Most of Miss Sweetie’s letters seek advice on love, a topic on which she is apparently an expert. I opine on what to do with a suitor who prefers grunting to conversation (drop him like a hot biscuit), a gold digger (same), and a woman who is a coquette (get thee a cooler biscuit). May I bring a certain wide-eyed candor to the table.
Hungry for biscuits, I come across a letter with no return address, which can only mean the sender hopes for an answer in print.
Dear Miss Sweetie,
I hear they have passed a new law requiring my maid to sit in the crowded back rows of the streetcar, even if there is a perfectly empty spot beside me. Your thoughts?
Yours truly,
Name Withheld
The flame of my candle flickers, tugged by unseen hands, and I’m caught by the great contradiction of Southern society: No one minds putting colored people in the back of the streetcar, so long as it’s not their colored people. Mrs. Payne would certainly have an earful for anyone who forced her to sit apart from Etta Rae—not that Mrs. Payne would ever need to ride a streetcar. But no wonder lines must be drawn. The farther away you stand from someone, the harder it is to like them.
Dear Name Withheld,
Do these lawmakers think we are so witless that we cannot make up our minds on the most trivial of decisions, namely, where to place our bottoms?
Time and money would be better spent on the problem of how to transport our sewage out of our city, rather than directing more garbage into it.
Yours sincerely,
Miss Sweetie
It may be more controversial than Nathan wants to print, but let him decide. It is a sincere letter, and if readers are asking, why can’t Miss Sweetie answer? Controversy sells, and this is a hot topic. Maybe we’ll even reach two thousand subscriptions before April rolls around.
I begin to fetch my disguise, but Shang’s letter beckons me from its place in the basket. Even inanimate objects have energy. Old Gin believes that, one day, the positive energy of his wife’s snuff bottle will reunite it with its matching top, which is why he wouldn’t let me use the box. Similarly, I feel sure the positive energy of the letter attracted me to it, so long hidden in Shang’s clothes. The paper seems to huddle now, curled into itself as if it had longed for someone to understand it, this forgotten scrap of memory and pain.
My fingers have gone damp, and I wipe them on my dress. Then I remove the letter.
Forgive me. Why would the sender use English here? “E,” as I’ve come to call the sender, as the loop looks like a lowercase e, must not have been Chinese. Then again, Old Gin and I mostly use English. Sometimes, even the uncles would drop English words here and there, especially those with no Chinese equivalent, like coffee.
I study the paper more carefully for clues and, remembering Caroline’s comment about watermarks, hold the paper up to the lamp.
The letter nearly drops from my hand.
The familiar insignia PM runs across the page, like footprints on sand.
Father puts it on all the premier-line stationery. An ounce of gold for half a ream. Whoever sent it lived on the top branch.
It could be anyone. I should leave it alone.
Yet, the mystery pulls at me, soft and sticky as a cobweb. Something Old Gin said nags at me. When I first showed him the clothes, he said they belonged to an uncle. Then when I saw him with Billy Riggs, he said the debtor left before I was born. Which means Shang couldn’t have been an uncle.
The inconsistencies rub together like a door and a frame that do not quite fit.
Perhaps Old Gin is trying to protect me from something. But what could possibly concern me about a man I never knew? I cannot help remembering how he purposely did not mention the urn involved with Lucky Yip’s trip to a better home. That was an omission meant to protect a child’s heart.
But I am no longer a child.
Who was Shang? Someone whose history Old Gin wanted to roll up in a rug.
Was he . . . my father?
My back thuds against the wall, as if my thoughts had just butted me from behind. The lamp swings too loud, each squeak stabbing my ears. I’d stopped asking about my parents long ago, after getting all I could out of Old Gin; I had been left on his doorstep, wrapped in chenille and sucking my finger. After all these years, could I have stumbled upon an answer?
I slide down to the floor, letting the cold concrete catch me and ground me.
My mind wheels back to my skirmish with Old Gin. I had just told him about the stones in the river hurting, but he seemed to not care. Perhaps he did care, more than I knew. Learning that Shang was my father would be a very sharp stone indeed. One he did not want in my path.
A heavy breath parts my lips. Our basement has grown smaller over the years, the brick shrunken and faded, the ceiling lower than I remember. Or perhaps the realities of my life have grown too big and unwieldy for the walls to contain.
I pull on the navy trousers, then slip on the shirt. My fingers mismatch the buttons, and I have to reseed the row. The idea I could be so close to the man I’d spent a lifetime wondering about puts an ache in my heart.
Whoever he was, he left.
I sniff. The scent of damp soil, pungent and earthy, crowds my nose, a reminder that the world will continue to spin, whether or not we are ready. Well, I must get on with it. After all, most underground residents can no longer smell the soil, so what complaints do I have?
I emerge from my hidey-hole and soon alight on the Bells’ porch, wearing a grimace that does not require much effort. Bear howls almost immediately. But then the yelps grow fainter. Perhaps Nathan moved her to another part of the house. The door swings open.
He looks different tonight. His hair has been trimmed and smoothed back, bringing out the height of his cheekbones and the rectitude of his forgettable nose. His eyes, usually hidden, shine bright as a full moon, crinkled at the outside corners by years of wry humor. Gone is the slubby sweater as well as the ink-stained apron. His usually crumpled collared shirt hangs straight as a sail, tucked neatly into pressed trousers. The slouch is gone. Instead, he holds himself as stiffly as a choirboy singing a high note.
Miss Sweetie is tongue-tied. Of course, I couldn’t be the reason for the faint whiff of spruce needles I detect coming off his freshly shaven face. I suddenly remember that Lizzie Crump said she would let him know her colors by this weekend. Perhaps she visited earlier this evening.
“Nearly a hundred more subscriptions with ‘The Singular Question’! A hundred more to two thousand.”
“You’re nearly there.” Too late, I realize my error. He blinks. “I mean, the Focus used to have two thousand subscriptions, but I noticed the numbers dropped off.”
“Right. Well, as a matter of fact, we have been trying to regain those numbers, so your help has come at a most opportune time.”