“I don’t know how you take your coffee, Minny.”
I roll my eyes. “Same as you.”
She drops two sugars into both mugs. She gives me my coffee and then she just stands, staring out the back window with her jaw set tight. I start washing last night’s dishes, wishing she’d just leave me be.
“You know,” she says kind of low, “You can talk to me about anything, Minny.”
I keep washing, feel my nose start to flare.
“I’ve seen some things, back when I lived in Sugar Ditch. In fact . . .”
I look up, about to give it to her for getting in my business, but Miss Celia says in a funny voice, “We’ve got to call the police, Minny.”
I put my coffee cup down so hard it splashes. “Now look a here, I don’t want no police getting involved—”
She points out the back window. “There’s a man, Minny! Out there!”
I turn to where’s she’s looking. A man—a
naked
man—is out by the azaleas. I blink to see if it’s real. He’s tall, mealy-looking and white. He’s standing with his back to us, about fifteen feet away. His brown tangled hair is long like a hobo. Even from the back I can tell he’s touching himself.
“Who is he?” Miss Celia whispers. “What’s he doing here?”
The man turns to face front, almost like he heard us. Both our jaws drop. He’s holding it out like he’s offering us a po’boy sandwich.
“Oh . . .
God
,” Miss Celia says.
His eyes search the window. They land right on mine, staring a dark line across the lawn. I shiver. It’s like he knows me, Minny Jackson. He’s staring with his lip curled like I deserved every bad day I’ve ever lived, every night I haven’t slept, every blow Leroy’s ever given. Deserved it and more.
And his fist starts punching his palm with a slow rhythm. Punch. Punch. Punch. Like he knows exactly what he’s going to do with me. I feel the throb in my eye start again.
“We’ve got to call the police!” whispers Miss Celia. Her wide eyes dart to the phone on the other side of the kitchen, but she doesn’t move an inch.
“It’ll take em forty-five minutes just to find the house,” I say. “He could break the door down by then!”
I run to the back door, flip the lock on. I dart to the front door and lock it, ducking down when I pass the back window. I stand up on my tiptoes, peek through the little square window on the back door. Miss Celia peeks around the side of the big window.
The naked man’s walking real slow up toward the house. He comes up the back steps. He tries the doorknob and I watch it jiggle, feeling my heart whapping against my ribs. I hear Miss Celia on the phone, saying, “Police? We’re getting intruded! There’s a man! A naked man trying to get in the—”
I jump back from the little square window just in time for the rock to smash through, feel the sprinkle of shards hit my face. Through the big window, I see the man backing up, like he’s trying to see where to break in next.
Lord,
I’m praying,
I don’t want to do this, don’t make me have to do this . . .
Again, he stares at us through the window. And I know we can’t just sit here like a duck dinner, waiting for him to get in. All he has to do is break a floor-to-ceiling window and step on in.
Lord, I know what I have to do. I have to go out there. I have to get him
first.
“You stand back, Miss Celia,” I say and my voice is shaking. I go get Mister Johnny’s hunting knife, still in the sheath, from the bear. But the blade’s so short, he’ll have to be awful close for me to cut him, so I get the broom too. I look out and he’s in the middle of the yard, looking up at the house. Figuring things out.
I open the back door and slip out. Across the yard, the man smiles at me, showing a mouth with about two teeth. He stops punching and goes back to stroking himself, smoothly, evenly now.
“Lock the door,” I hiss behind me. “Keep it locked.” I hear the click.
I tuck the knife in the belt of my uniform, make sure it’s tight. And I grip the broom with both hands.
“You get on out a here, you fool!” I yell. But the man doesn’t move. I take a few steps closer. And then so does he and I hear myself praying,
Lord protect me from this naked white man . . .
“I got me a knife!” I holler. I take some more steps and he does too. When I get seven or eight feet from him, I’m panting. We both stare.
“Why, you’re a fat nigger,” he calls in a strange, high voice and gives himself a long stroke.
I take a deep breath. And then I rush forward and swing with the broom.
Whoosh!
I’ve missed him by inches and he dances away. I lunge again and the man runs toward the house. He heads straight for the back door, where Miss Celia’s face is in the window.
