The Help / Прислуга. Книга для чтения на английском языке

In town, Hilly and Elizabeth spent all weekend going to and from each other’s houses, while I was only allowed to spend the night out or have company every other weekend. I grumbled over this plenty. I took Constantine for granted at times, but I think I knew, for the most part, how lucky I was to have her there.

When I was fourteen, I started smoking cigarettes. I’d sneak them from Carlton’s packs of Marlboros he kept in his dresser drawer. He was almost eighteen and no one minded that he’d been smoking for years anywhere he wanted to in the house or out in the fields with Daddy.

Sometimes Daddy smoked a pipe, but he wasn’t a cigarette man and Mother didn’t smoke anything at all, even though most of her friends did. Mother told me I wasn’t allowed to smoke until I was seventeen.

So I’d slip into the backyard and sit in the tire swing, with the huge old oak tree concealing me. Or, late at night, I’d hang out of my bedroom window and smoke. Mother had eagle-eyes, but she had almost zero sense of smell.

Constantine knew immediately, though. She narrowed her eyes, with a little smile, but said nothing. If Mother headed to the back porch while I was behind the tree, Constantine would rush out and bang her broom handle on the iron stair rail.

“Constantine, what are you doing?” Mother would ask her, but by then I would’ve stubbed it out and dropped the butt in the hole in the tree.

“Just cleaning this here old broom, Miss Charlotte.”

“Well, find a way to do it a little quieter, please.

Oh, Eugenia, what, did you grow another inch overnight? What am I going to do? Go… put on a dress that fits.”

“Yes ma’am,” Constantine and I would say at the same time and then pass each other a little smile.

Oh, it was delicious to have someone to keep secrets with. If I’d had a sister or a brother closer in age, I guessed that’s what it would be like. But it wasn’t just smoking or skirting around Mother. It was having someone look at you after your mother has nearly fretted herself to death because you are freakishly tall and frizzy and odd.

Someone whose eyes simply said, without words, You are fine with me.

Still, it wasn’t all sweet talk with her. When I was fifteen, a new girl had pointed at me and asked, “Who’s the stork?” Even Hilly had tucked back a smile before steering me away, like we hadn’t heard her.

“How tall are you, Constantine?” I asked, unable to hide my tears.