Читать «The Help / Прислуга. Книга для чтения на английском языке» онлайн - страница 10
Е Г Тигонен
“I put up with the new clothes, all the damn trips to New Orleans with your sorority sisters, but this takes the goddamn cake.”
“But it’ll increase the value of the house. Hilly said so!” I’m still in the washroom, but I can almost hear Miss Leefolt trying to keep that smile on her face.
“We can’t afford it! And we do not take orders from the Holbrooks!”
Everthing get real quiet for a minute. Then I hear the
“Da-dee?”
I come out the washroom and into the kitchen then cause Mae Mobley’s my business.
Mister Leefolt already kneeling down to her. He’s wearing a smile look like it’s made out a rubber. “Guess what, honey?”
She smile back. She waiting for a good surprise.
“You’re not going to college so your mama’s friends don’t have to use the same bathroom as the maid.”
He stomp off and slam the door so hard it make Baby Girl blink.
Miss Leefolt look down at her, start shaking her finger. “Mae Mobley, you know you’re not supposed to climb up out of your crib!”
Baby Girl, she looking at the door her daddy slammed, she looking at her mama frowning down at her. My baby, she swallowing it back, like she trying real hard not to cry.
I rush past Miss Leefolt, pick Baby Girl up. I whisper, “Let’s go on in the living room and play with the talking toy. What that donkey say?”
“She keeps getting up. I put her back in bed three times this morning.”
“Cause somebody needs changing. Whooooweeee.”
Miss Leefolt tisk, say, “Well I didn’t realize…” but she already staring out the window at the lumber truck.
I go on to the back, so mad I’m stomping. Baby Girl been in that bed since eight o’clock last night, a course she need changing! Miss Leefolt try to sit in twelve hours worth a bathroom mess without getting up!
I lay Baby Girl on the changing table, try to keep my mad inside. Baby Girl stare up at me while I take off her diaper. Then she reach out her little hand. She touch my mouth real soft.
“Mae Mo been bad,” she say.
“No, baby, you ain’t been bad,” I say, smoothing her hair back. “You been good. Real good.”
I live on Gessum Avenue, where I been renting since 1942. You could say Gessum got a lot a personality. The houses all be small, but every front yard’s different – some scrubby and grassless like a baldheaded old man. Others got azalea bushes and roses and thick green grass. My yard, I reckon it be somewhere in between.
I got a few red camellia bushes out front a the house. My grass be kind a spotty and I still got a big yellow mark where Treelore’s pickup sat for three months after the accident. I ain’t got no trees. But the backyard, now it looks like the Garden of Eden. That’s where my next-door neighbor, Ida Peek, got her vegetable patch.
Ida ain’t got no backyard to speak of what with all her husband’s junk – car engines and old refrigerators and tires. Stuff he say he gone fix but never do. So I tell Ida she come plant on my side. That way I don’t have no mowing to tend to and she let me pick whatever I need, save me two or three dollars ever week. She put up what we don’t eat, give me jars for the winter season. Good turnip greens, eggplant, okra by the bushel, all kind a gourds. I don’t know how she keep them bugs out a her tomatoes, but she do. And they good.
