The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

Fact, her whole body be so full a sharp knobs and corners, it’s no wonder she can’t soothe that baby. Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That I know.

That was the day my whole world went black. Air look black, sun look black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls a my house. Minny came ever day to make sure I was still breathing, feed me food to keep me living. Took three months fore I even look out the window, see if the world still there. I was surprise to see the world didn’t stop just cause my boy did.

me. And I just didn’t feel so accepting anymore.

She ain’t but twenty-three years old and she like hearing herself tell me what to do.

See, Miss Leefolt, she dress up nice ever day. Always got her makeup on, got a carport, double-door Frigidaire with the built-in icebox. You see her in the Jitney 14 grocery, you never think she go and leave her baby crying in her crib like that. But the help always know.

Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked. Tonight I just know I’m on have that dream I’m stuck inside and the gas gets turned on. But I keep my head in that awful place cause I’d rather be anywhere sides answering Miss Leefolt’s questions about what Miss Skeeter was trying to say to me. Asking do I want to change things.

Minny don’t like nobody talking bad about her white lady except herself. That’s her job and she own the rights.

Cause that’s the way prayer do. It’s like electricity, it keeps things going. And the bathroom situation, it just ain’t something I really want to discuss.

look down at Baby Girl, who I know, deep down, I can’t keep from turning out like her mama.

I put the iron down real slow, feel that bitter seed grow in my chest, the one planted after Treelore died. My face goes hot, my tongue twitchy. I don’t know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain’t saying it. And I know she ain’t saying what she want a say either and it’s a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.

There are ten rooms downstairs and one with a stuffed grizzly bear that looks like it ate up the last maid and is biding for the next one.

Birthdays were the only day of the year I was allowed to eat as much as I wanted.

from a colored grocery store and I reckon I don’t blame her, with the potatoes having inch-long eyes and the milk almost sour.

Most days when I come in to Miss Celia’s, I am grateful for the peace.

a fly on the X-ray machine.

Because ain’t that white people for you, wondering if they are happy enough.

Gone With the Wind come spring. I don’t like azaleas and I sure didn’t like that movie, the way they made slavery look like a big happy tea party.

hair. To say I have frizzy hair is an understatement. It is kinky, more pubic than cranial, and whitish blond, breaking off easily, like hay. My skin is fair and while some

“It’s all about putting yourself in a man-meeting situation where you can—”

Mrs. Charlotte Phelan’s Guide to Husband-Hunting, Rule Number One: a pretty, petite girl should accentuate with makeup and good posture. A tall plain one, with a trust fund. I was five-foot-eleven but I had twenty-five thousand cotton dollars in my name and if the beauty in that was not apparent then, by God, he wasn’t smart enough to be in the family anyway.

“Be nice to the little colored girls when you’re down there,” Mother said to me one time and I remember looking at her funny, saying, “Why wouldn’t I be?” But Mother never explained.

“Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person. Is you one a them peoples?”

She pressed her thumb hard in the palm of my hand, something we both knew meant Listen. Listen to me.

yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?”

But with Constantine’s thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.

I listened wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would’ve been Constantine’s voice singing. If singing was a color, it would’ve been the color of that chocolate.

Mother wouldn’t want me to know this, that Constantine’s father was white, that he’d apologized to her for the way things were. It was something I wasn’t supposed to know. I felt like Constantine had given me a gift.

Our letters were like a yearlong conversation, answering questions back and forth, continuing face-to-face at Christmas or between summer school sessions.

Mother’s letters said, Say your prayers and Don’t wear heels because they make you too tall clipped to a check for thirty-five dollars.

“You cannot leave a Negro and a Nigra together unchaperoned,” Mother’d whispered to me, a long time ago. “It’s not their fault, they just can’t help it.”

A Chi Omega never walks with a cigarette. I follow her through the desks of staring men, the haze of

“Mother,” I say, shutting my eyes tight. “I want to be with girls as much as you’d like to be with … Jameso.” I head for the door. But I glance behind me. “I mean, unless, of course, you do?”

With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it’s our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends.

It’s not like Mother’s meddling, but a clean hope, without strings or hurt.

She like one a them baby chickens that get confused and follow the ducks around instead.

Aibileen, she moves on to another job when the babies get too old and stop being color-blind. We don’t talk about it.

It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that’s been burning me up all my life.

They’d charge us with integration violation—I read about it in the paper all the time—they despise the whites that meet with the coloreds to help with the civil rights movement. This has nothing to do with integration, but why else would we be meeting? I didn’t even bring any Miss Myrna letters as backup.

guess that’s when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain’t black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a

new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.”

Mae Mobley, she get a dull look on her face, say, “Yes ma’am.” But I know what she thinking. She thinking, Great. Just what I need today. Another lady in this house who don’t like me.

“You don’t know how to hire proper help, Elizabeth. It is her job to make sure Mae Mobley has good manners.” “Alright, Mama, we’ll work on it.” “You can’t just hire anybody and hope you get lucky.”

They don’t let no nekkid babies swim at the country club.” Nor Negroes nor Jews. I used to work for the Goldmans. The Jackson Jews got to swim at the Colonial Country Club, the Negroes, in May’s Lake.

They got a sliding window on the back side so colored folk can get our ice cream too. My legs is sweating with Baby Girl

It’s so hot, Mister Dunn’s rooster walks in my door and squats his red self right in front of my kitchen fan. I come in to find him looking at me like I ain’t moving nowhere, lady. He’d rather get beat with a broom than go back out in that nonsense.

What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver.

He lets out a long sorry sigh and I love that look on his face, that disappointment. I understand now why girls resist, just for that sweet look of regret.

It’s all a big game to Mother, to show only one side of me, that the real me shouldn’t come out until after it’s “too late.”

“Come here,” and he’s on my side of the room in one stride and he claps my hands to his hips and kisses my mouth like I am the drink he’s been dying for all day and I’ve heard girls say it’s like melting, that feeling. But I think it’s like rising, growing even taller and seeing sights over a hedge, colors you’ve never seen before.

brain.