel protected just because I’m white. I check over my shoulder often when I drive the truck to Aibileen’s. The cop who stopped me a few months back is my reminder: I am now a threat to every white family in town. Even though so many of the stories are good, celebrating the bonds of women and family, the bad stories will be the ones that catch the white people’s attention. They will make their blood boil and their fists swing. We must keep this a perfect secret.

I’m DELIBERATELY FIVE MINUTES LATE for the Monday night League meeting, our first in a month. Hilly’s been down at the coast, wouldn’t dare allow a meeting without her. She’s tan and ready to lead. She holds her gavel like a weapon. All around me, women sit and smoke cigarettes, tip them into glass ashtrays on the floor. I chew my nails to keep from smoking one. I haven’t smoked in six days.

Besides the cigarette missing from my hand, I’m jittery from the faces around me. I easily spot seven women in the room who are related to someone in the book, if not in it themselves. I want to get out of here and get back to work, but two long, hot hours pass before Hilly finally bangs her gavel. By then, even she looks tired of hearing her own voice.

Girls stand and stretch. Some head out, eager to attend to their husbands. Others dawdle, the ones with a kitchen full of kids and help that has gone home. I gather my things quickly, hoping to avoid talking to anyone, especially Hilly.

But before I can escape, Elizabeth catches my eye, waves me over. I haven’t seen her for weeks and I can’t avoid speaking to her. I feel guilty that I haven’t been to see her. She grabs the back of her chair and raises herself up. She is six months pregnant, woozy from the pregnancy tranquilizers.

“How are you feeling?” I ask. Everything on her body is the same except her stomach is huge and swollen. “Is it any better this time?”

“God, no, it’s awful and I still have three months to go.”

We’re both quiet. Elizabeth burps faintly, looks at her watch. Finally, she picks up her bag, about to leave, but then she takes my hand. “I heard,” she whispers, “about you and Stuart. I’m so sorry.”

I look down. I’m not surprised she knows, only that it took this long for anyone to find out. I haven’t told anyone, but I guess Stuart has. Just this morning, I had to lie to Mother and tell her the Whitworths would be out of town on the twenty-fifth, Mother’s so-called date to have them over.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say. “I don’t like talking about it.”

“I understand. Oh shoot, I better go on, Raleigh’s probably having a fit by himself with her.” She gives a last look at Hilly. Hilly smiles and nods her excusal.

I gather my notes quickly, head for the door. Before I make it out, I hear her.

“Wait a sec, would you, Skeeter?”

I sigh, turn around and face Hilly. She’s wearing the navy blue sailor number, something you’d dress a five-year-old in. The pleats around her hips are stretched open like accordion bellows. The room is empty except for us now.

“Can we discuss this, please, ma’am?” She holds up the most recent newsletter and I know what’s coming.

“I can’t stay. Mother’s sick—”

“I told you five months ago to print my initiative and now another week has passed and you still haven’t followed my instructions.”

I stare at her and my anger is sudden, ferocious. Everything I’ve kept down for months rises and erupts in my throat.

“I will not print that initiative.”

She looks at me, holding very still. “I want that initiative in the newsletter before election time,” she says and points to the ceiling, “or I’m calling upstairs, missy.”

“If you try to throw me out of the League, I will dial up Genevieve von Hapsburg in New York City myself,” I hiss, because I happen to know Genevieve’s Hilly’s hero. She’s the youngest national League president in history, perhaps the only person in this world Hilly’s afraid of. But Hilly doesn’t even flinch.

“And tell her what, Skeeter? Tell her you’re not doing your job? Tell her you’re carrying around Negro activist materials?”

I’m too angry to let this unnerve me. “I want them back, Hilly. You took them and they don’t belong to you.”

“Of course I took them. You have no business carrying around something like that. What if somebody saw those things?”

“Who are you to say what I can and cannot carry ar—”

“It is my job, Skeeter! You know well as I do, people won’t buy so much as a slice of pound cake from an organization that harbors racial integrationists!”

“Hilly.” I just need to hear her say it. “Just who is all that pound cake money being raised for, anyway?”

She rolls her eyes. “The Poor Starving Children of Africa?”

I wait for her to catch the irony of this, that she’ll send money to colored people overseas, but not across town. But I get a better idea. “I’m going to call up Genevieve right now. I’m going to tell her what a hypocrite you are.”