“My name is Celia Foote and I am here to see Miss Elizabeth Leefolt, please.”
I’m so mesmerized by all that pink, it takes a few seconds to hit me how bad this could turn out for me. And Minny. It was a long time ago, but that lie stuck.
“I . . . she . . .” I’d tell her nobody’s home but the bridge table’s five feet behind me. I look back and all four a them ladies is staring at the door with they mouths open like they catching flies. Miss Caldwell whisper something to Miss Hilly. Miss Leefolt stagger up, slap on a smile.
“Hello, Celia,” Miss Leefolt say. “It’s certainly been a long time.”
Miss Celia clears her throat and says kind a too loud, “Hello, Elizabeth. I’m calling on you today to—” Her eyes flicker back to the table where the other ladies is setting.
“Oh no, I’m interrupting. I’ll just . . . I’ll come on back. Another time.”
“No, no, what can I do for you?” Miss Leefolt say.
Miss Celia takes a deep breath in that tight pink skirt and for a second I guess we all think she gone pop.
“I’m here to offer my help for the Children’s Benefit.”
Miss Leefolt smile, say, “Oh. Well, I . . .”
“I got a real knack for arranging flowers, I mean, everybody back in Sugar Ditch said so, even my maid said so, right after she said I’m the worst cook she’s ever laid eyes on.” She giggle at this a second and I suck in my breath at the word
maid.
Then she snap back to serious. “But I can address things and lick stamps and—”
Miss Hilly get up from the table. She lean in, say, “We really don’t need any more help, but we’d be delighted if you and Johnny would attend the Benefit, Celia.”
Miss Celia smile and look so grateful it’d break anybody’s heart. Who had one.
“Oh thank you,” she say. “I’d
love
to.”
“It’s on Friday night, November the fifteenth at the—”
“—the Robert E. Lee Hotel,” Miss Celia finish. “I know all about it.”
“We’d love to sell you some tickets. Johnny’ll be coming with you, won’t he? Go get her some tickets, Elizabeth.”
“And if there’s anything I can do to help—”
“No, no.” Hilly smile. “We’ve got it all taken care of.”
Miss Leefolt come back with the envelope. She fish out a few tickets, but then Miss Hilly take the envelope away from her.
“While you’re here, Celia, why don’t you buy some tickets for your friends?”
Miss Celia be frozen for a second. “Um, alright.”
“How about ten? You and Johnny and eight friends. Then you’d have a whole table.”
Miss Celia smiling so hard it starts to tremble. “I think just the two will be fine.”
Miss Hilly take out two tickets and hand the envelope back to Miss Leefolt, who goes in the back to put it away.
“Lemme just get my check writ out. I’m lucky I have this big ole thing with me today. I told my maid Minny I’d pick up a hambone for her in town.”
Miss Celia struggle to write that check on her knee. I stay still as I can, hoping to God Miss Hilly didn’t hear what she just said. She hand the check to her but Miss Hilly all wrinkled up, thinking.
“Who? Who’d you say your maid was?”
“Minny Jackson. Aw! Shoot.” Miss Celia pop her hand over her mouth. “Elizabeth made me swear I’d never tell she recommended her and here I am blabbing my mouth off.”
“Elizabeth . . . recommended Minny Jackson?”
Miss Leefolt come back in from the bedroom. “Aibileen, she’s up. Go on and get her now. I can’t lift a nail file with my back.”
I go real quick to Mae Mobley’s room but soon as I peek in, Mae Mobley’s done fallen asleep again. I rush back to the dining room. Miss Hilly’s shutting the front door closed.
Miss Hilly set down, looking like she just swallowed the cat that ate the canary.
“Aibileen,” Miss Leefolt say, “go on and get the salads ready now, we’re all waiting.”
I go in the kitchen. When I come back out, the salad plates is rattling like teeth on the serving tray.
“. . . mean the one who stole all your mama’s silver and . . .”
“. . . thought everybody in town knew that Nigra was a thief . . .”
“. . . I’d never in a million years recommend . . .”
“. . . you see what she had on? Who does she . . .”
“I’m going to figure this out if it kills me,” Miss Hilly say.
MINNY
chapter 24
I
’M AT THE KITCHEN sink waiting for Miss Celia to come home. The rag I’ve been pulling on is in shreds. That crazy woman woke up this morning, squoze into the tightest pink sweater she has, which is saying something, and hollered, “I’m going to Elizabeth Leefolt’s. Right now, while I got the nerve, Minny.” Then she drove off in her Bel Aire convertible with her skirt hanging out the door.
