get up from your chair.”
Leroy’s eyes don’t move from his paper. “That don’t make no sense, Minny.”
“Miss Celia got it, called Space Command. A box bout half the size of a bread loaf.”
Leroy shakes his head. “Lazy white people. Can’t even get up to turn a knob.”
“I reckon people gone be flying to the moon pretty soon,” I say. I’m not even listening to what’s coming out of my mouth. I’m listening for the scream again. When is that lady going to finish?
“What’s for supper?” Leroy says.
“Yeah, Mama, when we gone eat?” Kindra says.
I hear a car pull in the driveway. I listen and the spoon slips down into the pot of beans. “Cream-a-Wheat.”
“I ain’t eating no Cream-a-Wheat for supper!” Leroy says.
“I had that for breakfast!” Kindra cries.
“I mean—ham. And beans.” I go slam the back door and turn the latch. I look out the window again. The car is backing out. It was just turning around.
Leroy gets up and flings the back door open again. “It’s hot as hell in here!” He comes to the stove where I’m standing. “What’s wrong with you?” he asks, about an inch from my face.
“Nothing,” I say and move back a little. Usually, he doesn’t mess with me when I’m pregnant. But he moves closer. He squeezes my arm hard.
“What’d you do this time?”
“I—I didn’t do nothing,” I say. “I’m just tired.”
He tightens his grip on my arm. It’s starting to burn. “You don’t get tired. Not till the tenth month.”
“I didn’t do nothing, Leroy. Just go set and lemme get to supper.”
He lets go, giving me a long look. I can’t meet his eyes.
AIBILEEN
chapter 31
EVER TIME Miss Leefolt go out shopping or in the yard or even to the bathroom, I check her bedside table where she put the book. I act like I’m dusting, but what I really be doing is checking to see if that First Presbyterian Bible bookmark’s moved any deeper in the pages. She’s been reading it for five days now and I flip it open today and she still on Chapter One, page fourteen. She got two hundred and thirty-five pages left. Law, she read slow.
Still, I want to tell her, you reading about Miss Skeeter, don’t you know? About her growing up with Constantine. And I’m scared to death, but I want to tell her, keep reading, lady, cause Chapter Two gone be about you.
I am nervous as a cat seeing that book in her house. All week long I been tiptoeing around. One time Li’l Man come up from behind and touch me on the leg and I near bout jump out a my workshoes. Especially on Thursday, when Miss Hilly come over. They set at the dining room table and work on the Benefit. Ever once in a while they look up and smile, ask me to fetch a mayonnaise sandwich or some ice tea.
Twice Miss Hilly come in the kitchen and call her maid, Ernestine. “Are you done soaking Heather’s smock dress like I told you to? Uh-huh, and have you dusted the half-tester canopy? Oh you haven’t, well go on and do that right away.”
I go in to collect they plates and I hear Miss Hilly say, “I’m up to Chapter Seven,” and I freeze, the plates in my hand clattering. Miss Leefolt look up and wrinkle her nose at me.
But Miss Hilly, she shaking her finger at Miss Leefolt. “And I think they’re right, it just feels like Jackson.”
“You do?” Miss Leefolt ask.
Miss Hilly lean down and whisper. “I bet we even know some of these Nigra maids.”
“You really think so?” Miss Leefolt ask and my body go cold. I can barely move a foot toward the kitchen. “I’ve only read a little . . .”
“I do. And you know what?” Miss Hilly smile real sneaky-like. “I’m going to figure out every last one of these people.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I’m near about hyperventilating at the bus stop thinking about what Miss Hilly gone do when she get to her part, wondering if Miss Leefolt done read Chapter Two yet. And when I walk in her house, there Miss Leefolt is reading my book at the kitchen table. She hand me Li’l Man from her lap without even taking her eyes off the page. Then she wander off to the back reading and walking at the same time. All a sudden, she can’t get enough of it now that Miss Hilly done taken a interest in it.
Few minutes later, I go back