“Nigger can’t catch me! Nigger too fat to run!”
He makes it to the steps and I panic that he’s going to try and bust down the door, but then he flips around and runs along the sideyard, holding that gigantic flopping po’boy in his hand.
“You get out a here!” I scream after him, feeling a sharp pain, knowing my cut’s ripping wider.
I rush him hard from the bushes to the pool, heaving and panting. He slows at the edge of the water and I get close and land a good swing on his rear,
thwak!
The stick snaps and the brush-end flies off.
“Didn’t hurt!” He jiggles his hand between his legs, hitching up his knees. “Have a little pecker pie, nigger? Come on, get you some pecker pie!”
I dive around him back to the middle of the yard, but the man is too tall and too fast and I’m getting slower. My swings are flying wild and soon I’m hardly even jogging. I stop, lean over, breathing hard, the short broken-off broom in my hand. I look down and the knife—it is
gone.
As soon as I look back up,
whaaam!
I stagger. The ringing comes harsh and loud, making me totter. I cover my ear but the ringing gets louder. He’s punched me on the same side as the cut.
He comes closer and I close my eyes, knowing what’s about to happen to me, knowing I’ve got to move away but I can’t. Where is the knife? Does he have the knife? The ringing’s like a nightmare.
“You get out a here before I kill you,” I hear, like it’s in a tin can. My hearing’s half gone and I open my eyes. There’s Miss Celia in her pink satin nightgown. She’s got a fire poker in her hand, heavy, sharp.
“White lady want a taste a pecker pie, too?” He flops his penis around at her and she steps closer to the man, slow, like a cat. I take a deep breath while the man jumps left, then right, laughing and chomping his toothless gums. But Miss Celia just stands still.
After a few seconds he frowns, looks disappointed that Miss Celia isn’t doing anything. She’s not swinging or frowning or hollering. He looks over at me. “What about you? Nigger too tired to—”
Crack!
The man’s jaw goes sideways and blood bursts out of his mouth. He wobbles around, turns, and Miss Celia whacks the other side of his face too. Like she just wanted to even him up.
The man stumbles forward, looking nowhere in particular. Then he falls face flat.
“Lordy, you . . . you got him . . .” I say, but in the back of my head, there’s this voice asking me, real calm, like we’re just having tea out here,
Is this really happening?
Is a white woman really beating up a white man to save me? Or did he shake my brain pan loose and I’m over there dead on the ground...
I try to focus my eyes. Miss Celia, she’s got a snarl on her lips. She raises her rod and
ka-wham!
across the back of his knees.
This ain’t happening, I decide. This is just too damn strange.
Ka-wham!
She hits him across his shoulders, making a
ugh
sound every time.
“I—I said you got him now, Miss Celia,” I say. But evidently, Miss Celia doesn’t think so. Even with my ears ringing, it sounds like chicken bones cracking. I stand up straighter, make myself focus my eyes before this turns into a homicide. “He down, he down, Miss Celia,” I say. “Fact, he”—I struggle to catch the poker—“he might be dead.”
I finally catch it and she lets go and the poker flies into the yard. Miss Celia steps back from him, spits in the grass. Blood’s spattered across her pink satin nightgown. The fabric’s stuck to her legs.
“He ain’t dead,” Miss Celia says.
“He close,” I say.
“Did he hit you hard, Minny?” she asks, but she’s staring down at him. “Did he hurt you bad?”
I can feel blood running down my temple but I know it’s from the sugar bowl cut that’s split open again. “Not as bad as you hurt him,” I say.
The man groans and we both jump back. I grab the poker and the broom handle from the grass. I don’t give her either one.
He rolls halfway over. His face is bloody on both sides, his eyes are swelling shut. His jaw’s been knocked off its hinge and somehow he still brings himself to his feet. And then he starts to walk away, a pathetic wobbly thing. He doesn’t even look back at us. We just stand there and watch him hobble through the prickly boxwood bushes and disappear in the trees.
“He ain’t gone get far,” I say, and I keep my grip on that poker. “You whooped him pretty good.”
“You think?” she says.
I give her a look. “Like Joe Louis with a tire iron.”
