Not finding gloves, I restack the crates, and my eyes catch on a rolled-up rug standing in the corner. It’s been there so long, it almost looks like part of the wall. We could use a rug like that under the spool table to cushion Old Gin’s creaky ankles.
The rug fights me when I drag it from its corner, spitting dust and making me sneeze. I unroll it, and to my surprise, a set of clothes drops out: a navy suit with fine French seams, a four-ply linen collared shirt, a coat of undyed wool, and one barely scratched pair of black-and-white Balmoral boots. No wonder the rug was so heavy.
Whoever wore the clothes was taller than either Hammer Foot or Lucky Yip and slim in build. He certainly dressed finer than the typical laborer. Maybe he was a gambler. If so, Old Gin would never have allowed him to live with us. But he must have been someone important to Old Gin; otherwise, why not sell the clothes?
I am fitting the rug under our spool table when I hear Old Gin’s narrow step approaching. Freshly scrubbed and smelling of cedar, he hangs his coat and cap on a wall hook. He frowns at the mostly blue-speckled rug, then tests the springiness with his toe. “Fits well here, but I see you have been too busy redecorating to eat.”
“I wasn’t hungry until now.” My lowered voice sounds chirpier than normal, and I busy myself working the meat off the drumstick. “Please, I can’t finish both.” I gesture to the second drumstick with my knife.
“If you only eat one, you will walk lopsided.”
I wait for his face to break, but it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if he’s joking.
“I found clothes, too, and a pair of Balmorals. Who did they belong to?”
He doesn’t turn around from where he’s pouring himself tea at the stove. “One of the uncles. You wouldn’t remember him.”
“Well, they are fine clothes. The Balmorals alone will fetch ten dollars.”
He dries his hands on the towel by the stove, then settles himself on his milking stool. “I will take care of it.” Reaching toward me, he pulls something from my ear: a bluebell, one of the deep violet beauties that grow along the Paynes’ hedges. A grin spreads across his face. “Mrs. Payne will see you tomorrow about a position.”
I take the bluebell and twirl it between my fingers. “What position?”
He pauses, as if readying the words before sending them out. “Weekday maid. For Caroline.”
“Caroline?” The name of the Paynes’ only daughter douses me with cold water.
“She returned from finishing school last month.”
I grimace. “You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“Well, I don’t know how to be a lady’s maid.”
At my dismissive tone, Old Gin’s uneven ears twitch. He interlaces his fingers and shakes his hands at the wrist, a “good fortune” gesture to keep away the monkeys of mischief.
I sigh. The wildflower doesn’t complain when the horse waters it. It is just thankful for the moisture. I should be grateful for Old Gin’s devotion, and willing to do my share. After a day of beating the rug for any paying crumbs that might shake loose, a real job drops in my lap, and I react as if it were a hairy spider. “Forgive me, Father.”
He stretches his ankles, and they make cracking sounds. “Caroline is older now. You are older, too, hm?” Despite his mild tone, he sees right through me.
My pickled tomato is so sour, I chase it with water. A long-buried memory of being locked in a rusted bin during hide-and-seek on the Payne Estate bubbles to the surface. When Old Gin finally found me, I had wet myself, and my voice was raw from yelling. Though Caroline was only seven and I was five, and plenty of vile nippers grow into well-mannered adults, I doubt she is one of them. A cockroach will always be a nasty, horrible insect.
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 that he needs 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 thoughts in 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.