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Chapter 3

Standing on that white lady’s back porch, I tell myself, Tuck it in, Minny. Tuck in whatever might fly out my mouth and tuck in my behind too. Look like a maid who does what she’s told. Truth is, I’m so nervous right now, I’d never backtalk again if it meant I’d get this job.

I yank my stockings up from sagging around my feet – the trouble of all fat, short women around the world. Then I rehearse what to say, what to keep to myself. I go ahead and punch the bell.

The doorbell rings a long bing-bong, fine and fancy for this big mansion out in the country. It looks like a castle, gray brick rising high in the sky and left and right too. Woods surround the lawn on every side. If this place was in a storybook, there’d be witches in those woods. The kind that eat kids.

The back door opens and there stands Miss Marilyn Monroe[23]. Or something kin to her.

“Hey there, you’re right on time. I’m Celia. Celia Rae Foote.”

The white lady sticks her hand out to me and I study her. She might be built like Marilyn, but she ain’t ready for no screen test. She’s got flour in her yellow hairdo. Flour in her glue-on eyelashes. And flour all over that tacky pink pantsuit. Her standing in a cloud of dust and that pantsuit being so tight, I wonder how she can breathe.

“Yes ma’am. I’m Minny Jackson.” I smooth down my white uniform instead of shaking her hand. I don’t want that mess on me. “You cooking something?”

“One of those upsidedown cakes from the magazine?” She sighs. “It ain’t working out too good.”

I follow her inside and that’s when I see Miss Celia Rae Foote’s suffered only a minor injury in the flour fiasco. The rest of the kitchen took the real hit. The countertops, the double-door refrigerator, the Kitchen-Aid mixer are all sitting in about a quarter-inch of snow flour. It’s enough mess to drive me crazy. I ain’t even got the job yet, and I’m already looking over at the sink for a sponge.

Miss Celia says, “I guess I have some learning to do.”

“You sure do,” I say. But I bite down hard on my tongue. Don’t you go sassing this white lady like you done the other. Sassed her all the way to the nursing home.

But Miss Celia, she just smiles, washes the muck off her hands in a sink full of dishes. I wonder if maybe I’ve found myself another deaf one, like Miss Walters was. Let’s hope so.

“I just can’t seem to get the hang of kitchen work,” she says and even with Marilyn’s whispery Hollywood voice, I can tell right off, she’s from way out in the country. I look down and see the fool doesn’t have any shoes on, like some kind of white trash. Nice white ladies don’t go around barefoot.

She’s probably ten or fifteen years younger than me, twenty-two, twenty-three, and she’s real pretty, but why’s she wearing all that goo on her face? I’ll bet she’s got on double the makeup the other white ladies wear. She’s got a lot more bosom to her, too. In fact, she’s almost as big as me except she’s skinny in all those places I ain’t. I just hope she’s an eater. Because I’m a cooker and that’s why people hire me.

“Can I get you a cold drink?” she asks. “Set down and I’ll bring you something.”

And that’s my clue: something funny’s going on here.

“Leroy, she got to be crazy,” I said when she called me up three days ago and asked if I’d come interview, “cause everbody in town think I stole Miss Walters’ silver. And I know she do too cause she call Miss Walters up on the phone when I was there.”

“White people strange,” Leroy said. “Who knows, maybe that old woman give you a good word[24].”

I look at Miss Celia Rae Foote hard. I’ve never in my life had a white woman tell me to sit down so she can serve me a cold drink. Shoot, now I’m wondering if this fool even plans on hiring a maid or if she just drug me all the way out here for sport.

“Maybe we better go on and see the house first, ma’am.”

She smiles like the thought never entered that hairsprayed head of hers, letting me see the house I might be cleaning.

“Oh, of course. Come on in yonder, Maxie. I’ll show you the fancy dining room first.”

“The name,” I say, “is Minny.”

Maybe she’s not deaf or crazy. Maybe she’s just stupid. A shiny hope rises up in me again.

All over that big ole doodied up house she walks and talks and I follow. There are ten rooms downstairs and one with a stuffed grizzly bear that looks like it ate up the last maid and is biding for the next one. A burned-up Confederate flag[25] is framed on the wall, and on the table is an old silver pistol with the name “Confederate General John Foote” engraved on it. I bet Great-Grandaddy Foote scared some slaves with that thing.

We move on and it starts to look like any nice white house. Except this one’s the biggest I’ve ever been in and full of dirty floors and dusty rugs, the kind folks who don’t know any better would say is worn out, but I know an antique when I see one. I’ve worked in some fine homes. I just hope she ain’t so country she don’t own a Hoover.

“Johnny’s mama wouldn’t let me decorate a thing. I had my way, there’d be wall-to-wall white carpet and gold trim and none of this old stuff.”

“Where your people from?” I ask her.

“I’m from… Sugar Ditch.” Her voice drops down a little. Sugar Ditch is as low as you can go in Mississippi, maybe the whole United States. It’s up in Tunica County, almost to Memphis. I saw pictures in the paper one time, showing those tenant shacks. Even the white kids looked like they hadn’t had a meal for a week.

