We warm in the afternoon sun, watching the horses, and I wonder if the reason Mrs. Payne called me out here was to tell me about her lost filly and nothing more. But then she sweeps a hand in front of her as if clearing away fog and says, “How are your rides with Caroline going?”
“Fine, ma’am.”
“You’re not letting her out of your sight, are you?”
Merritt pops into my head, the only one who could expose my lie. Has he already said something?
The longer I stand here saying nothing, the more suspicious I become. “No, ma’am, she’s stuck with me,” I hear myself say. “Your daughter rides as well as the comb on a rooster’s head. I expect she gets that from you.”
I’m not sure why I lie. I owe Mrs. Payne much more than that crank. Probably because I am not a snitch.
Mrs. Payne dimples prettily. “Yes, perhaps. Well, I’m glad to see you getting along.”
Ameer tumbles closer into view, his jockey uttering curses. With a sigh, Mrs. Payne picks her way to them.
Old Gin approaches, smelling of saddle soap and ruddy with the day’s efforts. “Notice something different?”
“You’re skinnier.” He has knocked a new hole in his belt, bunching his canvas trousers at his waist.
He brushes that aside with a wave of his chapped hand. “No more coughing. Even blew up that ball.” Sweet Potato tries to step on the sheep’s bladder, but it slips out from her hoof. “Seems we don’t need that refund.”
You could take the smile from my face and hook it for the moon. “We should celebrate. Tomorrow, we could take Sweet Potato to the creek. Find where the quails are nesting? Or if you want to rest, we could play chess—”
“I will need to stay here again this weekend. I am sorry.”
“Well then, I shall keep the burrows secure—” I say, but Jed Crycks has already summoned Old Gin away.
Twenty-Two
Solitude is a frequent visitor here, often dragging along her companion loneliness. Tonight, the latter plants herself right in my lap.
How many other lonely souls have taken refuge in this basement, enduring horrors that put my own troubles to shame? I trace a finger along the wordgalaxyon the wall, a word that means all the stars in the heavens. May those who passed here have found their way. Like the stars, may they have claimed their own bit of sky.
My letters of admiration form an uneven pile on the floor. I gather them up and reread them, hoping to ground myself in the inky pleas of others. What is it about a stranger that makes it easy for one to unburden oneself? Perhaps a stranger is less likely to gossip to people you know or judge you based on their knowledge of you. Or perhaps it is simply comforting to feel that a stranger cares to listen.
Most of Miss Sweetie’s letters seek advice on love, a topic on which she is apparently an expert. I opine on what to dowith a suitor who prefers grunting to conversation (drop him like a hot biscuit), a gold digger (same), and a woman who is a coquette (get thee a cooler biscuit). May I bring a certain wide-eyed candor to the table.
Hungry for biscuits, I come across a letter with no return address, which can only mean the sender hopes for an answer in print.
Dear Miss Sweetie,
I hear they have passed a new law requiring my maid to sit in the crowded back rows of the streetcar, even if there is a perfectly empty spot beside me. Your thoughts?
Yours truly,
Name Withheld
The flame of my candle flickers, tugged by unseen hands, and I’m caught by the great contradiction of Southern society: No one minds putting colored people in the back of the streetcar, so long as it’s not their colored people. Mrs. Payne would certainly have an earful for anyone who forced her to sit apart from Etta Rae—not that Mrs. Payne would ever need to ride a streetcar. But no wonder lines must be drawn. The farther away you stand from someone, the harder it is to like them.
Dear Name Withheld,
Do these lawmakers think we are so witless that we cannot make up our minds on the most trivial of decisions, namely, where to place our bottoms?
Time and money would be better spent on the problem of how to transport our sewage out of our city, rather than directing more garbage into it.
Yours sincerely,
Miss Sweetie
