Miss Leefolt off getting her hair done. She don’t care bout being there on the morning her only child wakes up on the first birthday she remember. But least Miss Leefolt got her what she want. Brung me back to her bedroom and point to a big box on the floor.
“Won’t she be happy?” Miss Leefolt say. “It walks and talks and even cries.”
Sho nuff they’s a big pink polky-dot box. Got cellophane across the front, and inside they’s the doll baby tall as Mae Mobley. Name Allison. She got blond curly hair and blue eyes. Frilly pink dress on. Evertime the commercial come on the tee-vee Mae Mobley run over to the set and grab the box on both sides, put her face up to the screen and stare so serious. Miss Leefolt look like she gone cry herself, looking down at that toy. I reckon her mean old mama never got her what she wanted when she little.
In the kitchen, I fix some grits without no seasoning, and put them baby marshmallows on top. I toast the whole thing to make it a little crunchy. Then I garnish it with a cut-up strawberry. That’s all a grit is, a vehicle. For whatever it is you rather be eating.
The three little pink candles I done brought from home is in my pocketbook. I bring em out, undo the wax paper I got em in so they don’t turn out bent. After I light em, I bring them grits over to her booster chair, at the white linoleum table in the middle a the room.
I say, “Happy birthday, Mae Mobley Two!”
She laugh and say, “I am Mae Mobley Three!”
“You sure is! Now blow out them candles, Baby Girl. Fore they run up in you grits.”
She stare at the little flames, smiling.
“Blow it, big girl.”
She blow em clean over. She suck the grits off the candles and start eating. After while, she smile up at me, say, “How old are you?”
“Aibileen’s fifty-three.”
Her eyes get real wide. I might as well be a thousand.
“Do you . . . get birthdays?”
“Yeah.” I laugh. “It’s a pity, but I do. My birthday be next week.” I can’t believe I’m on be fifty-four years old. Where do it go?
“Do you have some babies?” she ask.
I laugh. “I got seventeen of em.”
She ain’t quite got up to seventeen in her numbers yet, but she know this be a big one.
“That’s enough to fill up this whole kitchen,” I say.
Her brown eyes is so big and round. “Where are the babies?”
“They all over town. All the babies I done looked after.”
“Why don’t they come play with me?”
“Cause most of em grown. Lot of em already having babies a they own.”
Lordy, she look confuse. She doing her figuring, like she be trying to count it all up. Finally I say, “You one of em, too. All the babies I tend to, I count as my own.”
She nod, cross up her arms.
I start washing the dishes. The birthday party tonight just gone be the family and I got to get the cakes made. First, I’m on do the strawberry one with the strawberry icing. Every meal be strawberry, if it was up to Mae Mobley. Then I do the other one.
“Let’s do a chocolate cake,” say Miss Leefolt yesterday. She seven months pregnant and love eating chocolate.
Now I done planned this last week. I got everything ready. This too important to be occurring to me the day before. “Mm-hmm. What about strawberry? That be Mae Mobley’s favorite, you know.”
“Oh no, she wants chocolate. I’m going to the store today and get everything you need.”
Chocolate my foot. So I figured I’d just go on and make both. At least then she get to blow out two sets a candles.
I clean up the grits plate. Give her some grape juice to drink. She got her old baby doll in the kitchen, the one she call Claudia, with the painted-on hair and the eyes that close. Make a pitiful whining sound when you drop it on the floor.
“There’s your baby,” I say and she pats its back like she burping it, nods.
Then she say, “Aibee, you’re my real mama.” She don’t even look at me, just say it like she talking about the weather.
I kneel down on the floor where she playing. “Your mama’s off getting her hair fixed. Baby Girl, you know who your mama is.”
But she shake her head, cuddling that doll to her. “I’m
your
baby,” she say.
“Mae Mobley, you know I’s just teasing you, about all them seventeen kids being mine? They ain’t really. I only had me one child.”
“I know,” she say. “I’m your real baby. Those other ones you said are pretend.”
Now I had babies be confuse before. John Green Dudley, first word out a that boy’s mouth was Mama and he was looking straight at me. But then pretty soon he calling everybody including hisself Mama, and calling his daddy Mama too. Did that for a long time. Nobody worry bout it. Course when he start playing dress-up in his sister’s Jewel Taylor twirl skirts and wearing Chanel Number 5, we all get a little concern.