Miss Celia tries to smile, says, “This is my first time hiring a maid.”

“Well you sure need one.” Now, Minny —

“I was real glad to get the recommendation from Missus Walters. She told me all about you. Said your cooking is the best in town.”

That makes zero sense to me. After what I did to Miss Hilly, right in front of Miss Walters to see? “She say… anything else about me?”

But Miss Celia’s already walking up a big curving staircase. I follow her upstairs, to a long hall with sun coming through the windows. Even though there are two yellow bedrooms for girls and a blue one and a green one for boys, it’s clear there aren’t any children living here. Just dust.

“We’ve got five bedrooms and five bathrooms over here in the main house.” She points out the window and I see a big blue swimming pool, and behind that, another house. My heart thumps hard.

“And then there’s the poolhouse out yonder,” she sighs.

I’d take any job I can get at this point, but a big house like this should pay plenty. And I don’t mind being busy. I ain’t afraid to work. “When you gone have you some chilluns, start filling up all these beds?” I try to smile, look friendly.

“Oh, we’re gonna have some kids.” She clears her throat, fidgets. “I mean, kids is the only thing worth living for.” She looks down at her feet. A second passes before she heads back to the stairs. I follow behind, noticing how she holds the stair rail tight on the way down, like she’s afraid she might fall.

It’s back in the dining room that Miss Celia starts shaking her head. “It’s an awful lot to do,” she says. “All the bedrooms and the floors…”

“Yes ma’am, it’s big,” I say, thinking if she saw my house with a cot in the hall and one toilet for six behinds, she’d probably run. “But I got lots a energy.”

“…and then there’s all this silver to clean.”

She opens up a silver closet the size of my living room. She fixes a candle that’s turned funny on the candelabra and I can see why she’s looking so doubtful.

After the town got word of Miss Hilly’s lies, three ladies in a row hung up on me the minute I said my name[26]. I ready myself for the blow. Say it, lady. Say what you thinking about me and your silver. I feel like crying thinking about how this job would suit me fine and what Miss Hilly’s done to keep me from getting it. I fix my eyes on the window, hoping and praying this isn’t where the interview ends.

“I know, those windows are awful high. I never tried to clean them before.”

I let my breath go. Windows are a heck of a lot better subject for me than silver. “I ain’t afraid a no windows. I clean Miss Walters’ top to bottom ever four weeks.”

“Did she have just the one floor or a double decker?”

“Well, one… but they’s a lot to it. Old houses got a lot a nooks and crannies, you know.”

Finally, we go back in the kitchen. We both stare down at the breakfast table, but neither one of us sits. I’m getting so jittery wondering what she’s thinking, my head starts to sweat.

“You got a big, pretty house,” I say. “All the way out here in the country. Lot a work to be done.”

She starts fiddling with her wedding ring. “I guess Missus Walters’ was a lot easier than this would be. I mean, it’s just us now, but when we get to having kids…”

“You, uh, got some other maids you considering?”

She sighs. “A bunch have come out here. I just haven’t found… the right one yet.” She bites on her fingernails, shifts her eyes away.

I wait for her to say I’m not the right one either, but we just stand there breathing in that flour. Finally, I play my last card, whisper it because it’s all I got left.

“You know, I only left Miss Walters cause she going up to the rest home. She didn’t fire me.”

But she just stares down at her bare feet, black-soled because her floors haven’t been scrubbed since she moved in this big old dirty house. And it’s clear, this lady doesn’t want me.

“Well,” she says, “I appreciate you driving all this way. Can I at least give you some money for the gas?”

I pick up my pocketbook and thrust it up under my armpit. She gives me a cheery smile I could wipe off with one swat. Damn that Hilly Holbrook.

“No ma’am, no, you cannot.”

“I knew it was gonna be a chore finding someone, but…” I stand there listening to her acting all sorry but I just think, Get it over with, lady, so I can tell Leroy we got to move all the way to the North Pole next to Santy Claus where nobody’s heard Hilly’s lies about me.

“…and if I were you I wouldn’t want to clean this big house either.”

I look at her square on. Now that’s just excusing herself a little too much, pretending Minny ain’t getting the job cause Minny don’t want the job.

“When you hear me say I don’t want a clean this house?”

“It’s alright, five maids have already told me it’s too much work.”

I look down at my hundred-and-sixty-five-pound, five-foot-zero self practically busting out of my uniform. “Too much for me?”

She blinks at me a second. “You… you’ll do it?”

“Why you think I drove all the way out here to kingdom come, just to burn gas?” I clamp my mouth shut. Don’t go ruirning this now, she offering you a jay-o-bee. “Miss Celia, I be happy to work for you.”

She laughs and the crazy woman goes to hug me, but I step back a little, let her know that’s not the kind of thing I do.

“Hang on now, we got to talk about some things first. You got to tell me what days you want me here and… and that kind a thing.” Like how much you paying.

