The Help / Прислуга. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Mae Mobley’s sleeping?” I ask.

“Finally.” Elizabeth fiddles with a clump of hair that’s slipped out of her roller, grimaces at its obstinacy. Sometimes her voice takes on a hard edge when she talks about her little girl.

The door to the guest bathroom in the hall opens and Hilly comes out talking, “…so much better. Everybody has their own place to go now.”

Elizabeth fiddles with the machine needle, seems worried by it.

“You tell Raleigh I said You are welcome,” Hilly adds, and it hits me, then, what’s being said.

Aibileen has her own bathroom in the garage now.

Hilly smiles at me and I realize she’s about to bring up the initiative. “How’s your mama?” I ask, even though I know this is her least favorite subject. “She get settled in the home alright?”

“I guess.” Hilly pulls her red sweater down over the pudgy roll in her waist. She has on red-and-green plaid pants that seem to magnify her bottom, making it rounder and more forceful than ever.

“Of course she doesn’t appreciate a thing I do. I had to fire that maid for her, caught her trying to steal the damn silver right under my nose.” Hilly narrows her eyes a bit. “Y’all haven’t heard, by the way, if that Minny Jackson is working somewhere, have you?”

We shake our heads no.

“I doubt she’ll find work in this town again,” Elizabeth says.

Hilly nods, mulling this over. I take a deep breath, anxious to tell them my news.

“I just got a job at the Jackson Journal,” I say.

There is quiet in the room. Suddenly Elizabeth squeals. Hilly smiles at me with such pride, I blush and shrug, like it’s not that big of a deal.

“They’d be a fool not to hire you, Skeeter Phelan,” Hilly says and raises her iced tea as a toast.

“So… um, have either of y’all actually read Miss Myrna?” I ask.

“Well no,” Hilly says. “But I bet the poor white trash girls in South Jackson read it like the King James[55 - read it like the King James – (разг.

) читают как Библию (перевод Библии на английский язык был сделан для короля Англии Якова I в 1611 г.)].”

Elizabeth nods. “All those poor girls without help, I bet they do.”

“Would you mind if I talked to Aibileen?” I ask Elizabeth. “To help me answer some of the letters?”

Elizabeth is very still a second.