After an hour or so, Daddy would pul up, get out, hand Constantine a dol ar. Not once did Constantine invite him inside. Even back then, I
understood we were on Constantine’s turf and she didn’t have to be nice to anybody at her own house. Afterward, Daddy would let me go in the
colored store for a cold drink and sucking candy.
“Don’t tel your mama I gave Constantine a little extra, now.”
“Okay, Daddy,” I’d say. That’s about the only secret my daddy and I have ever shared.
THE FIRST TIME I was ever cal ed ugly, I was thirteen. It was a rich friend of my brother Carlton’s, over to shoot guns in the field.
“Why you crying, girl?” Constantine asked me in the kitchen.
I told her what the boy had cal ed me, tears streaming down my face.
“Wel ? Is you?”
I blinked, paused my crying. “Is I what?”
“Now you look a here, Eugenia”—because Constantine was the only one who’d occasional y fol ow Mama’s rule. “Ugly live up on the inside.
Ugly be a hurtful, mean person. Is you one a them peoples?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” I sobbed.
Constantine sat down next to me, at the kitchen table. I heard the cracking of her swol en joints. She pressed her thumb hard in the palm of
my hand, something we both knew meant Listen. Listen to me.
“Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision.” Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of
her gums. “You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today? ”
She kept her thumb pressed hard in my hand. I nodded that I understood. I was just smart enough to realize she meant white people. And
even though I stil felt miserable, and knew that I was, most likely, ugly, it was the first time she ever talked to me like I was something besides my mother’s white child. Al my life I’d been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine’s thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actual y had a choice in what I could believe.
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. “Good morning, beautiful girl!” I’d sit at the kitchen table and tel her what I’d dreamed. She claimed
dreams told the future.
“I was in the attic, looking down at the farm,” I’d tel her. “I could see the tops of the trees.”
“You gone 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 took for me to pass by that door. I used to dash by, feeling like a dartboard, a big red bul ’s-eye 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 if 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 to have any white
neighbors. In town, Hil y and Elizabeth spent al weekend going to and from each other’s houses, while I was only al owed to spend the night out or
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’d 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 al , even though most of her friends did.
Mother told me I wasn’t al owed to smoke until I was seventeen.
So I’d slip into the backyard and 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 smel . 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.”
“Wel , find a way to do it a little quieter, please. Oh, Eugenia, what, did you grow another inch overnight? What am I going to do? Go…put on
a dress that fits.”
“Yes ma’am,” 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 tal and frizzy and odd. Someone whose eyes simply said, without words, You are fine with me.
Stil , it wasn’t al sweet talk with her. When I was fifteen, a new girl had pointed at me and asked, “Who’s the stork?” Even Hil y had tucked
back a smile before steering me away, like we hadn’t heard her.
“How tal are you, Constantine?” I asked, unable to hide my tears.
Constantine narrowed her eyes at me. “How tal is you?”
“Five-eleven,” I cried. “I’m already tal er than the boys’ basketbal coach.”
“Wel , I’m 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 noticed first about Constantine, besides her tal ness, were her eyes. They were light brown, strikingly honey-colored against her
dark skin. I’ve never seen light brown eyes on a colored person. In fact, the shades of brown on Constantine were endless. Her elbows were
absolutely black, with a dry white dust on them in the winter. The skin on her arms and neck and face was 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 barefooted.
“Just you and me this weekend,” she said with a smile.
It was the weekend that Mother and Daddy were driving Carlton to look at LSU and Tulane. My brother was going to col ege 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, a five-hundred-piece puzzle
with a picture of Mount Rushmore on it. It was our favorite thing to do when she stayed over.
That night, we sat for hours, munching on peanuts, sifting through the pieces spread out on the kitch
en 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 asked, studying the puzzle box 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 look 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 as naïve as they come.
Constantine put the box top down and looked over the pieces again.
“Because your daddy was so…tal ?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Cause my daddy was white. I got the tal from my mama.”
I put the piece down. “Your…father was white and your mother was…colored?”
“Yup,” she said and smiled, snapping two pieces together. “Wel , 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 I’d brought to the table. I was fourteen but, feeling very grown up, I lit it. As I did, the overhead light dimmed to a dul , dirty brown, buzzing softly.
“Oh, my daddy looooved me. Always said I was his favorite.” She leaned back in her chair. “He used to come over to the house ever
Saturday afternoon, and one time, he give me a set a ten hair ribbons, ten different colors. Brought em over from Paris, made out a 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 brung 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 Constantine’s voice singing. If
singing was a color, it would’ve been the color of that chocolate.
“One time I was boo-hooing over hard feelings, I reckon I had a list a things to be upset about, being poor, cold baths, rotten tooth, I don’t
know. But he held me by the head, hugged me to him for the longest time. When I looked up, he was crying too and he…did that thing I do to you so
you know I mean it. Press his thumb up in my hand and he say…he sorry.”
We sat there, staring at the puzzle pieces. Mother wouldn’t want me to know this, that Constantine’s father was white, that he’d apologized to
her for the way things were. It was something I wasn’t supposed to know. I felt like Constantine had given me a gift.
I finished my cigarette, stubbed it out in the silver guest ashtray. The light brightened again. Constantine smiled at me and I smiled back.
“How come you never told me this before?” I said, looking into her light brown eyes.
“I can’t tel you ever single thing, Skeeter.”
“But why?” She knew everything about me, everything about my family. Why would I ever keep secrets from her?
She stared at me and I saw a deep, bleak sadness there, inside of her. After a while, she said, “Some things I just got to keep for myself.”
WHEN IT WAS MY TURN to go off to col ege, Mother cried her eyes out when Daddy and I pul ed away in the truck. But I felt free. I was off the farm, out from under the criticism. I wanted to ask Mother, Aren’t you glad? Aren’t you relieved that you don’t have to worry-wart over me every day anymore?
