So many questions. So many lies.
A crow squawks from somewhere nearby, but I hardly hear it. Old Gin knew, that’s for certain. Lucky Yip’s urn almostdances before me, a child’s lie compared to this whopper. Why else would Mrs. Payne allow him, a lowly and aging servant, to ride in her race? Guilt. Was he ever going to tell me? There are many arrows of blame in my bow, and without the proper targets, many are pointed at him. All my life, Old Gin knew exactly who I was. He lied to me for seventeen years, even when I was desperate to know who left me on his doorstep. I hear myself whimper and wonder if I am collapsing into myself.
Bile rises again in my throat, and I force it back down.
Instead of going home, I steer my rudder toward Whitehall. It is still early enough that most shops haven’t opened, though the cloth-covered food stalls by Union Station have begun unfolding—one row of white sellers and another row of colored farther down. With few pedestrians out and a sky as clear as glass, there’s a crystalline quality about the city that I feel like shattering with a kick of my heel.
When I was seven, Robby’s mother, a washerwoman, built a contraption for spinning the water out of laundry using a barrel with a crank. Once, I tried stopping the barrel with my hand—it was going too fast for my eyes to track—and got a scolding that burned more than the raspberry on my palm. “You got no business trying to stop this. Run along and do the things you supposed to be doing.”
Maybe the world is like that spinner, and I should stop touching it so much and let it spin.
Buxbaum’s brick façade and long display windows stretch before me, its neat appearance somehow anchoring the chaos in my head. Before entering the shop, I attempt to breathe away some of my anger.
Even the sight of Robby folding a bolt of cloth at the far wall only cheers me a little. He is filling in again, which must be a good sign.
“Don’t tell me you finished those knots already,” he says.
I nod, not trusting my voice. I set down my damask bag, containing a hundred knots, on the waist-high table where Robby has been cutting fabric. “I no longer work for the Paynes,” I spill.
His eyes soften. It’s funny how one glance of sympathy can trigger an avalanche of self-pity. I worry my finger into a knot in the oak, refusing to give in to my grief.
“I told you not to stand so close to Noemi.”
I can’t even smile. When we were children, we would joke with each other not to stand so close—him, because I used to swing my braids around, sometimes clipping him in the face; and me, because he had a gangly phase that put my feet in constant jeopardy.
My face must crumple a little, because his own expression wavers. He smooths a bolt of fabric with his hand and sets it on a shelf. “What happened?”
I reach for my handkerchief, grateful there are few customers around, and then unload my grief.
He leans his forearms against the table as he listens, his thick eyelashes blinking now and then. When I am done, my handkerchief is soaked.
From a cabinet, he pulls out a box of thin paper and places it on the table. “Just got these in. Mr. Buxbaum calls them ‘disposables.’ They’re handkerchiefs you can throw away. Go on, help yourself. They’re samples.”
The disposables feel rough on my nose, but I am grateful they do the job. I stare at the bolts of fabric. Each color occupies a different shelf. “Where would you shelve me?”
Robby’s eyes sharpen, and he straightens his cuffs with quick tugs. “Don’t you dare let some self-loathing, chicken-livered blueblood make you doubt yourself. You know where you’re from, and I know where you’re from, and that ain’t a shelf or a country or even a place. Sometimes I forget you’re even Chinese.”
“I don’t.” I help myself to another disposable.
“That’s ’cause you care too much about what the world says. Listen to those who know you best, and you’ll be okay.”
“It’s hard to do that when the person who knew me best was lying to me this whole time.”
“If Old Gin did anything wrong, he was doing it for you.” His gaze drifts away. “Does seem strange him repaying that debt now, after all these years. Billy Riggs ain’t the sort to let a debt go that long. You should’ve never gone to see him. He’s so crooked, I bet his bones won’t even lie flat when he’s dead in his coffin.”
I half listen as my mind returns to the years toiling at the Payne Estate. It’s not so much that I minded the mucking and scraping and serving, but did it have to be for that family? My insides roil at the thought of Merritt’s—mybrother’s—constant flirting. He had admired me in a way that was ungodly and immoral. Maybe I had admired him a little, too, damn my mother’s cold, unfeeling heart. My stomach bucks, and I am thankful for the small mercy of not having eaten today.
“You look a little green. Here, sit.” Robby pulls out a stool. “Bring you water?”
I shake my head, knowing I won’t be able to keep anything down. Robby sweeps threads into a pile with his hand. “Sometimes things fall apart so better things can come together,” he says gently. “When Noemi was sacked, I thought it was going to break her. She spent the whole weekend pulling lint pills off the blankets. Thought we were going to have to reknit them from the piles she was making just to keep warm at night.”
I still can’t smile.
“But then Mrs. Payne wants her back. And Noemi tells her she’ll come back, but only if that bicycle is five dollars, not eighty.” A chuckle floats from his mouth. “My point is, a blessing loves a good disguise. And something tells me the Paynes are a stepping-stone for you, not a destination, just like for that woman of mine. Hello, Mr. Buxbaum.”
I didn’t even notice the shop owner walking up behind me. Trim and quick, he’s the kind of man that could slip into a door before it closed and not get his coattails caught. His eyebrows sit high on his forehead, giving him a look of perpetual frankness, which works in his favor when it comes to doing business.
“Slow morning?” he asks.
