The irritating part is, after Miss Celia makes these stupid calls and hangs up the phone, she picks that receiver right back up. She listens for a dial tone in case the line doesn't go free.

"Ain't nothing wrong with that phone," I say. She just keeps smiling at me like she's been doing for a month now, like she's got a pocketful of paper money.

"Why you in such a good mood?" I finally ask her. "Mister Johnny being sweet or something?" I'm loading up my next "When you gone tell" but she beats me to it.

"Oh, he's being sweet alright," she says. "And it's not gonna be much longer until I tell him about you."

"Good," I say and I mean it. I am sick of this lying game. I imagine how she must smile at Mister Johnny when she hands him my pork chops, how that nice man has to act like he's so proud of her when he knows it's me doing the cooking. She's making a fool of herself, a fool of her nice husband, and a liar out of me.

"Minny, would you mind fetching the mail for me?" she asks even though she's sitting here all dressed and I've got b.u.t.ter on my hands and a wash in the machine and a motor blender going. She's like a Philistine on a Sunday, the way she won't take but so many steps a day. Except every day's Sunday around here.

I clean off my hands and head out to the box, sweat half a gallon on the way. I mean, it's only ninety-nine degrees outside. There's a two-foot package sitting next to the mailbox, in the gra.s.s. I've seen her with these big brown boxes before, figure it's some kind of beauty cream she's ordering. But when I pick it up, it's heavy. Makes a tinkling sound like I'm toting Co-Cola bottles.

"You got something, Miss Celia." I plop the box on the floor of the kitchen.

I've never seen her jump up so fast. In fact, the only thing fast about Miss Celia is the way she dresses. "It's just my . . ." She mumbles something. She heaves the box all the way to her bedroom and I hear the door slam.

An hour later, I go back in the bedroom to suck the rugs. Miss Celia's not laying down and she's not in the bathroom. I know she's not in the kitchen or the living room or out at the pool and I just dusted fancy parlor number one and number two and vacuumed the bear. Which means she must be upstairs. In the creepy rooms.

Before I got fired for accusing Mr. White Manager of wearing a hair piece, I used to clean the ballrooms at the Robert E. Lee Hotel. Those big, empty rooms with no peoples and the lipsticked napkins and the leftover smell of perfume gave me chills. And so does the upstairs of Miss Celia's house. There's even an antique cradle with Mister Johnny's old baby bonnet and silver rattle that I swear I can hear tinkling sometimes on its own accord. And it's thinking of that tinkling sound that makes me wonder if those boxes don't have something to do with her sneaking up to those rooms every other day.

I decide it's time I go up there and take a look for myself.

I KEEP an EYE On Miss Celia the next day, waiting for her to sneak upstairs so I can see what she's up to. Around two o'clock, she sticks her head in the kitchen and gives me a funny smile. A minute later, I hear the squeak in the ceiling.

Real easy, I head for the staircase. Even though I tiptoe, the dishes in the sideboard jangle, the floorboards groan. I walk so slowly up the stairs, I can hear my own breathing. At the top, I turn down the long hall. I pa.s.s wide open bedroom doors, one, two, three. Door number four, down on the end, is closed except for an inch. I move in a little closer. And through the crack, I spot her.

She's sitting on the yellow twin bed by the window and she's not smiling. The package I toted in from the mailbox is open and on the bed are a dozen bottles filled with brown liquid. It's a slow burn that rises up my bosoms, my chin, my mouth. I know the look of those flat bottles. I nursed a worthless pint drinker for twelve years and when my lazy, life-sucking daddy finally died, I swore to G.o.d with tears in my eyes I'd never marry one. And then I did.

And now here I am nursing another G.o.dd.a.m.n drinker. These aren't even store-bought bottles, these have a red wax top like my Uncle Toad used to cap his moonshine with. Mama always told me the real alcoholics, like my daddy, drink the homemade stuff because it's stronger. Now I know she's as much a fool as my daddy was and as Leroy is when he gets on the Old Crow, only she doesn't chase me with the frying pan.

Miss Celia picks a bottle up and looks at it like it's Jesus in there and she can't wait to get saved. She uncorks it, sips it, and sighs. Then she drinks three hard swallows and lays back on her fancy pillows.

My body starts to shake, watching that ease cross her face. She was so eager to get to her juice, she didn't even close the d.a.m.n door. I have to grit my teeth so I don't scream at her. Finally I force my way back down the stairs.

When Miss Celia comes back downstairs ten minutes later, she sits at the kitchen table, asks me if I'm ready to eat.

