An exclusive extract from the Great Read in the April issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly: The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Fig Tree)
Constantine came to work in our house at six in the morning and at harvest time, she came at five. That way she could fix Daddy his biscuits and gravy before he headed to the field. I woke up nearly every day to her standing in the kitchen, Preacher Green playing on the radio that sat on the kitchen table. The minute she saw me, she smiled instantly. “Good morning beautiful girl!” I’d sit at the kitchen table and tell her what I’d dreamed. She claimed dreams told the future.
“I was in the attic, looking down at the farm,” I’d tell her. “I could see the tops of the trees.”
“You’re going to be a brain surgeon! Top a the house mean the head.”
Mother ate her breakfast early in the dining room, then moved to the relaxing room to do needlepoint or write letters to missionaries in Africa. From her green wing chair, she could see everyone going almost anywhere in the house. It was shocking what she could process about my appearance in the split second it tool for me to pass by that door. I used to dash by, feeling like a dartboard, a big red bullseye that mother pinged darts at.
“Eugenia, you know there is no chewing gum in this house.”
“Eugenia, go put alcohol on that blemish.”
“Eugenia, march upstairs and brush your hair down, what is we have an unexpected visitor?”
I learned that socks are stealthier transportation than shoes. I learned to use the back door. I learned to wear hats, cover my face with my hands when I passed by. But mostly, I learned to just stay in the kitchen.
A summer month could stretch on for years, out on Longleaf. I didn’t have friends coming over every day – we lived too far out for white neighbours. In town, Hilly and Elizabeth spent all weekend going to and from each other’s houses, while I was only allowed to spend the night out of have company every other weekend. I grumbled over this plenty. I took Constantine for granted at times, but I think I knew, for the most part, how lucky I was to have her there.
When I was fourteen I started smoking cigarettes. I’d sneak them from Carlton’s packs of Marlboros he kept in his dresser drawer. He was almost eighteen and no one minded that he’s been smoking for years anywhere he wanted to in the house or out in the fields with Daddy. Sometimes Daddy smoked a pipe, but he wasn’t a cigarette man and Mother didn’t smoke anything at all, even though all her friends did. Mother told me I wasn’t allowed to smoke until I was seventeen.
So I’d slip into the back yard, sit in the tire swing, with the huge old oak tree concealing me. Or late at night, I’d hang out of my bedroom window and smoke. Mother had eagle-eyes, but she had almost zero sense of smell. Constantine knew immediately, though. She narrowed her eyes, with a little smile, but said nothing. If Mother headed to the back porch while I was behind the tree, Constantine would rush out and bang her broom handle on the iron stair rail.
“Constantine, what are you doing?” Mother would ask her, but by then I would’ve stubbed it out and dropped the butt in the hole in the tree.
“Just cleaning this here old broom, Miss Charlotte.”
“Well find a way to do it a little quieter, please. Oh Eugina, what, did you grow another inch overnight? What am I going to do? Go… put a dress on that fits.”
“Yes mam,” Constantine and I would say at the same time and then pass each other a little smile. Oh it was delicious to have someone to keep secrets with. If I’d had a sister or a brother closer in age, I guessed that’s what it would be like. But it wasn’t just smoking or skirting around Mother, It was having someone look at you after your mother has nearly fretted herself to death because you are freakishly tall and frizzy and odd. Someone whose eyes simply said, without words, You are fine with me.
Still, it wasn’t all sweet talk with her. When I was fifteen, a new girl had pointed at me and asked, “Who’s the stork?” Even Hillary had tucked back a smile before steering me away, like we hadn’t heard her.
“How tall are you, Constantine?” I asked, unable to hide my tears.
Constantine narrowed her eyes at me. “How tall is you?”
“Five eleven,” I cried. “I’m already taller than the boy’s basketball coach.”
“Well I’ve five thirteen, so quit feeling sorry for yourself.”
Constantine’s the only woman I’ve ever had to look up to, to look her straight in the eye. What you first notice about Constantine, besides her tallness, were her eyes. They were light brown, strikingly honey-colored against her dark skin. I’ve never seen light brown eyes on a black person. In fact, the shades of brown on Constantine were endless. Her elbows were absolutely black, with a dry white dust in them in winter. The skin on her arms and neck and face were a dark ebony. The palms of her hands were orangey-tan and that made me wonder if the soles of her feet were too, but I never saw her face beforehand,
“Just you and me this weekend,” she said with a smile.
It was the weekend that Mother and Daddy were driving Carton to look at LSU and Tulane. My brother was going to college next year, That morning, Daddy had moved the cot into the kitchen, next to her bathroom. That’s where Constantine always slept when she spent the night.
“Go look what I got,” she said, pointing to the broom closet. I went and opened it and saw, tucked in her bag, was a five-hundred piece puzzle with a picture of Mount Rushmore on it. It was our favourite thing to do when she stayed over.
That night, we sat for hours, munching on peanuts, sifting through the pieces spread out o the kitchen table. A storm raged outside, making the room cozy while we picked out the edges. The bulb in the kitchen dimmed then brightened again.
“Which one he?” Constantine aked, studying the puzzle book through her black-rimmed glasses.
“That’s Jefferson.”
“Oh it sure is. What about him?”
“That’s…” I leaned over. “I think that’s..Roosevelt.”
“Only one I recognize is Lincoln. He looks like my Daddy.”
I stopped, puzzle piece in hand. I was fourteen and had never made less than an A. I was smart but I was naïve as they come. Constantine put the box top down and looked over the pieces again.
“Because your Daddy was so…tall?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Cause my Daddy was white. I got the tall from my Mama.”
I put the piece down. “Your…father was white and you mother was…black?”
“Yup,” she said and smiled, snapping two pieces together. “Well look a there. Got me a match.”
I had so many questions – who was he? Where was he? I knew he wasn’t married to Constantine’s mother because that was against the law. I picked a cigarette from my stash on the table. I was fourteen, but feeling very grown up. I lit a cigarette. As I did, the overhead light dimmed to a dull, dirty brown, buzzing softly.
“Oh my Daddy loooved me. Always said I was his favourite,” she leaned back in her chair. “He used to come over to the house every Saturday afternoon and one time, he gave me a set a ten hair ribbons, ten different colours. Brought em over from Paris, made out of Japanese silk. I sat in his lap from the minute he got there until he had to leave and Mama’d play Bessie Smith on the Victrola he brunbg her and he and me’d sing:
It’s mighty strange, without a doubt Nobody knows you when you’re down and out
I listened, wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would’ve been Constance’s voice singing. If singing was a colour, it would’ve been the colour of that chocolate.
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