“I guess… whenever you feel like coming,” she says.

“For Miss Walters I work Sunday through Friday[27].”

Miss Celia chews some more on her pink pinky-nail. “You can’t come here on weekends.”

“Alright.” I need the days, but maybe later on she’ll let me do some party serving or whatnot. “Monday through Friday then. Now, what time you want me here in the morning?”

“What time do you want to come in?”

I’ve never had this choice before. I feel my eyes narrow up. “How bout eight. That’s when Miss Walters used to get me in.”

“Alright, eight’s real good.” Then she stands there like she’s waiting for my next checker move.

“Now you supposed to tell me what time I got to leave.”

“What time?” asks Celia.

I roll my eyes at her. “Miss Celia, you supposed to tell me that. That’s the way it works.”

She swallows, like she’s trying real hard to get this down. I just want to get through this before she changes her mind about me.

“How bout four o’clock?” I say. “I work eight to four and I gets some time for lunch or what-have-you.”

“That’s just fine.”

“Now… we got to talk bout pay,” I say and my toes start wriggling in my shoes. It must not be much if five maids already said no.

Neither one of us says anything.

“Now come on, Miss Celia. What your husband say you can pay?”

She looks off at the Veg-O-Matic I bet she can’t even use and says, “Johnny doesn’t know.”

“Alright then. Ask him tonight what he wants to pay.”

“No, Johnny doesn’t know I’m bringing in help.”

My chin drops down to my chest. “What you mean he don’t know?”

“I am not telling Johnny.” Her blue eyes are big, like she’s scared to death of him.

“And what’s Mister Johnny gone do if he come home and find a colored woman up in his kitchen?”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t —”

“I’ll tell you what he’s gone do, he’s gone get that pistol and shoot Minny dead right here on this no-wax floor.”

Miss Celia shakes her head. “I’m not telling him.”

“Then I got to go,” I say. Shit. I knew it. I knew she was crazy when I walked in the door —

“It’s not that I’d be fibbing to him. I just need a maid —”

“A course you need a maid. Last one done got shot in the head.”

“He never comes home during the day. Just do the heavy cleaning and teach me how to fix supper and it’ll only take a few months —”

My nose prickles from something burning. I see a waft of smoke coming from the oven. “And then what, you gone fire me after them few months?”

“Then I’ll… tell him,” she say but she’s frowning at the thought. “Please, I want him to think I can do it on my own. I want him to think I’m… worth the trouble.”

“Miss Celia…” I shake my head, not believing I’m already arguing with this lady and I haven’t worked here two minutes. “I think you done burned up your cake.”

She grabs a rag and rushes to the oven and jerks the cake out. “Oww! Dawgon it!”

I set my pocketbook down, sidle her out of the way. “You can’t use no wet towel on a hot pan.”

I grab a dry rag and take that black cake out the door, set it down on the concrete step.

Miss Celia stares down at her burned hand. “Missus Walters said you were a real good cook.”

“That old woman eat two butterbeans and say she full[28]. I couldn’t get her to eat nothing.”

“How much was she paying you?”

“Dollar an hour,” I say, feeling kind of ashamed. Five years and not even minimum wage.

“Then I’ll pay you two.”

And I feel all the breath slip out of me.

“When Mister Johnny get out the house in the morning?” I ask, cleaning up the butterstick melting right on the counter, not even a plate under it.

“Six. He can’t stand to do-dad around here very long. Then he heads back from his real estate office about five.”

I do some figuring and even with the fewer hours it’d be more pay. But I can’t get paid if I get shot dead. “I’ll leave at three then. Give myself two hours coming and going so I can stay out a his way.”

“Good.” She nods. “It’s best to be safe.”

On the back step, Miss Celia dumps the cake in a paper sack. “I’ll have to bury this in the waste bin so he won’t know I’ve burned up another one.”

I take the bag out of her hands. “Mister Johnny ain’t seeing nothing. I’ll throw it out at my house.”

“Oh, thank you.” Miss Celia shakes her head like that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for her. She holds her hands in tight little fists under her chin. I walk out to my car.

I sit in the sagging seat of the Ford Leroy’s still paying his boss twelve dollars every week for. Relief hits me. I have finally gotten myself a job. I don’t have to move to the North Pole. Won’t Santy Claus be disappointed.

“Sit down on your behind[29], Minny, because I’m about to tell you the rules for working in a White Lady’s house.”

I was fourteen years old to the day. I sat at the little wooden table in my mama’s kitchen eyeing that caramel cake on the cooling rack, waiting to be iced. Birthdays were the only day of the year I was allowed to eat as much as I wanted.

I was about to quit school and start my first real job. Mama wanted me to stay on and go to ninth grade – she’d always wanted to be a schoolteacher instead of working in Miss Woodra’s house. But with my sister’s heart problem and my no-good drunk daddy, it was up to me and Mama. I already knew about housework. After school, I did most of the cooking and the cleaning. But if I was going off to work in somebody else’s house, who’d be looking after ours?

