By placing strong characters in everyday situations at a troubled time in United States history, author Kathryn Stockett makes her first book, The Help (2009, Penguin / Fig Tree, 464 pages), extra compelling. She tells of black maids toiling for white families in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960s as the civil-rights movement gains momentum.
Using three narrators, Aibileen and Minny, both maids, and Miss Skeeter, an idealistic white woman, the author adds diversity and complexity, multiplying the poignant moments. The stakes rise beyond humiliation and mistreatment. Black people behaving “wrongly” or sympathetic whites helping them become targets for vandalism, sabotage and violence, even murder.
“Franny bend her head down, say, ‘You hear what happen to Louvenia Brown’s grandson this morning?’
‘Robert?’ I say. ‘Who do the mowing?’
‘Use the white bathroom at Pinchman Lawn and Garden. Say they wasn’t a sign up saying so. Two white mens chased him and beat him with a tire iron.’
Oh no. Not Robert. ‘He… is he…?’
Franny shake her head. ‘They don’t know. He up at the hospital. I heard he blind.’ ”
Recent college grad Skeeter Phelan, an aspiring writer, contacts a New York publisher with a plan to interview black maids about personal and work experiences. Will any maids take the big risk of co-operating? Can they secretly finish the project? If such a book appears, what’s the payback for defying racist rules?
Usually silent at work, the maids notice much, like their employers’ flaws: “Here’s something about Miss Leefolt: she not just frowning all the time, she skinny. Her legs is so spindly, she look like she done growed em last week.”
Kind-hearted Aibileen, who raised 17 white children, but lost her own son, Treelore, to an industrial accident, and her best friend, sharp-tongued, often-unemployed Minny, reluctantly agree to help Skeeter. They have lots to tell.
“ ‘Get the house straightened up and then go on and fix some of that chicken salad now,’ say Miss Leefolt… she like hearing herself tell me what to do…. I arrange the-this and the-that for her lady friends.”
Resentful and conflicted, each narrator displays boldness and ambition to help build a fairer society. In a modern context, the author shows similar admirable qualities.
“…my jaw so tight I could break my teeth off. I feel that bitter seed growing inside a me, the one planted after Treelore died. I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain’t a color, disease ain’t the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming – and it come in ever white child’s life – when they start to think that colored folks ain’t as good as whites.”
Unfairness in that bygone, yet recent, era, looks limitless. The two races live in different districts and shop in separate stores. “The store is bright, lined up neat. Nothing like the colored Piggly Wiggly with sawdust on the floor.”
Relying on fond memories of her own family maid, the author captures the feelings of those times on both sides of the racial divide: “Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody’s business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady’s problems, you don’t go crying to her with yours – you can’t pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends.”
Some situations look contradictory, even ridiculous. Maids polish jewelry and silverware, but then their employers count the pieces, checking that none disappeared. While barking orders at maids, the cake-nibbling, cigarette-puffing white ladies plan charity events to help PSCAs (poor starving children of Africa). White families trust their maids to raise children, but refuse to share toilets with them.
“Miss Hilly talk slow, like she spreading icing on a cake. ‘You just tell Raleigh every penny he spends on that bathroom he’ll get back when y’all sell this house.’ She nod like she agreeing with herself. ‘All these houses they’re building without maid’s quarters? It’s just plain dangerous. Everybody knows they carry different kinds of diseases than we do.’ ”
The maids also dislike some intimate details. “The day after… is change-the-damn-sheets day and the day I hate the most. Sheets are just too personal a thing for folks who aren’t kin to be fooling with. They are full of hair and scabs and snot and the signs of jelly-rolling. But it’s the blood stains that are the worst. Scrubbing those out with my bare hands, I gag over the sink.”
Always poignant, The Help holds more sad and frightening moments than funny ones. Yet even the most abused and troubled characters keep a sense of humor that helps in troubled times.
Living in Atlanta but raised in Jackson, Stockett knows her subject and setting. After studying English and creative writing at the University of Alabama, she moved to New York and worked on magazines. Judging by the initial success for The Help, she should have many more stories to tell.
While based on history, The Help shines for its authenticity and courageous characters. Stockett tells of imperfect people who are full of heart and ready, despite their fears, to risk all for a greater good. Readers won’t forget this book.
Approval Rating: 84 per cent
For more information: www.kathrynstockett.com
(February 23, 2010)
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Kathryn Stockett hits
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