The book, The Help Brings Back Memories

"You just can't get good help these days."
      complaint from a white dowager

The book, The Help has made quite a splash in the literary world. Even though the book was published in 2009 it is still first on the list of The New York Times Combined Print and E-Book Best Sellers. Obviously the book has struck a chord with many people or Hollywood would have never turned the book into a movie. Though I have not seen the film, Kathryn Stockett tells a fine story about black domestic servants working in white Southern households in the 1960’s. Though the author is white she wrote the book out of her own growing up in Mississippi in those turbulent sixties.


The Help is about the maids that worked for the white folk. Anybody who has lived particularly in the South would understand much of what the author tells. I was horrified by most of what I had forgotten about that time. In the book most of the maids had to use a special bathroom usually constructed behind the white folk’s house. They ate off one particular plate. They could not eat at the kitchen table and certainly not the dining room. Most of them had to come through the back door of the houses where they worked. If they were driven home by their employers they had to sit in the back seat. As maids they were to appear as invisible as possible. The suffering these women endured is spelled out in chapter after chapter. What is not told is the sexual harassment that many of these maids faced from their male employers. The presence of so many light colored children ought to give us pause. Many of these children were the result of rape and threats. To work they had to keep silent. There are so many layers to that time that was not that long ago.

The Help reminded me of my own growing up in a little cotton mill village in Columbus, Georgia. Though we have little of the world’s goods we had a maid, sometimes full-time and often part time. But our maid, Nancy came into our lives when my brother and I were little boys. Our Mother worked in the mill and Nancy kept us safe and clean. Through the years she slowly weaved her way into our lives. Sometimes even on her day off, she would appear on Saturday and announce: “This house needs a cleaning.” And so she would tear it apart and the dust would fly and by day’s end the house was clean. Even after I left home for college, Nancy kept up with me. She kept my brother’s children when they were little. She was there when I came home from college making sure the macaroni and cheese and banana pudding and the biscuits were in their place. When we brought our children home she proudly held and loved them. Years later when my mother died she sat in the family section at the funeral. After all she was a very real part of our family. As the years passed I would always call her on her birthday in late December and we would reminisce. “Roger we had us some good times, didn’t we?” “Oh Nancy, we did have some good times.”

She had eight children of her own. She would talk about each one and how proud she was of their accomplishments. I often wondered how in the world she lived with the paltry salary we paid her out of my mother’s own paltry salary. Her children stayed in Hurtsboro (AL) with family while Nancy moved to Georgia to get a job and send money back home. It must have been hard to be unable to see her own children except on holidays and weekends.

Several years ago her daughter called me late one evening. “Mama passed away last night, peaceful and without pain.” She told me the funeral would be in Hurtsboro in the little Methodist church she loved. They asked me to say a few words at her funeral service. I unfolded my notes and told those gathered that even though Nancy had only finished the third grade, she was one of the best teachers I ever had.

I told them she taught me about patience. I can remember sitting at our kitchen table many times pouring out my disappointments. She would turn and say sharply, “Roger, just you wait. Just you wait. Chile—you got to be patient.”

She taught me a lot about faith. She would say from time to time, “You got to believe. How can anybody get through this world without believing.” She never talked a lot about faith—she just lived it.

I learned about the dignity of every human being from Nancy. I did not have to remind those black folk at the funeral about how hard it was in the nineteen forties. There was a hard line drawn between white folk and black folk. I told them that I did not know many black people back then. That was one of the awful things about segregation. I told them that I knew Nancy. I trusted her. I loved her. I knew she was as important as anybody else. I told those gathered that I learned a little later how wrong the world was to black folk. I told that group gathered in that little church that when I started preaching I talked a lot about the dignity of everybody. I learned that lesson from Nancy.

Nancy taught me about loyalty and commitment. Even though we could pay her so very little, she was committed to our family. She defended us fiercely. She was there at every juncture of our lives. Births, weddings, funerals—Nancy was there. This is her picture at the beginning of this piece. She proudly held my first born in her arms.

Nancy taught me about gratitude. Born in 1909 I told her grievers that I could not imagine how hard her life must have been. Even though her life was hard she never stayed depressed very long. She was grateful. She was grateful for her children and her family. She was grateful that she had survived when so many others had not.

She had stood by my mother’s casket years before her own death. I remember clearly what she said over that casket, “Miz Ruth, you worked hard in your life. Hard. And you raised two good boys. Now it’s time for you to rest. Miz Ruth, you just rest.” And I told the mourners at her own funeral that I had come all the way from Birmingham to give her words back to her. “Nancy, you have worked hard, very hard all your life. You raised eight wonderful children. Now it’s time for you rest. Nancy, dear Nancy, you just rest.”

We buried her across the street from her church. And as I read The Help it all came back. And I wondered how many thousands and thousands of black folk whose names were never in the headlines have made an incredible difference in the lives of the white folk they worked for. So I thank the writer, Kathryn Stockett for telling the story that so many of us in the South really know by heart.

(You might  be interested in reading "Who I am because mother was a maid" appeared in The Birmingham News, August 8, 2011 Viewpoints section. It is moving and worth reading. )