Aibileen hurries to the bedroom and comes back with a list. I better mark the ones I want first. I been on the waiting list for To Kill a Mockingbird at the Carver Library near bout three months now. Less see
I watch as she puts checkmarks next to the books: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois[113], poems by Emily Dickinson[114] (any), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I read some a that back in school, but I didnt get to finish. She keeps marking, stopping to think which one she wants next.
You want a book by Sigmund Freud?
Oh, people crazy. She nods. I love reading about how the head work. You ever dream you fall in a lake? He say you dreaming about your own self being born. Miss Frances, who I work for in 1957, she had all them books.
On her twelfth title, I have to know. Aibileen, how long have you been wanting to ask me this? If Id check these books out for you?
A while. She shrugs. I guess Is afraid to mention it.
Did you think Id say no?
These is white rules. I dont know which ones you following and which ones you aint.
We look at each other a second. Im tired of the rules, I say.
Aibileen chuckles and looks out the window. I realize how thin this revelation must sound to her.
For four days straight, I sit at my typewriter in my bedroom. Twenty of my typed pages, full of slashes and red-circled edits, become thirty-one on thick Strathmore white. I write a short biography of Sarah Ross, the name Aibileen chose, after her sixth-grade teacher who died years ago. I include her age, what her parents did for a living. I follow this with Aibileens own stories, just as she wrote them, simple, straightforward.
On day three, Mother calls up the stairs to ask what in the world Im doing up there all day and I holler down, Just typing up some notes from the Bible study. Just writing down all the things I love about Jesus. I hear her tell Daddy, in the kitchen after supper, Shes up to something.[115] I carry my little white baptism Bible around the house, to make it more believable.
I read and re-read and then take the pages to Aibileen in the evenings and she does the same. She smiles and nods over the nice parts where everyone gets along fine but on the bad parts she takes off her black reading glasses and says, I know I wrote it, but you really want to put that in about the
And I say, Yes, I do. But I am surprised myself by whats in these stories, of separate colored refrigerators at the governors mansion, of white women throwing two-year-old fits over wrinkled napkins, white babies calling Aibileen Mama.
At three a.m., with only two white correction marks on what is now twenty-seven pages, I slide the manuscript into a yellow envelope. Yesterday, I made a long-distance phone call to Missus Steins office. Her secretary, Ruth, said she was in a meeting. She took down my message, that the interview is on its way. There was no call back from Missus Stein today.
I hold the envelope to my heart and almost weep from exhaustion, doubt. I mail it at the Canton P.O. the next morning. I come home and lie down on my old iron bed, worrying over what will happen if she likes it. What if Elizabeth or Hilly catches us at what were doing? What if Aibileen gets fired, sent to jail? I feel like Im falling down a long spiral tunnel. God, would they beat her the way they beat the colored boy who used the white bathroom? What am I doing? Why am I putting her at such risk?
I go to sleep. I have nightmares for the next fifteen hours straight.
Its a quarter past one and Hilly and Elizabeth and I are sitting at Elizabeths dining room table waiting on Lou Anne to show up. Ive had nothing to eat today except Mothers sexual-correction tea and I feel nauseous, jumpy. My foot is wagging under the table. Ive been like this for ten days, ever since I mailed Aibileens stories to Elaine Stein. I called once and Ruth said she passed it on to her four days ago, but still Ive heard nothing.
Is this not just the rudest thing youve ever heard of? Hilly looks at her watch and scowls. This is Lou Annes second time to be late. She wont last long in our group with Hilly around.
Aibileen walks in the dining room and I do my best not to look at her for too long. I am afraid Hilly or Elizabeth will see something in my eyes.
Stop jiggling your foot, Skeeter. Youre shaking the whole entire table, Hilly says.
Aibileen moves around the room in her easy, white-uniformed stride, not showing even a hint of what weve done. I guess shes grown deft at hiding her feelings.
Hilly shuffles and deals out a hand of gin rummy[116]. I try to concentrate on the game, but little facts keep jumping in my head every time I look at Elizabeth. About Mae Mobley using the garage bathroom, how Aibileen cant keep her lunch in the Leefolts refrigerator. Small details Im privy to now.
Aibileen offers me a biscuit from a silver tray. She fills my iced tea like we are the strangers we were meant to be. Ive been to her house twice since I mailed the package to New York, both times to trade out her library books.