"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," I say. "I don't like talking about it."

"I understand. Oh shoot, I better go on, Raleigh's probably having a fit by himself with her." She gives a last look at Hilly. Hilly smiles and nods her excusal.

I gather my notes quickly, head for the door. Before I make it out, I hear her.

"Wait a sec, would you, Skeeter?"

I sigh, turn around and face Hilly. She's wearing the navy blue sailor number, something you'd dress a five-year-old in. The pleats around her hips are stretched open like accordion bellows. The room is empty except for us now.

"Can we discuss this, please, ma'am?" She holds up the most recent newsletter and I know what's coming.

"I can't stay. Mother's sick--"

"I told you five months ago five months ago to print my initiative and now another week has pa.s.sed and you still haven't followed my instructions." to print my initiative and now another week has pa.s.sed and you still haven't followed my instructions."

I stare at her and my anger is sudden, ferocious. Everything I've kept down for months rises and erupts in my throat.

"I will not not print that initiative." print that initiative."

She looks at me, holding very still. "I want that initiative in the newsletter before election time," she says and points to the ceiling, "or I'm calling upstairs, missy."

"If you try to throw me out of the League, I will dial up Genevieve von Hapsburg in New York City myself," I hiss, because I happen to know Genevieve's Hilly's hero. She's the youngest national League president in history, perhaps the only person in this world Hilly's afraid of. But Hilly doesn't even flinch.

"And tell her what, Skeeter? Tell her you're not doing your job? Tell her you're carrying around Negro activist materials?"

I'm too angry to let this unnerve me. "I want them back back, Hilly. You took them and they don't belong to you."

"Of course I took them. You have no business carrying around something like that. What if somebody saw those things?"

"Who are you to say what I can and cannot carry ar--"

"It is my job, Skeeter! You know well as I do, people won't buy so much as a slice of pound cake from an organization that harbors racial integrationists!"

"Hilly." I just need to hear her say it. "Just who who is all that pound cake money being raised for, anyway?" is all that pound cake money being raised for, anyway?"

She rolls her eyes. "The Poor Starving Children of Africa?"

I wait for her to catch the irony of this, that she'll send money to colored people overseas, but not across town. But I get a better idea. "I'm going to call up Genevieve right now. I'm going to tell her what a hypocrite you are."

Hilly straightens. I think for a second I've tapped a crack in her sh.e.l.l with those words. But then she licks her lips, takes a deep, noisy sniff.

"You know, it's no wonder Stuart Whitworth dropped you."

I keep my jaw clenched so that she cannot see the effect these words have on me. But inside, I am a slow, sliding scale. I feel everything inside of me slipping down into the floor. "I want those laws back," I say, my voice shaking.

"Then print the initiative."

I turn and walk out the door. I heave my satchel into the Cadillac and light a cigarette.

MOTHER'S LIGHT is Off when I get home and I'm grateful. I tiptoe down the hall, onto the back porch, easing the squeaky screen door closed. I sit down at my typewriter.

But I cannot type. I stare at the tiny gray squares of the back porch screen. I stare so hard, I slip through them. I feel something inside me crack open then. I am vaporous. I am crazy. I am deaf to that stupid, silent phone. Deaf to Mother's retching in the house. Her voice through the window, "I'm fine, Carlton, it's pa.s.sed." I hear it all and yet, I hear nothing. Just a high buzzing in my ears.

I reach in my satchel and pull out the page of Hilly's bathroom initiative. The paper is limp, already damp with humidity. A moth lands in the corner then flutters away, leaving a brown smudge of wing chalk.

With slow, deliberate strokes, I start typing the newsletter: Sarah Shelby to marry Robert Pryor; please attend a baby-clothes showing by Mary Katherine Simpson; a tea in honor of our loyal sustainers. Then I type Hilly's initiative. I place it on the second page, opposite the photo ops. This is where everyone will be sure to see it, after they look at themselves at the Summer Fun Jamboree. All I can think while I'm typing is, What would Constantine think of me? What would Constantine think of me?

AIBILEEN.

chapter 22.

HOW OLD A YOU TODAY, big girl?"

Mae Mobley still in bed. She hold out two sleepy fingers and say, "Mae Mo Two."

