The Help

“Just pour some pneumonia in that garbage. Dogs won’t so much as wink at them cans.” I jot it down, amending it to ammonia, and pick out the next letter. When I look up, Aibileen’s kind of smiling at me.

“I don’t mean nothing disrespectful, Miss Skeeter, but . . . ain’t it kind a strange you being the new Miss Myrna when you don’t know nothing about housekeeping?”

She didn’t say it the way Mother did, a month ago. I find myself laughing instead, and I tell her what I’ve told no one else, about the phone calls and the résumé I’d sent to Harper & Row. That I want to be a writer. The advice I received from Elaine Stein. It’s nice to tell somebody.

Aibileen nods, turns her knife around another soft red tomato. “My boy Treelore, he like to write.”

“I didn’t know you had a son.”

“He dead. Two years now.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say and for a moment it’s just Preacher Green in the room, the soft pat of tomato skins against the sink.

“Made straight As on ever English test he take. Then later, when he grown, he pick himself up a typewriter and start working on a idea . . .” The pin-tucked shoulders of her uniform slump down. “Say he gone write himself a book.”

“What kind of idea?” I ask. “I mean, if you don’t mind telling . . .”

Aibileen says nothing for a while. Keeps peeling tomatoes around and around. “He read this book call Invisible Man. When he done, he say he gone write down what it was like to be colored working for a white man in Mississippi.”

I look away, knowing this is where my mother would stop the conversation. This is where she’d smile and change the subject to the price of silver polish or white rice.

“I read Invisible Man, too, after he did,” Aibileen says. “I liked it alright.”

I nod, even though I’ve never read it. I hadn’t thought of Aibileen as a reader before.

“He wrote almost fifty pages,” she says. “I let his girl Frances keep hold of em.”

Aibileen stops peeling. I see her throat move when she swallows. “Please don’t tell nobody that,” she says, softer now, “him wanting to write about his white boss.” She bites her lip and it strikes me then that she’s still afraid for him. Even though he’s dead, the instinct to be afraid for her son is still there.

“It’s fine that you told me, Aibileen. I think it was . . . a brave idea.”

Aibileen holds my gaze for a moment. Then she picks up another tomato and sets the knife against the skin. I watch, wait for the red juice to spill. But Aibileen stops before she cuts, glances at the kitchen door.

“I don’t think it’s fair, you not knowing what happen to Constantine. I just—I’m sorry, I don’t feel right talking to you about it.”

I stay quiet, not sure what’s spurred this, not wanting to ruin it.

“I’ll tell you though, it was something to do with her daughter. Coming to see your mama.”

“Daughter? Constantine never told me she had a daughter.” I knew Constantine for twenty-three years. Why would she keep this from me?

“It was hard for her. The baby come out real . . . pale.”

I hold still, remembering what Constantine told me, years ago. “You mean, light? Like . . . white?”

Aibileen nods, keeping at her task in the sink. “Had to send her away, up north I think.”

“Constantine’s father was white,” I say. “Oh . . . Aibileen . . . you don’t think . . .” An ugly thought is running through my head. I am too shocked to finish my sentence.

Aibileen shakes her head. “No no, no ma’am. Not... that. Constantine’s man, Connor, he was colored. But since Constantine had her daddy’s blood in her, her baby come out a high yellow. It . . . happens.”

I feel ashamed for having thought the worst. Still, I don’t understand. “Why didn’t Constantine ever tell me?” I ask, not really expecting an answer. “Why would she send her away?”

Aibileen nods to herself, like she understands. But I don’t. “That was the worst off I ever seen her. Constantine must a said a thousand times, she couldn’t wait for the day when she got her back.”

“You said the daughter, she had something to do with Constantine getting fired? What happened?”

At this, Aibileen’s face goes blank. The curtain has drawn. She nods toward the Miss Myrna letters, making it clear that’s all she’s willing to say. At least right now.

THAT AFTERNOON, I stop by Hilly’s football party. The street is lined with station wagons and long Buicks. I force myself through the door, knowing I’ll be the only single one there. Inside, the living room is full of couples on the sofas, the chaises, the arms of chairs. Wives sit straight with their legs crossed, while husbands lean forward. All eyes are on the wooden television set. I stand in the back, exchange a few smiles, silent hellos. Except for the announcer, the room is quiet.

“Whooooooa!” they all yell and hands fly in the air and women stand and clap and clap. I chew at my cuticle.

“That’s it, Rebels! You show those Tigers!”