FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, the three of us arrange ourselves in the same seats in Aibileen’s small, warm living room. Minny storms in mad, quiets down as she tells Aibileen her story, then rushes out in a rage as fast as she came in. I write down as much as I can.

When Minny lapses into news about Miss Celia—“She sneaking upstairs, think I don’t see her, but I know, that crazy lady up to something”—she always stops herself, the way Aibileen does when she speaks of Constantine. “That ain’t part a my story. You leave Miss Celia out a this.” She watches me until my writing stops.

Besides her furiousness at white people, Minny likes to talk about food. “Let’s see, I put the green beans in first, then I go on and get the pork chops going cause, mmm-mmm, I like my chops hot out the pan, you know.”

One day, while she’s saying, “. . . got a white baby on one arm, green beans in the pot—” she stops. Cocks her jaw at me. Taps her foot.

“Half this stuff don’t have nothing to do with colored rights. Ain’t but day-to-day business.” She eyes me up and down. “Look to me like you just writing life.”

I stop my pencil. She’s right. I realize that’s just what I wanted to do. I tell her, “I hope so.” She gets up and says she’s got more important things to worry about than what I’m hoping for.

THE NEXT EVENING, I’m working upstairs in my room, banging the keys on my Corona. Suddenly I hear Mother hit the stairs running. In two seconds she’s made it in my room. “Eugenia!” she whispers.

I stand so fast my chair teeters, trying to guard the contents of my typewriter. “Yes ma’am?”

“Now don’t panic but there is a man—a very tall man—downstairs to see you.”

“Who?”

“He says his name is Stuart Whit worth.”

“What?”

“He said y’all spent an evening together awhile back but how can that be, I didn’t know anything—”

“Christ.”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Eugenia Phelan. Just put some lipstick on.”

“Believe me, Mama,” I say, putting on lipstick anyway. “Jesus wouldn’t like him either.”

I brush my hair because I know it’s awful. I even wash the typewriter ink and correcting fluid off my hands and elbows. But I won’t change clothes, not for him.

Mother gives me a quick up and down in my dungarees and Daddy’s old button-up white shirt. “Is he a Greenwood Whitworth or a Natchez?”

“He’s the state senator’s son.”

Mother’s jaw drops so far it hits her string of pearls. I go down the stairs, past the assembly of our childhood portraits. Pictures of Carlton line the wall, taken up until about the day before yesterday. Pictures of me stop when I was twelve. “Mother, give us some privacy.” I watch as she slowly drags herself back to her room, glancing over her shoulder before she disappears.

I walk out onto the porch, and there he is. Three months after our date, there is Stuart Whitworth himself, standing on my front porch in khaki pants and a blue coat and a red tie like he’s ready for Sunday dinner.

Asshole.

“What brings you here?” I ask. I don’t smile though. I’m not smiling at him.

“I just . . . I wanted to drop by.”

“Well. Can I get you a drink?” I ask. “Or should I just get you the entire bottle of Old Kentucky?”

He frowns. His nose and forehead are pink, like he’s been working in the sun. “Look, I know it was . . . a long while back, but I came out here to say I’m sorry.”

“Who sent you—Hilly? William?” There are eight empty rocking chairs on my porch. I don’t ask him to sit in any of them.

He looks off at the west cotton field where the sun is dipping into the dirt. He shoves his hands down in his front pockets like a twelve-year-old boy. “I know I was... rude that night, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot and . . .”

I laugh then. I’m just so embarrassed that he would come out here and have me relive it.

“Now look,” he says, “I told Hilly ten times I wasn’t ready to go out on any date. I wasn’t even close to being ready . . .”

I grit my teeth. I can’t believe I feel the heat of tears; the date was months ago. But I remember how secondhand I’d felt that night, how ridiculously fixed up I’d gotten for him. “Then why’d you even show up?”

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “You know how Hilly can be.”

I stand there waiting for whatever it is he’s here for. He runs a hand through his light brown hair. It is almost wiry it’s so thick. He looks tired.

I look away because he’s cute in an overgrown boy kind of way and it’s not something I want to be thinking right now. I want him to leave—I don’t want to feel this awful feeling again, yet I hear myself saying, “What do you mean, not ready?”

“Just not ready. Not after what happened.”

I stare at him. “You want me to guess?”

“Me and Patricia van Devender. We got engaged last year and then . . . I thought you knew.”

He sinks down in a rocking chair. I don’t sit next to him. But I don’t tell him to leave either.

“What, she ran off with someone else?”

