“Sorry I’m such a mess. Mae Mobley kept me up half the night and now I don’t even know where Aibileen’s gotten off to.”
I step inside the tiny foyer. It’s a low-ceilinged house with small rooms. Everything has a secondhand look – the faded-blue floral curtains, the crooked cover on the couch. I hear Raleigh’s new accounting business isn’t doing well. Maybe up in New York or somewhere it’s a good thing, but in Jackson, Mississippi, people just don’t care to do business with a rude, condescending asshole.
Hilly’s car is out front, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Elizabeth sits at the sewing machine she has on the dining room table. “I’m almost done,” she says. “Let me just hem this last seam…” Elizabeth stands, holds up a green church dress with a round white collar. “Now be honest,” she whispers with eyes that are pleading for me to be anything but[54]. “Does it look homemade?”
The hem on one side hangs longer than the other. It’s wrinkled and a cuff is already fraying. “One hundred percent store-bought. Straight from Maison Blanche’s,” I say because that is Elizabeth’s dream store. It is five stories of expensive clothes on Canal Street in New Orleans, clothes that could never be found in Jackson. Elizabeth gives me a grateful smile.
“Mae Mobley’s sleeping?” I ask.
“Finally.” Elizabeth fiddles with a clump of hair that’s slipped out of her roller, grimaces at its obstinacy. Sometimes her voice takes on a hard edge when she talks about her little girl.
The door to the guest bathroom in the hall opens and Hilly comes out talking, “…so much better. Everybody has their own place to go now.”
Elizabeth fiddles with the machine needle, seems worried by it.
“You tell Raleigh I said You are welcome,” Hilly adds, and it hits me, then, what’s being said. Aibileen has her own bathroom in the garage now.
Hilly smiles at me and I realize she’s about to bring up the initiative. “How’s your mama?” I ask, even though I know this is her least favorite subject. “She get settled in the home alright?”
“I guess.” Hilly pulls her red sweater down over the pudgy roll in her waist. She has on red-and-green plaid pants that seem to magnify her bottom, making it rounder and more forceful than ever. “Of course she doesn’t appreciate a thing I do. I had to fire that maid for her, caught her trying to steal the damn silver right under my nose.” Hilly narrows her eyes a bit. “Y’all haven’t heard, by the way, if that Minny Jackson is working somewhere, have you?”
We shake our heads no.
“I doubt she’ll find work in this town again,” Elizabeth says.
Hilly nods, mulling this over. I take a deep breath, anxious to tell them my news.
“I just got a job at the Jackson Journal,” I say.
There is quiet in the room. Suddenly Elizabeth squeals. Hilly smiles at me with such pride, I blush and shrug, like it’s not that big of a deal.
“They’d be a fool not to hire you, Skeeter Phelan,” Hilly says and raises her iced tea as a toast.
“So… um, have either of y’all actually read Miss Myrna?” I ask.
“Well no,” Hilly says. “But I bet the poor white trash girls in South Jackson read it like the King James[55].”
Elizabeth nods. “All those poor girls without help, I bet they do.”
“Would you mind if I talked to Aibileen?” I ask Elizabeth. “To help me answer some of the letters?”
Elizabeth is very still a second. “Aibileen? My Aibileen?” “I sure don’t know the answers to these questions.”
“Well… I mean, as long as it doesn’t interfere with her work.”
I pause, surprised by this attitude. But I remind myself that Elizabeth is paying her, after all.
“And not today with Mae Mobley about to get up or else I’ll have to look after her myself.”
“Okay. Maybe… maybe I’ll come by tomorrow morning then?” I count the hours on my hand. If I finish talking to Aibileen by midmorning, I’ll have time to rush home to type it up, then get it back to town by two.
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[56].”
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