The Help / Прислуга. Книга для чтения на английском языке

She turning in wobbly circles trying to see it.

“You ain’t got no tail.” I laugh and catch her fore she fall off that step. Dog sniff around for more hamburger.

It always tickle me how these babies believe anything you tell em. Tate Forrest, one a my used-to-be babies long time ago, stop me on the way to the Jitney just last week, give me a big hug, so happy to see me. He a grown man now. I needed to get back to Miss Leefolt’s, but he start laughing and memoring how I’d do him when he was a boy. How the first time his foot fell asleep and he say it tickle, I told him that was just his foot snoring.

And how I told him don’t drink coffee or he gone turn colored. He say he still ain’t drunk a cup a coffee and he twenty-one years old. It’s always nice seeing the kids grown up fine.

“Mae Mobley? Mae Mobley Leefolt!”

Miss Leefolt just now noticing her child ain’t setting in the same room with her. “She out here with me, Miss Leefolt,” I say through the screen door.

“I told you to eat in your high chair, Mae Mobley.

How I ended up with you when all my friends have angels I just do not know…” But then the phone ring and I hear her stomping off to get it.

I look down at Baby Girl, see how her forehead’s all wrinkled up between the eyes. She studying hard on something.

I touch her cheek. “You alright, baby?”

She say, “Mae Mo bad.”

The way she say it, like it’s a fact, make my insides hurt.

“Mae Mobley,” I say cause I got a notion to try something.

“You a smart girl?”

She just look at me, like she don’t know.

“You a smart girl,” I say again.

She say, “Mae Mo smart.”

I say, “You a kind little girl?”

She just look at me. She two years old. She don’t know what she is yet.

I say, “You a kind girl,” and she nod, repeat it back to me. But before I can do another one, she get up and chase that poor dog around the yard and laugh and that’s when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?

She turn from the birdbath and smile and holler, “Hi, Aibee.

I love you, Aibee,” and I feel a tickly feeling, soft like the flap a butterfly wings, watching her play out there. The way I used to feel watching Treelore. And that makes me kind a sad, memoring.

After while, Mae Mobley come over and press her cheek up to mine and just hold it there, like she know I be hurting. I hold her tight, whisper, “You a smart girl.