I look up and see it’s starting to sink in on Miss Leefolt. She straighten up all prim and proper.

“William had a fit when he saw what she did to our house and I can’t soil my name hanging around her anymore, not with the election coming up. I’ve already asked Jeanie Caldwell to take Skeeter’s place in bridge club.”

“You kicked her out of bridge club?”

“I sure did. And I thought about kicking her out of the League, too.”

“Can you even do that?”

“Of course I can. But I’ve decided I want her to sit in that room and see what a fool she’s made of herself.” Miss Hilly nods. “She needs to learn that she can’t carry on this way. I mean, around us it’s one thing, but around some other people, she’s going to get in big trouble.”

“It’s true. There are some racists in this town,” Miss Leefolt say.

Miss Hilly nod her head,“Oh, they’re out there.”

After while, they get up and drive off together. I am glad I don’t have to see they faces for a while.

AT NOONTIME, Mister Leefolt come home for lunch, which is rare. He set down at the little breakfast table.“Aibileen, make me up some lunch, would you please.” He lift the newspaper, pop the spine to get it straight. “I’ll have some roast beef.”

“Yessir.” I set down a placemat and a napkin and some silverware for him. He tall and real thin. Won’t be too long fore he all bald. Got a black ring round his head and nothing on top.

“You staying on to help Elizabeth with the new baby?” he asks, reading his paper. Generally, he don’t ever pay me no mind.

“Yessir,” I say.

“Because I hear you like to move around a lot.”

“Yessir,” I say. It’s true. Most maids stay with the same family all they lives, but not me. I got my own reasons for moving on when they about eight, nine years old. Took me a few jobs to learn that. “I work best with the babies.”

“So you don’t really consider yourself a maid. You’re more of a nurse-type for the children.” He puts his paper down, looks at me. “You’re a specialist, like me.”

I don’t say nothing, just nod a little.

“See, I only do taxes for businesses, not every individual that’s filing a tax return.”

I’m getting nervous. This the most he ever talk to me and I been here three years.

“Must be hard finding a new job every time the kids get old enough for school.”

“Something always come along.”

He don’t say nothing to that, so I go head and get the roast out.

“Got to keep up good references, moving around to different clientele like you do.”

“Yessir.”

“I hear you know Skeeter Phelan. Old friend of Elizabeth’s.”

I keep my head down. Real slow, I get to slicing, slicing, slicing the meat off that loin. My heart’s pumping triple speed now.

“She ask me for cleaning tips sometimes. For the article.”

“That right?” Mister Leefolt say.

“Yessir. She just ask me for tips.”

“I don’t want you talking to that woman anymore, not for cleaning tips, not to say hello, you hear?”

“Yessir.”

“I hear about you two talking and you’ll be in a heap of trouble. You understand?”

“Yessir,” I whisper, wondering what this man know.

Mister Leefolt pick up his newspaper again.“I’ll have that meat in a sandwich. Put a little mayonnaise on it. And not too toasted, I don’t want it dry now.”

THAT NIGHT, me and Minny’s setting at my kitchen table. My hands started shaking this afternoon and ain’t quit since.

“That ugly white fool,” Minny say.

“I just wish I knew what he thinking.”

They’s a knock on the back door and Minny and me both look at each other. Only one person knock on my door like that, everbody else just come on in. I open it and there Miss Skeeter. “Minny here,” I whisper, cause it’s always safer to know when you gone walk in a room with Minny.

I’m glad she here. I got so much to tell her I don’t even know where to start. But I’m surprised to see Miss Skeeter got something close to a smile on her face. I guess she ain’t talk to Miss Hilly yet.

“Hello, Minny,” she say when she step inside.

Minny look over at the window.“Hello, Miss Skeeter.”

Fore I can get a word in, Miss Skeeter set down and start right in.

“I had some ideas while I was away. Aibileen, I think we should lead with your chapter first.” She pull some papers out a that tacky red satchel. “And then Louvenia’s we’ll switch with Faye Belle’s story, since we don’t want three dramatic stories in a row. The middle we’ll sort outlater, but Minny, I think your section should definitely come last.”

“Miss Skeeter . . . I got some things to tell you,” I say.

Minny and me look at each other.“I’m on go,” Minny say, frowning like her chair gotten too hard to sit in. She head for the door, but on her way out, she give Miss Skeeter a touch on the shoulder, real quick, keep her eyes straight like she ain’t done it. Then she gone.

“You been out a town awhile, Miss Skeeter.” I rub the back a my neck.

Then I tell her that Miss Hilly pulled that booklet out and showed it to Miss Leefolt. And Law knows who else she passing it around town to now.

Miss Skeeter nod, say,“I can handle Hilly. This doesn’t implicate you, or the other maids, or the book at all.”

And then I tell her what Mister Leefolt say, how he real clear that I ain’t to talk to her no more about the cleaning article. I don’t want a tell her these things, but she gone hear em and I want her to hear em from me first.

