The Help

“Bates,” I say, because this is another detail I didn’t know, albeit insignificant. “She changed her last name back to Constantine’s.”

“Thank God nobody heard her. But then she starts talking to Phoebe Miller, the president of the Southern States of the DAR, and I pulled her into the kitchen and I said, Lulabelle, you can’t stay here. You need to go on, and oh she looked at me haughty. She said, What, you don’t allow colored Negroes in your living room if we’re not cleaning up? That’s when Constantine walks in the kitchen and she looks as shocked as I am. I say, Lulabelle, you get out of this house before I call Mister Phelan, but she won’t budge. Says, when I thought she was white, I treated her fine and dandy. Says up in Chicago, she’s part of some black cat group so I tell Constantine, I say, You get your daughter out of my house right now.”

Mother’s eyes seem more deep-set than ever. Her nostrils are flaring.

“So Constantine, she tells Lulabelle to go on back to their house, and Lulabelle says, Fine, I was leaving anyway, and heads for the dining room and of course I stop her. Oh no, I say, you go out the back door, not the front with the white guests. I was not about to have the DAR find out about this. And I told that bawdy girl, whose own mama we gave ten dollars extra to every Christmas, she was not to step foot on this farm again. And do you know what she did?”

Yes, I think, but I keep my face blank. I am still searching for the redemption.

“Spit. In my face. A Negro in my home. Trying to act white.”

I shudder. Who would ever have the nerve to spit at my mother?

“I told Constantine that girl better not show her face here again. Not to Hotstack, not to the state of Mississippi. Nor would I tolerate her keeping terms with Lulabelle, not as long as your daddy was paying Constantine’s rent on that house back there.”

“But it was Lulabelle acting that way. Not Constantine.”

“What if she stayed? I couldn’t have that girl going around Jackson, acting white when she was colored, telling everybody she got into a DAR party at Longleaf. I just thank God nobody ever found out about it. She tried to embarrass me in my own home, Eugenia. Five minutes before, she had Phoebe Miller filling out the form for her to join.”

“She hadn’t seen her daughter in twenty years. You can’t . . . tell a person they can’t see their child.”

But Mother is caught up in her own story. “And Constantine, she thought she could get me to change my mind. Miss Phelan, please, just let her stay at the house, she won’t come on this side again, I hadn’t seen her in so long.

“And that Lulabelle, with her hand up on her hip, saying, ‘Yeah, my daddy died and my mama was too sick to take care of me when I was a baby. She had to give me away. You can’t keep us apart.’ ”

Mother lowers her voice. She seems matter-of-fact now. “I looked at Constantine and I felt so much shame for her. To get pregnant in the first place and then to lie . . .”

I feel sick and hot. I’m ready for this to be over.

Mother narrows her eyes. “It’s time you learned, Eugenia, how things really are. You idolize Constantine too much. You always have.” She points her finger at me. “They are not like regular people.”

I can’t look at her. I close my eyes. “And then what happened, Mother?”

“I asked Constantine, just as plain as day, ‘Is that what you told her? Is that how you cover your mistakes?’ ”

This is the part I was hoping wasn’t true. This is what I’d hoped Aibileen had been wrong about.

“I told Lulabelle the truth. I told her, ‘Your daddy didn’t die. He left the day after you were born. And your mama hadn’t been sick a day in her life. She gave you up because you were too high yellow. She didn’t want you.’”

“Why couldn’t you let her believe what Constantine told her? Constantine was so scared she wouldn’t like her, that’s why she told her those things.”

“Because Lulabelle needed to know the truth. She needed to go back to Chicago where she belonged.”

I let my head sink into my hands. There is no redeeming piece of the story. I know why Aibileen hadn’t wanted to tell me. A child should never know this about her own mother.

“I never thought Constantine would go to Illinois with her, Eugenia. Honestly, I was . . . sorry to see her go.”

“You weren’t,” I say. I think about Constantine, after living fifty years in the country, sitting in a tiny apartment in Chicago. How lonely she must’ve felt. How bad her knees must’ve felt in that cold.

“I was. And even though I told her not to write you, she probably would’ve, if there’d been more time.”