“I—I couldn’t,” I stammer. I occasionally receive tips, but it doesn’t feel right to take money from her when I owe her so much. Her smile wobbles, and I realize I am acting suspicious. I accept the coin. “Thank you.”
She says in a low voice, “May God always keep you in His palm.”
With that, I am back to worrying that she does know about Old Gin and me. Has she just given her implicit approval that the situation may continue? But why say something sofinalunless she thought we would not meet again? Is she planning to reveal us after all?
Her face betrays nothing. She is back to admiring her hat in the reflection.
Three
Mrs. English drops two Lady Libertys into my palm and snaps the cash register shut.
My tired fingers curl around the coins on their own. “Thank you. Ma’am, won’t you reconsider?” I cringe at the desperation in my voice, but I’d hoped millinery held great promise for me. Making hats, you could make statements without saying anything at all. Plus, a hatter can pay her own way without marrying. A good Chinese wife is expected to cook, bear sons, and be willing to “eat bitterness.” I have enough of that on my plate right now.
“I’ll work twice as hard and try not to have so many opinions and—”
“Jo, you simply do not make economic sense.” With a handkerchief, she pats the moisture from her neck, then swabs the space between us, as if to rub away the sight of me. I’m reminded of the dreadedG-word that accompanied my last dismissal. But instead ofgo, Mrs. English says, “Good luck.”
Disappointment weighs heavy as a box of blocks on myheart. My chin quivers, but I hide it under the brim of my hat as I hurry toward Union Station, a brick hangar with a fan-shaped arch. The sooner I get home, the sooner I can eavesdrop on Mrs. Bell to ascertain whether her visit was more than a coincidence.
The Western & Atlantic Railroad was the first of several cuts in the pie that divided Atlanta into six wards. We live near the center of the pie. A uniformed man herds a noisy mass of carriages, carts, and pedestrians through the crossing. I hurry to make it through before it closes. A woman holds a handkerchief to her nose and shrinks away from me, and I know it is not the soot she is worried about.
My feet tingle as I cross the tracks and I cast my eyes toward Yankee country. North of the Mason-Dixon Line, even the dogs attend school for manners, and in New York, women are so fashionable, they change hats several times a day. I could’ve opened my own millinery in Madison Square, had I the right training.
Saucebox,I snort. I barely utter one word to every ten Lizzie speaks, and that’s the chattiest I get all day. Chinese people can’t afford to be sauceboxes, especially Chinese people who are trying to live undetected.
“Oh!” Past the tracks, I nearly collide with an old man perched upon a crate. He jerks, and a newspaper hat slides off his head. “I am sorry.” I pick up the newspaper hat, though he makes no move to take it from me.
“Pa, you a’right?” A young woman with sun-beaten skin snatches the newspaper hat.
The man’s yellowing eyes adhere to me like spots of glue. It occurs to me the two might not have a home, given their openrucksacks and dirty fingernails. The woman bends the hat back into shape and sets it gently onto her father’s head.
Suddenly, I see Old Gin and myself in these two, reduced to begging, with not even proper hats to shade us.Please let it not come to that,I implore both the Christian God and our ancestors. The sky looks coolly down on me. Unlike yesterday, there is no ombré in its sunset or tulle in its clouds. A thin puff of vapor resembles a stuck-out tongue. I’m gripped by the urge to run headlong into the sky and wipe that smug off its face.
Like a common pickpocket, I slip along alleys, keeping myself compact and unnoticeable. A copse of trees lies fifty yards beyond One Luckie Street, the home of the Bells’ print shop and attached house. Checking to see that no one is looking, I hasten to the center of the copse, where the heavy skirts of a Virginia cedar conceal a trapdoor. The door does not creak when I open it—we always keep it well-oiled. A rough staircase leads to one of the two tunnels looping to the basement under One Luckie Street.
Old Gin is perched, birdlike, at our spool table, home earlier than usual. Eavesdropping will have to wait. The Bells are probably in their kitchen eating dinner anyway, not in the print shop where I can overhear them.
“Evening, Father.” Lately, Old Gin’s garments have begun to hang on him, dark trousers and a shirt whose original color is hard to recall. With even strokes, he writes Chinese characters for me to copy. We use English with the uncles gone, but he wants me to keep up the mother tongue for the husband he hopes to find me one day.
His threadbare eyebrows hitch a fraction. Even at the barelyaudible volume that we use underground, he can tell I’m cross. It heaps insult onto injury that I can’t rail about my unjust situation at the volume it deserves. I scrub my hands and face in our wash bucket with more vigor than necessary, soaking my sleeves. Then I seat myself on the upside-down flowerpot I use as a chair, my knees bumping the table.
Old Gin has arranged on my plate two slices of ham, a wedge of cheese, one sesame seed roll, and a dish of peach preserves. Robby’s wife, Noemi, the Paynes’ cook, always gives Old Gin something extra to take home. We eat simply, avoiding foods that might release suspicious smells into the environment.
“It is better to save anger for tomorrow, hm?”
I sigh. Old Gin knows just how to press the valves that release steam. “Mrs. English dismissed me.”
While I pour out my story, he sips hot barley water, peppering my pauses with the musicalhms that both loosen my speech and rob it of indignation. Thehmappears so frequently that I forget it’s there. I think it comes from spending so much time with horses. “Hm?” is his way of showing them that he values their opinions.
“Guess it’s the cotton mills for me,” I mutter. The mills will hire anyone willing to work long hours spinning or spooling. Of course, it might cost a finger, or worse, one’s life, which is why they’re called “widow makers.”
Old Gin’s horrified gasp sets off another bout of coughing, and I immediately regret my words. It’s as if someone had grabbed ahold of his thin shoulders and is shaking him for loose change. It must be the damp. His old corner gets musty when it rains too much.
I travel the two steps to our “kitchen” to fetch the kettle off our coal-burning stove. The stove shares a chimney with the fireplace in the print shop overhead, which means we only use it when that fireplace is lit. Lucky for us, the printer’s wife prefers a warm room for her arthritis.
I pour more barley tea. Old Gin nods his thanks, his acorn-shaped face red and grimacing. The spasms have mussed his neatly kept gray hair.
“Robby says some of the new drafts are quite effective for the cough.”
