” I go in the kitchen and fill up a glass from the sink

“Yes’m.” I go in the kitchen and fill up a glass from the sink. She must be feeling bad because she’s never asked me to serve her anything before.
When I walk back in the bedroom though, Miss Celia’s not in bed and the bathroom door’s closed. Now why’d she ask me to go get her water if she’s got the means to get up and go to the bathroom? At least she’s out of my way. I pick Mister Johnny’s pants up off the floor, toss them over my shoulder. Ask me, this woman doesn’t take enough exercise, sitting around the house all day. Oh now, Minny, don’t go on that way. If she’s sick, she’s sick.
“You sick?” I holler outside the bathroom door.
“I’m . . . fine.”
“While you in there, I’m on go head and change these sheets.”
“No,nike shox torch ii, I want you to go on,” she says through the door. “Go on home for the day, Minny.”
I stand there and tap my foot on her yellow rug. I don’t want to go on home. It’s Tuesday, change-the-damn-sheets day. If I don’t do it today, that makes Wednesday change-the-damn-sheets day too.
“What Mister Johnny gone do if he come home and the house’s a mess?”
“He’s at the deer camp tonight. Minny, I need you to bring me the phone over—” her voice breaks into a trembly wail. “Drag it on over and fetch my phone book that’s setting in the kitchen.”
“You sick,Moncler Outlet, Miss Celia?”
But she doesn’t answer so I go get the book and stretch the phone over to the bathroom door and tap on it.
“Just leave it there.” Miss Celia sounds like she’s crying now. “I want you to go on home now.”
“But I just gots—”
“I said go home, Minny!”
I step back from that closed door. Heat rises up my face. And it stings,fake uggs online store, not because I haven’t been yelled at before. I just haven’t been yelled at by Miss Celia yet.
THE NEXT MORNING, Woody Asap on Channel Twelve is waving his white scaly hands all over the state map. Jackson, Mississippi, is frozen like an ice pop. First it rained, then it froze, then anything with more than a half-inch extending broke off to the ground by this morning. Tree branches, power lines, porch awnings collapsed like they’d plumb given up. Outside’s been dunked in a shiny clear bucket of shellac.
My kids glue their sleepy faces to the radio and when the box says the roads are frozen and school is closed, they all jump around and whoop and whistle and run outside to look at the ice with nothing on but their long johns.
“Get back in this house and put some shoes on!” I holler out the door. Not one of them does. I call Miss Celia to tell her I can’t drive in the ice and to find out if she’s got power out there. After she yelled at me like I was a nigger in the road yesterday, you’d think I wouldn’t give a hoot about her.
When I call, I hear, “Yeeello.”
My heart hiccups.
“Who is this? Who’s calling here,knockoff handbags?”
Real careful I hang up that phone. I guess Mister Johnny’s not working today either. I don’t know how he made it home with the storm. All I know is, even on a day off, I can’t escape the fear of that man. But in eleven days, that’s all going to be over.
MOST Of THE TOWN THAWS in a day. Miss Celia’s not in bed when I walk in. She’s sitting at the white kitchen table staring out the window with an ugly look on her face like her poor fancy life is just too hot a hell to live in. It’s the mimosa tree she’s eyeing out there. It took the ice pretty hard. Half of the branches broke off and all the spindly leaves are brown and soggy.