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, along with 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
toilet bowl before they Mamas even get out a bed in the morning.
  But 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 bottle like it’s a rotten turnip.
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
situation.
  So 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 her crying, 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 baby
blues after they done birthing. I reckon I thought that’s what
it was.
  Here’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 week. Twenty-three-years-old and she
lanky as a fourteen-year-old boy. Even her hair is thin, brown,
see-through. She try to tease it up, but it only make it look
thinner. 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 and corners, 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 I
know.
  By the time she a year old, Mae Mobley following me around ever where I go. Five o’clock would come round and she’d be hanging on my Doctor 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 that crying baby off my foot. I reckon that’s the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you chilluns.
  Mae Mobley two years old now. 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 the same 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. I
think 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’t enough time living in this
world.

Reprinted from THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett by arrangement with
Amy Einhorn Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.,
Copyright 2009 by Kathryn Stockett.