I feel Old Gin’s eyes on me and try to unbend my frown. “If I get the job, perhaps I’ll be able to watch the horse race.”
Old Gin’s face is as honest as the sun, but for a fleeting second, a cloud passes over it and then burns away. He is hiding something from me, just as I am hiding something from him. The last time I sensed it was when he told me that Lucky Yip had left for a “better home.” I only later learned that Lucky Yip had taken a one-way trip back to China. In an urn.
Standing, Old Gin runs his hands over his belly. He hasn’t touched the drumstick. “No chess tonight. Turn in early.”
“Okay,” I say, though it isn’t clear whether he is telling me to turn in early or thatheneeds the rest. “I’ll clean up.”
I watch with concern as Old Gin retreats to his quarters, until dark memories of Caroline muscle out any other thoughtsin my head. With bucket and brush, I work out my agitation on the dishes, washing them until they squeak. Then I complete my own toilet in the privacy of my corner. The leftover barley water not only disinfects the skin, but keeps my hair shiny. Finally, I tuck my letter to Nathan in my waistband and carry the wastewater plus my small chamber pot to the eastern corridor.
Like the tree exit, the eastern “barn” exit originates by our stove, but it terminates in the stall of a half-burned barn with a squashed roof. The barn must have provided a handy terminus for the enslaved on their road to freedom, offering not only a lookout but a water source from a well dug deep underground. I can still smell the charred wood from Sherman’s infamous march to the sea twenty-five years ago. The barn had been burned beyond repair, yet it persisted.
I will persist, too. Working as Caroline’s maid makes good economic sense, as Mrs. English would say. I should be so lucky to get a job right after losing one, especially one with the most influential family in Atlanta.
Maybe finishing school will have snipped off a few of Caroline’s more disagreeable threads and stitched a sound hem on her rough edges. I must put my best foot forward.
A cloudless sky has shed its day colors for a robe of dark violet. The scent of sewage, ever present in Atlanta, feels less combative than usual to my nose. Whenever it rains, storm water causes the sewers to overflow into the streets, but thankfully, the weather is finally starting to dry. I make sure no one is looking, and then quickly pour the wastes into the drain by the side of the road.
Leaving the pot and bucket in the barn, I slip around to the Bells’ house. A group of men, out for a night of drinking, judging by their boisterous voices, eye me from across the street. One wolf-whistles, starting off a chain of hoots through the pack. A jag of fear streaks through me. I make a show of walking up to the Bells’ porch, hoping the men will pass by when they see I have a destination.
The whistling stops and the men move on. Praying the banging of my heart doesn’t give me away, I slide my letter into the Bells’ mail drop.
My plans are laid.
Seven
Old Gin and I sail up Peachtree Street in Seamus Sullivan’s ten-row streetcar, the plodding rhythm of the mule out of sync with the trotting of my heart. Most of the commuters, both black and white, cluster around the coal heater Sully keeps in front. I suggested we sit up front today, though Old Gin refused. It is understood that the warmer rows are reserved for the weakest passengers, which Old Gin insists is not him.
While he exchanges pleasantries with a nanny, Mrs. Washington, I pick at my fraying sleeves and poke my finger through a hole in the seam. I wish I had thought to try on my old maid’s uniform last night, when I could’ve made adjustments.
“Lucy’s having a ‘first day,’ too—at Spelman Seminary. She’s a lucky girl,” Mrs. Washington says to Old Gin in her slow, lilting voice. All her freckles brighten on her face, which is charmingly set off by a bright yellow bonnet.
A twinge of longing stirs my soul. Only a few years old, Spelman has already established a reputation as a fine schoolfor colored girls. Old Gin has schooled me in mathematics, Chinese, and philosophy since I was five. English and history were more challenging for him, but the Bells’ misprint newspapers and conversations stepped in there. When I was twelve, he tried to enroll me at the Girls’ High School, but we were told I would have to attend the colored school. Old Gin said I shouldn’t take a colored child’s seat, given how few seats they had.
He glances at me sitting tight as a new shoe beside him. “I believe Luck rides a workhorse named Joy.”
“Luck rides a workhorse named Joy,” Mrs. Washington repeats, and she throws back her head. “Ha! That’s a good one. Shedoeswork hard, and she does enjoy it.”
One of the colored children rings the bell up front with aka-klank! ka-klank!The kids are always vying for that privilege. The streetcar stops.
“Votes for women!” chants a group from behind us. Heads turn.
A pair of safety bicycles float by, leading a trail of white women wearing sashes of marigold fabric. The women range in age, their faces tight with determination as they chant. A few push baby buggies, and one bangs on a drum to mark the beats.
The matron in front of us mutters to her daughters, “Ain’t they got nothing better to do than act like men?”
One of her daughters tugs at her honey-blond braids. “Can we get one of those safeties, Mama? They look like such fun.”
Unlike the high-wheeled variety, the chain-driven safeties feature even tires and brakes, so you don’t have to jump off to stop. That means women could ride them.
The matron snorts. “Only girls with loose morals ride those. Don’t ever let me catch you on one.”
Sully transports us past a trim colonial, which looks downright shabby compared to the Greek-looking temple one block up. Peachtree Street is Atlanta’s top branch, a stretch so dense with millionaires, you can probably throw a rock and hit three on the way down. A few years back, they carved a special ward out of two neighboring pie slices to separate this wealthy corridor from the rest of northern Atlanta. Not all parts of the pie taste the same.
Ka-klank! ka-klank!The streetcar reaches our stop, a block short of the Payne Estate, and Sully brakes the mule. “Off with you, on with you!” he barks.
Old Gin casually sweeps a foot underneath an empty bench. The man drives through life with one eye on the road and the other on the lookout for fallen coins. Then he offers me his arm, which feels birdlike under his worn coat. Though we stand the same height, today I feel taller than him. The points of his shoulders seem especially sharp, and even his rib cage projects more than usual under his shirt. He is becoming a bag of bones.
As we walk, my gray skirt swings an inch too high over my boots, and my sleeves slowly strangle my armpits. If I need to beat a hasty retreat, it will not be by swinging on trees.
