The Help / Прислуга. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Are you happy, Minny?”

“Why you ask me funny questions like that?”

“But are you?”

“Course I’s happy. You happy too. Big house, big yard, husband looking after you.” I frown at Miss Celia and I make sure she can see it. Because ain’t that white people for you, wondering if they are happy enough.

And when Miss Celia burns the beans, I try and use some of that self-control my mama swore I was born without. “Alright,” I say through my teeth, “we’ll do another batch fore Mister Johnny get home.

”

Any other woman I’ve worked for, I would’ve loved to have had just one hour of bossing them around, see how they like it. But Miss Celia, the way she stares at me with those big eyes like I’m the best thing since hairspray in the can, I almost rather she’d order me around like she’s supposed to. I start to wonder if her laying down all the time has anything to do with her not telling Mister Johnny about me. I guess she can see the suspicious in my eye too, because one day, out of the blue[36 - out of the blue – (разг.

) ни с того ни с сего] she says:

“I get these nightmares a lot, that I have to go back to Sugar Ditch and live! That’s why I lay down so much.” Then she nods real fast, like she’s been rehearsing this. “Cause I don’t sleep real well at night.”

I give her a stupid smile, like I really believe this, and go back to wiping the mirrors.

“Don’t do it too good. Leave some smudges.”

It’s always something, mirrors, floors, a dirty glass in the sink or the trash can full.

“We’ve got to make it believable,” she’ll say and I find myself reaching for that dirty glass a hundred times to wash it. I like things clean, put away.

* * *

“I wish I could tend to that azalea bush out there,” Miss Celia says one day. She’s taken to laying on the couch while my stories are on, interrupting the whole time. I’ve been tuned in to The Guiding Light for twenty-six years, since I was ten years old and listening to it on Mama’s radio.

A Dreft commercial comes on and Miss Celia stares out the back window at the colored man raking up the leaves. She’s got so many azalea bushes, her yard’s going to look like Gone With the Wind[37 - Gone With the Wind – «Унесенные ветром», фильм, снятый по роману Маргарет Митчелл о Гражданской войне] come spring.