The Help

 Authors note: In this piece I tried to focus on bringing out emotions that Skeeter was feeling when she found out what her mother did. I can imagine the pain that she felt. I would think that Skeeter cannot talk to her friends about her "obsession" with finding Constantine she would become an outcast. 

Losing someone is the worst pain someone can go through, having to face the fact that someone you once loved is gone. Being raised by her families maid, Constantine,  young Skeeter Phelan would cling to her leg. As Skeeter  grew older, she knew that Constantine was always there, there to listen and to comfort her when she knew her mother wouldn't be. Having the security of always having someone there is something that everyone should be blessed with. That all went away after Skeeter graduated from Ole' Miss. Pulling up the gravel driveway of her childhood home to find that her security had been taken away and replaced with someone else.

For years her mother had told her that her beloved Constantine had packed up and left to see her family in Chicago, leaving Skeeter with only a memory. Skeeter had learned to accept what her mother told her, until she started meeting with her friend who is also "the help" Aibileen. She starts to realize that the stories that her mother made up might not be entirely true. The pain of losing someone you love is hard enough, the fact of being lied is like squeezing lemon juice in a wound. Skeeter starts questioning her mother, after demanding to know what happened she finally confesses that she fired Constantine. Anger starts flowing through her veins, her own mother had take away the only thing she truly loved.  

Authors Note: While reading The Help the character of Minny Jackson really stuck out to me. She is the kind of person who doesn't care what people think, a person who wants the best for her friends and will do anything to get it. I admire her attitude and her point of view on life. 

Being a white girl living in southern Wisconsin, similarities to a black woman in Jackson, Mississippi working as the help, are slim. I don't have to wake up every morning and go work in someone else's house and take care of their children. I don't have financial worries and I definitely don't have to worry about racial segregation.

 In her early twenties Minny Jackson is a woman who dropped out of high school when she was only fourteen. Leaving the chance at an education to help care for her ill sister and her drunk father has left her mother without words. Every day since she was fourteen years old , she has gone to work for white women all over Jackson. I admire Minny for making such courageous choices, selfless decisions to help her family.

Ever since she was young Minny had attitude and an opinionated mouth that can't keep closed, that has served a problem for her work as well. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't have a filter. If it comes to mind I say it.  The first day of her first job as a maid her employer told her to hand wash the sheets then wash them in the machine.  Minny responded saying that was the "stupidest waste of time" and in no time at all she was on the curb.