haunted-looking house three down from Aibileen’s, as we planned. The front porch of the spooky house is sagging, the windows have no panes. I step into the dark, lock the doors and walk quickly. I keep my head lowered, my noisy heels clicking on the pavement.
A dog barks and my keys jangle to the pavement. I glimpse around, pick them up. Two sets of colored people sit on porches, watching, rocking. There are no streetlights so it’s hard to say who else sees me. I keep walking, feeling as obvious as my vehicle: large and white.
I reach number twenty-five, Aibileen’s house. I give one last look around, wishing I wasn’t ten minutes early. The colored part of town seems so far away when, evidently, it’s only a few miles from the white part of town.
I knock softly. There are footsteps, and something inside slams closed. Aibileen opens the door. “Come on in,” she whispers and quickly shuts it behind me and locks it.
I’ve never seen Aibileen in anything but her whites. Tonight she has on a green dress with black piping. I can’t help but notice, she stands a little taller in her own house.
“Make yourself comfortable. I be back real quick.”
Even with the single lamp on, the front room is dark, full of browns and shadows. The curtains are pulled and pinned together so there’s no gap. I don’t know if they’re like that all the time, or just for me. I lower myself onto the narrow sofa. There’s a wooden coffee table with hand-tatted lace draped over the top. The floors are bare. I wish I hadn’t worn such an expensive-looking dress.
A few minutes later, Aibileen comes back with a tray holding a teapot and two cups that don’t match, paper napkins folded into triangles. I smell the cinnamon cookies she’s made. As she pours the tea, the top to the pot rattles.
“Sorry,” she says and holds the top down. “I ain’t never had a white person in my house before.”
I smile, even though I know it wasn’t meant to be funny. I drink a sip of tea. It is bitter and strong. “Thank you,” I say. “The tea is nice.”
She sits and folds her hands in her lap, looks at me expectantly.
“I thought we’d do a little background work and then just jump right in with the questions,” I say. I pull out my notebook and scan the questions I’ve prepared. They suddenly seem obvious, amateur.
“Alright,” she says. She is sitting up very straight, on the sofa, turned toward me.
“Well, to start, um, when and where were you born?”
She swallows, nods. “Nineteen o-nine. Piedmont Plantation down in Cherokee County.”
“Did you know when you were a girl, growing up, that one day you’d be a maid?”
“Yes ma’am. Yes, I did.”
I smile, wait for her to elucidate. There is nothing.
“And you knew that . . . because . . . ?”
“Mama was a maid. My granmama was a house slave.”
“A house slave. Uh-huh,” I say, but she only nods. Her hands stay folded in her lap. She’s watching the words I’m writing on the page.
“Did you . . . ever have dreams of being something else?”
“No,” she says. “No ma’am, I didn’t.” It’s so quiet, I can hear both of us breathing.
“Alright. Then . . . what does it feel like, to raise a white child when your own child’s at home, being . . .” I swallow, embarrassed by the question, “. . . looked after by someone else?”
“It feel . . .” She’s still sitting up so straight it looks painful. “Um, maybe . . . we could go on to the next one.”
“Oh. Alright.” I stare at my questions. “What do you like best about being a maid and what do you like least?”
She looks up at me, like I’ve asked her to define a dirty word.
“I—I spec I like looking after the kids best,” she whispers.
“Anything . . . you’d like to add . . . about that?”
“No ma’am.”
“Aibileen, you don’t have to call me ‘ma’am.’ Not here.”
“Yes ma’am. Oh. Sorry.” She covers her mouth.
Loud voices shout in the street and both our eyes dart toward the window. We are quiet, stock-still. What would happen if someone white found out I was here on a Saturday night talking to Aibileen in her regular clothes? Would they call the police, to report a suspicious meeting? I’m suddenly sure they would. We’d be arrested because that is what they do. They’d charge us with integration violation—I read