The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

She already got the blue dress on I ironed this morning, the one with sixty-five pleats on the waist, so tiny I got to squint through my glasses to iron. I don’t hate much in life, but me and that dress is not on good terms.

They ain’t rich folk, that I know. Rich folk don’t try so hard.

All my life I’d been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine’s thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.

Don’t waste your time on the obvious things. Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.

But the dichotomy of love and disdain living side-by-side is what surprises me.

“All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”

Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.

What I am sure about is this: I don’t presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960s. I don’t think it is something any white woman on the other end of a black woman’s paycheck could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity.