February 11, 2010 | 
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The Help
If you haven’t read Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling debut novel The Help, do. It’ll keep you sighing with pathos and delight from first page to last and, if you’re old enough, marveling, too, at the grand distance we’ve traveled—culturally speaking—since the fifties. Set in Mississippi during the nascent dawn of the Civil Rights, Stockett’s book follows three women on their unique and crooked paths, tracking metamorphosis in an era of staid expectations. Two are black domestics, subservient to the whims and sick prejudice of their employers; the third is a moneyed white girl slowly awakening to the backwardness of her own culture. It is a wonderful story full of hope and epiphany, and it made me marvel at how greatly American life has changed since those times.
At the breakfast table savoring the last pages of this lovely novel the other day, I was feeling quite smug next to Stockett’s dense Crackers. The way some of them treated their maids! The disdain and the ignorance, the immovable borders! The suspicion and low wages and hard labor! And then the bell rang, and I found our Mexican housecleaner on the other side of the door, arriving on time for her chores.
She is a sturdy woman, our Trini, dark-skinned and plain, her hands made rough with hard labor. She always slips off her shoes before entering the house and she moves through the rooms with her eyes low. Her English is poor so we speak very little, using gesture and Spanglish to get by. When she’s finished a room it gleams and glows, and she smiles shyly when we thank her. She’s proud of her labors and could scrub spots off a Dalmatian, but suddenly I wonder: am I so different from the matrons in Stockett’s story? Am I unconsciously supporting social division by race and class? Has our American consciousness really evolved since Jim Crow, or is it mostly just cast and costume that have changed?
We pay our housekeeper nearly twice California’s minimum wage, and we give her a nice bonus at Christmas. When I purge the kids’ closets I set things aside, hoping her children and grandchildren might have use for our castoffs. We’ve given her bedding and tools and old toys, but these second-hand gifts are things we don’t want. They are torn or they’re bent; they’re crowding our cupboards. We give her our trash and expect gratitude.
In Stockett’s book there are maids whose white employers treat them well; in some cases, they become something like family. Distant family, the kind you can’t quite imagine sharing a meal with, or visiting at home when they’re sick. But there’s affection, none-the-less. For many of the maids, too, separation is desired: they wouldn’t really want to be invited for tea.
The division between patron and patronized was made plainer recently when our housecleaner came by unannounced. With her husband beside her making translation, she haltingly asked for an advance. There was some kind of trouble and she needed some cash, could we front her a month’s wages on credit? Our arrangement had always been pay as you go, and her special request made us all feel peculiar. Not because we feared she wouldn’t be good for it, or on her end because—one hopes—she was afraid we’d react badly, but because the unspoken rules that had governed our commerce had been breached. All relationships are hierarchical, in the end; even the best divide power unequally. It goes without saying that the person who scrubs toilets and the person who pays for the chore share power in a way that is intrinsically lopsided. Today’s “help” is no longer pilloried or vilified, but beholden all the same. As I watch our cleaner sweep and polish my floors I realize that though I thought we’d learned better, perhaps we haven’t after all.
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