Mama turned me by the shoulders so I’d look at her instead of the cake. Mama was a crack-whip. She was proper. She took nothing from nobody. She shook her finger so close to my face, it made me cross-eyed.

“Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody’s business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady’s problems, you don’t go crying to her with yours – you can’t pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don’t want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me?

“Rule Number Two: don’t you ever let that White Lady find you sitting on her toilet. I don’t care if you’ve got to go so bad it’s coming out of your hairbraids. If there’s not one out back for the help, you find yourself a time when she’s not there in a bathroom she doesn’t use.

“Rule Number Three —” Mama jerked my chin back around to face her because that cake had lured me in again. “Rule Number Three: when you’re cooking white people’s food, you taste it with a different spoon. You put that spoon to your mouth, think nobody’s looking, put it back in the pot, might as well throw it out.

“Rule Number Four: you use the same cup, same fork, same plate every day. Keep it in a separate cupboard and tell that white woman that’s the one you’ll use from here on out.

“Rule Number Five: you eat in the kitchen.

“Rule Number Six: you don’t hit on her children. White people like to do their own spanking.”

“Rule Number Seven: this is the last one, Minny. Are you listening to me? No sass-mouthing.[30]”

“Mama, I know how —”

“Oh, I hear you when you think I can’t, muttering about having to clean the stovepipe, about the last little piece of chicken left for poor Minny. You sass a white woman in the morning, you’ll be sassing out on the street in the afternoon.”

I saw the way my mama acted when Miss Woodra brought her home, all Yes Ma’aming, No Ma’aming, I sure do thank you Ma’aming. Why I got to be like that? I know how to stand up to people.

“Now come here and give your mama a hug on your birthday – Lord, you are heavy as a house, Minny.”

“I ain’t eaten all day, when can I have my cake?”

“Don’t say ain’t, you speak properly now. I didn’t raise you to talk like a mule.”

First day at my White Lady’s house, I ate my ham sandwich in the kitchen, put my plate up in my spot in the cupboard. When that little brat stole my pocketbook and hid it in the oven, I didn’t whoop her on the behind.

But when the White Lady said: “Now I want you to be sure and handwash all the clothes first, then put them in the electric machine to finish up.”

I said: “Why I got to handwash when the power washer gone do the job? That’s the biggest waste a time I ever heard of.”

That White Lady smiled at me, and five minutes later, I was out on the street.

Working for Miss Celia, I’ll get to see my kids off to Spann Elementary in the morning and still get home in the evening with time to myself. I haven’t had a nap since Kindra was born in 1957, but with these hours – eight to three – I could have one every day if that was my idea of a fine time. Since no bus goes all the way out to Miss Celia’s, I have to take Leroy’s car.

“You ain’t taking my car every day, woman, what if I get the day shift and need to —”

“She paying me seventy dollars cash every Friday, Leroy.”

“Maybe I take Sugar’s bike.”

On Tuesday, the day after the interview, I park the car down the street from Miss Celia’s house, around a curve so you can’t see it. I walk fast on the empty road and up the drive. No other cars come by.

“I’m here, Miss Celia.” I stick my head in her bedroom that first morning and there she is, propped up on the covers with her makeup perfect and her tight Friday-night clothes on even though it’s Tuesday, reading the trash in the Hollywood Digest like it’s the Holy B[31].

“Good morning, Minny! It’s real good to see you,” she says, and I bristle, hearing a white lady being so friendly.

I look around the bedroom, sizing up the job. It’s big, with cream-colored carpet, a yellow king canopy bed, two fat yellow chairs. And it’s neat, with no clothes on the floor. The spread’s made up underneath her. The blanket on the chair’s folded nice. But I watch, I look. I can feel it. Something’s wrong.

“When can we get to our first cooking lesson?” she asks. “Can we start today?”

“I reckon in a few days, after you go to the store and pick up what we need.”

She thinks about this a second, says, “Maybe you ought to go, Minny, since you know what to buy and all.”

I look at her. Most white women like to do their own shopping. “Alright, I go in the morning, then.”

I spot a small pink shag rug she’s put on top of the carpet next to the bathroom door. Kind of catty-cornered. I’m no decorator, but I know a pink rug doesn’t match a yellow room.

“Miss Celia, fore I get going here, I need to know. Exactly when you planning on telling Mister Johnny bout me?”

She eyes the magazine in her lap. “In a few months, I reckon. I ought to know how to cook and stuff by then.”

“By a few, is you meaning two?”

She bites her lipsticky lips. “I was thinking more like… four.”

Say what? I’m not working four months like an escaped criminal. “You ain’t gone tell him till 1963? No ma’am, before Christmas.”

She sighs. “Alright. But right before.”

I do some figuring. “That’s a hundred and… sixteen days then. You gone tell him. A hundred and sixteen days from now.”

She gives me a worried frown. I guess she didn’t expect the maid to be so good at math. Finally she says, “Okay.”

