The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

I was surprise to see the world didn’t stop just cause my boy did.

Cause that’s the way prayer do. It’s like electricity, it keeps things going.

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.

I’ve never in my life had a white woman tell me to sit down so she can serve me a cold drink.

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

Finally, I lift up that funny-looking pink shag rug. Underneath, there’s a big, deep stain the color of rust.

She’s wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.

Hahahaha

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

“Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision.” Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums. “You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?”

And damn it, I’m not going to let you miss this just because your mother convinced you you’re not good enough for somebody like him.”

“I did not raise you to use the colored bathroom!” I hear her hiss-whispering, thinking I can’t hear, and I think, Lady, you didn’t raise your child at all.

As usual, she looks plump and respectable, but for all her prim and proper, Aibileen can still tell a dirty joke that’ll make you tinkle in your pants.

White people been representing colored opinions since the beginning a time.”

Kind of ironic since a white lady wrote this book

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

“Not to mention she has live-in help, every day, every hour. I hardly had to see Mae Mobley at all.” I cringe at this comment, but no one else seems to notice.

Mother’s been trembling, torn between the terror that I’ll screw it up and glee that I actually like men.

she puts on her blinker like she’s doing brain surgery

Every time’s Mother’s first time to drive.

Felicia clammering for her driver’s license, now that she’s turned fifteen—she’s a good girl but I got pregnant with Leroy Junior when I wasn’t much older than her and a Buick had something to do with it.

She’s dressed in a white sweater so tight it’d make a hooker look holy.

Mother’s been nagging me about my smoking and I know I should stop, but it’s not like it’s going to kill me.

“Martian Luther King.”

I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.

I don’t stop him when he tries to kiss me. But I tell him, “I’m only letting you because my mother is dying.”

Just hold they breath and wait for it to pass, like gas.