“Oh no, she wants chocolate. I’m going to the store today and get everything you need.”

Chocolate my foot. So I figured I’d just go on and make both. At least then she get to blow out two sets a candles.

I clean up the grits plate. Give her some grape juice to drink. She got her old baby doll in the kitchen, the one she call Claudia, with the painted-on hair and the eyes that close. Make a pitiful whining sound when you drop it on the floor.

“There’s your baby,” I say and she pats its back like she burping it, nods.

Then she say, “Aibee, you’re my real mama.” She don’t even look at me, just say it like she talking about the weather.

I kneel down on the floor where she playing. “Your mama’s off getting her hair fixed. Baby Girl, you know who your mama is.”

But she shake her head, cuddling that doll to her. “I’m your baby,” she say.

“Mae Mobley, you know I’s just teasing you, about all them seventeen kids being mine? They ain’t really. I only had me one child.”

“I know,” she say. “I’m your real baby. Those other ones you said are pretend.”

Now I had babies be confuse before. John Green Dudley, first word out a that boy’s mouth was Mama and he was looking straight at me. But then pretty soon he calling everybody including hisself Mama, and calling his daddy Mama too. Did that for a long time. Nobody worry bout it. Course when he start playing dress-up in his sister’s Jewel Taylor twirl skirts and wearing Chanel Number 5, we all get a little concern.

I looked after the Dudley family for too long, over six years. His daddy would take him to the garage and whip him with a rubber hose-pipe trying to beat the girl out a that boy until I couldn’t stand it no more. Treelore near bout suffocated when I’d come home I’d hug him so hard. When we started working on the stories, Miss Skeeter asked me what’s the worst day I remember being a maid. I told her it was a stillbirth baby. But it wasn’t. It was every day from 1941 to 1947 waiting by the screen door for them beatings to be over. I wish to God I’d told John Green Dudley he ain’t going to hell. That he ain’t no sideshow freak cause he like boys. I wish to God I’d filled his ears with good things like I’m trying to do Mae Mobley. Instead, I just sat in the kitchen, waiting to put the salve on them hose-pipe welts.

Just then we hear Miss Leefolt pulling into the carport. I get a little nervous a what Miss Leefolt gone do if she hear this Mama stuff. Mae Mobley nervous too. Her hands start flapping like a chicken. “Shhh! Don’t tell!” she say. “She’ll spank me.”

So she already done had this talk with her mama. And Miss Leefolt didn’t like it one bit.

When Miss Leefolt come in with her new hairdo, Mae Mobley don’t even say hello, she run back to her room. Like she scared her mama can hear what’s going on inside her head.

MAE MOBLEY’S BIRTHDAY PARTY GOES fine, least that’s what Miss Leefolt tell me the next day. Friday morning, I come in to see three-quarters of a chocolate cake setting on the counter. Strawberry all gone. That afternoon, Miss Skeeter come by to give Miss Leefolt some papers. Soon as Miss Leefolt waddle off to the bathroom, Miss Skeeter slip in the kitchen.

“We on for tonight?” I ask.

“We’re on. I’ll be there.” Miss Skeeter don’t smile much since Mister Stuart and her ain’t steady no more. I heard Miss Hilly and Miss Leefolt talking about it plenty.

Miss Skeeter get herself a Co-Cola from the icebox, speak in a low voice. “Tonight we’ll finish Winnie’s interview and this weekend I’ll start sorting it all out. But then I can’t meet again until next Thursday. I promised Mama I’d drive her to Natchez Monday for a DAR thing.” Miss Skeeter kind a narrow her eyes up, something she do when she thinking about something important. “I’ll be gone for three days, okay?”

“Good,” I say. “You need you a break.”

She head toward the dining room, but she look back, say, “Remember. I leave Monday morning and I’ll be gone for three days, okay?”

“Yes ma’am,” I say, wondering why she think she got to say this twice.

IT ain’T BUT EIGHT THIRTY on Monday morning but Miss Leefolt’s phone already ringing its head off.

“Miss Leefolt res—”

“Put Elizabeth on the phone! ”

I go tell Miss Leefolt. She get out a bed, shuffle in the kitchen in her rollers and nightgown, pick up the receiver. Miss Hilly sound like she using a megaphone not a telephone. I can hear every word.

“Have you been by my house?”

“What? What are you talk—?”

“She put it in the newsletter about the toilets. I specifically said old coats are to be dropped off at my house not—”

“Let me get my . . . mail, I don’t know what you’re—”

“When I find her I will kill her myself.”

The line crash down in Miss Leefolt’s ear. She stand there a second staring at it, then throw a housecoat over her nightgown. “I’ve got to go,” she says, scrambling round for her keys. “I’ll be back.”

She run all pregnant out the door and tumble in her car and speed off. I look down at Mae Mobley and she look up at me.

“Don’t ask me, Baby Girl. I don’t know either.”

What I do know is, Hilly and her family drove in this morning from a weekend in Memphis. Whenever Miss Hilly gone, that’s all Miss Leefolt talk about is where she is and when she coming back.

“Come on, Baby Girl,” I say after while. “Let’s take a walk, find out what’s going on.”

We walk up Devine, turn left, then left again, and up Miss Hilly’s street, which is Myrtle. Even though it’s August, it’s a nice walk, ain’t too hot yet. Birds is zipping around, singing. Mae Mobley holding my hand and we swinging our arms having a good ole time. Lots a cars passing us today, which is strange, cause Myrtle a dead end.

We turn the bend to Miss Hilly’s great big white house. And there they is.

Mae Mobley point and laugh. “Look. Look, Aibee!”

I have never in my life seen a thing like this. Three dozen of em. Pots. Right smack on Miss Hilly’s lawn. All different colors and shapes and sizes. Some is blue, some is pink, some is white. Some ain’t got no ring, some ain’t got no tank. They’s old ones, young ones, chain on top, and flush with the handle. Almost look like a crowd a people the way some got they lids open talking, some with they lids closed listening.

We move over into the drain ditch, cause the traffic on this little street’s starting to build up. People is driving down, circling round the little island a grass at the end with they windows down. Laughing out loud saying, “Look at Hilly’s house,” “Look at those things.” Staring at them toilets like they never seen one before.

“One, two, three,” Mae Mobley start counting em. She get to twelve and I got to take over. “Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one. Thirty-two commodes, Baby Girl.”

We get a little closer and now I see they ain’t just all over the yard. They’s two in the driveway side-by-side, like they a couple. They’s one up on the front step, like it’s waiting for Miss Hilly to answer the door.

“Ain’t that one funny with the—”

But Baby Girl done broke off from my hand. She running in the yard and get to the pink pot in the middle and pull up the lid. Before I know it, she done pulled down her panties and tinkled in it and I’m chasing after her with half a dozen horns honking and a man in a hat taking pictures.

Miss Leefolt’s car’s in the drive behind Miss Hilly’s, but they ain’t in sight. They must be inside yelling about what they gone do with this mess. Curtains is drawn and I don’t see no stirring. I cross my fingers, hope they didn’t catch Baby Girl making potty for half a Jackson to see. It’s time to go on back.

The whole way home, Baby Girl is asking questions bout them pots. Why they there? Where they come from? Can she go see Heather and play with them toilets some more?