ANOTHER DAY PASSES, and still I can hear Miss Hilly’s voice talking the words, reading the lines. I don’t hear the scream. Not yet. But she’s getting close.

Aibileen told me what the ladies in the Jitney said yesterday, but we haven’t heard another thing since. I keep dropping things, broke my last measuring cup tonight and Leroy’s eyeing me like he knows. Right now he’s drinking coffee at the table and the kids are draped all over the kitchen doing their homework.

I jump when I see Aibileen standing at the screen door. She puts her finger to her lips and nods to me. Then she disappears.

“Kindra, get the plates, Sugar, watch the beans, Felicia, get Daddy to sign that test, Mama needs some air.” Poof I disappear out the screen door.

Aibileen’s standing on the side of the house in her white uniform.

“What happen?” I ask. Inside I hear Leroy yell, “A Eff? ” He won’t touch the kids. He’ll yell, but that’s what fathers are supposed to do.

“One-arm Ernestine call and say Miss Hilly’s talking all over town about who’s in the book. She telling white ladies to fire they maids and she ain’t even guessing the right ones!” Aibileen looks so upset, she’s shaking. She’s twisting a cloth into a white rope. I’ll bet she doesn’t even realize she carried over her real dinner napkin.

“Who she saying?”

“She told Miss Sinclair to fire Annabelle. So Miss Sinclair fired her and then took her car keys away cause she loaned her half the money to buy the car. Annabelle already paid most of it back but it’s gone.”

“That witch,” I whisper, grinding my teeth.

“That ain’t all, Minny.”

I hear bootsteps in the kitchen. “Hurry, fore Leroy catch us whispering.”

“Miss Hilly told Miss Lou Anne, ‘Your Louvenia’s in here. I know she is and you need to fire her. You ought to send that Nigra to jail.’ ”

“But Louvenia didn’t say a single bad thing about Miss Lou Anne!” I say. “And she got Robert to take care of! What Miss Lou Anne say?”

Aibileen bites her lip. She shakes her head and the tears come down her face.

“She say . . . she gone think about it.”

“Which one? The firing or the jail?”

Aibileen shrug. “Both, I reckon.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say, wanting to kick something. Somebody.

“Minny, what if Miss Hilly don’t ever finish reading it?”

“I don’t know, Aibileen. I just don’t know.”

Aibileen’s eyes jerk up to the door and there’s Leroy, watching us from behind the screen. He stands there, quiet, until I tell Abileen goodbye and come back inside.

AT FIVE-THIRTY THAT MORNING, Leroy falls into bed next to m............