She brushes a clump of blond hair out of her face, looks at me like it kills her that I got hit. Suddenly I realize I ought to thank her, but truly, I’ve got no words to draw from. This is a brand-new invention we’ve come up with.
All I can say is, “You looked mighty . . . sure a yourself.”
“I used to be a good fighter.” She looks out along the boxwoods, wipes off her sweat with her palm. “If you’d known me ten years ago . . .”
She’s got no goo on her face, her hair’s not sprayed, her nightgown’s like an old prairie dress. She takes a deep breath through her nose and I see it. I see the white trash girl she was ten years ago. She was strong. She didn’t take no shit from nobody.
Miss Celia turns and I follow her back to the house. I see the knife in the rosebush and snatch it up. Lord, if that man had gotten hold of this, we’d be dead. In the guest bathroom, I clean the cut, cover it with a white bandage. The headache is bad. When I come out, I hear Miss Celia on the phone, talking to the Madison County police.
I wash my hands, wonder how an awful day could turn even worse. It seems like at some point you’d just run out of awful. I try to get my mind on real life again. Maybe I’ll stay at my sister Octavia’s tonight, show Leroy I’m not going to put up with it anymore. I go in the kitchen, put the beans on to simmer. Who am I fooling? I already know I’ll end up at home tonight.
I hear Miss Celia hang up with the police. And then I hear her perform her usual pitiful check, to make sure the line is free.
THAT AFTERNOON, I do a terrible thing. I drive past Aibileen walking home from the bus stop. Aibileen waves and I pretend I don’t even see my own best friend on the side of the road in her bright white uniform.
When I get to my house, I fix an icepack for my eye. The kids aren’t home yet and Leroy’s asleep in the back. I don’t know what to do about anything, not Leroy, not Miss Hilly. Never mind I got boxed in the ear by a naked white man this morning. I just sit and stare at my oily yellow walls. Why can’t I ever get these walls clean?
“Minny
Jackson.
You too good to give old Aibileen a ride?”
I sigh and turn my sore head so she can see.
“Oh,” she says.
I look back at the wall.
“Aibileen,” I say and hear myself sigh. “You ain’t gone believe my day.”
“Come on over. I make you some coffee.”
Before I walk out, I peel that glaring bandage off, slip it in my pocket with my icepack. On some folks around here, a cut-up eye wouldn’t even get a comment. But I’ve got good kids, a car with tires, and a refrigerator freezer. I’m proud of my family and the shame of the eye is worse than the pain.
I follow Aibileen through the sideyards and backyards, avoiding the traffic and the looks. I’m glad she knows me so well.
In her little kitchen, Aibileen puts the coffeepot on for me, the tea kettle for herself.
“So what you gone do about it?” Aibileen asks and I know she means the eye. We don’t talk about me leaving Leroy. Plenty of black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump, but it’s just not something the colored woman do. We’ve got the kids to think about.
“Thought about driving up to my sister’s. But I can’t take the kids, they got school.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with the kids missing school a few days. Not if you protecting yourself.”
I fasten the bandage back, hold the icepack to it so the swelling won’t be so bad when my kids see me tonight.
“You tell Miss Celia you slip in the bathtub again?”
“Yeah, but she know.”
“Why, what she say?” Aibileen ask.
“It’s what she did.” And I tell Aibileen all about how Miss Celia beat the naked man with the fire poker this morning. Feels like ten years ago.
“That man a been black, he be dead in the ground. Police would a had a all-points alert for fifty-three states,” Aibileen say.
“All her girly, high-heel ways and she just about kill him,” I say.
Aibileen laughs. “What he call it again?”
“Pecker pie. Crazy Whitfield fool.” I have to keep myself from smiling because I know it’ll make the cut split open again.
“Law, Minny, you have had some things happen to you.”
“How come she ain’t got no problem defending herself from that crazy man? But she chase after Miss Hilly like she just begging for abuse?” I say this even though Miss Celia getting her feelings hurt is the least of my worries right now. It just feels kind of good to talk about someone else’s screwed-up life.
“Almost sounds like you care,” Aibileen says, smiling.
“She just don’t see em. The
lines.
Not between her and me, not between her and Hilly.”