All the wooden fold-chairs is full tonight. They’s over fifty people here, mostly womens.

“Sit down by me, Aibileen,” Bertrina Bessemer say. “Goldella, let the older folk have the chairs.”

Goldella jump up, motion me down. Least Bertrina still treating me like I ain’t crazy.

I settle in. Tonight, Shirley Boon’s sitting down and the Deacon standing at the front. He say we need a quiet prayer meeting tonight. Say we need to heal. I’m glad for it. We close our eyes and the Deacon leads us in a prayer for the Everses, for Myrlie, for the sons. Some folks is whispering, murmuring to God, and a quiet power fill up the room, like bees buzzing on a comb. I say my prayers to myself. When I’m done, I take a deep breath, wait for the others to finish. When I get home tonight, I’ll write my prayers too. This is worth the double time.

Yule May, Miss Hilly’s maid, setting in front a me. Yule May easy to recognize from the back cause she got such good hair, smooth, no nap to it. I hear she educated, went through most a college. Course we got plenty a smart people in our church with they college degrees. Doctors, lawyers, Mr. Cross who own The Southern Times, the colored newspaper that come out ever week. But Yule May, she probably the most educated maid we got in our parish. Seeing her makes me think again about the wrong I need to right.

The Deacon open his eyes, look out on us all real quiet. “The prayers we are say—”

“Deacon Thoroughgood,” a deep voice boom through stillness. I turn—everbody turn—and there’s Jessup, Plantain Fidelia’s grandson, standing in the doorway. He twenty-two, twenty-three. He got his hands in thick fists.

“What I want to know is,” he say slow, angry, “what we plan to do about it.”

Deacon got a stern look on his face like he done talked with Jessup before. “Tonight, we are going to lift our prayers to God. We will march peacefully down the streets of Jackson next Tuesday. And in August, I will see you in Washington to march with Doctor King.”

“That is not enough!” Jessup say, banging his fist on his hand. “They shot him in the back like a dog!”

“Jessup.” Deacon raise his hand. “Tonight is for prayer. For the family. For the lawyers on the case. I understand your anger, but, son—”

“Prayer? You mean y’all just gonna sit around and pray about it?”

He look around at all a us in our chairs.

“Y’all think prayer’s going to keep white people from killing us?”

No one answer, not even the Deacon. Jessup just turn and leave. We all hear his feet stomping up the stairs and then over our heads out the church.

The room is real quiet. Deacon Thoroughgood got his eyes locked a few inches above our heads. It’s strange. He ain’t a man not to look you in the eye. Everbody staring at him, everbody wondering what he thinking so that he can’t look in our faces. Then I see Yule May shaking her head, real small, but like she mean it and I reckon the Deacon and Yule May is thinking the same thing. They thinking about what Jessup ask. And Yule May, she just answering the question.

THE MEETING Ends around eight o’clock. The ones who got kids go on, others get ourselves coffee from the table in the back. They ain’t much chatter. People quiet. I take a breath, go to Yule May standing at the coffee urn. I just want to get this lie off that’s stuck on me like a cocklebur. I ain’t gone ask nobody else at the meeting. Ain’t nobody gone buy my stinky smell-good tonight.

Yule May nod at me, smile polite. She about forty and tall and thin. She done kept her figure nice. She still wearing her white uniform and it fit trim on her waist. She always wear earrings, tiny gold loops.

“I hear the twins is going to Tougaloo College next year. Congratulations.”

“We hope so. We’ve still got a little more to save. Two at once’s a lot.”

“You went to a good bit a college yourself, didn’t you?”

She nod, say, “Jackson College.”

“I loved school. The reading and the writing. Cept the rithmatic. I didn’t take to that.”

Yule May smiles. “The English was my favorite too. The writing.”

“I been . . . writing some myself.”

Yule May look me in the eye and I can tell then she know what I’m about to say. For a second, I can see the shame she swallow ever day, working in that house. The fear. I feel embarrassed to ask her.

But Yule May say it before I have to. “I know about the stories you’re working on. With that friend of Miss Hilly’s.”

“It’s alright, Yule May. I know you can’t do it.”

“It’s just... a risk I can’t afford to take right now. We so close to getting enough money together.”

“I understand,” I say and I smile, let her know she off the hook. But Yule May don’t move away.

“The names . . . you’re changing them, I heard?”

This the same question everbody ask, cause they curious.

“That’s right. And the name a the town, too.”

She look down at the floor. “So I’d tell my stories about being a maid and she’d write them down? Edit them or . . . something like that?”

I nod. “We want a do all kind a stories. Good things and bad. She working with . . . another maid right now.”

Yule May lick her lips, look like she imagining it, telling what it’s like to work for Miss Hilly.

“Could we . . . talk about this some more? When I have more time?”

“A course,” I say, and I see, in her eyes, she ain’t just being nice.

“I’m sorry, but Henry and the boys are waiting on me,” she says. “But may I call you? And talk in private?”

“Anytime. Whenever you feel like it.”

She touch my arm and look me straight in the eyes again. I can’t believe what I see. It’s like she been waiting on me to ask her all this time.

Then she gone out the door. I stand in the corner a minute, drinking coffee too hot for the weather. I laugh and mutter to myself, even though everbody gone think I’m even crazier for it.

MINNY

chapter 17

GO ON OUT A HERE SO I CAN DO MY CLEANING.”

Miss Celia draws the covers up around her chest like she’s afraid I might jerk her out of bed. Nine months here and I still don’t know if she’s sick in the body or fried up her wits with the hair coloring. She does look better than when I started. Her tummy’s got a little fat on it, her cheeks aren’t so hollow as they were, out here starving her and Mister Johnny to death.

For a while, Miss Celia was working in the backyard all the time but now that crazy lady’s back to sitting around the bed again. I used to be glad she stayed holed up in her room. Now that I’ve met Mister Johnny, though, I’m ready to work. And damn it, I’m ready to get Miss Celia in shape too.

“You driving me crazy hanging around this house twenty-five hours a day. Get. Go chop down that poor mimosa tree you hate so much,” I say, because Mr. Johnny never did chop that thing down.

But when Miss Celia doesn’t move from that mattress, I know it’s time to pull out the big guns. “When you gone tell Mister Johnny about me?” Because that always gets her moving. Sometimes I just ask it for my own entertainment.

I can’t believe the charade has gone on this long, with Mister Johnny knowing about me, and Miss Celia walking around like a ding-a-ling, like she’s still pulling her trick. It was no surprise when the Christmas deadline came and she begged for more time. Oh I railed her about it, but then the fool started boo-hooing so I let her off the hook just so she’d shut up, told her it was her Christmas present. She ought to get a stocking chock full of coal for all the lies she’s told.

Thank the Lord Miss Hilly hasn’t showed up here to play bridge, even though Mister Johnny tried to set it up again just two weeks ago. I know because Aibileen told me she heard Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt laughing about it. Miss Celia got all serious, asking me what to cook if they come over. Ordered a book in the mail to learn the game, Bridge for the Beginner. Ought to call it Bridge for the Brainless. When it came this morning in the mailbox, she didn’t read it for two seconds before she asked, “Will you teach me to play, Minny? This bridge book doesn’t make a lick of sense.”