up, Miss Skeeter. Send they kids off cause they have to tend to a white family.”
I look down, wondering if Constantine couldn’t take care of her child because she had to take care of us.
“But most send em off to family. A orphanage is... different altogether.”
“Why didn’t she send the baby to her sister’s? Or another relative?”
“Her sister...she just couldn’t handle it. Being Negro with white skin . . . in Mississippi, it’s like you don’t belong to nobody. But it wasn’t just hard on the girl. It was hard on Constantine. She . . . folks would look at her. White folks would stop her, ask her all suspicious what she doing toting round a white child. Policeman used to stop her on State Street, told her she need to get her uniform on. Even colored folks . . . they treat her different, distrustful, like she done something wrong. It was hard for her to find somebody to watch Lulabelle while she at work. Constantine got to where she didn’t want to bring Lula . . . out much.”
“Was she already working for my mother then?”
“She’d been with your mama a few years. That’s where she met the father, Connor. He worked on your farm, lived back there in Hotstack.” Aibileen shakes her head. “We was all surprised Constantine would go and... get herself in the family way. Some folks at church wasn’t so kind about it, especially when the baby come out white. Even though the father was black as me.”
“I’m sure Mother wasn’t too pleased, either.” Mother, I’m sure, knew all about it. She’s always kept tabs on all the colored help and their situations— where they live, if they’re married, how many children they have. It’s more of a control thing than a real interest. She wants to know who’s walking around her property.
“Was it a colored orphanage or a white one?” Because I am thinking, I am hoping, maybe Constantine just wanted a better life for her child. Maybe she thought she’d be adopted by a white family and not feel so different.
“Colored. White ones wouldn’t take her, I heard. I guess they knew... maybe they seen that kind a thing before.
“When Constantine went to the train station with Lulabelle to take her up there, I heard white folks was staring on the platform, wanting to know why a little white girl was going in the colored car. And when Constantine left her at the place up in Chicago . . . four is . . . pretty old to get given up. Lulabelle was screaming. That’s what Constantine told somebody at our church. Said Lula was screaming and thrashing, trying to get her mama to come back to her. But Constantine, even with that sound in her ears . . . she left her there.”
As I listen, it starts to hit me, what Aibileen is telling me. If I hadn’t had the mother I have, I might not have thought it. “She gave her up because she was . . . ashamed? Because her daughter was white?”
Aibileen opens her mouth to disagree, but then she closes it, looks down. “A few years later, Constantine wrote the orphanage, told em she made a mistake, she wanted her girl back. But Lula been adopted already. She was gone. Constantine always said giving her child away was the worst mistake she’d ever made in her life.” Aibileen leans back in her chair. “And she said if she ever got Lulabelle back, she’d never let her go.”
I sit quietly, my heart aching for Constantine. I am starting to dread what this has to do with my mother.
“Bout two years ago, Constantine get a letter from Lulabelle. I reckon she was twenty-five by then, and it said her adoptive parents give her the address. They start writing to each other and Lulabelle say she want a come down and stay with her awhile. Constantine, Law, she so nervous she couldn’t walk straight. Too nervous to eat, wouldn’t even take no water. Kept throwing it up. I had her on my prayer list.”
Two years ago. I was up at school then. Why didn’t Constantine tell me in her letters what was going on?
“She took all her savings and bought new clothes for Lulabelle, hair things, had the church bee sew her a new quilt for the bed Lula gone sleep in. She told us at prayer meeting, What if she hate me? She’s gone ask me why I give