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? Im not working four months like an escaped criminal. You aint gone tell him till 1963? No maam, before Christmas.
She sighs. Alright. But right before.
I do some figuring. Thats 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 didnt expect the maid to be so good at math. Finally she says, Okay.
She gives me a worried frown. I guess she didnt 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 shes 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 shes hasnt 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 wont know she cant wash and iron. Finally, I lift up that funny-looking pink shag rug. Underneath, theres 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 wont eat food from a colored grocery store and I reckon I dont blame her, with the potatoes having inch-long eyes and the milk almost sour. When I get to work, Im ready to fight with her over all the reasons Im late, but there Miss Celia is on the bed like before, smiling like it doesnt 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 dont ask. Im 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. Hes 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 furs nappy with dust. Theres a cobweb between his jaws.
First, I swat at the dust with my broom, but its 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 Im 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. Im hoping hes fat and short-legged in case it comes to running, but hes not anywhere close. Hes strong, tall, thick. And hes no stranger either. Lord. Hes 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 oclock, Miss Celia comes in the kitchen and says shes ready for her first cooking lesson. She settles on a stool. Shes 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 cant 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 didnt have electric current out where I lived. But Im ready to learn right. On a real stovetop.
Lord. Ive 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 youll teach me to cook right, wont you?
Ill try, I say, even though Ive never told a white woman what to do and I dont 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 theres anything you ought a know about cooking, its this.
Thats just lard, aint it?
No, it aint just lard, I say. Its the most important invention in the kitchen since jarred mayonnaise.