01UndatedThe first time I was ever called 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 called me, tears streaming down my face.'Well? Is you?'I blinked, paused my crying. 'Is I what?''Now you look a here, Egenia'-because constantien was the only one who'd occasionally follow 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 swollen joints. She pressed her thumb hard in the palm of my hand, somthing 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 still 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. All 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 actually had a choice in what I could believe.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
02UndatedAnd she is remembering the words I put in her head...."You is kind," she say, "you is smart. You is important.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
03UndatedI want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it come in ever white child's life - when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as whites. ... I pray that wasn't her moment, Pray I still got time.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
04UndatedToday I'm on tell you bout a man from outer space." She just loves hearing about peoples from outer space. Her favorite show on the tee-vee is My Favorite Martian, I pull on my antennae hats I shaped last night out a tin foil, fasten em on our heads. One for her and one for me. We look like we a couple a crazy people in them things."One day, a wise Martian come down to Earth to teach us people a thing or two," I say."Martian? How big?""oh, he about six-two.""What's his name?""Martian Luther King."She take a deep breath and lean her head down on my shoulder. I feel her three-year-old heart racing against mine, flapping like butterflies on my white uniform."He was a real nice Martian, Mister King. Looked just like us, nose, mouth, hair up on his head, but sometime people looked at him funny and sometime, well, I guess sometime people was just downright mean."I coul get in a lot a trouble telling her these little stories, especially with Mister Leefolt. But Mae Mobley know these our "secret stories"."Why Aibee? Why was they so mean to him?" she ask."Cause he was green.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
05UndatedWe go on in her room, where we like to set. I get up in the big chair and she get up on me and smile, bounce a little. "Tell me bout the brown wrapping. And the present." She so excited, she squirming. She has to jump off my lap, squirm a little to get it out. Then she crawl back up. That's her favorite story cause when I tell it, she get two presents. I take the brown wrapping from my Piggly Wiggly grocery bag and wrap up a little something, like piece a candy, inside. Then I use the white paper from my Cole's Drug Store bag and wrap another one just like it. She take it real serious, the unwrapping, letting me tell the story bout how it ain't the color a the wrapping that count, it's what we is inside.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
06UndatedHilly raises her voice about three octaves higher when she talks to coloured people. Elizabeth smiles like she's talking to a child, although certainly not her own. I am starting to notice things.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
07UndatedI 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.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
08UndatedI worked for Miss Margaret thirty-eight years. She had her a baby girl with the colic and the only thing that stopped the hurting was to hold her. So I made me a wrap. I tied her up on my waist, toted her around all day with me for a entire year. That baby like to break my back. Put ice packs on it ever night and still do. But I loved that girl. And I loved Miss Margaret.Miss Margaret always made me put my hair up in a rag, say she know coloreds don't wash their hair. Counted ever piece a silver after I done the polishing. When Miss Margaret die of the lady problems thirty years later, I go to the funeral. Her husband hug me, cry on my shoulder. When it's over, he give me a envelope. Inside a letter from Miss Margaret reading, 'Thank you. For making my baby stop hurting. I never forgot it.'Callie takes off her black-rimmed glasses, wipes her eyes.If any white lady reads my story, that's what I want them to know. Saying thank you, when you really mean it, when you remember what someone done for you-she shakes her head, stares down at the scratched table-it's so good.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
09UndatedYou're gon' have to say to your self, am I gon' believe what them fools say about me today?Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
10UndatedAll 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 actually had a choice in what I could believe.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
11UndatedI come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month's worth a light bill for. I guess that's when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
12UndatedShame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
14UndatedI looked after that Dudley family for too long, over six years. His daddy would take him to the garage and whip him with a rubber hose-pipe trying to beat the girl out a that boy until I couldn't stand it no more.... I wish to God I'd told John Green Dudley he ain't going to hell. That he ain't no sideshow freak cause he like boys. I wish to God I'd filled his ears with good things like I'm trying to do with Mae Mobley. Instead, I just sat in the kitchen, waiting to put the salve on them hose-pipe welts.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
15UndatedAs I wrote, I found that Aibileen had some things to say that really weren't in her character. She was older, soft-spoken, and she started showing some attitude.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
16UndatedWhen Demetrie got sick, we knew it was our responsibility to take care of her and pay her medical bills. And we embraced that. But the tricky part is, like so many families in the South, we also expected her to use a separate bathroom, to use separate utensils.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
17UndatedThat white uniform was her 'pass' to get into white places with us - the grocery store, the state fair, the movies. Even though this was the 70s and the segregation laws had changed, the 'rules' had not.Kathryn Stockett / quote ↗
