The Help (38 page)

I have on the new light blue Lady Day skirt and matching jacket. Daddy has on his black funeral suit. His belt is cinched too tight to be comfortable much less fashionable. Mother is wearing a simple white dress—like a country bride wearing a hand-me-down, I suddenly think, and I feel a rush of panic that we have overdressed, all of us. Mother’s going to bring up the ugly girl’s trust fund and we look like countryfolk on a big damn visit to town.

“Daddy, loosen your belt, it’s hitching your pants up.”

He frowns at me and looks down at his pants. Never once have I told my daddy what to do. The door opens.

“Good evening.” A colored woman in a white uniform nods to us. “They expecting y’all.”

We step into the foyer and the first thing I see is the chandelier, sparkling, gauzy with light. My eyes rise up the hollow twirl of the staircase and it is as if we are inside a gigantic seashell.

“Why, hello there.”

I look down from my lollygagging. Missus Whitworth is clicking into the foyer, hands extended. She has on a suit like mine, thankfully, but in crimson. When she nods, her graying-blond hair does not move.

“Hello, Missus Whitworth, I am Charlotte Boudreau Cantrelle Phelan. We thank you so much for having us.”

“Delighted,” she says and shakes both my parents’ hands. “I’m Francine Whitworth. Welcome to our home.”

She turns to me. “And you must be Eugenia. Well. It is so nice to finally meet you.” Missus Whitworth grasps my arms and looks me in the eyes. Hers are blue, beautiful, like cold water. Her face is plain around them. She is almost my height in her peau de soie heels.

“So nice to meet you,” I say. “Stuart’s told me so much about you and Senator Whitworth.”

She smiles and slides her hand down my arm. I gasp as a prong of her ring scratches my skin.

“There she is!” Behind Missus Whitworth, a tall, bull-chested man lumbers toward me. He hugs me hard to him, then just as quickly flings me back. “Now I told Little Stu a month ago to get this gal up to the house. But frankly,” he lowers his voice, “he’s still a little gun-shy after that other one.”

I stand there blinking. “Very nice to meet you, sir.”

The Senator laughs loudly. “You know I’m just teasing you,” he says, gives me another drastic hug, clapping me on the back. I smile, try to catch my breath. Remind myself he is a man with all sons.

He turns to Mother, solemnly bows and extends his hand.

“Hello, Senator Whitworth,” Mother says. “I’m Charlotte.”

“Very nice to meet you, Charlotte. And you call me Stooley. All my friends do.”

“Senator,” Daddy says and pumps his hand hard. “We thank you for all you did on that farm bill. Made a heck of a difference.”

“Shee-oot. That Billups tried to wipe his shoes on it and I told him, I said, Chico, if Mississippi don’t have cotton, hell, Mississippi don’t have
nothing
.”

He slaps Daddy on the shoulder and I notice how small my father looks next to him.

“Y’all come on in,” the Senator says. “I can’t talk politics without a drink in my hand.”

The Senator pounds his way out of the foyer. Daddy follows and I cringe at the fine line of mud on the back of his shoe. One more swipe of the rag would’ve gotten it, but Daddy’s not used to wearing good loafers on a Saturday.

Mother follows him out and I give one last glance up at the sparkling chandelier. As I turn, I catch the maid staring at me from the door. I smile at her and she nods. Then she nods again, and drops her eyes to the floor.

Oh.
My nervousness rises like a trill in my throat as I realize,
she knows.
I stand, frozen by how duplicitous my life has become. She could show up at Aibileen’s, start telling me all about serving the Senator and his wife.

“Stuart’s still driving over from Shreveport,” the Senator hollers. “Got a big deal brewing over there, I hear.”

I try not to think about the maid and take a deep breath. I smile like this is fine, just fine. Like I’ve met so many boyfriends’ parents before.

We move into a formal living room with ornate molding and green velvet settees, so full of heavy furniture I can hardly see the floor.

“What can I get y’all to drink?” Mister Whitworth grins like he’s offering children candy. He has a heavy, broad forehead and the shoulders of an aging linebacker. His eyebrows are thick and wiry. They wiggle when he talks.

Daddy asks for a cup of coffee, Mother and I for iced tea. The Senator’s grin deflates and he looks back at the maid to collect these mundane drinks. In the corner, he pours himself and his wife something brown. The velvet sofa groans when he sits.