Then I tell her she needs to go on in the living room, let me do my work in here. When she’s gone, I eyeball the room, at how neat it all looks. Real slow, I open her closet and just like I thought, forty-five things fall down on my head. Then I look under the bed and find enough dirty clothes to where I bet she’s hasn’t washed in months.

Every drawer is a wreck, every hidden cranny full of dirty clothes and wadded-up stockings. I find fifteen boxes of new shirts for Mister Johnny so he won’t know she can’t wash and iron. Finally, I lift up that funny-looking pink shag rug. Underneath, there’s a big, deep stain the color of rust. I shudder.

That afternoon, Miss Celia and I make a list of what to cook that week, and the next morning I do the grocery shopping. But it takes me twice as long because I have to drive all the way to the white Jitney Jungle in town instead of the colored Piggly Wiggly by me since I figure she won’t eat food from a colored grocery store and I reckon I don’t blame her, with the potatoes having inch-long eyes and the milk almost sour. When I get to work, I’m ready to fight with her over all the reasons I’m late, but there Miss Celia is on the bed like before, smiling like it doesn’t matter. All dressed up and going nowhere. For five hours she sits there, reading the magazines. The only time I see her get up is for a glass of milk or to pee. But I don’t ask. I’m just the maid.

After I clean the kitchen, I go in the formal living room. I stop in the doorway and give that grizzly bear a good long stare. He’s seven feet tall and baring his teeth. His claws are long, curled, witchy-looking. At his feet lays a bone-handled hunting knife. I get closer and see his fur’s nappy with dust. There’s a cobweb between his jaws.

First, I swat at the dust with my broom, but it’s thick, matted up in his fur. All this does is move the dust around. So I take a cloth and try and wipe him down, but I squawk every time that wiry hair touches my hand. White people. I mean, I have cleaned everything from refrigerators to rear ends but what makes that lady think I know how to clean a damn grizzly bear?

I go get the Hoover. I suck the dirt off and except for a few spots where I sucked too hard and thinned him, I think it worked out pretty good.

After I’m done with the bear, I dust the fancy books nobody reads, the Confederate coat buttons, the silver pistol. On a table is a gold picture frame of Miss Celia and Mister Johnny at the altar and I look close to see what kind of man he is. I’m hoping he’s fat and short-legged in case it comes to running, but he’s not anywhere close. He’s strong, tall, thick. And he’s no stranger either. Lord. He’s the one who went steady with Miss Hilly all those years when I first worked for Miss Walters. I never met him, but I saw him enough times to be sure. I shiver, my fears tripling. Because that alone says more about that man than anything.

At one o’clock, Miss Celia comes in the kitchen and says she’s ready for her first cooking lesson. She settles on a stool. She’s wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker[32].

“What you know how to cook already?” I ask.

She thinks this over, wrinkling her forehead. “Maybe we could just start at the beginning.”

“Must be something you know. What your mama teach you growing up?”

She looks down at the webby feet of her stockings, says, “I can cook corn pone.”

I can’t help but laugh. “What else you know how to do sides corn pone?”

“I can boil potatoes.” Her voice drops even quieter. “And I can do grits. We didn’t have electric current out where I lived. But I’m ready to learn right. On a real stovetop.”

Lord. I’ve never met a white person worse off than me except for crazy Mister Wally, lives behind the Canton feed store and eats the cat food.

“You been feeding your husband grits and corn pone ever day?”

Miss Celia nods. “But you’ll teach me to cook right, won’t you?”

“I’ll try,” I say, even though I’ve never told a white woman what to do and I don’t really know how to start. I pull up my stockings, think about it. Finally, I point to the can on the counter.

“I reckon if there’s anything you ought a know about cooking, it’s this.”

“That’s just lard, ain’t it?”

“No, it ain’t just lard,” I say. “It’s the most important invention in the kitchen since jarred mayonnaise.”

“What’s so special about” – she wrinkles her nose at it – “pig fat?”

“Ain’t pig, it’s vegetable.” Who in this world doesn’t know what Crisco is? “You don’t have a clue of all the things you can do with this here can.”

She shrugs. “Fry?”

“Ain’t just for frying. You ever get a sticky something stuck in your hair, like gum?” I jackhammer my finger on the Crisco can. “That’s right, Crisco. Spread this on a baby’s bottom, you won’t even know what diaper rash is.” I plop three scoops in the black skillet. “Shoot, I seen ladies rub it under they eyes and on they husband’s scaly feet.”

“Look how pretty it is,” she says. “Like white cake frosting.”

“Clean the goo from a price tag, take the squeak out a door hinge. Lights get cut off, stick a wick in it and burn it like a candle.”

I turn on the flame and we watch it melt down in the pan. “And after all that, it’ll still fry your chicken.”

“Alright,” she says, concentrating hard. “What’s next?”

“Chicken’s been soaking in the buttermilk,” I say. “Now mix up the dry.[33]” I pour flour, salt, more salt, pepper, paprika, and a pinch of cayenne into a doubled paper sack.

