How It All Goes Down
- It's September now and still hot. Skeeter checks the mail and finds a letter from Elaine Stein at the publishing company Skeeter applied to. The letter says that editors need experience. Fair enough.
- Miss Stein admires Skeeter's ambition and suggests Skeeter take any job she can get at her local newspaper and offers to look over Skeeter's ideas.
- Skeeter makes a list of some, and mails it.
- A few days later, Skeeter, who double majored in journalism and English, goes to the Jackson Journal for a job interview. She's offered a job writing the Miss Myrna column.
- It's a column that answers questions about cleaning. The real Miss Myrna has had some kind of breakdown. Skeeter just has to copy her style.
- Skeeter is excited, but has no cleaning know-how. Hmm, so she has to copy her style and come up with answers out of thin air…
- She convinces a very reluctant Elizabeth to consult with Aibileen.
- During Aibileen and Skeeter's first meeting, Skeeter asks Aibileen if she happens to know anything about Constantine. Aibileen reveals that Constantine was fired, but won't say more.
- At home, a very upset Skeeter asks her mother Charlotte if she fired Constantine, who worked for them for 29 years. Charlotte admits that she did, but still won't explain why.
- When Aibileen is helping Skeeter with the Miss Myrna Column, she tells Skeeter about her son Treelore's death. She tells her Treelore was writing a book about his life in Mississippi.
- Skeeter also learns that Constantine had a daughter who was born with very pale skin. The father is a black man; the daughter gets her skin tone from Constantine's white father.
- But it was impossible for a black woman to raise a white-looking child in Jackson. Constantine had to send her daughter away. Her big goal was to get her daughter back.
- Skeeter has lots more questions, but Aibileen won't answer them.
- That night, Skeeter gets a letter from Elaine Stein saying that none of Skeeter's ideas are all that exciting. Unless she comes up with something "original" (6.227), Skeeter shouldn't write to her again.
- Skeeter is very upset, but then she gets a good idea, one that won't leave her alone.