"There's pork chops in the icebox and I'm not eating lunch today," I say and stomp out of the room.

That afternoon Miss Celia's in her bathroom sitting on the toilet lid. She's got the hair dryer on the back tank and the hood pulled over her bleached head. With that contraption on she wouldn't hear the A-bomb explode.

I go upstairs with my oil rags and I open that cupboard for myself. Two dozen flat whiskey bottles are hidden behind some ratty old blankets Miss Celia must've toted with her from Tunica County. The bottles don't have any labels fastened to them, just the stamp Old KENTUCKY in the gla.s.s. Twelve are full, ready for tomorrow. Twelve are empty from last week. Just like all these d.a.m.n bedrooms. No wonder the fool doesn't have any kids.

On THE FIRST THURSDAY of July, at twelve noon, Miss Celia gets up from the bed for her cooking lesson. She's dressed in a white sweater so tight it'd make a hooker look holy. I swear her clothes get tighter every week.

We settle in our places, me at the stovetop, her on her stool. I've hardly spoken word one to her since I found those bottles last week. I'm not mad. I'm irate. But I have sworn every day for the past six days that I would follow Mama's Rule Number One. To say something would mean I cared about her and I don't. It's not my business or my concern if she's a lazy, drunk fool.

We lay the battered raw chicken on the rack. Then I have to remind the ding-dong for the bobillionth time to wash her hands before she kills us both.

I watch the chicken sizzle, try to forget she's there. Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life. I almost forget I'm working for a drunk. When the batch is done, I put most of it in the refrigerator for supper that night. The rest goes on a plate for our lunch. She sits down across from me at the kitchen table, as usual.

"Take the breast," she says, her blue eyes bugging out at me. "Go ahead."

"I eat the leg and the thigh," I say, taking them from the plate. I thumb through the Jackson Journal Jackson Journal to the Metro section. I pop up the spine of my newspaper in front of my face so I don't have to look at her. to the Metro section. I pop up the spine of my newspaper in front of my face so I don't have to look at her.

"But they don't have hardly any meat on them."

"They good. Greasy." I keep reading, trying to ignore her.

"Well," she says, taking the breast, "I guess that makes us perfect chicken partners then." And after a minute she says, "You know, I'm lucky to have you as a friend, Minny."

I feel thick, hot disgust rise up in my chest. I lower my paper and just look at her. "No ma'am. We ain't friends."

"Well . . . sure we are." She smiles, like she's doing me a big favor.

"No, Miss Celia. We ain't."

She blinks at me with her fake eyelashes. Stop it, Minny, Stop it, Minny, my insides tell me. But I already know I can't. I know by the fists in my hands that I can't hold this in another minute. my insides tell me. But I already know I can't. I know by the fists in my hands that I can't hold this in another minute.

"Is it . . ." She looks down at her chicken. "Because you're colored? Or because you don't . . . want to be friends with me?"

"So many reasons, you white and me colored just fall somewhere in between."

She's not smiling at all now. "But . . . why?"

"Because when I tell you I'm late on my light bill, I ain't asking you for money," I say.

"Oh Minny--"

"Because you don't even give me the courtesy a telling your husband I'm working here. Because you in this house twenty-four hours a day driving me insane."

"You don't understand, I can't. can't. I can't leave." I can't leave."

"But all that is nothing compared to what I know now."

Her face goes a shade paler under her makeup.

"All this time, there I was thinking you were dying a the cancer or sick in the head. Poor Miss Celia, all day long."

"I know it's been hard . . ."

"Oh, I know you ain't sick. I seen you with them bottles upstairs. And you ain't fooling me another second."

"Bottles? Oh G.o.d, Minny, I--"

"I ought to pour them things down the drain. I ought to tell Mister Johnny right now--"

She stands up, knocking her chair over. "Don't you dare tell--"

"You act like you want kids but you drinking enough to poison a elephant!"

"If you tell him, I'll fire you, Minny!" She's got tears in her eyes. "If you touch those bottles, I'll fire you right now!"

But the blood's running too hot in my head to stop now. "Fire me? Who else gone come out here and work in secret while you hang around the house drunk all day?"

"You think I can't fire you? You finish your work today, Minny!" She's boo-hooing and pointing her finger at me. "You eat your chicken and then you go home!"

She picks up her plate with the white meat and charges through the swinging door. I hear it clatter down on the long fancy dining room table, the chair legs sc.r.a.ping against the floor. I sink down in my seat because my knees are shaking, and stare down at my chicken.

I just lost another d.a.m.n job.