I was just jittery until the phone rang. Aibileen was hiccupping she was so upset. Not only did Miss Celia tell the ladies that Minny Jackson is working for her, she informed them that Miss Leefolt was the one who “recommended” me. And that was all the story Aibileen heard. It’ll take those cackling hens about five minutes to figure this out.
So now, I have to wait. Wait to find out if, Number One, my best friend in the entire world gets fired for getting me a job. And Number Two, if Miss Hilly told Miss Celia those lies that I’m a thief. And Number Two and a half, if Miss Hilly told Miss Celia how I got back at her for telling those lies that I’m a thief. I’m not sorry for the Terrible Awful Thing I done to her. But now that Miss Hilly put her own maid in jail to rot, I wonder what that lady’s going to do to me.
It’s not until ten after four, an hour past my time to leave, that I see Miss Celia’s car pull in. She jiggles up the walk like she’s got something to say. I hitch up my hose.
“Minny, it’s so late!” she yells.
“What happened with Miss Leefolt?” I’m not even trying to be coy. I want to know.
“Go, please! Johnny’s coming home any minute.” She’s pushing me to the washroom where I keep my things.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she says, but for once, I don’t want to go home, I want to hear what Miss Hilly said about me. Hearing your maid’s a thief is like hearing your kid’s teacher’s a twiddler. You don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, you just get the hell rid of em.
But Miss Celia won’t tell me anything. She’s shooing me out so she can keep up her charade, so twisted it’s like kudzu. Mister Johnny knows about me. Miss Celia knows Mister Johnny knows about me. But Mister Johnny doesn’t know that Miss Celia knows he knows. And because of that ridiculousness, I have to leave at four-oh-ten and worry about Miss Hilly for the entire night.
THE NEXT MORNING BEFORE WORK, Aibileen calls my house.
“I call poor Fanny early this morning cause I know you been stewing about it all night.” Poor Fanny’s Miss Hilly’s new maid. Ought to call her Fool Fanny for working there. “She heard Miss Leefolt and Miss Hilly done decided you made the whole recommendation thing up so Miss Celia would give you the job.”
Whew.
I let out a long breath. “Glad you ain’t gone get in trouble,” I say. Still, now Miss Hilly calling me a liar
and
a thief.
“Don’t you worry bout me,” Aibileen says. “You just keep Miss Hilly from talking to your boss lady.”
When I get to work, Miss Celia’s rushing out to go buy a dress for the Benefit next month. She says she wants to be the first person in the store. It’s not like the old days when she was pregnant. Now she can’t wait to get out the door.
I stomp out to the backyard and wipe down the lawn chairs. The birds all twitter up in a huff when they see me coming, making the camellia bush rattle. Last spring Miss Celia was always nagging at me to take those flowers home. But I know camellias. You bring a bunch inside, thinking how it’s so fresh it looks like it’s moving and as soon as you go down for a sniff, you see you’ve brought an army full of spider mites in the house.
I hear a stick break, then another, behind the bushes. I prickle inside, hold still. We’re out in the middle of nowhere and nobody would hear us call for miles. I listen, but I don’t hear anything else. I tell myself it’s just the old dregs of waiting for Mister Johnny. Or maybe I’m paranoid because I worked with Miss Skeeter last night on the book. I’m always jittery after talking to her.
Finally, I go back to cleaning pool chairs, picking up Miss Celia’s movie magazines and tissues the slob leaves out here. The phone rings inside. I’m not supposed to answer the phone what with Miss Celia trying to keep up the big fat lie with Mister Johnny. But she’s not here and it might be Aibileen with more news. I go inside, lock the door behind me.
“Miss Celia residence.” Lord, I hope it’s not Miss Celia calling.
“This is Hilly Holbrook speaking. Who is this?”
My blood whooshes down from my hair to my feet. I’m an empty, bloodless shell for about five seconds.
I lower my voice, make it deep like a stranger. “This Doreena. Miss Celia’s help.”
Doreena? Why I use my sister’s name!
“Doreena. I thought Minny Jackson was Miss Foote’s maid.”
“She . . . quit.”
“Is that right? Let me speak to Missus Foote.”
