Mr. Bell always travels to New York in the spring to meet with theFocus’s sponsors. The sound of grumbles is followed by footfalls as the publisher departs.
Eavesdropping is a vile habit. But I have been eavesdropping on the Bells ever since Ihadears, and I doubt I can change now. Their words comforted me on many a lonely night and made me feel like part of a family. The abolitionists who built this place cleverly disguised the upstairs end of the speaking tube to resemble a vent. Bet they never expected someone like me would be eavesdropping. Who could’ve anticipated that when the enslaved were freed, Chinese would be shipped in, not just to replace them on the plantations, but to help rebuild the South?
A broom scratches the floor as Mrs. Bell wages her nightly war against carbon soot. I imagine the straw bundle snooping under the worktable, the foot-operated press, and the type case. Bear woofs, chasing the broom.
“Let me do that.”
“Ilikesweeping. Please, just humor your father. If things don’t go well in New York, it won’t matter what we write.”
“What do you mean, ‘if things don’t go well’?”
I hold my breath, my fingers twisted into my flannel nightgown.
“Most of our Northern sponsors have given up floating a paper down here. If we don’t return to two thousand subscribers by April, we are done.”
“But April’s only four weeks away. We’d need a hundred new subscribers a week. Impossible.”
“Maybe it’s time for us to move to Aunt Susannah’s—”
“We’re not alfalfa farmers. I don’t even like alfalfa. It’s a joke of a word. Rearrange the letters and it’s a-laf-laf. Those sponsors need to give us more time.”
I worry a hole into the toe of my sock. Never did it occur to me that the Bells might move. Is that why she came to Mrs. English’s? To give me an implicit goodbye?
“What does theTrumpeterhave that we lack?” asks Nathan.
Mrs. Bell snorts. “Advice from Aunt Edna.” Her broom scratches even harder. “Well, maybe we’ll get more subscriptions at that horse race.”
The race kicks off debutante season, and everyone who lives on the top branch will want to be seen. Those of us on the bottom branch would be content just to see the horses, but tickets cost two dollars each.
“What did you say?”
I press the right side of my head up against the opening.
“I said, maybe we’ll get more—”
“No, before that. Advice from Aunt Edna. If we had anagony aunt column, we could improve our readership. What do women, er, like? Laundry tips?” He lets out half a grunt. Probably his mother pinched him.
“Sometimes you’re as dense as your father.” Bear adds awoof!“Women get enough household advice from Aunt Edna. Someone should write about meatier topics. Like how to get a bunion of a husband to listen to you. Or what to do if the butcher tries to gull you with an inferior cut of meat.”
Gull. Such a great word, though I doubt the seagulls love having their good name tied to trickery. I’ll add it to theG-words I chalked on my wall. Mr. Payne gave Old Gin our dictionary, which is intact except for theGsection, so I give those words a place here.
“Why don’t you write one?” Nathan asks.
“I’d have to run it by your father.”
Nathan groans. “Forget I mentioned it.”
The upstairs grows silent, and I plug the listening tube. We are careful never to leave the open tube unattended.
If the Bells go out of business, they would leave, and they are like family. Old Gin might even decide it’s time to find me a husband with a “fleshy nose,” the kind thought to accumulate wealth. Chinese bachelors are so desperate for wives, they spend hundreds of dollars fetching them from China, many younger than my seventeen years. I’d have my pick of noses and all the bitterness I could stomach.
Four
Dear Miss Sweetie,
I am a young woman with no dowry, and I have enough hair on my upper lip to resemble a dead ferret. Despite this, a certain mister professes he is in love with me. How can I believe him?
Maiden with a Mustachio