"Nuh-uh, we three today!" I move up one a her fingers, chant what my daddy used to say to me on my birthdays, "Three little soldiers, come out the doe, two say stop, one say go."

She in a big-girl bed now since the nursery getting fixed up for the new baby. "Next year, we do four little soldiers, they looking for something to eat."

Her nose wrinkle up cause now she got to remember to say she Mae Mobley Three, when her whole life she can remember, she been telling people she Mae Mobley Two. Two. When you little, you only get asked two questions, what's your name and how old you is, so you better get em right. When you little, you only get asked two questions, what's your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.

"I am Mae Mobley Three," she say. She scramble out a bed, her hair in a rat's nest. That bald spot she had as a baby, it's coming back. Usually I can brush over it and hide it for a few minutes, but not for long. It's thin and she's losing them curls. It gets real stringy by the end a the day. It don't trouble me that she ain't cute, but I try to fix her up nice as I can for her mama.

"Come on to the kitchen," I say. "We gone make you a birthday breakfast."

Miss Leefolt off getting her hair done. She don't care bout being there on the morning her only child wakes up on the first birthday she remember. But least Miss Leefolt got her what she want. Brung me back to her bedroom and point to a big box on the floor.

"Won't she be happy?" Miss Leefolt say. "It walks and talks and even cries."

Sho nuff they's a big pink polky-dot box. Got cellophane across the front, and inside they's the doll baby tall as Mae Mobley. Name Allison. She got blond curly hair and blue eyes. Frilly pink dress on. Evertime the commercial come on the tee-vee Mae Mobley run over to the set and grab the box on both sides, put her face up to the screen and stare so serious. Miss Leefolt look like she gone cry herself, looking down at that toy. I reckon her mean old mama never got her what she wanted when she little.

In the kitchen, I fix some grits without no seasoning, and put them baby marshmallows on top. I toast the whole thing to make it a little crunchy. Then I garnish it with a cut-up strawberry. That's all a grit is, a vehicle. For whatever it is you rather be eating.

The three little pink candles I done brought from home is in my pocketbook. I bring em out, undo the wax paper I got em in so they don't turn out bent. After I light em, I bring them grits over to her booster chair, at the white linoleum table in the middle a the room.

I say, "Happy birthday, Mae Mobley Two!"

She laugh and say, "I am Mae Mobley Three!"

"You sure is! Now blow out them candles, Baby Girl. Fore they run up in you grits."

She stare at the little flames, smiling.

"Blow it, big girl."

She blow em clean over. She suck the grits off the candles and start eating. After while, she smile up at me, say, "How old are you?"

"Aibileen's fifty-three."

Her eyes get real wide. I might as well be a thousand.

"Do you . . . get birthdays?"

"Yeah." I laugh. "It's a pity, but I do. My birthday be next week." I can't believe I'm on be fifty-four years old. Where do it go?

"Do you have some babies?" she ask.

I laugh. "I got seventeen of em."

She ain't quite got up to seventeen in her numbers yet, but she know this be a big one.

"That's enough to fill up this whole kitchen," I say.

Her brown eyes is so big and round. "Where are the babies?"

"They all over town. All the babies I done looked after."

"Why don't they come play with me?"

"Cause most of em grown. Lot of em already having babies a they own."

Lordy, she look confuse. She doing her figuring, like she be trying to count it all up. Finally I say, "You one of em, too. All the babies I tend to, I count as my own."

She nod, cross up her arms.

I start washing the dishes. The birthday party tonight just gone be the family and I got to get the cakes made. First, I'm on do the strawberry one with the strawberry icing. Every meal be strawberry, if it was up to Mae Mobley. Then I do the other one.

"Let's do a chocolate cake," say Miss Leefolt yesterday. She seven months pregnant and love eating chocolate.

Now I done planned this last week. I got everything ready. This too important to be occurring to me the day before. "Mm-hmm. What about strawberry? That be Mae Mobley's favorite, you know."

"Oh no, she wants chocolate. I'm going to the store today and get everything you need."

Chocolate my foot. So I figured I'd just go on and make both. At least then she get to blow out two sets a candles.