“She . . . out a town. Down at the coast. For a—a—” My mind’s pedaling a thousand miles an hour trying to come up with details.
“Well, when is she coming back?”
“Looong time.”
“Well, when she gets back, you tell her I called. Hilly Holbrook, Emerson three sixty-eight forty?”
“Yes ma’am. I tell her.” In about a hundred years.
I hold on to the counter edge, wait for my heart to stop hammering. It’s not that Miss Hilly can’t find me. I mean, she could just look up Minny Jackson on Tick Road in the phone book and get my address. And it’s not like I couldn’t tell Miss Celia what happened, tell her I’m not a thief. Maybe she’d believe me after all. But it’s the Terrible Awful that ruins it all.
Four hours later, Miss Celia walks in with five big boxes stacked on top of each other. I help her tote them back to her bedroom and then I stand very still outside her door to hear if she’ll call up the society ladies like she does every day. Sure enough, I hear her pick up the phone. But she just hangs it back up again. The fool’s listening for the dial tone again, in case someone tries to call.
EVEN THOUGH IT’S THE third week of October, the summer beats on with the rhythm of a clothes dryer. The grass in Miss Celia’s yard is still a full-blown green. The orange dahlias are still smiling drunk up at the sun. And every night, the damn mosquitoes come out for their blood hunt, my sweat pads went up three cents a box, and my electric fan is broke dead on my kitchen floor.
On this October morning, three days after Miss Hilly called, I walk into work half an hour early. I’ve got Sugar seeing the kids to school. The coffee grinds go in the fancy percolator, the water goes in the pot. I lean my bottom against the counter. Quiet. It’s what I’ve been waiting for all night long.
The Frigidaire picks up a hum where it left off. I put my hand on it to feel its vibration.
“You’re awful early, Minny.”
I open the refrigerator and bury my head inside. “Morning,” I say from the crisper. All I can think is,
Not yet.
I fiddle with some artichokes, the cold spines prickling my hand. Bent over like this, my head pounds even harder. “I’m on fix you and Mister Johnny a roast and I’m on . . . fix some . . .” But the words go all high-pitched on me.
“
Minny,
what happened?” Miss Celia has made her way around the refrigerator door without me even realizing it. My face bunches up. The cut on my eyebrow breaks open again, the hot blood stinging like a razor. Usually my bruises don’t show.
“Honey, set down. Did you take a spill?” She props her hand on the hip of her pink nightgown. “Did you trip on the fan cord again?”
“I’m fine,” I say, trying to turn so she can’t see me. But Miss Celia’s moving with me, bug-eyeing the cut like she’s never seen anything so awful. I had a white lady tell me once that blood looks redder on a colored person. I take a wad of cotton from my pocket, hold it to my face.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “I banged it in the bathtub.”
“Minny, that thing’s bleeding. I think you need you some stitches. Let me get Doctor Neal over here.” She grabs the phone from the wall, then bangs it back. “Oh, he’s up at the hunting camp with Johnny. I’ll call Doctor Steele, then.”
“Miss Celia, I don’t need no doctor.”
“You need medical attention, Minny,” she says, picking the phone back up.
Do I really have to say it? I grit my teeth to get it out. “Them doctors ain’t gone work on no colored person, Miss Celia.”
She hangs the phone up again.
I turn and face the sink. I keep thinking,
This ain’t nobody’s business, just do your work,
but I haven’t had a minute’s sleep. Leroy screamed at me all night, threw the sugar bowl upside my head, threw my clothes out on the porch. I mean, when he’s drinking the Thunderbird, it’s one thing, but . . .
oh.
The shame is so heavy I think it might pull me to the floor. Leroy, he wasn’t on the Thunderbird this time. This time he beat me stone-cold sober.
“Go on out a here, Miss Celia, let me get some work done,” I say because I just need some time alone. At first, I thought Leroy had found out about my working with Miss Skeeter. It was the only reason I could come up with while he was beating me with his hand. But he didn’t say a thing about it. He was just beating me for the pure pleasure of it.
“Minny?” Miss Celia says, eyeing the cut again. “Are you sure you did that in the bathtub?”
I run the water just to get some noise in the room. “I told you I did and I did. Alright?”
She gives me a suspicious look and points her finger at me. “Alright, but I’m fixing you a cup of coffee and I want you to just take the day off, okay?” Miss Celia goes to the coffee percolator, pours two cups, but then stops. Looks at me kind of surprised.