Table of Contents KATHRYN STOCKETT The Help

1 The HelpKATHRYN STOCKETTP enguin Group USAT able of ContentsCopyright PageDedicationAIBILEEN chapter 1 - August 1962chapter 2 MINNY chapter 3chapter 4 MISS SKEETER chapter 5chapter 6 AIBILEEN chapter 7 MISS SKEETER chapter 8chapter 9 MINNY chapter 10 MISS SKEETER chapter 11chapter 12chapter 13 AIBILEEN chapter 14chapter 15chapter 16 MINNY chapter 17chapter 18 MISS SKEETER chapter 19chapter 20chapter 21 AIBILEEN chapter 22chapter 23 MINNY chapter 24 THE BENEFIT chapter 25 MINNY chapter 26 MISS SKEETER chapter 27chapter 28 AIBILEEN chapter 29 MINNY chapter 30 AIBILEEN chapter 31 MINNY chapter 32 MISS SKEETER chapter 33 AIBILEEN chapter 34 AcknowledgementsTOO LITTLE, TOO LATEABOUT THE AUTHORAMY EINHORN BOOKS Published by G.

2 P. Putnam s Sons Publishers Since 1838 Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South AfricaPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices.

3 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, EnglandFirst published in the United States by Amy Einhorn Books, published by G. P. Putnam s SonsCopyright 2009 by KATHRYN StockettAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in CanadaA CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the Library of is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication.

4 Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their : 978-1-440-69763-0 Grandaddy STOCKETT , the best storyteller of allAIBILEEN chapter 1 August 1962 MAE MOBLEY was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that s what I do, alongwith all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toiletbowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the I ain t never seen a baby yell like Mae Mobley Leefolt. First day I walk in the door, there she be, red-hot and hollering with the colic, fighting that bottlelike it s a rotten turnip.

5 Miss Leefolt, she look terrified a her own child. What am I doing wrong? Why can t I stop it? It? That was my first hint: something is wrong with this I took that pink, screaming baby in my arms. Bounced her on my hip to get the gas moving and it didn t take two minutes fore Baby Girl stopped hercrying, got to smiling up at me like she do. But Miss Leefolt, she don t pick up her own baby for the rest a the day. I seen plenty a womens get the babyblues after they done birthing. I reckon I thought that s what it s something about Miss Leefolt: she not just frowning all the time, she skinny. Her legs is so spindly, she look like she done growed em last years old and she lanky as a fourteen-year-old boy. Even her hair is thin, brown, see-through.

6 She try to tease it up, but it only make it lookthinner. Her face be the same shape as that red devil on the redhot candy box, pointy chin and all. Fact, her whole body be so full a sharp knobs andcorners, it s no wonder she can t soothe that baby. Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That the time she a year old, Mae Mobley following me around everwhere I go. Five o clock would come round and she d be hanging on my Dr. Scholl shoe,dragging over the floor, crying like I weren t never coming back. Miss Leefolt, she d narrow up her eyes at me like I done something wrong, unhitch thatcrying baby off my foot. I reckon that s the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you Mobley two years old now.

7 She got big brown eyes and honey-color curls. But the bald spot in the back of her hair kind a throw things off. She get thesame wrinkle between her eyebrows when she worried, like her mama. They kind a favor except Mae Mobley so fat. She ain t gone be no beauty queen. Ithink it bother Miss Leefolt, but Mae Mobley my special baby. I LOST MY OWN BOY, Treelore, right before I started waiting on Miss Leefolt. He was twenty-four years old. The best part of a person s life. It just wasn tenough time living in this had him a little apartment over on Foley Street. Seeing a real nice girl name Frances and I spec they was gone get married, but he was slow boutthings like that. Not cause he looking for something better, just cause he the thinking kind.

8 Wore big glasses and reading all the time. He even start writinghis own book, bout being a colored man living and working in Mississippi. Law, that made me proud. But one night he working late at the Scanlon-Taylormill, lugging two-by-fours to the truck, splinters slicing all the way through the glove. He too small for that kind a work, too skinny, but he needed the job. Hewas tired. It was raining. He slip off the loading dock, fell down on the drive. Tractor trailer didn t see him and crushed his lungs fore he could move. By thetime I found out, he was was the day my whole world went black. Air look black, sun look black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls a my house. Minny came everday to make sure I was still breathing, feed me food to keep me living.

9 Took three months fore I even look out the window, see if the world still there. I wassurprise to see the world didn t stop just cause my boy months after the funeral, I lifted myself up out a bed. I put on my white uniform and put my little gold cross back around my neck and I went to wait onMiss Leefolt cause she just have her baby girl. But it weren t too long before I seen something in me had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside a I just didn t feel so accepting anymore. GET THE HOUSE straightened up and then go on and fix some of that chicken salad now, say Miss s bridge club day. Every fourth Wednesday a the month. A course I already got everthing ready to go made the chicken salad this morning, ironed thetablecloths yesterday.

10 Miss Leefolt seen me at it too. She ain t but twenty-three years old and she like hearing herself tell me what to already got the blue dress on I ironed this morning, the one with sixty-five pleats on the waist, so tiny I got to squint through my glasses to iron. I don thate much in life, but me and that dress is not on good terms. And you make sure Mae Mobley s not coming in on us, now. I tell you, I am so burned up at her tore up my good stationery into five thousand piecesand I ve got fifteen thank-you notes for the Junior League to do .. I arrange the-this and the-that for her lady friends. Set out the good crystal , put the silver service out. Miss Leefolt don t put up no dinky card Table like theother ladies do.