“Now. Put the chicken parts in the bag and shake it.”

Miss Celia puts a raw chicken thigh in, bumps the bag around. “Like this? Just like the Shake ’n Bake commercials on the tee-vee?”

“Yeah,” I say and run my tongue up over my teeth because if that’s not an insult, I don’t know what is. “Just like the Shake ’n Bake.” But then I freeze. I hear the sound of a car motor out on the road. I hold still and listen. I see Miss Celia’s eyes are big and she’s listening too. We’re thinking the same thing: What if it’s him and where will I hide?

The car motor passes. We both breathe again.

“Miss Celia,” I grit my teeth, “how come you can’t tell your husband about me? Ain’t he gone know when the cooking gets good?”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that! Maybe we ought to burn the chicken a little.”

I look at her sideways. I ain’t burning no chicken. She didn’t answer the real question, but I’ll get it out of her soon enough.

Real careful, I lay the dark meat in the pan. It bubbles up like a song and we watch the thighs and legs turn brown. I look over and Miss Celia’s smiling at me.

“What? Something on my face?”

“No,” she says, tears coming up in her eyes. She touches my arm. “I’m just real grateful you’re here.”

I move my arm back from under her hand. “Miss Celia, you got a lot more to be grateful for than me.”

“I know.” She looks at her fancy kitchen like it’s something that tastes bad. “I never dreamed I’d have this much.”

“Well, ain’t you lucky[34].”

“I’ve never been happier in my whole life.”

I leave it at that. Underneath all that happy, she sure doesn’t look happy.

That night, I call Aibileen.

“Miss Hilly was at Miss Leefolt’s yesterday,” Aibileen says. “She ask if anybody knew where you was working.”

“Lordy, she find me out there, she ruirn it for sure.” It’s been two weeks since the Terrible Awful Thing I did to that woman. I know she’d just love to see me fired on the spot.

“What Leroy say when you told him you got the job?” Aibileen asks.

“Shoot. He strut around the kitchen like a plumed rooster cause he in front a the kids,” I say. “Act like he the only one supporting the family and I’m just doing this to keep my poor self entertained. Later on though, we in bed and I thought my big old bull for a husband gone cry.”

Aibileen laughs. “Leroy got a lot a pride.”

“Yeah, I just got to make sure Mister Johnny don’t catch up with me.”

“And she ain’t told you why she don’t want him to know?”

“All she say is she want him to think she can do the cooking and the cleaning herself. But that ain’t why. She hiding something from him.”

“Ain’t it funny how this worked out. Miss Celia can’t tell nobody, else it’ll get back to Mister Johnny. So Miss Hilly won’t find out, cause Miss Celia can’t tell nobody. You couldn’t a fixed it up better yourself.”

“Mm-hmm” is all I say. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, since Aibileen’s the one who got me the job. But I can’t help but think that I’ve just doubled my trouble, what with Miss Hilly and now Mister Johnny too.

“Minny, I been meaning to ask you.” Aibileen clears her throat. “You know that Miss Skeeter?”

“Tall one, used to come over to Miss Walters for bridge?”

“Yeah, what you think about her?”

“I don’t know, she white just like the rest of em. Why? What she say about me?”

“Nothing about you,” Aibileen says. “She just… a few weeks ago, I don’t know why I keep thinking about it. She ask me something. Ask do I want to change things. White woman never asked —”

But then Leroy stumbles in from the bedroom wanting his coffee before his late shift. “Shoot, he’s up,” I say. “Talk quick.”

“Naw, never mind. It’s nothing,” Aibileen says.

“What? What’s going on? What that lady tell you?”

“It was just jabber. It was nonsense.”

Chapter 4

My first week at Miss Celia’s, I scrub the house until there isn’t a dust rag or a stripped sheet or even a run stocking left to wipe with. Second week, I scrub the house again because it’s like the dirt grew back. Third week, I am satisfied and settle in my ways.

Every day, Miss Celia looks like she just can’t believe I’ve come back to work. I’m the only thing that interrupts all that quiet around her. My house is always full of five kids and neighbors and a husband. Most days when I come in to Miss Celia’s, I am grateful for the peace.

My housekeeping tasks fall on the same day for every job I take: on Monday, I oil up the furniture. Tuesday, I wash and iron the damn sheets, the day I hate. Wednesday is for scrubbing the bathtub real good even though I wipe it down every morning. Thursday is for polishing floors and sucking rugs, minding the antique ones with a hand broom so they don’t thread. Friday is heavy cooking for the weekend and what-have-you. And every day is mopping, washing clothes and ironing shirts so they don’t go getting out of hand, and generally keeping things clean. Silver and windows, they’re as needed. Since there aren’t any kids to look after, there’s ample time left for Miss Celia’s so-called cooking lesson.

