The Help / Прислуга. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Кэтрин Стокетт

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СКАЧАТЬ 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] 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], 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. 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. Then later, when he grown, he pick himself up a typewriter and start working on a idea…” The pin-tucked shoulders of her uniform slump down. “Say he gone write himself a book.”

      “What kind of idea?” I ask. “I mean, if you don’t mind telling…”

      Aibileen says nothing for a while. Keeps peeling tomatoes around and around. “He read this book call Invisible Man[63]. When he done, he say he gone write down what it was like to be colored working for a white man in Mississippi.”

      I look away, knowing this is where my mother would stop the conversation. This is where she’d smile and change the subject to the price of silver polish or white rice.

      “I read Invisible Man, too, after he did,” Aibileen says. “I liked it alright.”

      I nod, even though I’ve never read it. I hadn’t thought of Aibileen as a reader before.

      “He wrote almost fifty pages,” she says. “I let his girl Frances keep hold of em.”

      Aibileen stops peeling. I see her throat move when she swallows. “Please don’t tell nobody that,” she says, softer now, “him wanting to write about his white boss.” She bites her lip and it strikes me then that she’s still afraid for him. Even though he’s dead, the instinct to be afraid for her son is still there.

      “It’s fine that you told me, Aibileen. I think it was… a brave idea.”

      Aibileen holds my gaze for a moment. Then she picks up another tomato and sets the knife against the skin. I watch, wait for the red juice to spill. But Aibileen stops before she cuts, glances at the kitchen door.

      “I don’t think it’s fair, you not knowing what happen to Constantine. I just – I’m sorry, I don’t feel right talking to you about it.”

      I stay quiet, not sure what’s spurred this, not wanting to ruin it.

      “I’ll tell you though, it was something to do with her daughter. Coming to see your mama.”

      “Daughter? Constantine never told me she had a daughter.” I knew Constantine for twenty-three years. Why would she keep this from me?

      “It was hard for her. The baby come out real… pale.”

      I hold still, remembering what Constantine told me, years ago. “You mean, light? Like… white?”

      Aibileen nods, keeping at her task in the sink. “Had to send her away, up north I think.”

      “Constantine’s father was white,” I say. “Oh… Aibileen… you don’t think…” An ugly thought is running through my head. I am too shocked to finish my sentence.

      Aibileen shakes her head. “No no, no ma’am. Not… that. Constantine’s man, Connor, he was colored. But since Constantine had her daddy’s blood in her, her baby come out a high yellow. It… happens.[64]”

      I feel ashamed for having СКАЧАТЬ