chapter 32

ANOTHER DAY PASSES, and still I can hear Miss Hilly’s voice talking the words, reading the lines. I don’t hear the scream. Not yet. But she’s getting close.

Aibileen told me what the ladies in the Jitney said yesterday, but we haven’t heard another thing since. I keep dropping things, broke my last measuring cup tonight and Leroy’s eyeing me like he knows. Right now he’s drinking coffee at the table and the kids are draped all over the kitchen doing their homework.

I jump when I see Aibileen standing at the screen door. She puts her finger to her lips and nods to me. Then she disappears.

“Kindra, get the plates, Sugar, watch the beans, Felicia, get Daddy to sign that test, Mama needs some air.” Poof I disappear out the screen door.

Aibileen’s standing on the side of the house in her white uniform.

“What happen?” I ask. Inside I hear Leroy yell, “A Eff? ” He won’t touch the kids. He’ll yell, but that’s what fathers are supposed to do.

“One-arm Ernestine call and say Miss Hilly’s talking all over town about who’s in the book. She telling white ladies to fire they maids and she ain’t even guessing the right ones!” Aibileen looks so upset, she’s shaking. She’s twisting a cloth into a white rope. I’ll bet she doesn’t even realize she carried over her real dinner napkin.

“Who she saying?”

“She told Miss Sinclair to fire Annabelle. So Miss Sinclair fired her and then took her car keys away cause she loaned her half the money to buy the car. Annabelle already paid most of it back but it’s gone.”

“That witch,” I whisper, grinding my teeth.

“That ain’t all, Minny.”

I hear bootsteps in the kitchen. “Hurry, fore Leroy catch us whispering.”

“Miss Hilly told Miss Lou Anne, ‘Your Louvenia’s in here. I know she is and you need to fire her. You ought to send that Nigra to jail.’ ”

“But Louvenia didn’t say a single bad thing about Miss Lou Anne!” I say. “And she got Robert to take care of! What Miss Lou Anne say?”

Aibileen bites her lip. She shakes her head and the tears come down her face.

“She say . . . she gone think about it.”

“Which one? The firing or the jail?”

Aibileen shrug. “Both, I reckon.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say, wanting to kick something. Somebody.

“Minny, what if Miss Hilly don’t ever finish reading it?”

“I don’t know, Aibileen. I just don’t know.”

Aibileen’s eyes jerk up to the door and there’s Leroy, watching us from behind the screen. He stands there, quiet, until I tell Abileen goodbye and come back inside.

AT FIVE-THIRTY THAT MORNING, Leroy falls into bed next to me. I wake up to the squawk of the frame and the stench of the liquor. I grit my teeth, praying he doesn’t try to start a fight. I am too tired for it. Not that I was asleep good anyway, worrying about Aibileen and her news. For Miss Hilly, Louvenia would just be another jail key on that witch’s belt.

Leroy flops around and tosses and turns, never mind his pregnant wife’s trying to sleep. When the fool finally gets settled, I hear his whisper.

“What’s the big secret, Minny?”

I can feel him watching me, feel his liquor breath on my shoulder. I don’t move.

“You know I’ll find out,” he hisses. “I always do.”

In about ten seconds, his breathing slows to almost dead and he throws his hand across me. Thank you for this baby, I pray. Because that’s the only thing that saved me, this baby in my belly. And that is the ugly truth.

I lay there grinding my teeth, wondering, worrying. Leroy, he’s onto something. And God knows what’ll happen to me if he finds out. He knows about the book, everybody does, just not that his wife was a part of it, thank you. People probably assume I don’t care if he finds out—oh I know what people think. They think big strong Minny, she sure can stand up for herself. But they don’t know what a pathetic mess I turn into when Leroy’s beating on me. I’m afraid to hit back. I’m afraid he’ll leave me if I do. I know it makes no sense and I get so mad at myself for being so weak! How can I love a man who beats me raw? Why do I love a fool drinker? One time I asked him, “Why? Why are you hitting me?” He leaned down and looked me right in the face.

“If I didn’t hit you, Minny, who knows what you become.”

I was trapped in the corner of the bedroom like a dog. He was beating me with his belt. It was the first time I’d ever really thought about it.

Who knows what I could become, if Leroy would stop goddamn hitting me.

THE NEXT NIGHT, I make everybody go to bed early, including myself. Leroy’s at the plant until five and I’m feeling too heavy for my time. Lord, maybe it’s twins. I’m not paying a doctor to tell me that bad news. All I know is, this baby’s already bigger than the others when they came out, and I’m only six months.

I fall into a heavy sleep. I’m dreaming I’m at a long wooden table and I’m at a feast. I’m gnawing on a big roasted turkey leg.

I fly upright in my bed. My breath is fast. “Who there?”

My heart’s flinging itself against my chest. I look around my dark bedroom. It’s half-past midnight. Leroy’s not here, thank God. But something woke me for sure.

And then I realize what it was that woke me. I heard what I’ve been waiting on. What we’ve all been waiting on.

I heard Miss Hilly’s scream.

MISS SKEETER

chapter 33

MY EYES POP OPEN. My chest is pumping. I’m sweating. The greenvined wallpaper is snaking up the walls. What woke me? What was that?

I get out of bed and listen. It didn’t sound like Mother. It was too high-pitched. It was a scream, like material ripping into two shredded pieces.

I sit back on the bed and press my hand to my heart. It’s still pounding. Nothing is going as planned. People know the book is about Jackson. I can’t believe I forgot what a slow goddamn reader Hilly is. I’ll bet she’s telling people she’s read more than she has. Now things are spinning out of control, a maid named Annabelle was fired, white women are whispering about Aibileen and Louvenia and who knows who else. And the irony is, I’m gnawing my hands waiting for Hilly to speak up when I’m the only one in this town who doesn’t care what she has to say anymore.

What if the book was a horrible mistake?

I take a deep, painful breath. I try to think of the future, not the present. A month ago, I mailed out fifteen résumés to Dallas, Memphis, Birmingham, and five other cities, and once again, New York. Missus Stein told me I could list her as a reference, which is probably the only notable thing on the page, having a recommendation from someone in publishing. I added the jobs I’ve held for the past year:

Weekly Housekeeping Columnist for the Jackson Journal Newspaper

Editor of the Junior League of Jackson Newsletter

Author of Help, a controversial book about colored housekeepers and

their white employers, Harper & Row

I didn’t really include the book, I just wanted to type it out once. But now, even if I did get a job offer in a big city, I can’t abandon Aibileen in the middle of this mess. Not with things going so badly.

But God, I have to get out of Mississippi. Besides Mother and Daddy, I have nothing left here, no friends, no job I really care about, no Stuart. But it’s not just out of here. When I addressed my résumé to the New York Post, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker magazine, I felt that surge again, the same I’d felt in college, of how much I want to be there. Not Dallas, not Memphis—New York City, where writers are supposed to live. But I’ve heard nothing back from any of them. What if I never leave? What if I’m stuck. Here. Forever?