She Called the Bride the Help, So I Read the Bill Aloud novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Nobody Was the Help
On the seventeenth of October I woke up in my grandmother's guest room.
For the first time in my life I had nothing to do.
I lay there and listened.
The kitchen below me was already loud. Pots, a radio, two voices arguing about salt.
One was my grandmother's.
The other was a man's, patient and low and slightly out of his depth, and he said, "Yes, Mamère," three times in a row.
I did not go downstairs.
That was my own rule.
I had written it on a sheet of letterhead in June, and for once in my life I was going to keep a rule that was good for me.
A knock came at nine.
It was my oldest cook, in her good dress, with a cup of coffee and a plate of toast.
"Sit," she said. "I'm told you're not to lift anything."
"I can lift a cup."
"You can lift that. Nothing else."
She set it down on the dresser and looked at me for a moment, and her eyes filled.
"Baby," she said. "Five months ago you stood over a steel table and told me the whole damn wedding was on you."
"I remember."
"Look at this one."
I looked out of the window.
Down the hill, on the levee above the river, they had set up the long tables.
There were six of them, end to end along the grass, with white cloths and lanterns and jars of late zinnias.
The Mississippi going by behind them, wide and brown and slow.
It was not Bellwood. Nobody had been invited who had not earned the chair.
There were sixty guests.
The Silver Street Four had been told to sit down and eat.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of She Called the Bride the Help, So I Read the Bill Aloud are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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