Three days after my conversation with Mother on the porch, I spread out the help-wanted ads from the Jackson Journal on my desk. All morning, Mothers been following me around with a new hair-straightening thing while Daddys been on the front porch growling and goddamning the cotton fields because theyre melting like summer snow. Besides boll weevils, rain is just about the worst thing that can happen at harvest time. Its hardly September but the fall drenches have already begun.
My red pen in hand, I scan the squat, single column under help wanted: female.
Kenningtons Dept. Str. seeks salesgirls w/poise, manners & a smile!
Trim, young secretary wanted. Typing not nec. Call Mr. Sanders. Jesus, if he doesnt want her to type, what does he want her to do?
Jr. Stenographer wanted, Percy & Gray, LP, $1.25/hr. This is new. I draw a circle around it.
No one could argue that I hadnt worked hard at Ole Miss. While my friends were out drinking rum and Cokes at Phi Delta Theta parties and pinning on mum corsages, I sat in the study parlor and wrote for hours mostly term papers but also short stories, bad poetry, episodes of Dr. Kildare, Pall Mall jingles, letters of complaint, ransom notes, love letters to boys Id seen in class but hadnt had the nerve to speak to, all of which I never mailed. Sure, I dreamed of having football dates[42], but my real dream was that one day I would write something that people would actually read.
Fourth term of my senior year, I only applied to one job, but it was a good one, being six hundred miles away from Mississippi. Piling twenty-two dimes in the Oxford Mart pay phone, Id inquired about an editor position at the Harper & Row publishing house on 33rd Street in Manhattan. Id seen the ad in The New York Times down at the Ole Miss library and mailed them my résumé that very day. On a sprig of hope, I even called about an apartment listing on East 85th Street, a one-bedroom with hot plate for forty-five dollars a month. Delta Airlines told me a one-way ticket to Idlewild Airport would cost seventy-three dollars. I didnt have the sense to apply for more than one job at a time and I never even heard back from them.
My eyes drift down to help wanted: male. There are at least four columns filled with bank managers, accountants, loan officers, cotton collate operators. On this side of the page, Percy & Gray, LP, is offering Jr. Stenographers fifty cents more an hour.
Miss Skeeter, you got a phone call, I hear Pascagoula holler at the bottom of the stairs.
I go downstairs to the only phone in the house. Pascagoula holds the phone out to me. She is as tiny as a child, not even five feet tall, and black as night. Her hair is curly around her head and her white uniform dress has been tailored to fit her short arms and legs.
Miss Hilly on the phone for you, she says, and hands it to me with a wet hand.
I sit at the white iron table. The kitchen is large and square and hot. Black-and-white linoleum tiles are cracked in places, worn thin in front of the sink. The new silver dishwashing machine sits in the middle of the room, attached to a hose stretched from the faucet.
Hes coming next weekend, Hilly says. On Saturday night. You free?
Gee, let me check my calendar, I say. All traces of our bridge-club argument are gone from Hillys voice. Im suspicious but relieved.
I cant believe this is finally going to happen, Hilly says, because shes been trying to set me up[43] for months with her husbands cousin. Shes intent on it even though hes much too good-looking for me, not to mention a state senators son.
Dont you think we should meet first? I ask. I mean, before we go out on an actual date?
Dont be nervous. William and I will be right next to you the whole time.
I sigh. The dates been canceled twice already. I can only hope itll be put off again. And yet Im flattered that Hilly has so much faith that someone like him would be interested in someone like me.
Oh, and I need you to come on by and pick up these notes, Hilly says. I want my initiative in the next newsletter[44], a full page next to the photo ops.
I pause. The bathroom thing? Even though it was only a few days ago that shed brought this up at bridge club, Id hoped it was forgotten.
Its called the Home Help Sanitation Initiative William Junior you get down or I will snatch you baldheaded Yule May get in here and I want it in this week.
I am editor of the League newsletter. But Hilly is president. And shes trying to tell me what to print.
Ill see. I dont know if theres room[45], I lie.
From the sink, Pascagoula sneaks a look at me, as if she can hear what Hillys saying. I look over at Constantines bathroom, now Pascagoulas. Its off the kitchen. The doors half open and I can see a tiny room with a toilet, a pull string flusher at the top, a bulb with a yellowing plastic shade. The small corner sink hardly holds a glass of water. Ive never once been inside. When we were kids, Mother told us shed spank us if we went in Constantines bathroom. I miss Constantine more than anything Ive ever missed in my life.