IT’S TECHNICALLY WINTER in most of the nation, but already there is gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands in my mother’s house. Signs of spring have come too early. Daddy’s in a cotton-planting frenzy, had to hire ten extra field workers to till and drive tractors to get the seed in the ground. Mother’s been studying The Farmer’s Almanac, but she’s hardly concerned with planting. She delivers the bad news to me with a hand on her forehead.

“They say this’ll be the most humid one in years.” She sighs. The Shinalator never did much good after those first few times. “I’d pick up some more spray cans down at Beemon’s, the new extra-heavy kind.”

She looks up from the Almanac, narrows her eyes at me. “What are you dressed that way for?”

I have on my darkest dress, dark stockings. The black scarf over my hair probably makes me look more like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia than Marlene Dietrich. The ugly red satchel hangs from my shoulder.

“I have some errands to run tonight. Then I’m meeting... some girls. At church.”

“On a Saturday night?”

“Mama, God doesn’t care what day of the week it is,” I say and make for the car before she can ask any more questions. Tonight, I’m going to Aibileen’s for her first interview.

My heart racing, I drive fast on the paved town roads, heading for the colored part of town. I’ve never even sat at the same table with a Negro who wasn’t paid to do so. The interview has been delayed by over a month. First, the holidays came and Aibileen had to work late almost every night, wrapping presents and cooking for Elizabeth’s Christmas party. In January, I started to panic when Aibileen got the flu. I’m afraid I’ve waited so long, Missus Stein will have lost interest or forgotten why she even agreed to read it.

I drive the Cadillac through the darkness, turning on Gessum Avenue, Aibileen’s Street. I’d rather be in the old truck, but Mother would’ve been too suspicious and Daddy was using it in the fields. I stop in front of an abandoned, 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 about it in the paper all the time—they despise the whites that meet with the coloreds to help with the civil rights movement. This has nothing to do with integration, but why else would we be meeting? I didn’t even bring any Miss Myrna letters as backup.

I see open, honest fear on Aibileen’s face. Slowly the voices outside dissipate down the road. I exhale but Aibileen stays tense. She keeps her eyes on the curtains.

I look down at my list of questions, searching for something to draw this nervousness out of her, out of myself. I keep thinking about how much time I’ve lost already.

“And what . . . did you say you disliked about your job?”

Aibileen swallows hard.

“I mean, do you want to talk about the bathroom? Or about Eliz—Miss Leefolt? Anything about the way she pays you? Has she ever yelled at you in front of Mae Mobley?”

Aibileen takes a napkin and dabs it to her forehead. She starts to speak, but stops herself.

“We’ve talked plenty of times, Aibileen . . .”

She puts her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, I—” She gets up and walks quickly down the narrow hall. A door closes, rattling the teapot and the cups on the tray.

Five minutes pass. When she comes back, she holds a towel to her front, the way I’ve seen Mother do after she vomits, when she doesn’t make it to her toilet in time.

“I’m sorry. I thought I was . . . ready to talk.”

I nod, not sure what to do.

“I just . . . I know you already told that lady in New York I’s gone do this but . . .” She closes her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can. I think I need to lay down.”

“Tomorrow night. I’ll . . . come up with a better way. Let’s just try again and . . .”

She shakes her head, clutches her towel.

On my drive home, I want to kick myself. For thinking I could just waltz in and demand answers. For thinking she’d stop feeling like the maid just because we were at her house, because she wasn’t wearing a uniform.

I look over at my notebook on the white leather seat. Besides where she grew up, I’ve gotten a total of twelve words. And four of them are yes ma’am and no ma’am.

PATSY CLINE’S VOICE DRIFTS out of WJDX radio. As I drive down the County Road, they’re playing “Walking After Midnight.” When I pull into Hilly’s driveway, they’re on “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray.” Her plane crashed this morning and everyone from New York to Mississippi to Seattle is in mourning, singing her songs. I park the Cadillac and stare out at Hilly’s rambling white house. It’s been four days since Aibileen vomited in the middle of our interview and I’ve heard nothing from her.

I go inside. The bridge table is set up in Hilly’s antebellum-style parlor with its deafening grandfather clock and gold swag curtains. Everyone is seated—Hilly, Elizabeth, and Lou Anne Templeton, who has replaced Missus Walters. Lou Anne is one of those girls who wears a big eager smile—all the time, and it never stops. It makes me want to stick a straight pin in her. And when you’re not looking, she stares at you with that vapid, toothy smile. And she agrees with every single little thing Hilly says.

Hilly holds up a Life magazine, points to a spread of a house in California. “A den they’re cal............