ON SATURDAY MORNING, I get up tired and sore. I walk in the kitchen where Sugar’s counting out her nine dollars and fifty cents, the money she earned at the Benefit last night. The phone rings and Sugar’s on it quicker than a grease fire. Sugar’s got a boyfriend and she doesn’t want her mama to know.
“Yessir,” Sugar whispers and hands me the phone.
“Hello?” I say.
“It’s Johnny Foote,” he says. “I’m up at deer camp but I just want you to know, Celia’s real upset. She had a rough time at the party last night.”
“Yessir, I know.”
“You heard, then, huh?” He sighs. “Well, keep an eye on her next week, will you, Minny? I’ll be gone and—I don’t know. Just call me if she doesn’t perk up. I’ll come home early if I need to.”
“I look after her. She gone be alright.”
I didn’t see myself what happened at the party, but I heard about it while I was doing dishes in the kitchen. All the servers were talking about it.
“You see that?” Farina said to me. “That big pink lady you work for, drunk as a Injun on payday.”
I looked up from my sink and saw Sugar headed straight for me with her hand up on her hip. “Yeah, Mama, she upchuck all over the floor. And everbody at the whole party see!” Then Sugar turned around, laughing with the others. She didn’t see the whap coming at her. Soapsuds flew through the air.
“You shut your mouth, Sugar.” I yanked her to the corner. “Don’t you never let me hear you talking bad about the lady who put food in your mouth, clothes on your back! You hear me?”
Sugar, she nodded and I went back to my dishes, but I heard her muttering. “You do it, all the time.”
I whipped around and put my finger in her face. “I got a right to. I earn it every day working for that crazy fool.”
WHEN I GET TO WORK on Monday, Miss Celia’s still laid up in bed with her face buried under the sheets.
“Morning, Miss Celia.”
But she just rolls over and won’t look at me.
At lunchtime, I take a tray of ham sandwiches to the bed.
“I’m not hungry,” she says and throws the pillow over her head.
I stand there looking at her, all mummified in the sheets.
“What you gone do, just lay there all day?” I ask, even though I’ve seen her do it plenty of times before. But this is different. There’s no goo on her skin or smile on her face.
“Please, just leave me alone.”
I start to tell her she needs to just get up, put on her tacky clothes, and forget about it, but the way she’s laying there so pitiful and poor, I keep quiet. I am not her psychiatrist and she’s not paying me to be one.
On Tuesday morning, Miss Celia’s still in the bed. Yesterday’s lunch tray’s on the floor without a single bite missing. She’s still in that ratty blue nightgown that looks left over from her Tunica County days, the gingham ruffle torn at the neck. Something that looks like charcoal stains on the front.
“Come on, lemme get to them sheets. Show bout to come on and Miss Julia gone be in trouble. You ain’t gone believe what that fool done yesterday with Doctor Bigmouth.”
But she just lays there.
Later on, I bring her a tray of chicken pot pie. Even though what I really want to do is tell Miss Celia to pull herself together and go in the kitchen and eat proper.
“Now, Miss Celia, I know it was terrible what happened at the Benefit. But you can’t set in here forever feeling sorry for yourself.”
Miss Celia gets up and locks herself in the bathroom.
I start stripping the bed. When I’m done, I pick up all the wet tissues and glasses off the nightstand. I see a stack of mail. At least the woman’s gotten up to go to the mailbox. I pick it up to wipe the table and there I see the letters H W H across the top of a card. Before I know it, I’ve read the whole note:
Dear Celia,
In lieu of reimbursing me for my dress you tore, we at the League would gladly receive a donation of no less than two hundred dollars. Furthermore, please withhold from volunteering for any nonmember activities in the future, as your name has been placed on a probationary list. Your cooperation in this matter is appreciated.
Do kindly make the check out to the Jackson League Chapter.
Sincerely,
Hilly Holbrook
President and Chairman of Appropriations
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Miss Celia’s still under the covers. I do my work in the kitchen, try to appreciate the fact that she’s not hanging around with me in here. But I can’t enjoy it because the phone’s been ringing all morning, and for the first time since I started, Miss Celia won’t pick it up. After the tenth time, I can’t listen to it anymore and finally just grab it and say hello.
I go in her bedroom, tell her, “Mister Johnny on the phone.”
“What? He’s not supposed to know that I know that he knows about you.”
I let out a big sigh to show I don’t give a fat rat about that lie anymore. “He called me at home. The jig is up, Miss Celia.”
Miss Celia shuts her eyes. “Tell him I’m asleep.”
I pick up the bedroom line and look Miss Celia hard in the eye and tell him she’s in the shower.
“Yessir, she doing alright,” I say and narrow my eyes at her.
I hang up the phone and glare down at Miss Celia.
“He want to know how you doing.”
“I heard.”
“I lied for you, you know.”
She puts the pillow back over her head.
By the next afternoon, I can’t stand it another minute. Miss Celia’s still in the same spot she’s been all week. Her face is thin and that Butterbatch is greasy-looking. The room is starting to smell too, like dirty people. I bet she hasn’t bathed since Friday.
“Miss Celia,” I say.
Miss Celia looks at me, but doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak.
“Mister Johnny gone be home tonight and I told him I’d look after you. What’s he gone think if he find you laid up in that old nasty nightthing you got on?”
I hear Miss Celia sniffle, then hiccup, then start to cry full-on. “None of this would’ve happened if I’d just stayed where I belonged. He should’ve married proper. He should’ve married . . . Hilly.”
“Come on, Miss Celia. It ain’t—”
“The way Hilly looked at me . . . like I was nothing. Like I was trash on the side of the road.”
“But Miss Hilly don’t count. You can’t judge yourself by the way that woman see you.”
“I’m not right for this kind of life. I don’t need a dinner table for twelve people to sit at. I couldn’t get twelve people to come over if I begged.”
I shake my head at her. Complaining again cause she has too much.
“Why does she hate me so much? She doesn’t even know me,” Miss Celia cries. “And it’s not just Johnny, she called me a liar, accused me of getting her that . . . pie.” She bangs her fists against her knees. “I never would a thrown up if it wasn’t for that.”
“What pie?”
“H-H-Hilly won your pie. And she accused me of signing her up for it. Playing some . . . trick on her.” She wails and sobs. “Why would I do that? Write her name down on a list?”
It comes to me real slow what’s going on here. I don’t know who signed up Hilly for that pie, but I sure know why she’d eat alive anybody she thought did it.
I glance over at the door. That voice in my head says, Walk away, Minny. Just ease on out a here. But I look at Miss Celia bawling into her old nightgown, and I get a guilt thick as Yazoo clay.
“I can’t do this to Johnny anymore. I’ve already decided, Minny. I’m going back,” she sobs. “Back to Sugar Ditch.”
“You gone leave your husband just cause you throwed up at some party?” Hang on, I think, my eyes opening wide. Miss Celia can’t leave Mister Johnny—where in the heck would that leave me?
Miss Celia cries down harder at the reminder. I sigh and watch her, wondering what to do.
Lord, I reckon it’s time. Time I told her the one thing in the world I never want to tell anybody. I’m going to lose my job either way, so I might as well take the chance.
“Miss Celia . . .” I say and I sit down in the yellow armchair in the corner. I’ve never sat anywhere in this house but in the kitchen and her bathroom floor, but today calls for extreme measures.
“I know why Miss Hilly got so mad,” I say. “About the pie, I mean.”
Miss Celia blows a hard, loud honk into a tissue. She looks at me.
“I did something to her. It was Terrible. Awful.” My heart starts thumping just thinking about it. I realize I can’t sit in this chair and tell her this story at the sam............