The Help / Прислуга. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Mama’d get cross with her about a tarnished spoon and Constantine would serve her toast burned up for a week. I can only imagine how a firing would’ve gone.

It hardly matters, though, because all Aibileen will do is shrug at me, say she don’t know nothing.

One afternoon, after asking Aibileen how to get out tough tub rings (never having scrubbed a bathtub in my life), I come home. I walk past the relaxing room. The television set is on and I glance at it. Pascagoula’s standing about five inches away from the screen.

I hear the words Ole Miss and on the fuzzy screen I see white men in dark suits crowding the camera, sweat running off their bald heads. I come closer and see a Negro man, about my age, standing in the middle of the white men, with Army men behind him. The picture pans back and there is my old administration building. Governor Ross Barnett stands with his arms crossed, looking the tall Negro in the eye. Next to the governor is our Senator Whitworth, whose son Hilly’s been trying to set me up with on a blind date.

I watch the television, riveted. Yet I am neither thrilled nor disappointed by the news that they might let a colored man into Ole Miss, just surprised. Pascagoula, though, is breathing so loud I can hear her. She stands stock-still, not aware I am behind her. Roger Sticker, our local reporter, is nervous, smiling, talking fast. “President Kennedy has ordered the governor to step aside[61 - to step aside – (разг.) уступить место] for James Meredith, I repeat, the President of the United —”

“Eugenia, Pascagoula! Turn that set off right this minute!”

Pascagoula jerks around to see me and Mother.

She rushes out of the room, her eyes to the floor.

“Now, I won’t have it[62 - I won’t have it – (разг.) я не потерплю этого], Eugenia,” Mother whispers. “I won’t have you encouraging them like that.”

“Encouraging? It’s nationwide news, Mama.

”

Mother sniffs. “It is not appropriate for the two of you to watch together,” and she flips the channel, stops on an afternoon rerun of Lawrence Welk.

“Look, isn’t this so much nicer?”

On a hot Saturday in late September, the cotton fields chopped and empty, Daddy carries a new RCA color television set into the house. He moves the black-and-white one to the kitchen. Smiling and proud, he plugs the new TV into the wall of the relaxing room.