“Lizzie, open the packages. I hope the new boater block’s in one of them.” Mrs. English wiggles her fingers.
“Yes, ma’am.” Drawers clatter as Lizzie rummages for a knife.
“B-but—” I turn my back on Lizzie and lower my pipes to a whisper. “Mrs. English, I trained her. I can felt a block twice as fast as her, I’m never late, and you said I have an eye for color.” I can’t lose this job. It took me almost two years to find steady work after my last dismissal, and Old Gin’s meager wage as a groom isn’t enough to sustain us both. We’d be back to living hand to mouth, tiptoeing on the edges of disaster. A bubble of hysteria works up my chest, but I slowly breathe it out.
At least we have a home. It’s dry, warm, and rent-free, one of the perks of living secretly in someone else’s basement. As long as you have a home, you have a place to plan and dream.
The woman sighs, something she does often. Her great bosom has a personality of its own, at times riding high, and at times twitchy and nervous, like when the mayor’s wife pays a visit. Today’s gusting tests the iron grip of her corset. Her rheumy eyes squint up at me towering over her. “You make some of the ladies uncomfortable.”
Each of the syllables slaps me on the cheeks, un-com-for-ta-ble, and mortification pours like molten iron from my face to my toes. But I’m good at my job. The solicitor’s wife even called the silk knots I tied for her bonnet “extraordinary.” So what about me causes such offense? I wash regularly with soap, even the parts that don’t show. I keep my black hair neatly braided and routinely scrub my teeth with a licorice root, thanks to Robby. I’m not sluggish like Lizzie or overbearing like Mrs. English. In fact, I’m the least offensive member of our crew.
“It’s because I’m . . .” My hand flies to my cheek, dusky and smooth as the Asian steppes.
“I know you can’t help it. It’s the lot you drew.” She matches her round eyes with mine, which are just as round, but taper at the outside corners. “But it’s not just that. You’re . . . a saucebox.” She squints at my cap, and I regret calling it a toadstool. “You don’t know when to keep your opinions to yourself.”
She draws back her head, causing her neck to bunch. “Women want to be complimented. They do not want to be told they look washed-out, square in the jaw, or pie-faced.”
If a hat made me look pie-faced, I would certainly want to know before I purchased it. Lizzie routinely gives opinions. Just last week, she told a woman with a lumpy head that maybe she should give up wearing hats entirely. Mrs. English only smiled. I’m about to give my opinion of her opinion, but that would only prove her point. “I only wished to help them find the best fit.” I try to keep a tight grip on my indignation, but my voice trembles.
“Well, the simple fact is you are not the best fit here. Today will be your last day. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. I am sure you will have no trouble getting a job as a lady’s maid or some such.”
A lady’s maid? I suck in my breath. Now, that would be a fall backward, not that someone like me can be choosy.
“Not a hatter’s apprentice, of course,” she jabs the pin in deeper. “I have already talked to the Sixteen, and they will not hire you.”
Despite being competitors, the sixteen milliners that dress Atlanta’s heads are tight as hatbands. Something bangs on the floor, but Lizzie’s apologies for dropping the boater block sound far away. I have been blacklisted. Servants are routinely blacklisted when their services come to an end, even when they have done nothing to deserve it, except working their fingers to the breaking point each day, coming in early, leaving late, cleaning up other people’s messes, painstakingly redoing their stitches. I can barely breathe. “B-but, I—”
“I can’t risk you spilling my secrets.”
The door chimes clang, and Mrs. English scurries back to the front.
Tears gather in my eyes, and I press my sleeves to them before they fall. And I had once thought Mrs. English kind for taking a chance on me.
The proprietress pokes her head back into the workroom. “Jo, a lady is asking for you.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Me?” No one has ever asked for me. And it’s a little early for customers.
“The precise words were ‘the Chinese girl,’ and so I had to give it my best shot. Don’t dawdle.”
I dry my face and follow her into the shop. On the other side of the oak counter stands a woman in a gray suit with a modest bustle and a white blouse with a high collar. Narrow shoulders slope into an equally narrow neck, a pointed chin, and high cheekbones. Her prematurely white hair is tied into a practical knot.
I gasp. It’s Mrs. Bell, my upstairs neighbor. Though we have kept our existence secret from the printer and his family, I have stolen glances at them through the print shop window. Her flannel-gray eyes spread over me, and I can almost hear the underground walls of our home caving in. Outside, a whip cracks. A mule brays, and the last of my hopes seem to stampede away.
Two
Dear Miss Sweetie,
Six months ago, a Jewish family moved in next door. These people do the oddest things: kissing scrolls in the doorway, building huts in their yards to “camp” in, singing gibberish words, and waving branches. It’s enough to shake the powder from my wig. How can we restore the quality of our neighborhood?
Sincerely,
Mr. and Mrs. Respectable
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Respectable,
You could move.
Sincerely,
Miss Sweetie
* * *
—
“This is Mrs. Bell. Well, don’t just stand there. Speak, girl.” Mrs. English puts her fists on her hips. Even her bosom seems to glare at me, frozen in front of her. Has the woman come to have me arrested? If it were discovered that two Chinese people were squatting in her basement, we could be imprisoned or worse. In this part of the world, mobs form as easily and violently as cloudbusters.
“Ma’am, how do you do?” I force my face into something pleasant or, at least, less grim. Act natural. If she’s looking for the Chinese girl who’s been tunneling under her, she’s got the wrong one, never mind I’m the only one for miles and miles. My twitchy fingers pluck a fan from a basket. “Nice weather we’re having.”
Mrs. English snatches the fan and glares at me.
“Er, yes,” says Mrs. Bell, despite the gloom outside. Now that I am forced to face the woman, I have to admit, she appears more bemused than angry, her dark eyebrows steepling, her mouth halfway ajar. She unpins her hat from her head—a simple spooner in mourning-dove gray—and sets it on the counter. “I have been admiring the knot embellishment on my friend’s hat, and she said it was made by the Chinese girl who works here.”