I clean up the grits plate. Give her some grape juice to drink. She got her old baby doll in the kitchen, the one she call Claudia, with the painted-on hair and the eyes that close. Make a pitiful whining sound when you drop it on the floor.

"There's your baby," I say and she pats its back like she burping it, nods.

Then she say, "Aibee, you're my real mama." She don't even look at me, just say it like she talking about the weather.

I kneel down on the floor where she playing. "Your mama's off getting her hair fixed. Baby Girl, you know who your mama is."

But she shake her head, cuddling that doll to her. "I'm your your baby," she say. baby," she say.

"Mae Mobley, you know I's just teasing you, about all them seventeen kids being mine? They ain't really. I only had me one child."

"I know," she say. "I'm your real baby. Those other ones you said are pretend."

Now I had babies be confuse before. John Green Dudley, first word out a that boy's mouth was Mama and he was looking straight at me. But then pretty soon he calling everybody including hisself Mama, and calling his daddy Mama too. Did that for a long time. n.o.body worry bout it. Course when he start playing dress-up in his sister's Jewel Taylor twirl skirts and wearing Chanel Number 5, we all get a little concern.

I looked after the Dudley family for too long, over six years. His daddy would take him to the garage and whip him with a rubber hose-pipe trying to beat the girl out a that boy until I couldn't stand it no more. Treelore near bout suffocated when I'd come home I'd hug him so hard. When we started working on the stories, Miss Skeeter asked me what's the worst day I remember being a maid. I told her it was a stillbirth baby. But it wasn't. It was every day from 1941 to 1947 waiting by the screen door for them beatings to be over. I wish to G.o.d I'd told John Green Dudley he ain't going to h.e.l.l. That he ain't no sideshow freak cause he like boys. I wish to G.o.d I'd filled his ears with good things like I'm trying to do Mae Mobley. Instead, I just sat in the kitchen, waiting to put the salve on them hose-pipe welts.

Just then we hear Miss Leefolt pulling into the carport. I get a little nervous a what Miss Leefolt gone do if she hear this Mama stuff. Mae Mobley nervous too. Her hands start flapping like a chicken. "Shhh! Don't tell!" she say. "She'll spank me."

So she already done had this talk with her mama. And Miss Leefolt didn't like it one bit.

When Miss Leefolt come in with her new hairdo, Mae Mobley don't even say h.e.l.lo, she run back to her room. Like she scared her mama can hear what's going on inside her head.

MAE MOBLEY'S BIRTHDAY PARTY GOES fine, least that's what Miss Leefolt tell me the next day. Friday morning, I come in to see three-quarters of a chocolate cake setting on the counter. Strawberry all gone. That afternoon, Miss Skeeter come by to give Miss Leefolt some papers. Soon as Miss Leefolt waddle off to the bathroom, Miss Skeeter slip in the kitchen.

"We on for tonight?" I ask.

"We're on. I'll be there." Miss Skeeter don't smile much since Mister Stuart and her ain't steady no more. I heard Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt talking about it plenty.

Miss Skeeter get herself a Co-Cola from the icebox, speak in a low voice. "Tonight we'll finish Winnie's interview and this weekend I'll start sorting it all out. But then I can't meet again until next Thursday. I promised Mama I'd drive her to Natchez Monday for a DAR thing." Miss Skeeter kind a narrow her eyes up, something she do when she thinking about something important. "I'll be gone for three days, okay?"

"Good," I say. "You need you a break."

She head toward the dining room, but she look back, say, "Remember. I leave Monday morning and I'll be gone for three days, okay?"

"Yes ma'am," I say, wondering why she think she got to say this twice.

IT ain'T BUT EIGHT THIRTY on Monday morning but Miss Leefolt's phone already ringing its head off.

"Miss Leefolt res--"

"Put Elizabeth on the phone! "

I go tell Miss Leefolt. She get out a bed, shuffle in the kitchen in her rollers and nightgown, pick up the receiver. Miss Hilly sound like she using a megaphone not a telephone. I can hear every word.

"Have you been by my house?"

"What? What are you talk--?"

"She put it in the newsletter about the toilets. I specifically said old coats are to be dropped off at my house not--"

"Let me get my . . . mail, I don't know what you're--"

"When I find her I will kill her myself."