I looked after the Dudley family for too long, over six years. His daddy would take him to the garage and whip him with a rubber hose-pipe trying to beat the girl out a that boy until I couldn’t stand it no more. Treelore near bout suffocated when I’d come home I’d hug him so hard. When we started working on the stories, Miss Skeeter asked me what’s the worst day I remember being a maid. I told her it was a stillbirth baby. But it wasn’t. It was every day from 1941 to 1947 waiting by the screen door for them beatings to be over. I wish to God I’d told John Green Dudley he ain’t going to hell. That he ain’t no sideshow freak cause he like boys. I wish to God I’d filled his ears with good things like I’m trying to do Mae Mobley. Instead, I just sat in the kitchen, waiting to put the salve on them hose-pipe welts.
Just then we hear Miss Leefolt pulling into the carport. I get a little nervous a what Miss Leefolt gone do if she hear this Mama stuff. Mae Mobley nervous too. Her hands start flapping like a chicken. “Shhh! Don’t tell!” she say. “She’ll spank me.”
So she already done had this talk with her mama. And Miss Leefolt didn’t like it one bit.
When Miss Leefolt come in with her new hairdo, Mae Mobley don’t even say hello, she run back to her room. Like she scared her mama can hear what’s going on inside her head.
MAE MOBLEY’S BIRTHDAY PARTY GOES fine, least that’s what Miss Leefolt tell me the next day. Friday morning, I come in to see three-quarters of a chocolate cake setting on the counter. Strawberry all gone. That afternoon, Miss Skeeter come by to give Miss Leefolt some papers. Soon as Miss Leefolt waddle off to the bathroom, Miss Skeeter slip in the kitchen.
“We on for tonight?” I ask.
“We’re on. I’ll be there.” Miss Skeeter don’t smile much since Mister Stuart and her ain’t steady no more. I heard Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt talking about it plenty.
Miss Skeeter get herself a Co-Cola from the icebox, speak in a low voice. “Tonight we’ll finish Winnie’s interview and this weekend I’ll start sorting it all out. But then I can’t meet again until next Thursday. I promised Mama I’d drive her to Natchez Monday for a DAR thing.” Miss Skeeter kind a narrow her eyes up, something she do when she thinking about something important. “I’ll be gone for three days, okay?”
“Good,” I say. “You need you a break.”
She head toward the dining room, but she look back, say, “Remember. I leave Monday morning and I’ll be gone for three days, okay?”
“Yes ma’am,” I say, wondering why she think she got to say this twice.
IT ain’T BUT EIGHT THIRTY on Monday morning but Miss Leefolt’s phone already ringing its head off.
“Miss Leefolt res—”
“Put Elizabeth on the phone! ”
I go tell Miss Leefolt. She get out a bed, shuffle in the kitchen in her rollers and nightgown, pick up the receiver. Miss Hilly sound like she using a megaphone not a telephone. I can hear every word.
“Have you been by my house?”
“What? What are you talk—?”
“She put it in the newsletter about the toilets. I specifically said old coats are to be dropped off at my house not—”
“Let me get my . . . mail, I don’t know what you’re—”
“When I find her I will kill her myself.”
The line crash down in Miss Leefolt’s ear. She stand there a second staring at it, then throw a housecoat over her nightgown. “I’ve got to
go
,” she says, scrambling round for her keys. “I’ll be back.”
She run all pregnant out the door and tumble in her car and speed off. I look down at Mae Mobley and she look up at me.
“Don’t ask me, Baby Girl. I don’t know either.”
What I do know is, Hilly and her family drove in this morning from a weekend in Memphis. Whenever Miss Hilly gone, that’s all Miss Leefolt talk about is where she is and when she coming back.
“Come on, Baby Girl,” I say after while. “Let’s take a walk, find out what’s going on.”
We walk up Devine, turn left, then left again, and up Miss Hilly’s street, which is Myrtle. Even though it’s August, it’s a nice walk, ain’t too hot yet. Birds is zipping around, singing. Mae Mobley holding my hand and we swinging our arms having a good ole time. Lots a cars passing us today, which is strange, cause Myrtle a dead end.
We turn the bend to Miss Hilly’s great big white house. And there they is.
