I’m reading Kathryn Stocketts debut novel, “The Help.” The novel is set in 1963 Jackson, Mississippi, the year Medgar Evers was killed. Through the voice of the maids and their “bosses,” mostly 20 something mothers and wives, the relationship between blacks and whites is revealed.
The following is excerpted from the novel (ppgs 22-24), as Aibileen and her friend Minny discuss prayer.
Aibileen: “My prayer book is just a blue notepad I pick up at the Ben Franklin. I been writing my prayers since I was in junior high…A few times this week, I thought about maybe putting Miss Skeeter on my list. I’m not sure why…the thing is though, if I start praying gone continue the next time I see her. Cause that’s the way prayer do. It’s like electricity, it keeps things going.
And look a there who else I done put on this list, Bertrina Bessemer a all people. Everybody know (we) don’t take to each other ever since she call me a niggra fool for marrying Clyde…’Minny,’ I say last Sunday, ‘why Bertrina ask me to pray for her?’”
Minny: “Rumor is you got some kind a power .prayer, gets better results than just the regular variety.”
Aibileen: “Say what?”
Minny: “Eudora green, when she broke her hip, went on your list, up walking in a week. Isaiah fell off the cotton Truck, on your prayer list that night, back at work next day.”
Aibileen: “I think about how I didn’t even get a chance to pray for Treelore (her son), Maybe that’s why God took him so fast. He didn’t want a have to argue with me.”
“But that ain’t me,” I say. “That’s just prayer…”
Minny: “We all on a party line to God, but you, you setting right in his ear.”
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