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never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.” “Ain’t nothing funny bout that. Took me three weeks and twenty-five dollars to get my hair black again.”
A book with black folks in it. It makes me wonder if, one day, I’ll see Miss Skeeter’s book on a bedside table.
her complexion is the color of fabric softener, a flat milky blue.
I kind of panic when I put that one together.
but I wish there wasn’t a “we” mixed up in this.
I’ve done worse than this, haven’t I? Nothing comes to mind, but there has to be something.
I don’t have any good things left to say. For a minute, we’re just two people wondering why things are the way they are.
“Stuart, I only want to know so I don’t do the same thing.” He looks at me and tries to laugh but it comes out more like a growl. “You would never in a million years do what she did.”
there’s an article on a new pill, the “Valium” they’re calling it, “to help women cope with everyday challenges.” God, I could use about ten of those little pills right now.
My feet dangle off the end, dance nervously, relishing relief for the first time in months.
looks eerily thrilled by it all.
“…this modern postal addressing system is called a Z-Z-ZIP code, that’s right, I said Z-Z-ZIP code, that’s five numbers to be written along the bottom of your envelope…” He’s holding up a letter, showing us where to write the numbers. A man in overalls with no teeth says, “Ain’t nobody gonna use them there numbers. Folks is still trying to get used to using the tellyphone.”
Many of the stories are sad, bitter. I expected this. But there are a surprising number of good stories too. And all of them, at some point, look back at Aibileen as if to ask, Are you sure? Can I really tell a white woman this?
“No, I mean I want to read what you’re thinking.
These things I know already, yet hearing them from colored mouths, it is as if I am hearing them for the first time.
want to ask her how much of what Gretchen said is true. But I can’t. I can’t look Aibileen in the face.
She wore lipstick, the same color pink me and my friends wore. She was young. She spoke evenly and with care, like a white person. I don’t know why, but that made it worse.
she slapped me with a look so angry it gave me chills.
Mother is wearing a simple white dress—like a country bride wearing a hand-me-down,
The Senator’s grin deflates and he looks back at the maid to collect these mundane drinks.
gives the Senator a deafening look.
Mother views this supper as an important move in the game called “Can My Daughter Catch Your Son?”
I stop, not because I’ve forgotten the words, but because I remember them.
turns it up to “3,” which is the highest, coldest, most wonderful setting of all,
needs “space” and “time,” as if this were physics and not a human relationship.
Who knew heartbreak would be so goddamn hot.
The risk they’re taking is proof they want this to get printed and they want it bad.
even she looks tired of hearing her own voice.
She is six months pregnant, woozy from the pregnancy tranquilizers.
Everything I’ve kept down for months rises and erupts in my throat.
I just need to hear her say it. “Just who is all that pound cake money being raised for, anyway?” She rolls her eyes. “The Poor Starving Children of Africa?” I wait for her to catch the irony of this,
That’s all a grit is, a vehicle. For whatever it is you rather be eating.
first word out a that boy’s mouth was Mama and he was looking straight at me. But then pretty soon he calling everybody including hisself Mama, and calling his daddy Mama too.
Miss Skeeter asked me what’s the worst day I remember being a maid. I told her it was a stillbirth baby. But it wasn’t. It was every day from 1941 to 1947 waiting by the screen door for them beatings to be over. I wish to God I’d told John Green Dudley he ain’t going to hell.
Miss Hilly sound like she using a megaphone not a telephone.
I have never in my life seen a thing like this.
Almost look like a crowd a people the way some got they lids open talking, some with they lids closed listening.
They’s two in the driveway side-by-side, like they a couple.
“It’s true. There are some racists in this town,” Miss Leefolt say. Miss Hilly nod her head, “Oh, they’re out there.”
“I don’t care about any of that ole stuff, anyway.” She kind a laugh and it hurts my heart. Cause everbody care. Black, white, deep down we all do.
“Mississippi and the world is two very different places,” the Deacon say and we all nod cause ain’t it the truth.
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extra-large bosoms in a extra-small sweater?
look so grateful it’d break anybody’s heart. Who had one.
squoze into the tightest pink sweater she has, which is saying something,
Hearing your maid’s a thief is like hearing your kid’s teacher’s a twiddler. You don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, you just get the hell rid of em.
her charade, so twisted it’s like kudzu.
summer beats on with the rhythm of a clothes dryer.
I had a white lady tell me once that blood looks redder on a colored person.
He’s holding it out like he’s offering us a po’boy sandwich.
