The Help (11 page)

Mother’s letters said,
Say your prayers
and
Don’t wear heels because they make you too tall
clipped to a check for thirty-five dollars.

In April of my senior year, a letter came from Constantine that said,
I have a surprise for you, Skeeter. I am so excited I almost can’t stand myself. And don’t you go asking me about it neither. You will see for yourself when you come home.

That was close to final exams, with graduation only a month away. And that was the last letter I ever got from Constantine.

 

 

 

I SKIPPED MY GRADUATION CEREMONY at Ole Miss. All my close friends had dropped out to get married and I didn’t see the point in making Mama and Daddy drive three hours just to watch me walk across a stage, when what Mother really wanted was to watch me walk down the aisle. I still hadn’t heard from Harper & Row, so instead of buying a plane ticket to New York, I rode home to Jackson in sophomore Kay Turner’s Buick, squeezed in the front with my typewriter at my feet and her wedding dress between us. Kay Turner was marrying Percy Stanhope next month. For three hours I listened to her worry about cake flavors.

When I got home, Mother stepped back to get a better look at me. “Well, your skin looks beautiful,” she said, “but your hair . . .” She sighed, shook her head.

“Where’s Constantine?” I asked. “In the kitchen?”

And like she was delivering the weather, Mother said, “Constantine is no longer employed here. Now let’s get all these trunks unpacked before you ruin your clothes.”

I turned and blinked at her. I didn’t think I’d heard her correctly. “What did you say?”

Mother stood straighter, smoothing down her dress. “Constantine’s gone, Skeeter. She went to live with her people up in Chicago.”

“But . . . what? She didn’t say anything in her letters about Chicago.” I knew that wasn’t her surprise. She would’ve told me such terrible news immediately.

Mother took a deep breath, straightened her back. “I told Constantine she wasn’t to write to you about leaving. Not in the middle of your final exams. What if you’d flunked and had to stay on another year? God knows, four years of college is more than enough.”

“And she . . . agreed to that? Not to write me and tell me she was leaving?”

Mother looked off, sighed. “We’ll discuss it later, Eugenia. Come on to the kitchen, let me introduce you to the new maid, Pascagoula.”

But I didn’t follow Mother to the kitchen. I stared down at my college trunks, terrified by the thought of unpacking here. The house felt vast, empty. Outside, a combine whirred in a cotton field.

By September, not only had I given up hope of ever hearing back from Harper & Row, I gave up on ever finding Constantine. No one seemed to know a thing or how I could reach her. I finally stopped asking people why Constantine had left. It was like she’d simply disappeared. I had to accept that Constantine, my one true ally, had left me to fend for myself with these people.

chapter 6

O
N A HOT SEPTEMBER MORNING, I wake up in my childhood bed, slip on the huarache shoes my brother, Carlton, brought me back from Mexico. A man’s pair since, evidently, Mexican girls’ feet don’t grow to size nine-and-a-half. Mother hates them and says they’re trashy-looking.

Over my nightgown, I put on one of Daddy’s old button-down shirts and slip out the front door. Mother is on the back porch with Pascagoula and Jameso while they shuck oysters.

“You cannot leave a Negro and a Nigra together unchaperoned,” Mother’d whispered to me, a long time ago. “It’s not their fault, they just can’t help it.”

I head down the steps to see if my mail-order copy of
Catcher in the Rye
is in the box. I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good. By the time I reach the end of the drive, my huaraches and ankles are covered with fine yellow dust.

On either side of me, the cotton fields are a glaring green, fat with bolls. Daddy lost the back fields to the rain last month, but the majority bloomed unharmed. The leaves are just starting to spot brown with defoliant and I can still smell the sour chemical in the air. There are no cars on the County Road. I open the mailbox.

And there, underneath Mother’s
Ladies’ Home Journal
, is a letter addressed to Miss Eugenia Phelan. The red raised font in the corner says Harper & Row, Publishers. I tear it open right there in the lane, in nothing but my long nightgown and Daddy’s old Brooks Brothers shirt.

 

Below the pica type is a handwritten note, in a choppy blue scrawl:

 

A truck full of cotton rumbles by on the County Road. The Negro in the passenger side leans out and stares. I’ve forgotten I am a white girl in a thin nightgown. I have just received correspondence, maybe even encouragement, from New York City and I say the name aloud: “Elaine Stein.” I’ve never met a Jewish person.

I race back up the lane, trying to keep the letter from flapping in my hand. I don’t want it wrinkled. I dash up the stairs with Mother hollering to take off those tacky Mexican man shoes, and I get to work writing down every goddamn thing that bothers me in life, particularly those that do not seem to faze anyone else. Elaine Stein’s words are running hot silver through my veins and I type as fast as I can. Turns out, it is a spectacularly long list.

By the next day, I am ready to mail my first letter to Elaine Stein, listing the ideas I thought worthy journalism material: the prevalence of illiteracy in Mississippi; the high number of drunk-driving accidents in our county; the limited job opportunities for women.

It’s not until after I mail the letter that I realize I probably chose those ideas she would think impressive, rather than ones I was really interested in.

 

 

 

I TAKE a DEEP BREATH and pull open the heavy glass door. A feminine little bell tinkles hello. A not-so-feminine receptionist watches me. She is enormous and looks uncomfortable in the small wooden chair. “Welcome to the
Jackson Journal.
Can I help you?”

I had made my appointment day before yesterday, hardly an hour after I’d received Elaine Stein’s letter. I asked for an interview for any position they might have. I was surprised they said they’d see me so soon.

