My Help

When I was younger, you didn't see me very often without a book. Come to think of it, you don't see me very often without a book now. There are several stacked next to my bed (yes, I confess, I read two or three books at a time), some in one of the drawers of my nightstand, a couple stacked on the desk in my closet, and almost always one on my desk at work. The only difference between now and ten or twenty years ago is I don't have as much time to read and I don't read as quickly as I used to. But it's been a long time since I've carried a book around with me like it's a vital organ and cracked it open every spare moment I had. But that's what I did with The Help.

I'm not sure why. There's some language in it. And there's a few things I wouldn't write. But it was so easy to read, and fascinating, and the characters were so real, and maybe it was a touch of home. I haven't lived in the South but about four years of my life (Texas doesn't count), but my mom's family has lived in the Carolinas and Tennessee since they came to America in the 1600s. So I guess the blood is my veins. Of course I wasn't around in the 1960s when The Help takes place, but I've heard stories from my parents who remember the era of integration as kids growing up in Tennessee. (My dad was a correctly-placed Yankee.) And even though my mom was from a long line of Southern plantation owners with slaves and stills in their backyards, she wasn't raised by a black woman. However, Miss Sally came to help clean,  polish the silver (Miss Sally loved to polish the silver) and showed up at the house the morning of my mother's wedding to do what she could to help, although she refused to attend. I remember Miss Sally at Grandma's daycare helping in the kitchen, and I think I remember her at Grandma's house once or twice. Miss Sally was old then. When I saw her briefly twenty years later, she was still old. It's the way I will always remember her.

I think I knew at a young age that segregation in the South remained, and not just in the minds of those my Grandma's age. As I grew up, I learned more and more about it, and it's always intrigued me. It's not just the way my grandmother treats those of black skin. I find it equally fascinating that the black women my grandmother's age behave towards her as if sixty years haven't gone by and they still come polish the silver. My most vivid memory of this was after my great aunt Ruby Jean had a stroke and a black woman would come help her at the old farmhouse where she lived. I visited the summer after that, sat in the living room and tried not to gawk as the older black woman spoke in a tongue right out of the days of slavery. She wasn't going to say anything that wasn't in answer to my grandmother's polite questions, but I wish she had talked more. I felt like I was living history.

For history is a little more complicated than classroom history books. It's not the rote schools teach you: slavery is bad, slave owners are evil, Abraham Lincoln was a savior, and while integration was rough, everyone was better for it. I'm not being racial. I'm just saying that history isn't cardboard. The people were real flesh and blood with real fear, and real emotions, and real problems they couldn't see how to resolve. Slavery is bad but most slave owners were not Simon Legree and both the owners and the slaves felt real attachment to one another despite the walls between them. And integration? Everyone likes their comfort zones and change is hard, no matter what color your skin is. Perhaps that is why The Help is so interesting. It isn't cardboard - it's complicated. Just like life.