“Go on.”
I’m about to tell her the hazards of spending money she doesn’t have for things she doesn’t need to spite people she shouldn’t spite. But her grim expression blows the words like dust from my mouth. “Never mind.”
Noemi sighs. “Mama’s been dead for almost ten years, but Caroline still counts the silverware every night.”
I was seven when we lost Noemi’s mother, Caroline’s mammy. At her burial, the world seemed to grow colder and more distant on that dark October day, and the scrape of the shovel sounded like a hawk sharpening its claws. Caroline had insisted on attending, even though the cemetery was for colored only. But when the reverend began eulogizing, she began keening so loud, her father had to take her away.
Twenty yards in front of us, a terrier strains at its leash, its fierce expression at odds with its stubby body. I instinctively shrink away. The dog’s owner strolls leisurely behind, chatting with another white lady. Ignoring Noemi, who steps into the busy street, their collective gaze sweeps over me, surprise tinged with distrust. I’m about to follow Noemi into the street when the terrier lunges at me, scaring me there faster.
“Fluffers!” The dog’s owner tugs him back with a snap of her ruffled wrist. She hurries after her friend, but the terrier throws an extra snap in my direction.
“Cocky mutt,” Noemi mutters. “You okay?”
I nod, though my heart could probably beat Ameer in a sprint. A carriage barrels toward us, and Noemi pulls me back to the sidewalk.
I’m about to bring up the subject of the bicycle again when Noemi’s stout boots stop marching. In the grassy yard of a brick law office, men are hoisting up a statue. Weakening sunlight glints off the bronze figure of a Confederate officer, his chest puffed out like a sail.
“Why would anyone want to build a monument for a war they lost?”
“Because they ain’t good at losing. And that’s another reason why I want that bicycle. It’s bad enough we got the dogs barking us into place, now they’re putting up statues to remind us, too. We have to fight for every inch or we’ll lose it.”
“Every inch of what?”
“When’s the last time you saw a colored on a bicycle?”
“About thirty minutes ago.”
She bumps me with her arm. “Colored folks don’t ride bicycles, but it don’t mean we can’t. We got to act how we want people to treat us.”
The men notice us watching them, and we hurry away.
“But, you’re going to make your point with a bicycle? Why not choose something less costly, like not stepping off the sidewalk.”
Her eyelids peel back. “You want a gang of white hoods to jump me?”
“Of course not.” I interlace my fingers in Old Gin’s good-fortune gesture.
Noemi watches me shaking my hands as if I were winding up to throw dice. “Old Gin does that whenever that old billy goat runs by.”
“He doesn’t trust things that are white like that goat. Chinese people use white for funerals.”
Her cheekbones become knobs. “Ha! We got a lot in common, Old Gin and me. Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll borrow from my no-account brother if I have to.”
Whatever I was going to say dies on my tongue. I always figured her no-account brother had, well, no account.
“Here’s the thing. Unlike the sidewalk, there ain’t rules yet for bicycles. Means we got to jump in and make the rules.” She waggles her eyebrows at me. “Or someone else will make them for us.”
* * *
—
WITH THE BASEMENT all mine, I decide to give myself a thorough scrubbing with leftover tea in our kitchen. Nature tells all animals to get clean, and when we don’t, some powerful odors build up, not to mention the jibbies. At Mrs. English’s, I’d see women ruin their hats scratching to get at the itch underneath, when they could’ve avoided the problem by simply washing their hair now and then.
I dry mine by passing it over a frying pan I heated on the stove and then braid it into five strands for tomorrow’s pagoda hairstyle. Then I pad over to Old Gin’s room for paper. The drawer where we keep it sticks, even though Old Gin regularly waxes the wood. I slide open the drawer underneath, which contains scraps of fabric. A length of scarlet silk lies atop the heap.
I pull it out. “What are you doing here?” Old Gin had brought the cloth to the Beautiful Country—America—one of two items that had belonged to his late wife. I open the silk. To my horror, it falls into several irregular pieces. He cut it? But why?
I hold up a piece—definitely the beginnings of a sleeve. I measure it against my arm. It’s just my length.
My stomach squeezes into a cold knot. He’s making something for me. A wedding garment? Chinese women wear red on their wedding day, as it’s the color of happiness and luck. Is he planning to give me away so soon? And to whom? He said he had taken steps to assure our future, but it still comes as a shock.
I should be grateful for Old Gin’s care all these years. If not for me, he could’ve returned to China to fetch another wife, who might’ve given him sons. At sixty now, he is too old to marry. Once I am “taken care of,” at least he can put some dust on his soles, as he has always wished to do. For all the time he spends with horses, he never gets to travel far.
Still, the realization that I have been a burden tears something deep inside me. I wipe my eyes with the sleeve and tuck it back in the drawer.
I hope my parents appreciated him for the job he took on. Wherever they are.
Wondering about my parents is a strange kind of agony, an itch that I can’t help scratching until it causes pain. Mostly, I think about my mother. There’s a good chance my father was a cad—he wouldn’t be the first to love and leave a woman. It’s harder for a woman to leave her child. Maybe she had a good reason. Odds are, she would’ve been poor like me and, unless she had people like Old Gin and the Bells in her life, uneducated. Still, I like to think she had a smile in her eyes and a song on her lips. I like to think she smelled of summer peaches.
Back in my room, I stretch out on my bed. There is still time to show Old Gin that I don’t need a husband. That I can make my own way, despite my history of dismissals.
Cautiously, I unplug the listening tube. Forbearance woofs, throwing my heart into orbit. I scramble to replug the tube, but then Nathan says, “It’s just rats as I told you. We could get a cat . . .”
The barking stops.
Nathan chuckles. “I didn’t think so.”
Mrs. Bell says something I can’t distinguish, hopefully not, Maybe we should investigate under the house.