The Help

Even though I know Leroy Junior want a stay, he give em a look and they all disappear, quiet, quick. The radio man go quiet too. For a second, that box nothing but brown wood and wires. “Medgar Evers,” he say, his voice sound like it’s rolling backwards, “NAACP Field Secretary, is dead.” He sigh. “Medgar Evers is dead.”

I swallow back a mouthful a spit and stare at Minny’s wallpaint that’s gone yellow with bacon grease, baby hands, Leroy’s Pall Malls. No pictures or calendars on Minny’s walls. I’m trying not to think. I don’t want a think about a colored man dying. It’ll make me remember Treelore.

Minny’s hands is in fists. She gritting her teeth. “Shot him right in front a his children, Aibileen.”

“We gone pray for the Everses, we gone pray for Myrlie . . .” but it just sound so empty, so I stop.

“Radio say his family run out the house when they heard the shots. Say he bloody, stumbling round, all the kids with blood all over em . . .” She slap her hand on the table, rattling the wood radio.

I hold my breath, but I feel dizzy. I got to be the one who’s strong. I got to keep my friend here from losing it.

“Things ain’t never gone change in this town, Aibileen. We living in hell, we trapped. Our kids is trapped.”

Radio man get loud again, say, “. . . policemen everywhere, blocking the road. Mayor Thompson is expected to hold a press conference shortly—”

I choke then. The tears roll down. It’s all them white peoples that breaks me, standing around the colored neighborhood. White peoples with guns, pointed at colored peoples. Cause who gone protect our peoples? Ain’t no colored policemans.

Minny stare at the door the kids went through. Sweat’s drilling down the sides a her face.

“What they gone do to us, Aibileen? If they catch us . . .”

I take a deep breath. She talking about the stories. “We both know. It be bad.”

“But what would they do? Hitch us to a pickup and drag us behind? Shoot me in my yard front a my kids? Or just starve us to death?”

Mayor Thompson come on the radio, say how sorry he is for the Evers family. I look at the open back door and get that watched feeling again, with a white man’s voice in the room.

“This ain’t . . . we ain’t doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen.”

I turn off the radio, take Minny’s hand in mine. We set like that, Minny staring at the brown moth pressed up on the wall, me staring at that flap a red meat, left dry in the pan.

Minny got the most lonesome look in her eyes. “I wish Leroy was home,” she whisper.

I doubt if them words ever been said in this house before.

FOR DAYS and DAYS, Jackson, Mississippi’s like a pot a boiling water. On Miss Leefolt’s tee-vee, flocks a colored people march up High Street the day after Mister Evers’ funeral. Three hundred arrested. Colored paper say thousands a people came to the service, but you could count the whites on one hand. The police know who did it, but they ain’t telling nobody his name.

I come to find that the Evers family ain’t burying Medgar in Mississippi. His body’s going to Washington, to the Arlington Cemetery, and I reckon Myrlie real proud a that. She should be. But I’d want him here, close by. In the newspaper, I read how even the President a the United States telling Mayor Thompson he need to do better. Put a committee together with blacks and whites and work things out down here. But Mayor Thompson, he say—to President Kennedy—“I am not going to appoint a bi-racial committee. Let’s not kid ourselves. I believe in the separation of the races, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Few days later, the mayor come on the radio again. “Jackson, Mississippi, is the closest place to heaven there is,” he say. “And it’s going to be like this for the rest of our lives.”

For the second time in two months, Jackson, Mississippi’s in the Life magazine. This time, though, we make the cover.

chapter 15

NONE A THE MEDGAR EVERS talk come up in Miss Leefolt’s house. I change the station when she come back from her lunch meeting. We go on like it’s a nice summer afternoon. I still ain’t heard hide nor hair from Miss Hilly and I’m sick a the worry that’s always in my head.

A day after the Evers funeral, Miss Leefolt’s mama stop by for a visit. She live up in Greenwood, Mississippi, and she driving down to New Orleans. She don’t knock, Miss Fredericks just waltz on in the living room where I’m ironing. She give me a lemony smile. I go tell Miss Leefolt who here.

“Mama! You’re so early! You must’ve gotten up at the crack of dawn this morning, I hope you didn’t tire yourself out!” Miss Leefolt say, rushing into the living room, picking up toys fast as she can. She shoot me a look that say, now. I put Mister Leefolt’s wrinkled shirts in a basket, get a cloth for Baby Girl’s face to wipe off the jelly.