I squint my eyes, feel like I ain’t hearing too good. “The red one?”

She don’t reply.

“Aw . . .Law.” This all starting to make a sick sense.

“The stories were in a flap pocket. On the side, in another folder. I think all she saw were Jim Crow laws, some . . . booklet I’d picked up at the library but . . . I can’t say for sure.”

“Oh MissSkeeter,” I say and shut my eyes. God help me, God helpMinny . . .

“I know. Iknow,” Miss Skeeter say and start to cry into the phone.

“Alright. Alright, now.” I try to make myself swallow my anger down. It was a accident, I tell myself. Kicking her ain’t gone do us no good.

Butstill.

“Aibileen, I am soso sorry.”

There’s a few seconds a nothing but heart-pumping. Real slow and scary, my brain start ticking through the few facts she given me, what I know myself.

“How long ago this happen?” I ask.

“Three days ago. I wanted to find out what she knew before I told you.”

“You talked to Miss Hilly?”

“Just for a second when I picked it up. But I’ve talked to Elizabeth and Lou Anne and probably four other girls who know Hilly. Nobody’s said anything about it. That was . . . that was why I asked about Yule May,” she say. “I was wondering if she’d heard anything at work.”

I draw in a breath, hating what I have to tell her.“I heard it. Yesterday. Miss Hilly was talking to Miss Leefolt about it.”

Miss Skeeter don’t say nothing. I feel like I’m waiting for a brick to come slamming through my window.

“She talking about Mister Holbrook running for office and how you supporting colored people and she say . . . she read something.” Saying it out loud now, I’m shaking. And still bobbing the pencil between my fingers.

“Did she say anything about maids?” Miss Skeeter ask. “I mean, was she only upset with me or did she mention you or Minny?”

“No, just . . . you.”

“Okay.” Miss Skeeter blow air into the phone. She sound upset, but she don’t know what could happen to me, to Minny. She don’t know about them sharp, shiny utensils a white lady use. About that knock on the door, late at night. That there are white men out therehungry to hear about a colored person crossing whites, ready with they wooden bats, matchsticks. Any little thing’ll do.

“I-I can’t say a hundred percent, but . . .” Miss Skeeter say, “if Hilly knew anything about the book or you orespecially Minny, she’d be spreading it all over town.”

I think on this, wanting so hard to believe her.“It’s true, she do not like Minny Jackson.”

“Aibileen,” Miss Skeeter say, and I hear her start to break down again. That calm-down in her voice is cracking. “We can stop. I understand completely if you want to stop working on it.”

If I say I don’t want a do it anymore, then everthing I been writing and still have to write ain’t gone get to be said.No, I think. Idon’t want a stop. I’m surprised by how loud I think it.

“If Miss Hilly know, she know,” I say. “Stopping ain’t gone save us now.”

I DON’T SEE, hear, or smell Miss Hilly for two days. Even when I ain’t holding a pencil, my fingers is jiggling it, in my pocket, on the kitchen counter, thumping like drumsticks. I got to find out what’s inside Miss Hilly’s head.

Miss Leefolt leave Yule May three messages for Miss Hilly, but she always at Mister Holbrook’s office—the “campaign H.Q.” is what Miss Hilly been calling it. Miss Leefolt sigh, hang up the phone like she just don’t know how her brain gone operate without Miss Hilly coming over to push the Think buttons. Ten times Baby Girl ask when little Heather gone come play in the plastic pool again. I reckon they’ll be good friends growing up, with Miss Hilly teaching them both how things is. By that afternoon, we all wandering around the house, jiggling our fingers, wondering when Miss Hilly gone show up again.

After while, Miss Leefolt go to the material store. Say she gone make a cover for something. She don’t know what. Mae Mobley look at me and I reckon we thinking the same thing: that woman’d cover us both up if she could.

I HAVE TO WORK REAL LATE that evening. I feed Baby Girl supper and put her to bed, cause Mister and Miss Leefolt gone to see a picture at the Lamar. Mister Leefolt promise he take her and she hold him to it, even though it’s only the late show left. When they get home, they yawning, crickets is cricking. Other houses, I’d sleep in the maid’s room, but they ain’t one here. I kind a hang around thinking Mister Leefolt gone offer to drive me home, but he just go right to bed.

Outside, in the dark, I walk all the way up to Riverside, about ten minutes away, where they run a late bus for the nighttime water-plant workers. The breeze is good enough keep the mosquitoes off. I sit on the edge a the park, in the grass under the streetlight. Bus come after while. Ain’t but four people on there, two colored, two white, all mens. I don’t know any of em. I take a window seat behind a thin colored fella. He got on a brown suit and a brown hat, be about my age.

We cross the bridge, head in the direction a the colored hospital, where the bus make its turn. I got my prayer book out so I can write some things down. I concentrate on Mae Mobley, try to keep my mind off Miss Hilly.Show me how to teach Baby Girl to be kind, to love herself; to love others, while I got time with her . . .