“Shoot.” He drops his head down into his hands, mumbles, “That’d be a goddamn Mardi Gras party compared to what happened.”

I don’t let myself say to him what I’d like to, that he probably deserved whatever she did, but he’s just too pathetic-looking. Now that all his good ole boy, tough bourbon talk has evaporated, I wonder if he’s this pathetic all the time.

“We’d been dating since we were fifteen. You know how it is, when you’ve been steady with somebody that long.”

And I don’t know why I admit this, except that I simply have nothing to lose. “Actually, I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I’ve never dated anybody.”

He looks up at me, kind of laughs. “Well, that must be it, then.”

“Be what?” I steel myself, recalling fertilizer and tractor references.

“You’re . . . different. I’ve never met anybody that said exactly what they were thinking. Not a woman, anyway.”

“Believe me, I had a lot more to say.”

He sighs. “When I saw your face, out there by the truck . . . I’m not that guy. I’m really not such a jerk.”

I look away, embarrassed. It’s just starting to hit me what he said, that even though I’m different, maybe it’s not in a strange way or an abnormal, tall-girl way. But maybe in a good way.

“I came by to see if you’d like to come downtown with me for supper. We could talk,” he says and stands up. “We could... I don’t know, listen to each other this time.”

I stand there, shocked. His eyes are blue and clear and fixed on me like my answer might really mean something to him. I take in a deep breath, about to say yes—I mean, why would I of all people refuse—and he bites his bottom lip, waiting.

And then I think about how he treated me like I was nothing. How he got shit-dog drunk he was so miserable to be stuck with me. I think about how he told me I smelled like fertilizer. It took me three months to stop thinking about that comment.

“No,” I blurt out. “Thank you. But I really can’t imagine anything worse.”

He nods, looks down at his feet. Then he goes down the porch steps.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the door to his car open. “That’s what I came to say and, well, I guess I said it.”

I stand on the porch, listening to the hollow sounds of the evening, gravel under Stuart’s shifting feet, dogs moving in the early darkness. For a second, I remember Charles Gray, my only kiss in a lifetime. How I’d pulled away, somehow sure the kiss hadn’t been intended for me.

Stuart gets in his car and his door clicks shut. He props his arm up so his elbow pokes through the open window. But he keeps his eyes turned down.

“Just give me a minute,” I holler out to him. “Let me get my sweater.”

NO ONE TELLS us, girls who don’t go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens. Mother climbs all the way to the third floor and stands over me in my bed, but I act like I’m still asleep. Because I just want to remember it awhile.

We’d driven to the Robert E. Lee for dinner last night. I’d thrown on a light blue sweater and a slim white skirt. I’d even let Mother brush out my hair, trying to drown out her nervous, complicated instructions.

“And don’t forget to smile. Men don’t want a girl who’s moping around all night, and don’t sit like some squaw Indian, cross your—”

“Wait, my legs or my ank—”

“Your ankles. Don’t you remember anything from Missus Rheimer’s etiquette class? And just go ahead and lie and tell him you go to church every Sunday, and whatever you do, do not crunch your ice at the table, it’s awful. Oh, and if the conversation starts to lag, you tell him about our second cousin who’s a city councilman in Kosciusko . . .”

As she brushed and smoothed and brushed and smoothed, Mother kept asking how I’d met him and what happened on our last date, but I managed to scoot out from under her and dash down the stairs, shaking with wonder and nervousness of my own. By the time Stuart and I walked into the hotel and sat down and put our napkins in our lap, the waiter said they’d be closing soon. All they’d serve us was dessert.

Then Stuart had gotten quiet.

“What . . . do you want, Skeeter?” he’d asked and I’d sort of tensed up then, hoping he wasn’t planning on getting drunk again.

“I’ll have a Co-Cola. Lots of ice.”

“No.” He smiled. “I mean . . . in life. What do you want?”

I took a deep breath, knowing what Mother would advise me to say: fine, strong kids, a husband to take care of, shiny new appliances to cook tasty yet healthful meals in. “I want to be a writer,” I said. “A journalist. Maybe a novelist. Maybe both.”

He lifted his chin and looked at me then, right in the eye.

“I like that,” he said, and then he just kept staring. “I’ve been thinking about you. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you’re”—he smiled—“tall.”

Pretty?

We ate strawberry soufflés and had one glass of Chablis apiece. He talked about how to tell if there’s oil underneath a cotton field and I talked about how the receptionist and I were the only females working for the paper.

“I hope you write something really good. Something you believe in.”

“Thank you. I . . . hope so too.” I don’t say anything about Aibileen or Missus Stein.