She listen careful, ask a few questions. When I’m done, she say, “He’s full of hot air, Raleigh. I’ll have to be extra careful, though, when I go over to Elizabeth’s. I won’t come in the kitchen anymore,” and I can tell, this ain’t really hitting her, what’s happening. The trouble she in with her friends. How scared we need tobe. I tell her what Miss Hilly say about letting her suffer through the League. I tell her she been kicked out a bridge club. I tell her that Miss Hilly gone tell Mister Stuart all about it, just in case he get any “inclination” to mend things with her.

Skeeter look away from me, try to smile.“I don’t care about any of that ole stuff, anyway.” She kind a laugh and it hurts my heart. Cause everbody care. Black, white, deep down we all do.

“I just . . . I rather you hear it from me than in town,” I say. “So you know what’s coming. So you can be real careful.”

She bite her lip, nod.“Thank you, Aibileen.”

Chapter 23

THE SUMMER rolls behind us like a hot tar spreader. Ever colored person in Jackson gets in front a whatever tee-vee set they can find, watches Martin Luther King stand in our nation’s capital and tell us he’s got a dream. I’m in the church basement watching. Our own Reverend Johnson went up there to march and I find myself scanning the crowd for his face. I can’t believe so many peoples is there—two-hundred-fiftythousand. And the ringer is, sixty thousand a them iswhite.

“Mississippi and the world is two very different places,” the Deacon say and we all nod cause ain’t it the truth.

We get through August and September and ever time I see Miss Skeeter, she look thinner, a little more skittish in the eyes. She try to smile like it ain’t that hard on her that she ain’t got no friends left.

In October, Miss Hilly sets at Miss Leefolt’s dining room table. Miss Leefolt so pregnant she can’t barely focus her eyes. Meanwhile, Miss Hilly got a big fur around her neck even though it’s sixty degrees outside. She stick her pinky out from her tea glass and say, “Skeeter thought she was so clever, dumping all those toilets in myfront yard. Well, they’re working out just fine. We’ve already installed three of them in people’s garages and sheds. Even William said it was a blessing in disguise.”

I ain’t gone tell Miss Skeeter this. That she ended up supporting the cause she fighting against. But then I see it don’t matter cause Miss Hilly say, “I decided I’d write Skeeter a thank-you note last night. Told her how she’s helped move the project along faster than it ever would’ve gone.”

WITH MISS LEEFOLT SO BUSY making clothes for the new baby, Mae Mobley and me spend pretty much ever minute a the day together. She getting too big for me to carry her all the time, or maybe I’m too big. I try and give her a lot a good squeezes instead.

“Come tell me my secret story,” she whisper, smiling so big. She always want her secret story now, first thing when I get in. The secret stories are the ones I be making up.

But then Miss Leefolt come in with her purse on her arm, ready to leave.“Mae Mobley, I’m leaving now. Come give Mama a big hug.”

But Mae Mobley don’t move.

Miss Leefolt, she got a hand on her hip, waiting for her sugar.“Go on, Mae Mobley,” I whisper. I nudge her and she go hug her mama real hard, kinda desperate-like, but Miss Leefolt, she already looking in her purse for her keys, kind a wiggle off. It don’t seem to bother Mae Mobley so much, though, like it used to, and that’s what I can’t hardly lookat.

“Come on, Aibee,” Mae Mobley say to me after her mama gone. “Time for my secret story.”

We go on in her room, where we like to set. I get up in the big chair and she get up on me and smile, bounce a little.“Tell me, tell me bout the brown wrapping. And the present.” She so excited, she squirming. She has to jump off my lap, squirm a little to get it out. Then she crawl back up.

That’s her favorite story cause when I tell it, she get two presents. I take the brown wrapping from my Piggly Wiggly grocery bag and wrap up a little something, like piece a candy, inside. Then I use the white paper from my Cole’s Drug Store bag and wrap another one just like it. She take it real serious, the unwrapping, letting me tell the story bout how it ain’t the color a the wrapping that count, it’s what we is inside.

“We doing a different story today,” I say, but first I go still and listen, just to make sure Miss Leefolt ain’t coming back cause she forgot something. Coast is clear.

“Today I’m on tell you bout a man from outer space.” She just loves hearing about peoples from outer space. Her favorite show on the tee-vee isMy Favorite Martian. I pull out my antennae hats I shaped last night out a tinfoil, fasten em on our heads. One for her and one for me. We look like we a couple a crazy people in them things.

“One day, a wise Martian come down to Earth to teach us people a thing or two,” I say.

“Martian? How big?”

“Oh, he about six-two.”

“What’s his name?”

“Martian Luther King.”

She take a deep breath and lean her head down on my shoulder. I feel her three-year-old heart racing against mine, flapping like butterflies on my white uniform.

“He was a real nice Martian, Mister King. Looked just like us, nose, mouth, hair up on his head, but sometime people looked at him funny and sometime, well, I guess sometime people was just downright mean.”