I try to smile, like Im confident it will work this time, despite the idea she explained over the phone. Could we sit in the kitchen this time? I ask. Would you mind?
Alright. Aint nothing to look at, but come on back.
The kitchen is about half the size of the living room, and warmer. It smells like tea and lemons. The black-and-white linoleum floor has been scrubbed thin. Theres just enough counter for the china tea-set.
I set the typewriter on a scratched red table under the window. Aibileen starts to pour the hot water into the teapot.
Oh, none for me, thanks, I say and reach in my bag. I brought us some Co-Colas if you want one. Ive tried to come up with ways to make Aibileen more comfortable. Number One: dont make her feel like she has to serve me.
Well, aint that nice. I usually dont take my tea till later anyway. She brings over an opener and two glasses. I drink mine straight from the bottle and, seeing this, she pushes the glasses aside, does the same.
I called Aibileen after Elizabeth gave me the note, and listened hopefully as Aibileen told me her idea for her to write her own words down and then show me whats shes written. I tried to act excited. But I know Ill have to rewrite everything shes written, wasting even more time. I thought it might make it easier if she could see it in typeface instead of me reading it and telling her it cant work this way.
We smile at each other. I take a sip of my Coke, smooth my blouse. So I say.
Aibileen has a wire-ringed notebook in front of her. Want me to just go head and read?
Sure, I say.
We both take deep breaths and she begins reading in a slow, steady voice.
My first white baby to ever look after was named Alton Carrington Speers. It was 1924 and Id just turned fifteen years old. Alton was a long, skinny baby with hair fine as silk on a corn
I begin typing as she reads, her words rhythmic, pronounced more clearly than her usual talk. Every window in that filthy house was painted shut on the inside, even though the house was big with a wide green lawn. I knew the air was bad, felt sick myself
Hang on, I say. Ive typed wide greem. I blow on the typing fluid, retype it. Okay, go ahead.
When the mama died, six months later, she reads, of the lung disease, they kept me on to raise Alton until they moved away to Memphis. I loved that baby and he loved me and thats when I knew I was good at making children feel proud of themselves
I hadnt wanted to insult Aibileen when she told me her idea. I tried to urge her out of it, over the phone. Writing isnt that easy. And you wouldnt have time for this anyway, Aibileen, not with a full-time job.
Cant be much different than writing my prayers every night.
It was the first interesting thing shed told me about herself since wed started the project, so Id grabbed the shopping pad in the pantry. You dont say your prayers, then?
I never told nobody that before. Not even Minny. Find I can get my point across a lot better writing em down.
So this is what you do on the weekends? I asked. In your spare time? I liked the idea of capturing her life outside of work, when she wasnt under the eye of Elizabeth Leefolt.
Oh no, I write a hour, sometimes two ever day. Lot a ailing, sick peoples in this town.
I was impressed. That was more than I wrote on some days. I told her wed try it just to get the project going again.
Aibileen takes a breath, a swallow of Coke, and reads on.
She backtracks to her first job at thirteen, cleaning the Francis the First silver service at the governors mansion. She reads how on her first morning, she made a mistake on the chart where you filled in the number of pieces so theyd know you hadnt stolen anything.
I come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a months worth a light bill for. I guess thats when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame aint black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.
Aibileen looks up to see what I think. I stop typing. Id expected the stories to be sweet, glossy. I realize I might be getting more than Id bargained for[110]. She reads on.
so I go on and get the chiffarobe straightened out and before I know it, that little white boy done cut his fingers clean off in that window fan I asked her to take out ten times. I never seen that much red come out a person and I grab the boy, I grab them four fingers. Tote him to the colored hospital cause I didnt know where the white one was. But when I got there, a colored man stop me and say, Is this boy white? The typewriter keys are clacking like hail on a roof. Aibileen is reading faster and I am ignoring my mistakes, stopping her only to put in another page. Every eight seconds, I fling the carriage aside.
And I say, Yessuh, and he say, Is them his white fingers? And I say, Yessuh, and he say, Well, you better tell em he your high yellow cause that colored doctor wont operate on a white boy in a Negro hospital. And then a white policeman grab me and he say, Now you look a here