Miss Celia never does any entertaining, so we just fix whatever she and Mister Johnny are having for supper: pork chops, fried chicken, roast beef, chicken pie, lamb rack, baked ham, fried tomatoes, mashed potatoes, plus the vegetables. Or at least I cook and Miss Celia fidgets, looking more like a five-year-old than the rich lady paying my rent. When the lesson’s over, she rushes back to laying down. In fact, the only time Miss Celia walks ten feet is to come in the kitchen for her lesson or to sneak upstairs every two or three days, up in the creepy rooms.

I don’t know what she does for five minutes on the second floor. I don’t like it up there though. Those bedrooms should be stacked full of kids laughing and hollering and pooping up the place. But it’s none of my business what Miss Celia does with her day, and ask me, I’m glad she’s staying out of my way. I’ve followed ladies around with a broom in one hand and a trash can in the other trying to keep up with their mess. As long as she stays in that bed, then I’ve got a job. Even though she has zero kids and nothing to do all day, she is the laziest woman I’ve ever seen. Including my sister Doreena who never lifted a royal finger growing up because she had the heart defect that we later found out was a fly on the X-ray machine.

And it’s not just the bed. Miss Celia won’t leave the house except to get her hair frosted and her ends trimmed. So far, that’s only happened once in the three weeks I’ve been working. Thirty-six years old and I can still hear my mama telling me, It ain’t nobody’s business. But I want to know what that lady’s so scared of outside this place.

Every payday, I give Miss Celia the count. “Ninety-nine more days till you tell Mister Johnny bout me.”

“Golly, the time’s going by quick,” she’ll say with kind of a sick look.

“Cat got on the porch this morning, bout give me a cadillac arrest[35] thinking it was Mister Johnny.”

Like me, Miss Celia gets a little more nervous the closer we get to the deadline. I don’t know what that man will do when she tells him. Maybe he’ll tell her to fire me.

“I hope that’s enough time, Minny. Do you think I’m getting any better at cooking?” she says, and I look at her. She’s got a pretty smile, white straight teeth, but she is the worst cook I have ever seen.

So I back up and teach her the simplest things because I want her to learn and learn it fast. See, I need her to explain to her husband why a hundred-and-sixty-five-pound Negro woman has keys to his house. I need him to know why I have his sterling silver and Miss Celia’s zillion-karat ruby earrings in my hand every day. I need him to know this before he walks in one fine day and calls the police. Or saves a dime and takes care of business himself.

“Get the ham hock out, make sure you got enough water in there, that’s right. Now turn up the flame. See that little bubble there, that means the water’s happy.”

Miss Celia stares down into the pot like she’s looking for her future. “Are you happy, Minny?”

“Why you ask me funny questions like that?”

“But are you?”

“Course I’s happy. You happy too. Big house, big yard, husband looking after you.” I frown at Miss Celia and I make sure she can see it. Because ain’t that white people for you, wondering if they are happy enough.

And when Miss Celia burns the beans, I try and use some of that self-control my mama swore I was born without. “Alright,” I say through my teeth, “we’ll do another batch fore Mister Johnny get home.”

Any other woman I’ve worked for, I would’ve loved to have had just one hour of bossing them around, see how they like it. But Miss Celia, the way she stares at me with those big eyes like I’m the best thing since hairspray in the can, I almost rather she’d order me around like she’s supposed to. I start to wonder if her laying down all the time has anything to do with her not telling Mister Johnny about me. I guess she can see the suspicious in my eye too, because one day, out of the blue[36] she says:

“I get these nightmares a lot, that I have to go back to Sugar Ditch and live! That’s why I lay down so much.” Then she nods real fast, like she’s been rehearsing this. “Cause I don’t sleep real well at night.”

I give her a stupid smile, like I really believe this, and go back to wiping the mirrors.

“Don’t do it too good. Leave some smudges.”

It’s always something, mirrors, floors, a dirty glass in the sink or the trash can full. “We’ve got to make it believable,” she’ll say and I find myself reaching for that dirty glass a hundred times to wash it. I like things clean, put away.

“I wish I could tend to that azalea bush out there,” Miss Celia says one day. She’s taken to laying on the couch while my stories are on, interrupting the whole time. I’ve been tuned in to The Guiding Light for twenty-six years, since I was ten years old and listening to it on Mama’s radio.

A Dreft commercial comes on and Miss Celia stares out the back window at the colored man raking up the leaves. She’s got so many azalea bushes, her yard’s going to look like Gone With the Wind[37] come spring. I don’t like azaleas and I sure didn’t like that movie, the way they made slavery look like a big happy tea party. If I’d played Mammy[38], I’d of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Make her own damn man-catching dress.

“And I know I could make that rose bush bloom if I pruned it back,” Miss Celia says. “But the first thing I’d do is cut down that mimosa tree.”

“What’s wrong with that tree?” I press the corner of my iron into Mister Johnny’s collar-point. I don’t even have a shrub, much less a tree, in my entire yard.

“I don’t like those hairy flowers.” She gazes off like she’s gone soft in the head. “They look like little baby hairs.”

I get the creepers with her talking that way. “You know about flowers?”