I haven’t had the chance to look at too many men’s faces up close and I noticed how his skin was thicker than mine and a gorgeous shade of toast; the stiff blond hairs on his cheeks and chin seemed to be growing before my eyes. He smelled like starch. Like pine. His nose wasn’t so pointy after all.

The waiter yawned in the corner but we both ignored him and stayed and talked some more. And by the time I was wishing I’d washed my hair this morning instead of just bathed and was practically doubled over with gratefulness that I’d at least brushed my teeth, out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body—my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.

On a MONDAY AFTERNOON, a few weeks after my date with Stuart, I stop by the library before going to the League meeting. Inside, it smells like grade school—boredom, paste, Lysoled vomit. I’ve come to get more books for Aibileen and check if anything’s ever been written about domestic help.

“Well hey there, Skeeter!”

Jesus. It’s Susie Pernell. In high school, she could’ve been voted most likely to talk too much. “Hey . . . Susie. What are you doing here?”

“I’m working here for the League committee, remember? You really ought to get on it, Skeeter, it’s real fun! You get to read all the latest magazines and file things and even laminate the library cards.” Susie poses by the giant brown machine like she’s on The Price Is Right television show.

“How new and exciting.”

“So, what may I help you find today, ma’am? We have murder mysteries, romance novels, how-to makeup books, how-to hair books,” she pauses, jerks out a smile, “rose gardening, home decorating—”

“I’m just browsing, thanks.” I hurry off. I’ll fend for myself in the stacks. There is no way I can tell her what I’m looking for. I can already hear her whispering at the League meetings, I knew there was something not right about that Skeeter Phelan, hunting for those Negro materials...

I search through card catalogues and scan the shelves, but find nothing about domestic workers. In nonfiction, I spot a single copy of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. I grab it, excited to deliver it to Aibileen, but when I open it, I see the middle section has been ripped out. Inside, someone has written NIGGER BOOK in purple crayon. I am not as disturbed by the words as by the fact that the handwriting looks like a third grader’s. I glance around, push the book in my satchel. It seems better than putting it back on the shelf.

In the Mississippi History room, I search for anything remotely resembling race relations. I find only Civil War books, maps, and old phone books. I stand on tiptoe to see what’s on the high shelf. That’s when I spot a booklet, laid sideways across the top of the Mississippi River Valley Flood Index. A regular-sized person would never have seen it. I slide it down to glance at the cover. The booklet is thin, printed on onionskin paper, curling, bound with staples. “Compilation of Jim Crow Laws of the South,” the cover reads. I open the noisy cover page.

The booklet is simply a list of laws stating what colored people can and cannot do, in an assortment of Southern states. I skim the first page, puzzled why this is here. The laws are neither threatening nor friendly, just citing the facts:

No person shall require any white female to nurse in wards or rooms in which negro men are placed.
It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void.
No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls.
The officer in charge shall not bury any colored persons upon ground used for the burial of white persons.
Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.
 

I read through four of the twenty-five pages, mesmerized by how many laws exist to separate us. Negroes and whites are not allowed to share water fountains, movie houses, public restrooms, ballparks, phone booths, circus shows. Negroes cannot use the same pharmacy or buy postage stamps at the same window as me. I think about Constantine, the time my family took her to Memphis with us and the highway had mostly washed out, but we had to drive straight on through because we knew the hotels wouldn’t let her in. I think about how no one in the car would come out and say it. We all know about these laws, we live here, but we don’t talk about them. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them written down.

Lunch counters, the state fair, pool tables, hospitals. Number forty-seven I have to read twice, for its irony.

The Board shall maintain a separate building on separate grounds for the instruction of all blind persons of the colored race.
 

After several minutes, I make myself stop. I start to put the booklet back, telling myself I’m not writing a book about Southern legislation, this is a waste of my time. But then I realize, like a shell cracking open in my head, there’s no difference between these government laws and Hilly building Aibileen a bathroom in the garage, except ten minutes’ worth of signatures in the state capital.

On the last page, I see the pica type that reads Property of Mississippi Law Library. The booklet was returned to the wrong building. I scratch my revelation on a piece of paper and tuck it inside the booklet: Jim Crow or Hilly’s bathroom plan—what’s the difference? I slip it in my bag. Susie sneezes behind the desk across the room.

I head for the doors. I have a League meeting in thirty minutes. I give Susie an extra friendly smile. She’s whispering into the phone. The stolen books in my bag feel like they’re pulsing with heat.

“Skeeter,” Susie ............