Mae Mobley point and laugh. “Look. Look, Aibee!”
I have never in my life seen a thing like this. Three dozen of em. Pots. Right smack on Miss Hilly’s lawn. All different colors and shapes and sizes. Some is blue, some is pink, some is white. Some ain’t got no ring, some ain’t got no tank. They’s old ones, young ones, chain on top, and flush with the handle. Almost look like a crowd a people the way some got they lids open talking, some with they lids closed listening.
We move over into the drain ditch, cause the traffic on this little street’s starting to build up. People is driving down, circling round the little island a grass at the end with they windows down. Laughing out loud saying, “Look at Hilly’s house,” “Look at those things.” Staring at them toilets like they never seen one before.
“One, two, three,” Mae Mobley start counting em. She get to twelve and I got to take over. “Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one. Thirty-two commodes, Baby Girl.”
We get a little closer and now I see they ain’t just all over the yard. They’s two in the driveway side-by-side, like they a couple. They’s one up on the front step, like it’s waiting for Miss Hilly to answer the door.
“Ain’t that one funny with the—”
But Baby Girl done broke off from my hand. She running in the yard and get to the pink pot in the middle and pull up the lid. Before I know it, she done pulled down her panties and tinkled in it and I’m chasing after her with half a dozen horns honking and a man in a hat taking pictures.
Miss Leefolt’s car’s in the drive behind Miss Hilly’s, but they ain’t in sight. They must be inside yelling about what they gone do with this mess. Curtains is drawn and I don’t see no stirring. I cross my fingers, hope they didn’t catch Baby Girl making potty for half a Jackson to see. It’s time to go on back.
The whole way home, Baby Girl is asking questions bout them pots. Why they there? Where they come from? Can she go see Heather and play with them toilets some more?
When I get back to Miss Leefolt’s, the phone rings off the hook the rest a the morning. I don’t answer it. I’m waiting for it to stop long enough so I can call Minny. But when Miss Leefolt slam into the kitchen, she get to yapping on the phone a million miles a hour. Don’t take me long to get the story pieced together listening to her.
Miss Skeeter done printed Hilly’s toilet announcement in the newsletter alright. The list a them reasons why white folk and colored folk can’t be sharing a seat. And then, below that, she follow with the alert about the coat drive too, or at least that’s what she was supposed to do. Stead a coats though, it say something like “Drop off your old toilets at 228 Myrtle Street. We’ll be out of town, but leave them in front by the door.” She just get one word mixed up, that’s all. I spec that’s what she gone say, anyway.
TOO bad FOR Miss HILLY there wasn’t no other news going on. Nothing on Vietnam or the draft. They already say all they can about the church blown up in Alabama, killing those poor colored girls. Next day, Miss Hilly’s house with all them pots makes the front page a the
Jackson Journal.
I got to say, it is a funny-looking sight. I just wish it was in color so you could compare all them shades a pink and blue and white. Desegregation of the toilet bowls is what they should a call it.
The headline say, COME On BY, HAVE a SEAT! They ain’t no article to go with it. Just the picture and a little caption saying, “The home of Hilly and William Holbrook, of Jackson, Mississippi, was a sight to see this morning.”
And I don’t mean nothing going on just in Jackson, I mean nothing in the entire United States. Lottie Freeman, who work at the governor’s mansion where they get all the big papers, told me she saw it in the Living section a
The New York Times.
And in every one of em it read, “Home of Hilly and William Holbrook, Jackson, Mississippi.”
AT Miss LEEFOLT’S, they’s lots a extra talking on the telephone that week, lot a head-nodding like Miss Leefolt getting a earful from Miss Hilly. Part a me want a laugh about them pots, other part want a cry. It was a awful big risk for Miss Skeeter to take, turning Miss Hilly against her. She coming home tonight from Natchez, and I hope she call. I reckon now I know why she went.
On Thursday morning, I still ain’t heard from Miss Skeeter. I set up my ironing in the living room. Miss Leefolt come home with Miss Hilly and they set at the dining room table. I ain’t seen Miss Hilly over here since before the pots. I reckon she ain’t leaving the house so much. I turn the tee-vee set down low, keep my ear turned up.
“Here it is. Here’s what I told you about.” Miss Hilly got a little booklet opened up. She running her finger along the lines. Miss Leefolt shaking her head.