I DRIVE DOWN Gessum Avenue in Mama’s Cadillac. Up ahead, a little colored boy in overalls watches me, wide-eyed, gripping a red ball. I look into my rearview mirror. Aibileen is still on her front steps in her white uniform. She hadn’t even looked at me when she said No ma’am. She just kept her eyes set on that yellow patch of grass in her yard.

I guess I thought it would be like visiting Constantine, where friendly colored people waved and smiled, happy to see the little white girl whose daddy owned the big farm. But here, narrow eyes watch me pass by. When my car gets close to him, the little colored boy turns and scats behind a house a few down from Aibileen’s. Half-a-dozen colored people are gathered in the front yard of the house, holding trays and bags. I rub my temples. I try to think of something more that might convince Aibileen.

A WEEK AGO, Pascagoula knocked on my bedroom door.

“There’s a long distance phone call for you, Miss Skeeter. From a Miss . . . Stern, she say?”

“Stern?” I thought out loud. Then I straightened. “Do you mean . . . Stein?”

“I . . . I reckon it could a been Stein. She talk kind a hard-sounding.”

I rushed past Pascagoula, down the stairs. For some stupid reason, I kept smoothing my frizzy hair down as if it were a meeting and not a phone call. In the kitchen, I grabbed the phone dangling against the wall.

Three weeks earlier, I’d typed out the letter on Strathmore white. Three pages outlining the idea, the details, and the lie. Which was that a hardworking and respected colored maid has agreed to let me interview her and describe in specifics what it’s like to work for the white women of our town. Weighing it against the alternative, that I planned to ask a colored woman for help, saying she’d already agreed to it seemed infinitely more attractive.

I stretched the cord into the pantry, pulled the string on the single bare bulb. The pantry is shelved floor to ceiling with pickles and soup jars, molasses, put-up vegetables, and preserves. This was my old high school trick to get some privacy.

“Hello? This is Eugenia speaking.”

“Please hold, I’ll put the call through.” I heard a series of clicks and then a far, far away voice, almost as deep as a man’s, say, “Elaine Stein.”

“Hello? This is Skeet—Eugenia Phelan in Mississippi?”

“I know, Miss Phelan. I called you.” I heard a match strike, a short, sharp inhale. “I received your letter last week. I have some comments.”

“Yes ma’am.” I sank down onto a tall tin can of King Biscuit flour. My heart thumped as I strained to hear her. A phone call from New York truly sounded as crackly as a thousand miles away ought to.

“What gave you this idea? About interviewing domestic housekeepers. I’m curious.”

I sat paralyzed a second. She offered no chatting or hello, no introduction of herself. I realized it was best to answer her as instructed. “I was . . . well, I was raised by a colored woman. I’ve seen how simple it can be and—and how complex it can be between the families and the help.” I cleared my throat. I sounded stiff, like I was talking to a teacher.

“Continue.”

“Well,” I took a deep breath, “I’d like to write this showing the point of view of the help. The colored women down here.” I tried to picture Constantine’s face, Aibileen’s. “They raise a white child and then twenty years later the child becomes the employer. It’s that irony, that we love them and they love us, yet . . .” I swallowed, my voice trembling. “We don’t even allow them to use the toilet in the house.”

Again there was silence.

“And,” I felt compelled to continue, “everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.” Sweat dripped down my chest, blotting the front of my cotton blouse.

“So you want to show a side that’s never been examined before,” Missus Stein said.

“Yes. Because no one ever talks about it. No one talks about anything down here.”

Elaine Stein laughed like a growl. Her accent was tight, Yankee. “Miss Phelan, I lived in Atlanta. For six years with my first husband.”

I latched on to this small connection. “So . . . you know what it’s like then.”

“Enough to get me out of there,” she said, and I heard her exhale her smoke. “Look, I read your outline. It’s certainly... original, but it won’t work. What maid in her right mind would ever tell you the truth?”

I could see Mother’s pink slippers pass by the door. I tried to ignore them. I couldn’t believe Missus Stein was already calling my bluff. “The first interviewee is . . . eager to tell her story.”

“Miss Phelan,” Elaine Stein said, and I knew it wasn’t a question, “this Negro actually agreed to talk to you candidly? About working for a white family? Because that seems like a hell of a risk in a place like Jackson, Mississippi.”

I sat blinking. I felt the first fingers of worry that Aibileen might not be as easy to convince as I’d thought. Little did I know what she would say to me on her front steps the next week.

“I watched them try to integrate your bus station on the news,” Missus Stein continued. “They jammed fifty-five Negroes in a jail cell built for four.”

I pursed my lips. “She has agreed. Yes, she has.”

“Well. That is impressive. But after her, you really think other maids will talk to you? What if the employers find out?”

“The interviews would be conducted secretly. Since, as you know, things are a little dangerous down here right now.” The truth was, I had very little idea how dangerous things were. I’d spent the past four years locked away in the padded room of college, reading Keats and Eudora Welty and worrying over term papers.

“A little dangerous?” She laughed. “The marches in Birmingham, Martin Luther King. Dogs attacking colored children. Darling, it’s the hottest topic in the nation. But, I’m sorry, this will never work. Not as an article, because no Southern newspaper would publish it. And certainly not as a book. A book of interviews would never sell.”

“Oh,” I heard myself say. I closed my eyes, feeling all the excitement drain out of me. I heard myself say again, “Oh.”

“I called because, frankly, it’s a good idea. But . . . there’s no possible way to take it to print.”

“But . . . what if . . .” My eyes started darting around the pantry, looking for something to bring back her interest. Maybe I should talk about it as an article, maybe a magazine, but she said no—

“Eugenia, who are you talking to in there?” Mother’s voice cut though the crack. She inched the door open and I yanked it closed again. I covered the receiver, hissed, “I’m talking to Hilly, Mother—”

“In the pantry? You’re like a teenager again—”

“I mean—” Missus Stein let out a sharp tsk. “I suppose I could read what you get. God knows, the book business could use some rattling.”

“You’d do that? Oh Missus Stein . . .”

“I’m not saying I’m considering it. But... do the interview and I’ll let you know if it’s worth pursuing.”

I stuttered a few unintelligible sounds, finally coming out with, “Thank you. Missus Stein, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Call Ruth, my secretary, if you need to get in touch.” And she hung up.

I lug an Old SATCHEL to bridge club at Elizabeth’s on Wednesday. It is red. It is ugly. And for today, at least, it is a prop.

It’s the only bag in Mother’s house I could find large enough to carry the Miss Myrna letters. The ............