The Help: Chapters 1–6

I tote Mae Mobley into the kitchen and put her in her high chair, thinking about two chores I need to finish today fore Miss Leefolt have a fit: separate the napkins that started to fray and straighten up the silver service in the cabinet.

I spoon out the congealed salad and the ham sandwiches, can’t help but listen to the chatter.

She got this way a clearing her throat real delicate-like that get everbody’s attention without they even knowing she made em do it.

“That’s exactly why I’ve designed the Home Help Sanitation Initiative,” Miss Hilly say. “As a disease-preventative measure.”

That means after I pay the light bill, the water bill, the gas bill, and the telephone bill, I got thirteen dollars and fifty cents a week left for my groceries, my clothes, getting my hair done, and tithing to the church.

This a real predicament, see. I gave this Miss Celia woman Minny’s number at home, but Minny working today cause Miss Walter lonely. So when she call, Leroy gone give her Miss Walter number cause he a fool. If Miss Walter answer the phone when Miss Celia call, then the whole jig is up.

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 KitchenAid mixer are all sitting in about a quarter-inch of snow flour.

Since there aren’t any kids to look after, there’s ample time left for Miss Celia’s so-called cooking lesson.

But what with the juice running down my hand and me near about drunk on the butter smell, I am lost in a peach-peeling reverie.

“If you’d just show a little gumption, Eugenia—”

What I needed to do was find an apartment in town, the kind of building where single, plain girls lived, spinsters, secretaries, teachers.

I slip off my flats and walk down the front porch steps, while Mother calls out for me to put my shoes back on, threatening ringworm, mosquito encephalitis.

By the time I was seventeen, Mother would rather I suffered from apoplectic diarrhea than stand up straight.

Mrs. Charlotte Phelan’s Guide to Husband-Hunting, Rule Number One: a pretty, petite girl should accentuate with makeup and good posture. A tall plain one, with a trust fund.

My childhood bedroom is the top floor of my parents’ house. It has white-frosting chair rails and pink cherubs in the molding.

After Mother berates me about finding a husband every other day, I have to sleep in a wedding cake.

If I begged and practiced my catechism, Mother would sometimes let me go home with Constantine on Friday afternoons.

Constantine wasn’t just tall, she was stout. She was also wide in the hips and her knees gave her trouble all the time.

There were always dogs, hollow-stomached and mangy, laid out in the road.

I was smart, but I was as naïve as they come.

She stared at me and I saw a deep, bleak sadness there, inside of her.

She wrote me every mundane detail of Longleaf: My back pains are bad but it’s my feet that are worse, or The mixer broke off from the bowl and flew wild around the kitchen and the cat hollered and ran off.

Having once been an ambitious young lady myself however, I’ve decided to offer you some advice: go to your local newspaper and get an entry-level job.

I have just received correspondence, maybe even encouragement, from New York City and I say the name aloud: “Elaine Stein.”

By the next day, I am ready to mail my first letter to Elaine Stein, listing the ideas I thought worthy journalism material: the prevalence of illiteracy in Mississippi; the high number of drunk-driving accidents in our county; the limited job opportunities for women.

Inside, four men in suits bang away on typewriters and scratch with pencils. They are bent over, haggard, three with just a horseshoe of hair left.

He gives me a surprisingly appreciative look, from my flat shoes to my flat hairstyle. Some dormant instinct tells me to smile, run my hand through my hair.

I look away, wondering if everyone in town will be thinking the same thing. Already the joy is fleeting.

Living at home, whenever I want to leave Longleaf, I have to ask Mother if I can borrow her car. Which means she’ll ask where I’m going. Which means I have to lie to her on a daily basis, which is in itself enjoyable but a little degrading at the same time.

She has on a blue bathrobe and jumbo-sized rollers, making her head look huge, her body even more waif-like than it is.

Elizabeth fiddles with a clump of hair that’s slipped out of her roller, grimaces at its obstinacy.

Hilly nods, mulling this over.

"'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...”’

I stare across my room at the rose wallpaper, the eyelet curtains, the yellowing photographs so familiar they are nearly contemptible.

The fields are brown and crisp with dead cotton stalks, defoliated so the machines can get to the bolls.

Aibileen is no more than cordial with me, nervous, stands at the kitchen sink and never stops working.

Mama, of course, is glued to the color picture, oohing and aahing at the vibrant reds and blues of the team.

Mother finds it inexplicable that I don’t want to watch my alma mater throw a ball around.

So I lean against the counter and present the latest conundrum: how to keep the dogs from getting into your trash cans outside.

And yet, I am awed by my friend, by her tenacity for me.