Hilly straightens. I think for a second I’ve tapped a crack in her shell with those words. But then she licks her lips, takes a deep, noisy sniff.

“You know, it’s no wonder Stuart Whitworth dropped you.”

I keep my jaw clenched so that she cannot see the effect these words have on me. But inside, I am a slow, sliding scale. I feel everything inside of me slipping down into the floor. “I want those laws back,” I say, my voice shaking.

“Then print the initiative.”

I turn and walk out the door. I heave my satchel into the Cadillac and light a cigarette.

MOTHER’S LIGHT is Off when I get home and I’m grateful. I tiptoe down the hall, onto the back porch, easing the squeaky screen door closed. I sit down at my typewriter.

But I cannot type. I stare at the tiny gray squares of the back porch screen. I stare so hard, I slip through them. I feel something inside me crack open then. I am vaporous. I am crazy. I am deaf to that stupid, silent phone. Deaf to Mother’s retching in the house. Her voice through the window, “I’m fine, Carlton, it’s passed.” I hear it all and yet, I hear nothing. Just a high buzzing in my ears.

I reach in my satchel and pull out the page of Hilly’s bathroom initiative. The paper is limp, already damp with humidity. A moth lands in the corner then flutters away, leaving a brown smudge of wing chalk.

With slow, deliberate strokes, I start typing the newsletter: Sarah Shelby to marry Robert Pryor; please attend a baby-clothes showing by Mary Katherine Simpson; a tea in honor of our loyal sustainers. Then I type Hilly’s initiative. I place it on the second page, opposite the photo ops. This is where everyone will be sure to see it, after they look at themselves at the Summer Fun Jamboree. All I can think while I’m typing is, What would Constantine think of me?

AIBILEEN

chapter 22

HOW OLD A YOU TODAY, big girl?”

Mae Mobley still in bed. She hold out two sleepy fingers and say, “Mae Mo Two.”

“Nuh-uh, we three today!” I move up one a her fingers, chant what my daddy used to say to me on my birthdays, “Three little soldiers, come out the doe, two say stop, one say go.”

She in a big-girl bed now since the nursery getting fixed up for the new baby. “Next year, we do four little soldiers, they looking for something to eat.”

Her nose wrinkle up cause now she got to remember to say she Mae Mobley Three, when her whole life she can remember, she been telling people she Mae Mobley Two. When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.

“I am Mae Mobley Three,” she say. She scramble out a bed, her hair in a rat’s nest. That bald spot she had as a baby, it’s coming back. Usually I can brush over it and hide it for a few minutes, but not for long. It’s thin and she’s losing them curls. It gets real stringy by the end a the day. It don’t trouble me that she ain’t cute, but I try to fix her up nice as I can for her mama.

“Come on to the kitchen,” I say. “We gone make you a birthday breakfast.”

Miss Leefolt off getting her hair done. She don’t care bout being there on the morning her only child wakes up on the first birthday she remember. But least Miss Leefolt got her what she want. Brung me back to her bedroom and point to a big box on the floor.

“Won’t she be happy?” Miss Leefolt say. “It walks and talks and even cries.”

Sho nuff they’s a big pink polky-dot box. Got cellophane across the front, and inside they’s the doll baby tall as Mae Mobley. Name Allison. She got blond curly hair and blue eyes. Frilly pink dress on. Evertime the commercial come on the tee-vee Mae Mobley run over to the set and grab the box on both sides, put her face up to the screen and stare so serious. Miss Leefolt look like she gone cry herself, looking down at that toy. I reckon her mean old mama never got her what she wanted when she little.

In the kitchen, I fix some grits without no seasoning, and put them baby marshmallows on top. I toast the whole thing to make it a little crunchy. Then I garnish it with a cut-up strawberry. That’s all a grit is, a vehicle. For whatever it is you rather be eating.

The three little pink candles I done brought from home is in my pocketbook. I bring em out, undo the wax paper I got em in so they don’t turn out bent. After I light em, I bring them grits over to her booster chair, at the white linoleum table in the middle a the room.

I say, “Happy birthday, Mae Mobley Two!”

She laugh and say, “I am Mae Mobley Three!”

“You sure is! Now blow out them candles, Baby Girl. Fore they run up in you grits.”

She stare at the little flames, smiling.

“Blow it, big girl.”

She blow em clean over. She suck the grits off the candles and start eating. After while, she smile up at me, say, “How old are you?”

“Aibileen’s fifty-three.”

Her eyes get real wide. I might as well be a thousand.

“Do you . . . get birthdays?”