“Your home is just lovely. I hear it’s the centerpiece of the tour,” Mother says. This is what Mother’s been dying to say since she found out about this dinner. Mother’s been on the dinky Ridgeland County Historic Home Council forever, but refers to Jackson’s home tour as “high cotton” compared to theirs. “Now, do y’all do any kind of dress-up or staging for the tours?”

Senator and Missus Whitworth glance at each other. Then Missus Whitworth smiles. “We took it off the tour this year. It was just . . . too much.”

“Off ? But it’s one of the most important houses in Jackson. Why, I heard Sherman said the house was too pretty to burn.”

Missus Whitworth just nods, sniffs. She is ten years younger than my mother but looks older, especially now as her face turns long and prudish.

“Surely you must feel some obligation, for the sake of history . . .” Mother says, and I shoot her a look to let it go.

No one says anything for a second and then the Senator laughs loudly. “There was kind of a mix-up,” he booms. “Patricia van Devender’s mother is head of the council so after all that . . . ruck-a-muck with the kids, we decided we’d just as soon get off the tour.”

I glance at the door, praying Stuart will get here soon. This is the second time
she
has come up. Missus Whitworth gives the Senator a deafening look.

“Well, what are we gonna do, Francine? Just never talk about her again? We had the damn gazebo built in the backyard for the wedding.”

Missus Whitworth takes a deep breath and I am reminded of what Stuart said to me, that the Senator only knows part of it, but his mother, she knows all. And what she knows must be much worse than just “ruck-a-muck.”

“Eugenia”—Missus Whitworth smiles—“I understand you aim to be a writer. What kinds of things do you like to write?”

I put my smile back on. From one good subject to the next. “I write the Miss Myrna column in the
Jackson Journal.
It comes out every Monday.”

“Oh, I think Bessie reads that, doesn’t she, Stooley? I’ll have to ask her when I go in the kitchen.”

“Well, if she doesn’t, she sure as hell will now.” The Senator laughs.

“Stuart said you were trying to get into more serious subjects. Anything particular?”

Now everyone is looking at me, including the maid, a different one from the door, as she hands me a glass of tea. I don’t look at her face, terrified of what I’ll see there. “I’m working on a . . . a few—”

“Eugenia is writing about the life of Jesus Christ,” Mother pops in and I recall my most recent lie to cover my nights out, calling it “research.”

“Well,” Missus Whitworth nods, looks impressed by this, “that’s certainly an honorable subject.”

I try to smile, disgusted by my own voice. “And such an... important one.” I glance at Mother. She’s beaming.

The front door slams, sending all the glass lamps into a furious tinkle.

“Sorry I’m so late.” Stuart strides in, wrinkled from the car, pulling on his navy sportscoat. We all stand up and his mother holds out her arms to him but he heads straight for me. He puts his hands on my shoulders and kisses my cheek. “Sorry,” he whispers and I breathe out, finally relax half an inch. I turn and see his mother smiling like I just snatched her best guest towel and wiped my dirty hands all over it.

“Get yourself a drink, son, sit down,” the Senator says. When Stuart has his drink, he settles next to me on the sofa, squeezes my hand and doesn’t let go.

Missus Whitworth gives one glance at our hand-holding and says, “Charlotte, why don’t I give you and Eugenia a tour of the house?”

For the next fifteen minutes, I follow Mother and Missus Whitworth from one ostentatious room to the next. Mother gasps over a genuine Yankee bullethole in the front parlor, the bullet still lodged in the wood. There are letters from Confederate soldiers lying on a Federal desk, strategically placed antique spectacles and handkerchiefs. The house is a shrine to the War Between the States and I wonder what it must’ve been like for Stuart, growing up in a home where you can’t touch anything.

On the third floor, Mother gaggles over a canopy bed where Robert E. Lee slept. When we finally come down a “secret” staircase, I linger over family pictures in the hallway. I see Stuart and his two brothers as babies, Stuart holding a red ball. Stuart in a christening gown, held by a colored woman in white uniform.

Mother and Missus Whitworth move down the hall, but I keep looking, for there is something so deeply dear in Stuart’s face as a young boy. His cheeks were fat and his mother’s blue eyes shone the same as they do now. His hair was the whitish-yellow of a dandelion. At nine or ten, he stands with a hunting rifle and a duck. At fifteen, next to a slain deer. Already he is good-looking, rugged. I pray to God he never sees my teenage pictures.

