Her mingy eyes clench like two fists. “You dirty sneak.”
Despite my confident act, my heart squeezes with the thought of my boldness. “I think Miss Saltworth would be very interested in learning who else has been seasoning her roast.”
She gasps. Even her back molars blanch. “You know Melly-Lee—? You wouldn’t.”
“What I want is fairness. I was hired to be a lady’s maid, not to suffer your tricks and meanness. Treat me fairly, and you can keep your activities to yourself. Also, I will be wearing my hair however I wish. Agreed?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she glares down at the leaves floating in the trough, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the water started to boil. Frederick whickers and bows his head for another drink. Caroline glances in the direction of Our Lord’s Cemetery, and when her eyes return to me, they are laced with malice, but resigned. “Agreed.”
* * *
—
WHEN I BRING the horses to the stables, Old Gin is talking over the low hedge surrounding the property with a show pony of a man leaning against a giant curly oak.
My tongue nearly falls out of my mouth. It’s Billy Riggs, the fixer, trader of dirty secrets. He’s even wearing the same hat he wore for his picture in the Constitution, a demi-top with a stingy brim, burgundy to match his suit. Dark auburn curls conspire like weasels in the den of his neck. While his sorrel drifts on the sidewalk, he works a pocketknife over the tree’s thick bark with quick slashes.
Sweet Potato whinnies to Old Gin, and the men, standing a hundred feet away, look up at us. Billy stops carving, and his foxlike face sharpens, becoming almost gleeful. His eyes take their time tramping around on my face. “Well, who do we have here?” His words float toward me.
Something in Old Gin’s wary expression warns me away, and I make tracks toward the stables.
Acting disinterested, I tie the horses to a hitching post for Old Gin to untack later.
Then I duck into the work shed and double back to the rear, where Caroline’s safety keeps company with a pile of crates containing an assortment of objects, from cracked dishes to hats. Must be the Paynes’ castoffs. Peering through a crack in the wood slats, I can make out Old Gin and Billy still talking. Billy points his knife at Old Gin, and my breath comes out as a hiss. Old Gin does not react.
With a flick of his wrist, the man folds the knife and tucks it up his sleeve. Then he swings a leg over his sorrel and urges her away.
What would the fixer want with Old Gin? My stand-in father clearly wanted to distance himself from me, though I doubt his ruse succeeded. Anyone familiar with Atlanta would know that two Chinese people in the same place at the same time is more than a coincidence. I shake out the stiffness in my limbs and try to make my breathing effortless again, the way Hammer Foot instructed to get energy flowing.
No doubt there is an explanation. I will simply ask Old Gin later.
That decided, I edge around Caroline’s bicycle, and my eyes catch on a hat in the crate of castoffs, a top-shelf camel bonnet with box pleats and a thick tie of rose silk. With its good bones, it must have cost at least eight dollars new, though Mrs. English would’ve charged eight fifty. Perhaps Mrs. Payne will sell it to me for a discount.
At quitting time, I bring the camel bonnet to Mrs. Payne’s study, where she often writes in her Lady’s Planner. This room used to be my favorite because of the fairy-tale books she kept on the shelf. Then Caroline locked a litter of kittens inside, who tore through the place like termites in a bag of sawdust, and blamed me for the prank. The books were ruined. When Mrs. Payne believed me over her daughter, Caroline hissed in my ear, “I despise you.”
Mrs. Payne looks up from her journal and blinks at the hat in my hands.
“I would like to buy this, ma’am.”
A minnow of curiosity darts across her face. “Go ahead, try it on.”
I remove my lace cap and fit the bonnet over my head.
She rounds her desk and ties the rose ribbon to one side of my chin, as is the fashion, and then sweeps my simple hair braid to the front. “Please accept it as a gift.”
“Wh-what? Oh no, I couldn’t. I was thinking you could set it aside for me until I could pay for it—”
“I just lent Noemi Caroline’s bicycle. Take the hat. It’s fuzzy anyway.”
“Thank you, ma’am. You are most generous.”
Her gaze falls off me and lands on the rug. A strange moment passes, then she gracefully folds her hands as if warming them around a teacup. Her smile teeters. “We shall see you tomorrow, then.”
* * *
—
I WAIT UNTIL Old Gin and I have stepped off the Payne Estate before blurting out, “Why were you talking to Billy Riggs?”
His forehead pinches. “Turtle egg,” he growls, a Chinese insult. “He claims one of the Chinese owed his father money.”
“Who?”
“Someone who left before you were born.” The gray in his brown eyes suddenly looks like iron streaks in ore. “If you see this turtle egg again, stay away from him. We do not need his reek in our nose, hm?”
The streetcar arrives, and we drag our tired bodies aboard, along with other workers. In the streets, a different citizenry moves about. These ride carriages with polished seats, and their eyes roam freely about the scenery.
Old Gin slides in next to me. “On the way home from the baths, I saw twin Shetlands.”
He means the Shetlands belonging to the Bells’ landlord, who only visits when the rent is late. “That’s the third time this year.”
He nods. “If Bells evicted, landlord will build a factory.”
A factory is more lucrative than a single home. We will have to leave when the place is torn down. The memory of Carcass Alley tightens my belly. Where would we go? Southerners do not like the Chinese living among them, as Lucky Yip could have attested. Shiny pink scars covered half of his body from the fire that ruffians set to his shanty in Mississippi, where he was building railroads. The Chinese who drifted this way lived in shadows, and shadows were not easy to come by.
Old Gin notices me grimacing and tsks his tongue. “Do not worry. I have taken steps to ensure our future, even if that future is not in Atlanta.”
His words throw a switch, halting my other thoughts. For all its faults, Atlanta would be a hard city to leave, with its generous sunshine, rolling hills, and ladylike breezes. Seventeen years of living here has mapped its streets and alleyways into my veins. “What steps?”
“Many Chinese in Augusta. Maybe a husband.”
Augusta, Georgia, lies over a hundred fifty miles east, its bachelors mostly men who’d come to dig the canal. Something sour rises in my throat. “I have no desire to be someone’s wife.”