On BENEFIT FRIDAY, I work late cleaning that house top to bottom. Then I fry up a plate of pork chops. The way I figure it, the shinier the floors, the clearer the windowpanes, the better my chances are of having a job on Monday. But the smartest thing I can do, if Mister Johnny’s got a say in this, is plant my pork chop in his hand.

He’s not supposed to be home until six tonight, so at four-thirty I wipe the counters one last time, then head to the back where Miss Celia’s been getting ready for the past four hours. I like to do their bed and bathroom last so it’s clean for when Mister Johnny gets home.

“Miss Celia, now what is going on in here?” I mean, she’s got stockings dangling from chairs, pocketbooks on the floor, enough costume jewelry for a whole family of hookers, forty-five pairs of high-heel shoes, underthings, overcoats, panties, brassieres, and a half-empty bottle of white wine on the chifforobe with no coaster under it.

I start picking up all her stupid silky things and piling them on the chair. The least I can do is run the Hoover.

“What time is it, Minny?” Miss Celia says from the bathroom. “Johnny’ll be home at six, you know.”

“Ain’t even five yet,” I say, “but I got to go soon.” I have to pick up Sugar and get us to the party by six-thirty to serve.

“Oh Minny, I’m so excited.” I hear Miss Celia’s dress swishing behind me. “What do you think?”

I turn around. “Oh my Lord.” I might as well be Little Stevie Wonder I am so blinded by that dress. Hot pink and silver sequins glitter from her extra-large boobies all the way to her hot pink toes.

“Miss Celia,” I whisper. “Tuck yourself in fore you lose something.”

Miss Celia shimmies the dress up. “Isn’t it gorgeous? Ain’t it just the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen? I feel like I’m a Hollywood movie star.”

She bats her fake-lashed eyes. She is rouged, painted, and plastered with makeup. The Butterbatch hairdo is poufed up around her head like an Easter bonnet. One leg peeks out in a high, thigh-baring slit and I turn away, too embarrassed to look. Everything about her oozes sex, sex, and more sex.

“Where you get them fingernails?”

“At the Beauty Box this morning. Oh Minny, I’m so nervous, I’ve got butterflies.”

She takes a heavy swig from her wineglass, kind of teeters a little in her high heels.

“What you had to eat today?”

“Nothing. I’m too nervous to eat. What about these earrings? Are they dangly enough?”

“Take that dress off, let me fix you some biscuits right quick.”

“Oh no, I can’t have my stomach poking out. I can’t eat anything.”

I head for the wine bottle on the gozillion-dollar chifforobe but Miss Celia gets to it before me, dumps the rest into her glass. She hands me the empty and smiles. I pick up her fur coat she’s got tossed on the floor. She’s getting pretty used to having a maid.

I saw that dress four days ago and I knew it looked hussified—of course she had to pick the one with the low neckline—but I had no idea what would happen when she stuffed herself inside it. She’s popping out like a corn cob in Crisco. With twelve Benefits under my belt, I’ve hardly seen so much as a bare elbow there, much less bosoms and shoulders.

She goes in the bathroom and dabs some more rouge on her gaudy cheeks.

“Miss Celia,” I say, and I close my eyes, praying for the right words. “Tonight, when you see Miss Hilly . . .”

She smiles into the mirror. “I got it all planned. When Johnny goes to the bathroom, I’m just going to tell her. That they were over with by the time me and Johnny started getting together.”

I sigh. “That ain’t what I mean. It’s . . . she might say some things about . . . me.”

“You want me to tell Hilly you said hi?” she says, coming out of the bathroom. “Since you worked all those years for her mama?”

I just stare at her in her hot pink getup, so full of wine she’s almost cross-eyed. She burps up a little. There really isn’t any use telling her now, in this state.

“No ma’am. Don’t tell her nothing.” I sigh.

She gives me a hug. “I’ll see you tonight. I’m so glad you’ll be there so I’ll have somebody to talk to.”

“I’ll be in the kitchen, Miss Celia.”

“Oh and I’ve got to find that little doo-hickey pin . . .” She teeters over to the dresser, yanks out all the things I just put away.

Just stay home, fool, is what I want to say to her, but I don’t. It’s too late. With Miss Hilly at the helm, it is too late for Miss Celia, and Lord knows, it is too late for me.

THE BENEFIT

chapter 25

THE JACKSON JUNIOR LEAGUE Annual Ball and Benefit is known simply as “the Benefit” to anyone who lives within a ten-mile radius of town. At seven o’clock on a cool November night, guests will arrive at the Robert E. Lee Hotel bar for the cocktail hour. At eight o’clock, the doors from the lounge will open to the ballroom. Swags of green velvet have been hung around the windows, adorned with bouquets of real holly berries.