Low and cool, she say, “You spilled some, Aibileen.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Wipe it up.”

Shaking, I wipe it with the cloth I had on the handle a the pitcher.

She staring at my face. I have to look down. I can feel the hot secret between us. “Get me a new plate. One you haven’t soiled with your dirty cloth.”

I get her a new plate. She study it, sniff real loud. Then she turn to Miss Leefolt and say, “You can’t even teach these people how to be clean.”

I HAVE TO SIT LATE that night for Miss Leefolt. While Mae Mobley sleeping, I pull out my prayer book, get started on my list. I’m so glad for Miss Skeeter. She call me this morning and say she took the job. She moving to New York in a week! But Law, I can’t stop jumping ever time I hear a noise, thinking maybe Miss Leefolt gone walk in the door and say she know the truth. By the time I get home, I’m too jumpy to go to bed. I walk through the pitch-black dark to Minny’s back door. She setting at her table reading the paper. This is the only part a her day when she ain’t running around to clean something or feed something or make somebody do right. The house be so quiet I figure something wrong.

“Where everbody?”

She shrug, “Gone to bed or gone to work.”

I pull out a chair and set down. “I just want a know what’s gone happen,” I say. “I know I ought a be thankful it ain’t all blowed up in my face yet, but this waiting’s driving me crazy.”

“It’s gone happen. Soon enough,” Minny say, like we talking about the kind a coffee we drink.

“Minny, how can you be so calm?”

She looks at me, puts her hand on her tummy that’s popped out in the last two weeks. “You know Miss Chotard, who Willie Mae wait on? She ask Willie Mae yesterday if she treats her bad as that awful lady in the book.” Minny kind a snort. “Willie Mae tell her she got some room to grow but she ain’t too bad.”

“She really ask her that?”

“Then Willie Mae tell her what all the other white ladies done to her, the good and the bad, and that white lady listen to her. Willie May say she been there thirty-seven years and it’s the first time they ever sat at the same table together.”

Besides Louvenia, this the first good thing we heard. I try to enjoy it. But I snap back to now. “What about Miss Hilly? What about what Miss Skeeter say? Minny, ain’t you at least a little nervous?”

Minny put her newspaper down. “Look, Aibileen, I ain’t gone lie. I’m scared Leroy gone kill me if he find out. I’m scared Miss Hilly gone set my house on fire. But,” she shake her head, “I can’t explain it. I got this feeling. That maybe things is happening just how they should.”

“Really?”

Minny kind a laugh. “Lord, I’m starting to sound like you, ain’t I? Must be getting old.”

I poke her with my foot. But I try to understand where Minny’s coming from. We done something brave and good here. And Minny, maybe she don’t want a be deprived a any a the things that go along with being brave and good. Even the bad. But I can’t pick up on the calm she feeling.

Minny looks back down at her paper but after a little while, I can tell she ain’t reading. She just staring at the words, thinking about something else. Somebody’s car door slam next door and she jump. And I see it then, the worry she’s trying to hide. But why? I wonder. Why she hiding that from me?

The more I look, the more I start to understand what’s going on here, what Minny’s done. I don’t know why I’m just now getting this. Minny made us put the pie story in to protect us. Not to protect herself, but to protect me and the other maids. She knew it would only make it worse for herself with Hilly. But she did it anyway, for everbody else. She don’t want anybody to see how scared she is.

I reach over and squeeze her hand. “You a beautiful person, Minny.”

She roll her eyes and stick her tongue out like I handed her a plate a dog biscuits. “I knew you was getting senile,” she say.

We both chuckle. It’s late and we so tired, but she get up and refill her coffee and fix me a cup a tea and I drink it slow. We talk late into the night.

THE NEXT DAY, SATURDAY, we all in the house, the whole Leefolt family plus me. Even Mister Leefolt home today. My book ain’t setting on the bedside table no more. For a while, I don’t know where she put it. Then I see Miss Leefolt’s pocketbook on the sofa, and she got it tucked inside. Means she carried it with her somewhere. I peek over and see the bookmark’s gone.

I want to look in her eyes and see what she know, but Miss Leefolt stay in the kitchen most a the day trying to make a cake. Won’t let me in there to help. Say it’s not like one a my cakes, it’s a fancy recipe she got out the Gourmet magazine. She hosting a luncheon tomorrow for her church and the dining room’s stacked up with party serving stuff. She done borrowed three chafing dishes from Miss Lou Anne and eight settings a Miss Hilly’s silver cause they’s fourteen people coming and God forbid any a them church folk got to use a regular ole metal fork.

Li’l Man be in Mae Mobley’s bedroom playing with her. And Mister Leefolt pacing round the house. Time to time he stop in front a Baby Girl’s bedroom, then go to pacing again. Probably thinks he should be playing with his kids with it being Saturday, but I reckon he don’t know how.

So that don’t leave a whole lot a places for me to go. It’s only two o’clock but I already done cleaned the house down to the nubs, polished the bathrooms, washed the clothes. I ironed everthing short a the wrinkles on my face. Been banned from the kitchen and I don’t like Mister Leefolt thinking all I do is set around playing with the kids. Finally I just start wandering round too.

When Mister Leefolt dawdling around the dining room, I peek in and see Mae Mobley got a paper in her hand, teaching Ross something new. She love to play school with her little brother.

I go in the living room, start dusting the books for the second time. I guess I ain’t gone get to tell her my in-case goodbye today, with this crowd around.

“We’re gonna play a game,” I hear Mae Mobley call out to her brother. “Now you sit up at the counter cause you’re at the Woolworf ’s and you’re colored. And you got to stay there no matter what I do or you go to jail.”

I go to her bedroom fast as I can, but Mister Leefolt’s already there, watching at the door. I stand behind him.

Mister Leefolt cross his arms up over his white shirt. Cock his head to the side. My heart’s beating a thousand miles a hour. I ain’t never once heard Mae Mobley mention our secret stories out loud to anybody except me. And that’s when her mama ain’t home and they ain’t nobody but the house to hear. But she so thick in what she doing, she don’t know her daddy’s listening.

“Okay,” Mae Mobley say and she guide his wobbly self up on the chair. “Ross, you gotta stay there at the Woolworf counter. No getting up.”

I want to speak, but I can’t get nothing to come out my mouth. Mae Mobley be tippy-toeing up behind Ross, pour a box a crayons on his head, and they clatter down. Li’l Man frown, but she look at him stern, say, “You can’t move. You got to be brave. And no violets.” Then she stick her tongue out at him and start pinging him with baby doll shoes and Li’l Man look at her like Why am I putting up with this nonsense? and he crawl off the chair with a whine.

“You lose!” she says. “Now come on, we’re playing Back-a-the-Bus and your name is Rosa Parks.”

“Who taught you those things, Mae Mobley?” Mister Leefolt say and Baby Girl whip her head around with eyes like she seed a ghost.

I feel my bones go soft on me. Everthing say go in there. Make sure she don’t get in trouble, but I can’t breathe enough to go. Baby Girl look right at me standing behind her daddy, and Mister Leefolt turn around and see me, then turn back round to her.