But Mother looked miserable.
I was the happiest person in my freshman dorm. I wrote Constantine a letter once a week, tel ing her about my room, the classes, the
sorority. I had to mail her letters to the farm since the post didn’t deliver to Hotstack and I had to trust that Mother wouldn’t open them. Twice a
month, Constantine wrote me back on parchment paper that folded into an envelope. Her handwriting was large and lovely, although it ran at a
crooked angle down the page. She wrote me every mundane detail of Longleaf: My back pains are bad but it’s my feet that are worse, or The
mixer broke off from the bowl and flew wild around the kitchen and the cat hollered and ran off. I haven’t seen her since. She’d tel me that Daddy had a chest cold or that Rosa Parks was coming to her church to speak. Often she demanded to know if I was happy and the details of this. Our
letters were like a yearlong conversation, answering questions back and forth, continuing face-to-face at Christmas or between summer school
sessions.
Mother’s letters said, Say your prayers and Don’t wear heels because they make you too tall clipped to a check for thirty-five dol ars.
In April of my senior year, a letter came from Constantine that said, I have a surprise for you, Skeeter. I am so excited I almost can’t stand
myself. And don’t you go asking me about it neither. You will see for yourself when you come home.
That was close to final exams, with graduation only a month away. And that was the last letter I ever got from Constantine.
I SKIPPED MY GRADUATION CEREMONY at Ole Miss. Al my close friends had dropped out to get married and I didn’t see the point in making Mama and Daddy
drive three hours just to watch me walk across a stage, when what Mother real y wanted was to watch me walk down the aisle. I stil hadn’t heard
from Harper & Row, so instead of buying a plane ticket to New York, I rode home to Jackson in sophomore Kay Turner’s Buick, squeezed in the
front with my typewriter at my feet and her wedding dress between us. Kay Turner was marrying Percy Stanhope next month. For three hours I
listened to her worry about cake flavors.
When I got home, Mother stepped back to get a better look at me. “Wel , your skin looks beautiful,” she said, “but your hair…” She sighed,
shook her head.
“Where’s Constantine?” I asked. “In the kitchen?”
And like she was delivering the weather, Mother said, “Constantine is no longer employed here. Now let’s get al these trunks unpacked
before you ruin your clothes.”
I turned and blinked at her. I didn’t think I’d heard her correctly. “What did you say?”
Mother stood straighter, smoothing down her dress. “Constantine’s gone, Skeeter. She went to live with her people up in Chicago.”
“But…what? She didn’t say anything in her letters about Chicago.” I knew that wasn’t her surprise. She would’ve told me such terrible news
immediately.
Mother took a deep breath, straightened her back. “I told Constantine she wasn’t to write to you about leaving. Not in the middle of your final
exams. What if you’d flunked and had to stay on another year? God knows, four years of col ege is more than enough.”
“And she…agreed to that? Not to write me and tel me she was leaving?”
Mother looked off, sighed. “We’l discuss it later, Eugenia. Come on to the kitchen, let me introduce you to the new maid, Pascagoula.”
But I didn’t fol ow Mother to the kitchen. I stared down at my col ege trunks, terrified by the thought of unpacking here. The house felt vast,
empty. Outside, a combine whirred in a cotton field.
By September, not only had I given up hope of ever hearing back from Harper & Row, I gave up on ever finding Constantine. No one
seemed to know a thing or how I could reach her. I final y stopped asking people why Constantine had left. It was like she’d simply disappeared. I
had to accept that Constantine, my one true al y, had left me to fend for myself with these people.
CHAPTER 6
ON A HOT SEPTEMBER MORNING, I wake up in my childhood bed, slip on the huarache shoes my brother, Carlton, brought me back from Mexico. A man’s
&nbs
p; pair since, evidently, Mexican girls’ feet don’t grow to size nine-and-a-half. Mother hates them and says they’re trashy-looking.
Over my nightgown, I put on one of Daddy’s old button-down shirts and slip out the front door. Mother is on the back porch with Pascagoula
and Jameso while they shuck oysters.
“You cannot leave a Negro and a Nigra together unchaperoned,” Mother’d whispered to me, a long time ago. “It’s not their fault, they just
can’t help it.”
I head down the steps to see if my mail-order copy of Catcher in the Rye is in the box. I always order the banned books from a black market
dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good. By the time I reach the end of the drive, my huaraches and
ankles are covered with fine yel ow dust.
On either side of me, the cotton fields are a glaring green, fat with bol s. Daddy lost the back fields to the rain last month, but the majority
bloomed unharmed. The leaves are just starting to spot brown with defoliant and I can stil smel the sour chemical in the air. There are no cars on
the County Road. I open the mailbox.
And there, underneath Mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal, is a letter addressed to Miss Eugenia Phelan. The red raised font in the corner says
Harper & Row, Publishers. I tear it open right there in the lane, in nothing but my long nightgown and Daddy’s old Brooks Brothers shirt.
September 4, 1962
Dear Miss Phelan,
I am responding personally to your résumé because I found it admirable that a young lady with absolutely no work
experience would apply for an editing job at a publisher as prestigious as ours. A minimum of five years in the business is
mandatory for such a job. You’d know this if you’d done any amount of research on the business.
Having once been an ambitious young lady myself, however, I’ve decided to offer you some advice: go to your local
newspaper and get an entry-level job. You included in your letter that you “immensely enjoy writing.” When you’re not making
mimeographs or fixing your boss’s coffee, look around, investigate, and write. Don’t waste your time on the obvious things. Write
about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.
Yours sincerely,
Elaine Stein, Senior Editor, Adult Book Division
Below the pica type is a handwritten note, in a choppy blue scrawl:
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