“I’m here to see Mister Golden, please.”

The receptionist waddles to the back in her tented dress. I try and calm my shaking hands. I peek through the open door to a small, wood-paneled room in the back. Inside, four men in suits bang away on typewriters and scratch with pencils. They are bent over, haggard, three with just a horseshoe of hair left. The room is gauzy with cigarette smoke.

The receptionist reappears, thumbs me to follow her, cigarette dangling in her hand. “Come on back.” Despite my nerves, all I can think of is the old college rule,
A Chi Omega never walks with a cigarette.
I follow her through the desks of staring men, the haze of smoke, to an interior office.

“Close that thing back,” Mister Golden hollers as soon as I’ve opened the door and stepped in. “Don’t let all that damn smoke in here.”

Mister Golden stands up behind his desk. He’s about six inches shorter than me, trim, younger than my parents. He has long teeth and a sneer, the greased black hair of a mean man.

“Didn’t you hear?” he said. “They announced last week cigarettes’ll kill you.”

“I hadn’t heard that.” I can only hope it hadn’t been on the front page of his newspaper.

“Hell, I know niggers a hundred years old look younger than those idjits out there.” He sits back down, but I keep standing because there are no other chairs in the room.

“Alright, let’s see what you got.” I hand him my résumé and sample articles I’d written in school. I grew up with the
Journal
sitting on our kitchen table, open to the farm report or the local sports page. I rarely had time to read it myself.

Mister Golden doesn’t just look at my papers, he edits them with a red pencil. “Murrah High editor three years,
Rebel Rouser
editor two years, Chi Omega editor three years, double major English and journalism, graduated number four...
Damn
, girl,” he mutters, “didn’t you have
any
fun?”

I clear my throat. “Is . . . that important?”

He looks up at me. “You’re peculiarly tall but I’d think a pretty girl like you’d be dating the whole goddamn basketball team.”

I stare at him, not sure if he’s making fun of me or paying me a compliment.

“I assume you know how to clean . . .” He looks back to my articles, strikes them with violent red marks.

My face flushes hot and quick. “Clean? I’m not here to clean. I’m here to
write
.”

Cigarette smoke is bleeding under the door. It’s like the entire place is on fire. I feel so stupid that I thought I could just walk in and get a job as a journalist.

He sighs heavily, hands me a thick folder of papers. “I guess you’ll do. Miss Myrna’s gone shit-house crazy on us, drunk hair spray or something. Read the articles, write the answers like she does, nobody’ll know the damn difference.”

“I . . . what?” And I take the folder because I don’t know what else to do. I have no idea who this Miss Myrna is. I ask the only safe question I can think of. “How much . . . did you say it pays?”

He gives me a surprisingly appreciative look, from my flat shoes to my flat hairstyle. Some dormant instinct tells me to smile, run my hand through my hair. I feel ridiculous, but I do it.

“Eight dollars, every Monday.”

I nod, trying to figure out how to ask him what the job is without giving myself away.

He leans forward. “You do know who Miss Myrna is, don’t you?”

“Of course. We . . . girls read her all the time,” I say, and again we stare at each other long enough for a distant telephone to ring three times.

“What then? Eight’s not enough? Jesus, woman, go clean your husband’s toilet for free.”

I bite my lip. But before I can utter anything, he rolls his eyes.

“Alright,
ten.
Copy’s due on Thursdays. And if I don’t like your style, I’m not printing it or paying you squat.”

I take the folder, thank him more than I probably should. He ignores me and picks up his phone and makes a call before I’m even out the door. When I get to my car, I sink down into the soft Cadillac leather. I sit there smiling, reading the pages in the folder.

I just got a
job.

 

 

 

I COME HOME STANDING up straighter than I have since I was twelve, before my growth spurt. I am buzzing with pride. Even though every cell in my brain says do not, somehow I cannot resist telling Mother. I rush into the relaxing room and tell her everything about how I’ve gotten a job writing Miss Myrna, the weekly cleaning advice column.

“Oh the irony of it.” She lets out a sigh that means life is hardly worth living under such conditions. Pascagoula freshens her iced tea.

“At least it’s a start,” I say.

“A start at what? Giving advice on how to keep up a home when . . .” She sighs again, long and slow like a deflating tire.

I look away, wondering if everyone in town will be thinking the same thing. Already the joy is fleeting.

“Eugenia, you don’t even know how to polish silver, much less advise on how to keep a house clean.”

I hug the folder to my chest. She’s right, I won’t know how to answer any of the questions. Still, I thought she’d at least be proud of me.

“And you will never meet anybody sitting at that typewriter. Eugenia, have some sense.”

Anger works its way up my arms. I stand up straight again. “You think I
want
to live here? With
you
?” I laugh in a way I’m hoping will hurt her.

I see the quick pain in her eyes. She presses her lips together at the sting. Still, I have no desire to take back my words because finally,
finally
, I have said something she’s listening to.

I stand there, refusing to leave. I want to hear what she’ll say to this. I want to hear her say she’s sorry.

“I need to . . . ask you something, Eugenia.” She twists her handkerchief, grimaces. “I read the other day about how some . . . some girls get unbalanced, start thinking these—well, these un
natural
thoughts.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. I look up at the ceiling fan. Someone’s set it going too fast.
Clackety-clackety-clackety . . .

“Are you . . . do you . . . find men attractive? Are you having unnatural thoughts about . . .” She shuts her eyes tight. “Girls or—or women?”