I walk a few steps and see high school graduation, Stuart proud in a military school uniform. In the center of the wall, there is an empty space without a frame, a rectangle of wallpaper just the slightest shade darker. A picture has been removed.

“Dad, that is enough about—” I hear Stuart say, his voice strained. But just as quickly, there is silence.

“Dinner is served,” I hear a maid announce and I weave my way back into the living room. We all trail into the dining room to a long, dark table. The Phelans are seated on one side, the Whitworths on the other. I am diagonal from Stuart, placed as far as possible from him. Around the room, the wainscoting panels have been painted to depict scenes of pre-Civil War times, happy Negroes picking cotton, horses pulling wagons, white-bearded statesmen on the steps of our capitol. We wait while the Senator lingers in the living room. “I’ll be right there, y’all go ahead and start.” I hear the clink of ice, the clop of the bottle being set down two more times before he finally comes in and sits at the head of the table.

Waldorf salads are served. Stuart looks over at me and smiles every few minutes. Senator Whitworth leans over to Daddy and says, “I came from nothing, you know. Jefferson County, Mississippi. My daddy dried peanuts for eleven cents a pound.”

Daddy shakes his head. “Doesn’t get much poorer than Jefferson County.”

I watch as Mother cuts off the tiniest bite of apple. She hesitates, chews it for the longest time, winces as it goes down. She wouldn’t allow me to tell Stuart’s parents about her stomach problem. Instead, Mother ravishes Missus Whitworth with degustationary compliments. Mother views this supper as an important move in the game called “Can My Daughter Catch Your Son?”

“The
young people
so enjoy each other’s company.” Mother smiles. “Why, Stuart comes out to see us at the house nearly twice a week.”

“Is that right?” says Missus Whitworth.

“We’d be delighted if you and the Senator could drive out to the plantation for supper sometime, take a walk around the orchard?”

I look at Mother.
Plantation
is an outdated term she likes to use to gloss up the farm, while the “orchard” is a barren apple tree. A pear tree with a worm problem.

But Missus Whitworth has stiffened around the mouth. “Twice a week? Stuart, I had no idea you came to town that often.”

Stuart’s fork stops in midair. He casts a sheepish look at his mother.

“Y’all are so young.” Missus Whitworth smiles. “Enjoy yourselves. There’s no need to get serious so quickly.”

The Senator leans his elbows on the table. “From a woman who practically proposed to the other one herself, she was in such a hurry.”

“
Dad
,” Stuart says through gritted teeth, banging his fork against his plate.

The table is silent, except for Mother’s thorough, methodical chewing to try to turn solid food into paste. I touch the scratch, still pink along my arm.

The maid lays pressed chicken on our plates, tops it with a perky dollop of mayonnaisey dressing, and we all smile, glad for the mood breaker. As we eat, Daddy and the Senator talk about cotton prices, boll weevils. I can still see the anger on Stuart’s face from when the Senator mentioned Patricia. I glance at him every few seconds, but the anger doesn’t seem to be fading. I wonder if that’s what they’d argued about earlier, when I was in the hall.

The Senator leans back in his chair. “Did you see that piece they did in
Life
magazine? One before Medgar Evers, about what’s-’is-name—Carl . . . Roberts?”

I look up, surprised to find the Senator is aiming this question at me. I blink, confused, hoping it’s because of my job at the newspaper. “It was . . . he was lynched. For saying the governor was . . .” I stop, not because I’ve forgotten the words, but because I remember them.

“Pathetic,”
the Senator says, now turning to my father.
“With the morals of a streetwalker.
”

I exhale, relieved the attention is off me. I look at Stuart to gauge his reaction to this. I’ve never asked him his position on civil rights. But I don’t think he’s even listening to the conversation. The anger around his mouth has turned flat and cold.

My father clears his throat. “I’ll be honest,” he says slowly. “It makes me sick to hear about that kind of brutality.” Daddy sets his fork down silently. He looks Senator Whitworth in the eye. “I’ve got twenty-five Negroes working my fields and if anyone so much as laid a hand on them, or any of their families . . .” Daddy’s gaze is steady. Then he drops his eyes. “I’m ashamed, sometimes, Senator. Ashamed of what goes on in Mississippi.”