My mother didn’t leave me. She abandoned me. Women like her do not, cannot form affinities with people like me, not if they wish to remain on the top branch. They are knots that slip out easily with the barest of tugs.
Etta Rae pulls over a chair and helps Mrs. Payne into it. Caroline bursts into the study. “Maid, you forgot the utensils. What’s going on here? Mama, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
No one answers. Caroline glares at the housekeeper, as if prodding her to explain, but Etta Rae’s lips remain closed. Caroline blows out a frustrated breath.
When four winds meet, there is only silence.
Mrs. Payne’s eyes plead with me to understand. And though I know well the fences that corral us into our designated squares, I also know there are the chains we are born into, and those we choose to wear.
I take off my apron and set it on Mrs. Payne’s desk.
“No.” Caroline snatches it back and pushes it toward me, but when I don’t take it, she drops it and grabs my arms. “Don’t go. What did you do, Jo? Why is Mama crying?”
Etta Rae glances at Mrs. Payne, who gives her the barest nod. “Let your sister go, child,” says Etta Rae.
She knew, too. Shame takes another jab at me. Who else? Has the world conspired against me?
“My sis—” A soft gasp releases from Caroline’s mouth. “Oh my God.” She gapes, searching my face for the truth, but the truth is in the details we both missed while she was gazing in the mirror and I was looking away.
I descend the staircase for what I know will be the last time. A sob builds in my chest, but I bar it from leaving. Dignity can only be surrendered, and when it is gone, we are like the snail who has lost its shell. All it can do is find the nearest leaf and hope it’s not parade day. At least the snail never need care who its parents are.
The front door fights me, and the paved stones of the driveway scheme to trip my feet. The jangle of an approaching carriage pulls my attention. A vehicle painted a distinctive cabbage green with gold lettering sets off an alarm bell in my head. I conceal myself in the shade of a magnolia, watching the carriage swing into the Paynes’ driveway. What would Crump’s Paints be doing in this neighborhood? The Paynes do not buy discount paints, even if their house needed a touch-up, which it does not.
The passenger pushes aside her curtain, and I catch sight of her heavy-lidded eyes, her thin nose, and the withered rind of her mouth. Something icy chills my stomach.
Mrs. Crump is here because of me. I recall the way the woman looked at me when Nathan suggested Lizzie find another escort, as if I were to blame. Lizzie must have told her my secret, and now she is here to expose me, the troublemaker. She does not know I have nothing to lose now.
If only the same could be said of the Focus.
I hurry away, barely noticing Sully’s streetcar until it is rolling briskly past me with clangs that make my ears ring. The ever-present reek of sewage strangles the scent of the magnolias and overwhelms my sinuses. Too much morning light pours into my eyes. Yet Peachtree rolls along as always, heedless of the pain coursing down its veins.
My thoughts race. Leading the pack is the question of how my parents met. Old Gin said Shang was a groom, too. Maybe he’d even worked at the Payne Estate. Did Shang know about the baby he left behind? I imagine the man, two hands taller than me but not much wider, a shadowy figure shaking dice in his loose fist, a maverick who desired more than his earthly allotment. A bitter fluid burns my throat, and tears fill my eyes. I grip my damask bag to me like it is the only thing that might keep me anchored to this world.
And what about Mr. Payne? How did she hide a pregnancy from her husband? A deep-enough pocket can hide many things, and just as her husband is ruthless, Mrs. Payne is shrewd. And sometimes the eye sees what it wants and skips over what is in plain sight. Mr. Payne had the biggest house on Peachtree Street, the most successful mill in Atlanta, the belle of the ball for a wife, a son, and a daughter. Why fix what was not broken?
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 almost dances 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.