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Finally, I go back to cleaning pool chairs, picking up Miss Celia’s movie magazines and tissues the slob leaves out here. The phone rings inside. I’m not supposed to answer the phone what with Miss Celia trying to keep up the big fat lie with Mister Johnny. But she’s not here and it might be Aibileen with more news. I go inside, lock the door behind me.

“Miss Celia residence.” Lord, I hope it’s not Miss Celia calling.

“This is Hilly Holbrook speaking. Who is this?”

My blood whooshes down from my hair to my feet. I’m an empty, bloodless shell for about five seconds.

I lower my voice, make it deep like a stranger. “This Doreena. Miss Celia’s help.” Doreena? Why I use my sister’s name!

“Doreena. I thought Minny Jackson was Miss Foote’s maid.”

“She . . . quit.”

“Is that right? Let me speak to Missus Foote.”

“She . . . out a town. Down at the coast. For a—a—” My mind’s pedaling a thousand miles an hour trying to come up with details.

“Well, when is she coming back?”

“Looong time.”

“Well, when she gets back, you tell her I called. Hilly Holbrook, Emerson three sixty-eight forty?”

“Yes ma’am. I tell her.” In about a hundred years.

I hold on to the counter edge, wait for my heart to stop hammering. It’s not that Miss Hilly can’t find me. I mean, she could just look up Minny Jackson on Tick Road in the phone book and get my address. And it’s not like I couldn’t tell Miss Celia what happened, tell her I’m not a thief. Maybe she’d believe me after all. But it’s the Terrible Awful that ruins it all.

Four hours later, Miss Celia walks in with five big boxes stacked on top of each other. I help her tote them back to her bedroom and then I stand very still outside her door to hear if she’ll call up the society ladies like she does every day. Sure enough, I hear her pick up the phone. But she just hangs it back up again. The fool’s listening for the dial tone again, in case someone tries to call.

EVEN THOUGH IT’S THE third week of October, the summer beats on with the rhythm of a clothes dryer. The grass in Miss Celia’s yard is still a full-blown green. The orange dahlias are still smiling drunk up at the sun. And every night, the damn mosquitoes come out for their blood hunt, my sweat pads went up three cents a box, and my electric fan is broke dead on my kitchen floor.

On this October morning, three days after Miss Hilly called, I walk into work half an hour early. I’ve got Sugar seeing the kids to school. The coffee grinds go in the fancy percolator, the water goes in the pot. I lean my bottom against the counter. Quiet. It’s what I’ve been waiting for all night long.

The Frigidaire picks up a hum where it left off. I put my hand on it to feel its vibration.

“You’re awful early, Minny.”

I open the refrigerator and bury my head inside. “Morning,” I say from the crisper. All I can think is, Not yet.

I fiddle with some artichokes, the cold spines prickling my hand. Bent over like this, my head pounds even harder. “I’m on fix you and Mister Johnny a roast and I’m on . . . fix some . . .” But the words go all high-pitched on me.

“Minny, what happened?” Miss Celia has made her way around the refrigerator door without me even realizing it. My face bunches up. The cut on my eyebrow breaks open again, the hot blood stinging like a razor. Usually my bruises don’t show.

“Honey, set down. Did you take a spill?” She props her hand on the hip of her pink nightgown. “Did you trip on the fan cord again?”

“I’m fine,” I say, trying to turn so she can’t see me. But Miss Celia’s moving with me, bug-eyeing the cut like she’s never seen anything so awful. I had a white lady tell me once that blood looks redder on a colored person. I take a wad of cotton from my pocket, hold it to my face.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “I banged it in the bathtub.”

“Minny, that thing’s bleeding. I think you need you some stitches. Let me get Doctor Neal over here.” She grabs the phone from the wall, then bangs it back. “Oh, he’s up at the hunting camp with Johnny. I’ll call Doctor Steele, then.”

“Miss Celia, I don’t need no doctor.”

“You need medical attention, Minny,” she says, picking the phone back up.

Do I really have to say it? I grit my teeth to get it out. “Them doctors ain’t gone work on no colored person, Miss Celia.”

She hangs the phone up again.

I turn and face the sink. I keep thinking, This ain’t nobody’s business, just do your work, but I haven’t had a minute’s sleep. Leroy screamed at me all night, threw the sugar bowl upside my head, threw my clothes out on the porch. I mean, when he’s drinking the Thunderbird, it’s one thing, but . . . oh. The shame is so heavy I think it might pull me to the floor. Leroy, he wasn’t on the Thunderbird this time. This time he beat me stone-cold sober.