The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

Why can’t I stop it?” It? That was my first hint: something is wrong with this situation.

Her legs is so spindly, she look like she done growed em last week. Twenty-three years old and she lanky as a fourteen-year-old boy. Even her hair is thin, brown, see-through. She try to tease it up, but it only make it look thinner.

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

before I seen something in me had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside a me. And I just didn’t feel so accepting anymore.

I don’t hate much in life, but me and that dress is not on good terms.

Miss Leefolt done the house up nice as she can. She pretty good with the sewing machine. Anything she can’t buy new of, she just get her some blue material and sew it a cover.

cause she the kind that speak to the help.

Miss Skeeter always look like somebody else told her what to wear.

We start calling his daddy Crisco cause you can’t fancy up a man done run off on his family. Plus he the greasiest no-count you ever known.

She always talking back. One day it be the white manager a the Jitney Jungle grocery, next day it be her husband, and ever day it’s gone be the white lady she waiting on.

She got this way a clearing her throat real delicate-like that get everbody’s attention without they even knowing she made em do it.

I guess everbody wonder what they boss think a them.

I’m surprised by how tight my throat get. It’s a shame I learned to keep down a long time ago.

“Do you ever wish you could…change things?” she asks. And I can’t help myself. I look at her head-on. Cause that’s one a the stupidest questions I ever heard.

sweat’s running down my nose and ever time I scratch at it, I get a plug a crud on my face. Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked.

miles a big live oaks with the moss hanging down. Nobody living in it yet, but it’s there for when the white folks is ready to move somewhere else new.

Jackson’s just one white neighborhood after the next and more springing up down the road. But the colored part a town, we one big anthill, surrounded by state land that ain’t for sale. As our numbers get bigger, we can’t spread out. Our part a town just gets thicker.

it. “I think she got her eye on you, Minny. Just…be extra careful around her.” “Miss Hilly ought to be extra careful around me.

“She ever say that to me, she gone get a piece a Minny for lunch.”

the bus gone up to fifteen cents a ride and my rent gone up to twenty-nine dollars a month. I work for Miss Leefolt eight to four, six days a week except Saturdays. I get paid forty-three dollars ever Friday, which come to $172 a month.

but I done pushed it down to a place where I don’t have to worry with it.

turn on the kitchen radio. Little Stevie Wonder’s singing “Fingertips.” Being colored ain’t nothing on that boy. He twelve years old, blind, and got a hit on the radio.

Not to mention her asking me the whereabouts a Constantine, her maid growing up. I know what happen between Constantine and Miss Skeeter’s mama and ain’t no way I’m on tell her that story.

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

“Rumor is you got some kind a power prayer, gets better results than just the regular variety.”

Maybe that’s why God took him so fast. He didn’t want a have to argue with me.

They just think you got a better connection than most. We all on a party line to God, but you, you setting right in his ear.”

This woman talk like she from so deep in the country she got corn growing in her shoes. Her voice is sweet though, high-pitch. Still, she don’t sound like the ladies round here do.

Well, if that ain’t perfect then I don’t know what is.

I’m sure Miss Walters tell this woman I’m nothing short a the devil hisself.” Her voice sound eerie. Like she a record player going too slow.

I smooth her hair down over and over till she practically purring, feeling the love in my hand.

Law help me, but something’s gone have to be done.

it’s a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.

In fact, she’s almost as big as me except she’s skinny in all those places I ain’t. I just hope she’s an eater. Because I’m a cooker and that’s why people hire me.

You sass a white woman in the morning, you’ll be sassing out on the street in the afternoon.”

I have cleaned everything from refrigerators to rear ends but what makes that lady think I know how to clean a damn grizzly bear?

bout give me a cadillac arrest

See that little bubble there, that means the water’s happy.”

Look what it’s come to for Minny Jackson to make a damn living.

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

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.

“Didn’t you hear?” he said. “They announced last week cigarettes’ll kill you.”

I go downstairs wearing a thick Christian smile.

“Just pour some pneumonia in that garbage.

A big magnolia tree shades most a the yard. I already know that’s the tree gone be Mae Mobley’s hideout. In about five years, to hide from Miss Leefolt.

I hold her tight, whisper, “You a smart girl. You a kind girl, Mae Mobley. You hear me?” And I keep saying it till she repeat it back to me.

She got a permanent and she smell like pneumonia.

There ain’t nothing I can do but watch it happen.

My muscles is shivering they so tired. But I don’t want a stop moving.

“Poor Louvenia. I don’t know why the bad have to happen to the goodest ones,” Franny say.