The Help by Kathryn Stockett Read Free Book Online

Miss Celia, she just smiles, washes the muck off her hands in a sink full of dishes. I wonder if maybe I’ve found myself another deaf one, like Miss Walters was. Let’s hope so.
    “I just can’t seem to get the hang of kitchen work,” she says and even with Marilyn’s whispery Hollywood voice, I can tell right off, she’s from way out in the country. I look down and see the fool doesn’t have any shoes on, like some kind of white trash. Nice white ladies don’t go around barefoot.
    She’s probably ten or fifteen years younger than me, twenty-two, twenty-three, and she’s real pretty, but why’s she wearing all that goo on her face? I’ll bet she’s got on double the makeup the other white ladies wear. She’s got a lot more bosom to her, too. In fact, she’s almost as big as me except she’s skinny in all those places I ain’t. I just hope she’s an eater. Because I’m a cooker and that’s why people hire me.
    “Can I get you a cold drink?” she asks. “Set down and I’ll bring you something.”
    And that’s my clue: something funny’s going on here.
    “Leroy, she got to be crazy,” I said when she called me up three days ago and asked if I’d come interview, “cause everbody in town think I stole Miss Walters’ silver. And I know she do too cause she call Miss Walters up on the phone when I was there.”
    “White people strange,” Leroy said. “Who knows, maybe that old woman give you a good word.”
    I look at Miss Celia Rae Foote hard. I’ve never in my life had a white woman tell me to sit down so she can serve me a cold drink. Shoot, now I’m wondering if this fool even plans on hiring a maid or if she just drug me all the way out here for sport.
    “Maybe we better go on and see the house first, ma’am.”
    She smiles like the thought never entered that hairsprayed head of hers, letting me see the house I might be cleaning.
    “Oh, of course. Come on in yonder, Maxie. I’ll show you the fancy dining room first.”
    “The name,” I say, “is Minny.”
    Maybe she’s not deaf or crazy. Maybe she’s just stupid. A shiny hope rises up in me again.
    All over that big ole doodied up house she walks and talks and I follow. There are ten rooms downstairs and one with a stuffed grizzly bear that looks like it ate up the last maid and is biding for the next one. A burned-up Confederate flag is framed on the wall, and on the table is an old silver pistol with the name “Confederate General John Foote” engraved on it. I bet Great-Grandaddy Foote scared some slaves with that thing.
    We move on and it starts to look like any nice white house. Except this one’s the biggest I’ve ever been in and full of dirty floors and dusty rugs, the kind folks who don’t know any better would say is worn out, but I know an antique when I see one. I’ve worked in some fine homes. I just hope she ain’t so country she don’t own a Hoover.
    “Johnny’s mama wouldn’t let me decorate a thing. I had my way, there’d be wall-to-wall white carpet and gold trim and none of this old stuff.”
    “Where your people from?” I ask her.
    “I’m from…Sugar Ditch.” Her voice drops down a little. Sugar Ditch is as low as you can go in Mississippi, maybe the whole United States. It’s up in Tunica County, almost to Memphis. I saw pictures in the paper one time, showing those tenant shacks. Even the white kids looked like they hadn’t had a meal for a week.
    Miss Celia tries to smile, says, “This is my first time hiring a maid.”
    “Well you sure need one.” Now, Minny —
    “I was real glad to get the recommendation from Missus Walters. She told me all about you. Said your cooking is the best in town.”
    That makes zero sense to me. After what I did to Miss Hilly, right in front of Miss Walters to see? “She say…anything else about me?”
    But Miss Celia’s already walking up a big curving staircase. I follow her upstairs, to a long hall with sun coming through the windows. Even though