I wondered then, if he knew I was hiding something from him. It scared me that he might find out about the stories, and thrilled me that he was even interested.

“When you’re ready. I won’t push you,” he said.

“Maybe sometime I’ll let you,” I said, feeling my eyes close.

“Go to sleep, baby,” he said, stroking my hair back from my face. “Let me just sit here with you for a while.”

With Stuart out of town for the next six days, I can concentrate solely on the interviews. I head to Aibileen’s every night as nervous as the first time. The women are tall, short, black like asphalt or caramel brown. If your skin is too white, I’m told, you’ll never get hired. The blacker the better. The talk turns mundane at times, with complaints of low pay, hard hours, bratty children. But then there are stories of white babies dying in arms. That soft, empty look in their still blue eyes.

“Olivia she was called. Just a tiny baby, with her tiny hand holding on to my finger, breathing so hard,” Fanny Amos says, our fourth interview. “Her mama wasn’t even home, gone to the store for mentholatum. It was just me and the daddy. He wouldn’t let me put her down, told me to hold her till the doctor get there. Baby grew cold in my arms.”

There is undisguised hate for white women, there is inexplicable love. Faye Belle, palsied and gray-skinned, cannot remember her own age. Her stories unfold like soft linen. She remembers hiding in a steamer trunk with a little white girl while Yankee soldiers stomped through the house. Twenty years ago, she held that same white girl, by then an old woman, in her arms while she died. Each proclaimed their love as best friends. Swore that death could not change this. That color meant nothing. The white woman’s grandson still pays Faye Belle’s rent. When she’s feeling strong, Faye Belle sometimes goes over and cleans up his kitchen.

Louvenia is my fifth interview. She is Lou Anne Templeton’s maid and I recognize her from serving me at bridge club. Louvenia tells me how her grandson, Robert, was blinded earlier this year by a white man, because he used a white bathroom. I recall reading about it in the paper as Louvenia nods, waits for me to catch up on my typewriter. There is no anger in her voice at all. I learn that Lou Anne, whom I find dull and vapid and have never paid much mind to, gave Louvenia two weeks off with pay so she could help her grandson. She brought casseroles to Louvenia’s house seven times during those weeks. She rushed Louvenia to the colored hospital when the first call came about Robert and waited there six hours with her, until the operation was over. Lou Anne has never mentioned this to any of us. And I understand completely why she wouldn’t.

Angry stories come out, of white men who’ve tried to touch them. Winnie said she was forced over and over. Cleontine said she fought until his face bled and he never tried again. But the dichotomy of love and disdain living side-by-side is what surprises me. Most are invited to attend the white children’s weddings, but only if they’re in their uniforms. These things I know already, yet hearing them from colored mouths, it is as if I am hearing them for the first time.

WE CANNOT TALK for several minutes after Gretchen’s left.

“Let’s just move on,” Aibileen says. “We don’t got to... count that one.”

Gretchen is Yule May’s first cousin. She attended the prayer meeting for Yule May that Aibileen hosted weeks ago, but she belongs to a different church.

“I don’t understand why she agreed if...” I want to go home. The tendons in my neck have locked tight. My fingers are trembling from typing and from listening to Gretchen’s words.

“I’m sorry, I had no idea she gone do that.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say. I want to ask her how much of what Gretchen said is true. But I can’t. I can’t look Aibileen in the face.

I’d explained the “rules” to Gretchen, just like with the others. Gretchen had leaned back in her chair. I thought she was thinking about a story to tell. But she said, “Look at you. Another white lady trying to make a dollar off of colored people.”

I glanced back at Aibileen, not sure how to respond to this. Was I not clear on the money part? Aibileen tilted her head like she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.

“You think anybody’s ever going to read this thing?” Gretchen laughed. She was trim in her uniform dress. She wore lipstick, the same color pink me and my friends wore. She was young. She spoke evenly and with care, like a white person. I don’t know why, but that made it worse.

“All the colored women you’ve interviewed, they’ve been real nice, haven’t they?”

“Yes,” I’d said. “Very nice.”

Gretchen looked me straight in the eye.“They hate you. You know that, right? Every little thing about you. But you’re so dumb, you think you’re doing them a favor.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “You volunteered—”

“You know the nicest thing a white woman’s ever done for me? Given me the heel on her bread. The colored women coming in here, they’re just playing a big trick on you. They’ll never tell you the truth, lady.”

“You don’t have any idea what the other women have told me,” I said. I was surprised by how dense my anger felt, and how easily it sprang up.

“Say it, lady, say the word you think every time one of us comes in the door.Nigger.”

Aibileen stood up from her stool.“That’s enough, Gretchen. You go on home.”

“And you know what, Aibileen? You are just as dumb as she is,” Gretchen said.

I was shocked when Aibileen pointed to the door and hissed,“You get out a my house.”

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31