My mother had help, but it wasn’t based on race. She had combination nursemaid/housekeepers in Europe, who were Caucasian.
Before my time, though, there was an African American called Willa Mae. I’d heard a lot about her, and had even seen a snapshot of her with my brothers. There were stories of the gems she said, reported in dialect, by my mother, a natural storyteller, especially in regards to my middle brother. He announced to Willa Mae that she was black. She said, “I’m not black. Look at my shoes; they black. I’m brown.” She probably wouldn’t mind that adjective if she were living now. Another thing she was reported to have said to him was, “You know what I b’lieve bout you? I b’lieve you lahk to cry.”
In my experience, there was a very pretty black teenager named Nora Lee, who worked part-time when my mother worked in the hospital as an R.N. I followed her around wanting to help her. She smiled and said, “I can’t let you dust. That’s my job.”
I felt the key lines in this novel were as follows (Chapter 24, p. 367-68) from Minny.
“She just don’t see em. The lines. Not between her and me, not between her and Hilly.”
Aibileen takes a long sip of her tea. Finally I look at her. “What you so quiet for? I know you got a opinion bout all this.”
“You gone accuse me a philosophizing.”
“Go ahead,” I say. “I ain’t afraid a no philosophy.”
“It ain’t true.”
“Say what?”
“You talking about something that don’t exist.”
I shake my head at my friend. “not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.”
Aibileen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain’t.”
“I know they there cause you get punished for crossing em,” I say. "Least I do."
“Lot a folks think if you talk back to you husband, you crossed the line. And that justifies punishment. You believe in that line?”
I scowl down at the table. “You know I ain’t studying no line like that.”
“Cause that line ain’t there. Except in Leroy’s head. Lines between black and white ain’t there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.”
Thinking about Miss Celia coming out with that fire poker when she could’ve hid behind the door, I don’t know. I get a twinge. I want her to understand how it is with Miss Hilly. But how do you tell a fool like her?
“So you saying they ain’t no line between the help and the boss either?”
Aibileen shakes her head. “They’s just positions, like on a checkerboard. Who work for who don’t mean nothing.”
“So I ain’t crossing no line if I tell Miss Celia the truth, that she ain’t good enough for Hilly?” I pick my cup up. I’m trying hard to get this, but my cut’s thumping against my brain. “But wait, if I tell her Miss Hilly’s out a her league…then ain’t I saying they is a line?”
Aibileen laughs. She pats my hand. “All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”
I also saw a couple of symbols in the book.
In Chapter 1 on page 6 in my edition of the book, Aibileen commented that Crisco was something you couldn’t dress up or fancy up no matter how hard you tried. Her son, Treelore, also compared Crisco to her ex, who left her and him, and was greasy, as well.
Minny has a completely different perspective on Crisco to Miss Celia as “the most important invention in the kitchen since jarred mayonnaise.” (Chapter 3, page 51-2) Its uses are many:
1) getting something sticky, like gum, out of your hair
2) slapping it on a baby’s bottom to prevent diaper rash
3) ladies rub it under their eyes, on their husband’s scaly feet
4) clean goo from a price tag
5) take the squeak out of a door hinge
6) stick a wick in it, burn it like a candle
7) and after all that, it will still fry your chicken!
So Miss Celia comments at “how pretty it is, like white cake frosting.” This conclusion is vastly different from “something you can’t dress up or fancy up.”
Why these characters have such different perspectives on the same thing, I don’t know for sure. But I do know that Minny is known for her excellent cooking and takes great delight in her children and her domestic skills. Aibileen, on the other hand, is more thoughtful and philosophical, “writing” her prayers for hours nightly. Her son, apparently, had a strong desire to write, also.
I thought Crisco was something called the Central Symbol, but then, I noticed another one…
It was the Mimosa Tree that Miss Celia disliked, yet gazed at for long periods. It seemed to be a symbol of depression. When Celia grew even more depressed regarding her antics at the Benefit Party, and would not get up out of bed, Minny finally told her the details about the “terrible, awful thing she done” to Miss Hilly. (Chapter 26, p. 397-402) So Miss Celia went out in the rain and finally took an axe to the tree, at Minny’s protestations. Celia would not stop until it was felled. That’s when Minny saw the note on Celia’s check to Hilly, a very deep dig. So, if some of Celia’s depression was “anger turned inward”, then, she succeeded in letting all her anger out on the tree.
