The last thing I need him to know is that I’ve told off another white lady and lost another job. I put on my purple housedress and stomp to the kitchen. I clean it like it’s never been cleaned.

“Mama, where you going?” yells Kindra. “I’m hungry.”

“I’m going to Aibileen’s. Mama need to be with somebody not pulling on her for five minutes.” I pass Sugar sitting on the front steps. “Sugar, go get Kindra some breakfast.”

“She already ate. Just a half hour ago.”

“Well, she hungry again.”

I walk the two blocks to Aibileen’s house, across Tick Road onto Farish Street. Even though it’s hot as sin and steam’s already rising off the blacktop, kids are throwing balls, kicking cans, skipping rope. “Hey there, Minny,” someone says to me about every fifty feet. I nod, but I don’t get friendly. Not today.

I cut through Ida Peek’s garden. Aibileen’s kitchen door is open. Aibileen’s sitting at her table reading one of those books Miss Skeeter got her from the white library. She looks up when she hears the screen door whine. I guess she can tell I’m angry.

“Lord have mercy, who done what to you?”

“Celia Rae Foote, that’s who.” I sit down across from her. Aibileen gets up and pours me some coffee.

“What she do?”

I tell her about the bottles I found. I don’t know why I hadn’t told her a week and a half ago when I found them. Maybe I didn’t want her to know something so awful about Miss Celia. Maybe I felt bad because Aibileen was the one who got me the job. But now I’m so mad I let it all spill out.

“And then she fired me.”

“Oh, Law, Minny.”

“Say she gone find another maid. But who gone work for that lady? Some nappy-headed country maid already living out there, won’t know squat about serving from the left, clearing from the right.”

“You thought about apologizing? Maybe you go in Monday morning, talk to—”

“I ain’t apologizing to no drunk. I never apologized to my daddy and I sure ain’t apologizing to her.”

We’re both quiet. I throw back my coffee, watch a horsefly buzz against Aibileen’s screen door, knocking with its hard ugly head, whap, whap, whap, until it falls down on the step. Spins around like a crazy fool.

“Can’t sleep. Can’t eat,” I say.

“I tell you, that Celia must be the worst one you ever had to tend to.”

“They all bad. But she the worst of all.”

“Ain’t they? You remember that time Miss Walter make you pay for the crystal glass you broke? Ten dollars out a your pay? Then you find out them glasses only cost three dollars apiece down at Carter’s?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Oh, and you remember that crazy Mister Charlie, the one who always call you nigger to your face like he think it’s funny. And his wife, the one who make you eat lunch outside, even in the middle a January? Even when it snowed that time?”

“Make me cold just thinking bout it.”

“And what—” Aibileen is chuckling, trying to talk at the same time. “What about that Miss Roberta? Way she make you sit at the kitchen table while she try out her new hair dye solution on you?” Aibileen wipes at her eyes. “Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.”

“Ain’t nothing funny bout that. Took me three weeks and twenty-five dollars to get my hair black again.”

Aibileen shakes her head, breathes out a high-keyed “Huhhhhm,” takes a sip of her coffee.

“Miss Celia though,” she says. “Way she treat you? How much she paying you to put up with Mister Johnny and the cooking lessons? Must be less than all of em.”

“You know she paying me double.”

“Oh, that’s right. Well, anyway, with all her friends coming over, specting you to clean up after em all the time.”

I just look at her.

“And them ten kids she got too.” Aibileen presses her napkin to her lips, hides her smile. “Must drive you insane the way they screaming all day, messing up that big old house.”

“I think you done made your point, Aibileen.”

Aibileen smiles, pats me on the arm. “I’m sorry, honey. But you my best friend. And I think you got something pretty good out there. So what if she take a nip or two to get through the day? Go talk to her Monday.”

I feel my face crinkle up. “You think she take me back? After everthing I said?”

“Nobody else gone wait on her. And she know it.”

“Yeah. She dumb.” I sigh. “But she ain’t stupid.”

I go on home. I don’t tell Leroy what’s bothering me, but I think about it all day and all weekend long. I’ve been fired more times than I have fingers. I pray to God I can get my job back on Monday.

chapter 18

ON MONDAY MORNING, I drive to work rehearsing the whole way. I know I mouthed off . . . I walk into her kitchen. And I know I was out of place... I set my bag down in the chair, and . . . and . . . This is the hard part. And I’m sorry.

I brace myself when I hear Miss Celia’s feet padding through the house. I don’t know what to expect, if she’ll be mad or cold or just flat out re-fire me. All I know is, I’m doing the talking first.