to ask like poor folk.
We push open the door and the sun flash in our eyes again, but it’s nice, cooler. The swimming pool shining blue. The black-and-white stripe awnings look clean. The air smell like laundry soap. Kids is laughing and splashing and ladies is laying around in they swimsuits and sunglasses reading magazines.
Miss Leefolt roof her eyes and spy around for Miss Hilly. She got a white floppy hat on, black-and-white polky-dot dress, clonky white buckle sandals a size too big for her feet. She frowning cause she feel out a place, but smiling cause she don’t want nobody to know it.
“There she is.” We follow Miss Leefolt around the pool to where Miss Hilly is in a red bathing suit. She laid out on a lounge chair, watching her kids swim. I see two maids I don’t know with other families, but not Yule May.
“There y’all are,” Miss Hilly say. “Why, Mae Mobley, don’t you look like a little butterball in that bikini. Aibileen, the kids are right there in the baby pool. You can sit in the shade back yonder and look after them. Don’t let William splash the girls, now.”
Miss Leefolt lay down on the lounge chair next to Miss Hilly and I set at the table under a umbrella, few feet behind the ladies. I pop my hose away from my legs to dry the sweat. I’m in a pretty good position for hearing what they say.
“Yule May,” Miss Hilly shake her head at Miss Leefolt. “Another day off. I tell you, that girl is pushing it with me.” Well, that’s one mystery solved. Miss Hilly invite Miss Leefolt to the pool cause she know she bring me.
Miss Hilly pour more cocoa butter on her plump, tan legs, rub it around. She already so greasy she shining. “I am so ready to get down to the coast,” Miss Hilly say. “Three weeks at the beach.”
“I wish Raleigh’s family had a house down there.” Miss Leefolt sigh. She pull her dress up a little to sun her white knees. She can’t wear no bathing suit since she pregnant.
“Of course we have to pay the bus fare to get Yule May back up here on the weekends. Eight dollars. I ought to take it out of her pay.”
The kids yell they want to get in the big pool now. I pull Mae Mobley’s Styrofoam bubble out the bag, fasten it around her tummy. Miss Hilly hand me two more and I put one on William and Heather too. They get in the big pool and float around like a bunch a fishing corks. Miss Hilly look at me, say, “Aren’t they the cutest things?” and I nod. They sure is. Even Miss Leefolt nodding.
They talk and I listen, but they ain’t no mention a Miss Skeeter or a satchel. After while, Miss Hilly send me to the snack window to get cherry Co-Colas for everone, even myself. After while, the locusts in the trees start humming, the shade get cooler and I feel my eyes, trained on the kids in the pool, start to sag.
“Aibee, watch me! Looky at me!” I focus my eyes, smile at Mae Mobley funning around.
And that’s when I see Miss Skeeter, back behind the pool, outside the fence. She got on her tennis skirt and her racquet in her hand. She staring at Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt, tilting her head like she sorting something out. Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt, they don’t see her, they still talking about Biloxi. I watch Miss Skeeter come in the gate, walk around the pool. Pretty soon, she standing right in front a them and they still don’t see her.
“Hey y’all,” Miss Skeeter say. She got sweat running down her arms. Her face is pink and swolled up in the sun.
Miss Hilly look up, but she stay stretched out on her pool chair, magazine in her hand. Miss Leefolt jump up off her chair and stand up.
“Hey, Skeeter! Why—I didn’t . . . we tried to call . . .” Her teeth just about chattering she smiling so big.
“Hey, Elizabeth.”
“Tennis?” Miss Leefolt ask, nodding her head like she a doll on a dashboard. “Who’re you playing with?”
“I was hitting balls on the backboard by myself,” Miss Skeeter say. She blow a thicket a hair off her forehead, but it’s stuck. She don’t move out the sun, though.
“Hilly,” Miss Skeeter say, “did Yule May tell you I called?”
Hilly smile kind a tight. “She’s off today.”
“I