The Help / Прислуга. Книга для чтения на английском языке

But I bite down hard on my tongue. Don’t you go sassing this white lady like you done the other. Sassed her all the way to the nursing home.

But Miss Celia, she just smiles, washes the muck off her hands in a sink full of dishes. I wonder if maybe I’ve found myself another deaf one, like Miss Walters was. Let’s hope so.

“I just can’t seem to get the hang of kitchen work,” she says and even with Marilyn’s whispery Hollywood voice, I can tell right off, she’s from way out in the country. I look down and see the fool doesn’t have any shoes on, like some kind of white trash.

She’s probably ten or fifteen years younger than me, twenty-two, twenty-three, and she’s real pretty, but why’s she wearing all that goo on her face? I’ll bet she’s got on double the makeup the other white ladies wear. She’s got a lot more bosom to her, too. In fact, she’s almost as big as me except she’s skinny in all those places I ain’t.

“Can I get you a cold drink?” she asks. “Set down and I’ll bring you something.”

And that’s my clue: something funny’s going on here.

“Leroy, she got to be crazy,” I said when she called me up three days ago and asked if I’d come interview, “cause everbody in town think I stole Miss Walters’ silver. And I know she do too cause she call Miss Walters up on the phone when I was there.

“White people strange,” Leroy said. “Who knows, maybe that old woman give you a good word[24 - give you a good word – (разг.) хорошо о тебе отзывалась].”

I look at Miss Celia Rae Foote hard. I’ve never in my life had a white woman tell me to sit down so she can serve me a cold drink. Shoot, now I’m wondering if this fool even plans on hiring a maid or if she just drug me all the way out here for sport.

“Maybe we better go on and see the house first, ma’am.

She smiles like the thought never entered that hairsprayed head of hers, letting me see the house I might be cleaning.

“Oh, of course. Come on in yonder, Maxie. I’ll show you the fancy dining room first.”

“The name,” I say, “is Minny.”

Maybe she’s not deaf or crazy. Maybe she’s just stupid. A shiny hope rises up in me again.

All over that big ole doodied up house she walks and talks and I follow.