I WAKE up SAt.u.r.dAY MORNING at seven a.m. to a clanging headache and a raw tongue. I must've bitten down on it all night long.

Leroy looks at me through one eye because he knows something's up. He knew it last night at supper and smelled it when he walked in at five o'clock this morning.

"What's eating you? Ain't got trouble at work, do you?" he asks for the third time.

"Nothing eating me except five kids and a husband. Y'all driving me up a wall."

The last thing I need him to know is that I've told off another white lady and lost another job. I put on my purple housedress and stomp to the kitchen. I clean it like it's never been cleaned.

"Mama, where you going?" yells Kindra. "I'm hungry."

"I'm going to Aibileen's. Mama need to be with somebody not pulling on her for five minutes." I pa.s.s Sugar sitting on the front steps. "Sugar, go get Kindra some breakfast."

"She already ate. Just a half hour ago."

"Well, she hungry again."

I walk the two blocks to Aibileen's house, across Tick Road onto Farish Street. Even though it's hot as sin and steam's already rising off the blacktop, kids are throwing b.a.l.l.s, kicking cans, skipping rope. "Hey there, Minny," someone says to me about every fifty feet. I nod, but I don't get friendly. Not today.

I cut through Ida Peek's garden. Aibileen's kitchen door is open. Aibileen's sitting at her table reading one of those books Miss Skeeter got her from the white library. She looks up when she hears the screen door whine. I guess she can tell I'm angry.

"Lord have mercy, who done what to you?"

"Celia Rae Foote, that's who." I sit down across from her. Aibileen gets up and pours me some coffee.

"What she do?"

I tell her about the bottles I found. I don't know why I hadn't told her a week and a half ago when I found them. Maybe I didn't want her to know something so awful about Miss Celia. Maybe I felt bad because Aibileen was the one who got me the job. But now I'm so mad I let it all spill out.

"And then she fired me."

"Oh, Law, Minny."

"Say she gone find another maid. But who gone work for that lady? Some nappy-headed country maid already living out there, won't know squat about serving from the left, clearing from the right."

"You thought about apologizing? Maybe you go in Monday morning, talk to--"

"I ain't apologizing to no drunk. I never apologized to my daddy and I sure ain't apologizing to her."

We're both quiet. I throw back my coffee, watch a horsefly buzz against Aibileen's screen door, knocking with its hard ugly head, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, until it falls down on the step. Spins around like a crazy fool. until it falls down on the step. Spins around like a crazy fool.

"Can't sleep. Can't eat," I say.

"I tell you, that Celia must be the worst one you ever ever had to tend to." had to tend to."

"They all bad. But she the worst of all."

"Ain't they? You remember that time Miss Walter make you pay for the crystal gla.s.s you broke? Ten dollars out a your pay? Then you find out them gla.s.ses only cost three dollars apiece down at Carter's?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Oh, and you remember that crazy Mister Charlie, the one who always call you n.i.g.g.e.r to your face like he think it's funny. And his wife, the one who make you eat lunch outside, even in the middle a January? Even when it snowed that time?"

"Make me cold just thinking bout it."

"And what--" Aibileen is chuckling, trying to talk at the same time. "What about that Miss Roberta? Way she make you sit at the kitchen table while she try out her new hair dye solution on you?" Aibileen wipes at her eyes. "Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer s.p.a.ce."

"Ain't nothing funny bout that. Took me three weeks and twenty-five dollars to get my hair black again."

Aibileen shakes her head, breathes out a high-keyed "Huhhhhm," takes a sip of her coffee.

"Miss Celia though," she says. "Way she treat you? How much she paying you to put up with Mister Johnny and the cooking lessons? Must be less than all of em."

"You know she paying me double."

"Oh, that's right. Well, anyway, with all her friends coming over, specting you to clean up after em all the time."

I just look at her.

"And them ten kids she got too." Aibileen presses her napkin to her lips, hides her smile. "Must drive you insane the way they screaming all day, messing up that big old house."

"I think you done made your point, Aibileen."

Aibileen smiles, pats me on the arm. "I'm sorry, honey. But you my best friend. And I think you got something pretty good out there. So what if she take a nip or two to get through the day? Go talk to her Monday."

I feel my face crinkle up. "You think she take me back? After everthing I said?"

"n.o.body else gone wait on her. And she know it."

"Yeah. She dumb." I sigh. "But she ain't stupid."

I go on home. I don't tell Leroy what's bothering me, but I think about it all day and all weekend long. I've been fired more times than I have fingers. I pray to G.o.d I can get my job back on Monday.