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the garage.”
    “Yes ma’am.” Where she think I been all this time?
    “So, from now on, instead of using the guest bathroom, you can use your own right out there. Won’t that be nice?”
    “Yes ma’am.” I keep ironing. Tee-vee’s on and my program’s fixing to start. She keep standing there looking at me though.
    “So you’ll use that one out in the garage now, you understand?”
    I don’t look at her. I’m not trying to make no trouble, but she done made her point.
    “Don’t you want to get some tissue and go on out there and use it?”
    “Miss Leefolt, I don’t really have to go right this second.”
    Mae Mobley point at me from the playpen, say, “Mae Mo juice?”
    “I get you some juice, baby,” I say.
    “Oh.” Miss Leefolt lick her lips a few times. “But when you do, you’ll go on back there and use that one now, I mean…only that one, right?”
    Miss Leefolt wear a lot a makeup, creamy-looking stuff, thick. That yellowish makeup’s spread across her lips too, so you can barely tell she even got a mouth. I say what I know she want to hear: “I use my colored bathroom from now on. And then I go on and Clorox the white bathroom again real good.”
    “Well, there’s no hurry. Anytime today would be fine.”
    But by the way she standing there fiddling with her wedding ring, she really mean for me to do it right now.
    I put the iron down real slow, feel that bitter seed grow in my chest, the one planted after Treelore died. My face goes hot, my tongue twitchy. I don’t know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain’t saying it. And I know she ain’t saying what she want a say either and it’s a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.

M INNY

CHAPTER 3
    S TANDING ON that white lady’s back porch, I tell myself, Tuck it in, Minny. Tuck in whatever might fly out my mouth and tuck in my behind too. Look like a maid who does what she’s told. Truth is, I’m so nervous right now, I’d never backtalk again if it meant I’d get this job.
    I yank my stockings up from sagging around my feet—the trouble of all fat, short women around the world. Then I rehearse what to say, what to keep to myself. I go ahead and punch the bell.
    The doorbell rings a long bing-bong , fine and fancy for this big mansion out in the country. It looks like a castle, gray brick rising high in the sky and left and right too. Woods surround the lawn on every side. If this place was in a storybook, there’d be witches in those woods. The kind that eat kids.
    The back door opens and there stands Miss Marilyn Monroe. Or something kin to her.
    “Hey there, you’re right on time. I’m Celia. Celia Rae Foote.”
    The white lady sticks her hand out to me and I study her. She might be built like Marilyn, but she ain’t ready for no screen test. She’s got flour in her yellow hairdo. Flour in her glue-on eyelashes. And flour all over that tacky pink pantsuit. Her standing in a cloud of dust and that pantsuit being so tight, I wonder how she can breathe.
    “Yes ma’am. I’m Minny Jackson.” I smooth down my white uniform instead of shaking her hand. I don’t want that mess on me. “You cooking something?”
    “One of those upsidedown cakes from the magazine?” She sighs. “It ain’t working out too good.”
    I follow her inside and that’s when I see Miss Celia Rae Foote’s suffered only a minor injury in the flour fiasco. The rest of the kitchen took the real hit. The countertops, the double-door refrigerator, the Kitchen-Aid mixer are all sitting in about a quarter-inch of snow flour. It’s enough mess to drive me crazy. I ain’t even got the job yet, and I’m already looking over at the sink for a sponge.
    Miss Celia says, “I guess I have some learning to do.”
    “You sure do,” I say. But I bite down hard on my tongue. Don’t you go sassing this white lady like you done the other. Sassed her all the way to the nursing home.
    But