Elizabeth frowns down at her spool of green thread. “And only for a few minutes. Tomorrow’s silver-polishing day.”
“It won’t be long, I promise,” I say.
Elizabeth is starting to sound just like my mother.
THE NEXT MORNING AT TEN, Elizabeth opens her door, nods at me like a schoolteacher. “Alright. Go on in. And not too long now. Mae Mobley’ll be waking up any time.”
I walk into the kitchen, my notebook and papers under my arm. Aibileen smiles at me from the sink, her gold tooth shining. She’s a little plump in the middle, but it is a friendly softness. And she’s much shorter than me, because who isn’t? Her skin is dark brown and shiny against her starchy white uniform. Her eyebrows are gray even though her hair is black.
“Hey, Miss Skeeter. Miss Leefolt still at the machine?”
“Yes.” It’s strange, even after all these months home, to hear Elizabeth being called Miss Leefolt—not Miss Elizabeth or even her maiden name, Miss Fredericks.
“May I?” I point to the refrigerator. But before I can help myself, Aibileen’s opened it for me.
“What you want? A Co-Cola?”
I nod and she pops the cap off with the opener mounted on the counter, pours it into a glass.
“Aibileen”—I take a deep breath—“I was wondering if I could get your help on something.” I tell her about the column then, grateful when she nods that she knows who Miss Myrna is.
“So maybe I could read you some of the letters and you could . . . help me with the answers. After a while, maybe I’ll catch on and . . .” I stop. There is no way I’ll ever be able to answer cleaning questions myself. Honestly, I have no intention of learning how to clean. “It sounds unfair, doesn’t it, me taking your answers and acting like they’re mine. Or Myrna’s, I mean.” I sigh.
Aibileen shakes her head. “I don’t mind that. I just ain’t so sure Miss Leefolt gone approve.”
“She said it was alright.”
“During my regular hours working?”
I nod, remembering the propriety in Elizabeth’s voice.
“Alright then.” Aibileen shrugs. She looks up at the clock above the sink. “I probably have to stop when Mae Mobley gets up.”
“Should we sit?” I point to the kitchen table.
Aibileen glances at the swinging door. “You go head, I’m fine standing.”
I spent last night reading every Miss Myrna article from the previous five years, but I haven’t had time to sort through the unanswered letters yet. I straighten my clipboard, pencil in hand. “Here’s a letter from Rankin County.
“ ‘Dear Miss Myrna,’ ” I read, “ ‘how do I remove the rings from my fat slovenly husband’s shirt collar when he is such a pig and . . . and sweats like one too . . .’ ”
Wonderful. A column on cleaning and relationships. Two things I know absolutely nothing about.
“Which one she want a get rid of?” Aibileen asks. “The rings or the husband?”
I stare at the page. I wouldn’t know how to instruct her to do either one.
“Tell her a vinegar and Pine-Sol soak. Then let it set in the sun a little while.”
I write it quickly on my pad. “Sit in the sun for how long?”
“Bout an hour. Let it dry.”
I pull out the next letter and, just as quickly, she answers it. After four or five, I exhale, relieved.
“Thank you, Aibileen. You have no idea how much this helps.”
“Ain’t no trouble. Long as Miss Leefolt don’t need me.”
I gather up my papers and take a last sip of my Coke, letting myself relax for five seconds before I have to go write the article. Aibileen picks through a sack of green fiddleheads. The room is quiet except for the radio playing softly, Preacher Green again.
“How did you know Constantine? Were you related?”
“We . . . in the same church circle.” Aibileen shifts her feet in front of the sink.
I feel what has become a familiar sting. “She didn’t even leave an address. I just—I can’t believe she quit like that.”
Aibileen keeps her eyes down. She seems to be studying the fiddleheads very carefully. “No, I’m right sure she was let go.”
“No, Mama said she quit. Back in April. Went to live up in Chicago with her people.”
Aibileen picks up another fiddlehead, starts washing its long stem, the curly green ends. “No ma’am,” she says after a pause.
It takes me a few seconds to realize what we’re talking about here.
“Aibileen,” I say, trying to catch her eye. “You really think Constantine was fired?”
But Aibileen’s face has gone blank as the blue sky. “I must be misrememoring,” she says and I can tell she thinks she’s said too much to a white woman.
We hear Mae Mobley calling out and Aibileen excuses herself and heads through the swinging door. A few seconds pass before I have the sense to go home.
WHEN I WALK IN THE HOUSE ten minutes later, Mother is reading at the dining room table.
“Mother,” I say, clutching my notebook to my chest, “did you fire Constantine?”
“Did I . . . what?” Mother asks. But I know she’s heard me because she’s set the DAR newsletter down. It takes a hard question to pull her eyes off that riveting material.
“Eugenia, I told you, her sister was sick so she went up to Chicago to live with her people,” she says. “Why? Who told you different?”
I would never in a million years tell her it was Aibileen. “I heard it this afternoon. In town.”
“Who would talk about such a thing?” Mother narrows her eyes behind her reading glasses. “It must’ve been one of the other Nigras.”
“What did you do to her, Mother?”
Mother licks her lips, gives me a good, long look over her bifocals. “You wouldn’t understand, Eugenia. Not until you’ve hired help of your own.”
“You . . . fired her? For what?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s behind me now and I just won’t think about it another minute.”
“Mother, she raised me. You tell me right now what happened!” I’m disgusted by the squeakiness of my voice, the childish sound of my demands.
Mother raises her eyebrows at my tone, takes her glasses off. “It was nothing but a colored thing. And that’s all I’m saying.” She puts her glasses back on and lifts her DAR sheet to her eyes.
I’m shaking, I’m so mad. I pound my way up the stairs. I sit at my typewriter, stunned that my mother could cast off someone who’d done her the biggest favor of her life, raise her children, teach me kindness and self-respect. I stare across my room at the rose wallpaper, the eyelet curtains, the yellowing photographs so familiar they are nearly contemptible. Constantine worked for our family for twenty-nine years.
FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Daddy rises before dawn. I wake to truck motors, the chug of the combines starting, the hollers to hurry. The fields are brown and crisp with dead cotton stalks, defoliated so the machines can get to the bolls. Cotton harvest is here.
Daddy doesn’t even stop for church during harvest time, but on Sunday night, I catch him in the dusky hall, between his supper and sleep. “Daddy?” I ask. “Will you tell me what happened to Constantine?”
He is so dog-tired, he sighs before he answers.
“How could Mother fire her, Daddy?”
“What? Darlin’, Constantine quit. You know your mother would never fire her.” He looks disappointed in me for asking such a thing.