The Help / Прислуга. Книга для чтения на английском языке

The Ole Miss versus LSU football game blares through the house for the rest of the afternoon.

Mama, of course, is glued to the color picture, oohing and aahing at the vibrant reds and blues of the team. She and Daddy live by Rebel football. She’s dressed up in red wool pants despite the sweltering heat and has Daddy’s old Kappa Alpha blanket draped on the chair. No one mentions James Meredith, the colored student they let in.

I take the Cadillac and head into town. Mother finds it inexplicable that I don’t want to watch my alma mater throw a ball around.

But Elizabeth and her family are at Hilly’s watching the game so Aibileen’s working in the house alone. I’m hoping it’ll be a little easier on Aibileen if Elizabeth’s not there. Truth is, I’m hoping she’ll tell me something, anything, about Constantine.

Aibileen lets me in and I follow her back to the kitchen. She seems only the smallest bit more relaxed in Elizabeth’s empty house. She eyes the kitchen table, like she wants to sit today.

But when I ask her, she answers, “No, I’m fine. You go head.” She takes a tomato from a pan in the sink and starts to peel it with a knife.

So I lean against the counter and present the latest conundrum: how to keep the dogs from getting into your trashcans outside. Because your lazy husband forgets to put it out on the right pick-up day. Since he drinks all that damn beer.

“Just pour some pneumonia in that garbage. Dogs won’t so much as wink at them cans.” I jot it down, amending it to ammonia, and pick out the next letter.

When I look up, Aibileen’s kind of smiling at me.

“I don’t mean nothing disrespectful, Miss Skeeter, but… ain’t it kind a strange you being the new Miss Myrna when you don’t know nothing about housekeeping?”

She didn’t say it the way Mother did, a month ago. I find myself laughing instead, and I tell her what I’ve told no one else, about the phone calls and the résumé I’d sent to Harper & Row.

That I want to be a writer. The advice I received from Elaine Stein. It’s nice to tell somebody.

Aibileen nods, turns her knife around another soft red tomato. “My boy Treelore, he like to write.”

“I didn’t know you had a son.”

“He dead. Two years now.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say and for a moment it’s just Preacher Green in the room, the soft pat of tomato skins against the sink.

“Made straight As on ever English test he take.