She sighs. “I used to love to tend to my flowers back in Sugar Ditch. I learned to grow things hoping I could pretty up all that ugliness.”

“Go head outside then,” I say, trying not to sound too excited. “Take some exercise. Get some fresh air.” Get out a here.

“No,” Miss Celia sighs. “I shouldn’t be running around out there. I need to be still.”

It’s really starting to irritate me how she never leaves the house, how she smiles like the maid walking in every morning is the best part of her day. It’s like an itch. Every day I reach for it and can’t quite scratch it. Every day, it itches a little worse. Every day she’s there.

“Maybe you ought to go make some friends,” I say. “Lot a ladies your age in town.”

She frowns up at me. “I’ve been trying. I can’t tell you the umpteen times I’ve called those ladies to see if I can help with the Children’s Benefit or do something from home. But they won’t call me back. None of them.”

I don’t say anything to this because ain’t that a surprise. With her bosoms hanging out and her hair colored Gold Nugget.

“Go shopping then. Go get you some new clothes. Go do whatever white women do when the maid’s home.”

“No, I think I’ll go rest awhile,” she says and two minutes later I hear her creeping around upstairs in the empty bedrooms.

The mimosa branch knocks against the window and I jump, burn my thumb. I squeeze my eyes shut to slow my heart. Ninety-four more days of this mess and I don’t know how I can take a minute more.

“Mama, fix me something to eat. I’m hungry.” That’s what my youngest girl, Kindra, who’s five, said to me last night. With a hand on her hip and her foot stuck out.

I have five kids and I take pride that I taught them yes ma’am and please before they could even say cookie.

All except one.

“You ain’t having nothing till supper,” I told her.

“Why you so mean to me? I hate you,” she yelled and ran out the door.

I set my eyes on the ceiling because that’s a shock I will never get used to, even with four before her. The day your child says she hates you, and every child will go through the phase, it kicks like a foot in the stomach.

But Kindra, Lord. It’s not just a phase I’m seeing. That girl is turning out just like me.

I’m standing in Miss Celia’s kitchen thinking about last night, what with Kindra and her mouth, Benny and his asthma, my husband Leroy coming home drunk two times last week. He knows that’s the one thing I can’t stand after nursing my drunk daddy for ten years, me and Mama working ourselves to death so he had a full bottle. I guess I ought to be more upset about all this, but last night, as an I’m sorry, Leroy came home with a sack of early okra. He knows it’s my favorite thing to eat. Tonight I’m going to fry up that okra in some cornmeal and eat like my mama never let me.

That’s not the only treat to my day either. It’s October first and here I am peeling peaches. Mister Johnny’s mama brought back two crates from Mexico, heavy as baseballs. They are ripe and sweet and like cutting through butter. I don’t take charity from white ladies because I know they just want me to owe them. But when Miss Celia told me to take a dozen peaches home I pulled out a sack and plopped twelve right in. When I get home tonight, I’m eating fried okra for supper and peach cobbler for dessert.

I’m watching the long, fuzzy peel fold down into Miss Celia’s basin, paying no mind at all to the driveway. Usually when I’m standing at her kitchen sink, I map out my getaway from Mister Johnny. The kitchen’s the best room for it because the front window looks out to the street. Tall azalea bushes hide my face, but I can see through enough to spot an approacher. If he came in the front door, the back door would escape me into the garage. If he came in the back, I could slip out the front. Another door in the kitchen leads out to the backyard, just in case. But what with the juice running down my hand and me nearabout drunk on the butter smell, I am lost in a peach-peeling reverie. I don’t even notice the blue truck pull in.

The man’s made it halfway up the walk by the time I look up. I catch a sliver of a white shirt, the variety of which I’m used to ironing every day, and the leg of a pair of khaki pants like I hang up in Mister Johnny’s closet. I choke on a yelp. My knife clatters in the sink.

“Miss Celia!” I dash into her bedroom. “Mister Johnny home!”

Miss Celia jumps out of bed faster than I’ve seen her move before. I turn around in an idiot circle. Where am I going? Which way do I go? What happened to my getaway plan? And then I snap into decision – the guest bathroom!

I slip in and keep the door cracked. I crouch up on the toilet seat so he can’t see my feet under the door. It’s dark in here and hot. I feel like my head’s on fire. Sweat drips off my chin and splats on the floor. I feel sick by the thick smell of gardenia soaps by the sink.

I hear footsteps. I hold my breath.

The footsteps stop. My heart is thumping like a cat in a clothes dryer. What if Miss Celia pretends she doesn’t know me so she won’t get in trouble? Acts like I’m a burglar? Oh, I hate her! I hate that stupid woman!

I listen, but all I can hear is my own panting. The thud-thud in my chest. My ankles hurt and creak, holding up my body like this.

My eyes grow sharper in the dark. After a minute, I see myself in the mirror over the sink. Crouched like a fool on top of a white lady’s toilet.

Look at me. Look what it’s come to for Minny Jackson to make a damn living[39].