“It sounds wonderful,” Lizzie breathes, squeezing the mauve hat so hard, I think I hear it whimper. I expect Mrs. English to reprimand her, but instead, she’s staring at the cash register, a smile fanned across her face. Perhaps she’s remembering all the orders the horse race is generating. A tiny bubble of hope rises in my chest, pesky thing.
* * *
—
I SPEND MY last hours as a milliner in the back room, creating Mrs. Bell’s embellishment. Lucky Yip, one of the two “uncles” I remember, taught me the folk art of knot-tying one summer when a cloudbuster made it difficult to leave the basement. All you need is silk cord and your fingers.
Mrs. Bell’s plain felt sports a duck brim in front and a lifted back for her hair. To wake up its dull planes, I work cord into rose and pansy knots. I add green ribbons to suggest foliage.
The first time I was sacked, I’d been polishing banisters at the prestigious Payne Estate, where Old Gin had worked ever since stepping foot on American soil twenty years earlier. I had grown up on the estate, working first as a stable girl and sometimes playmate to the Paynes’ spoiled daughter, until I was promoted to a housemaid. The linseed oil was still slick on my fingers when Mrs. Payne snatched my rag and pointed it toward the door: “Go.”
At least Mrs. English had given a reason for dismissing me. Not a good one, but it beat no reason at all.
Lizzie drifts in from the front. Her breathy sighs pelt me from behind. The butterfly I’m knotting slips, and I throw her a wet look. “May I help you?”
“It shoulda been me. I don’t love this job like you do.”
I deflate, wishing she would make it easier for me to dislike her. “Once you get the hang of things, you’ll like it better.”
She glances toward the shop, which, judging by the chatter, is full of patrons. Instead of leaving, she drops into a chair. “I bet that horse race will be fine as fox fur.” She intertwines her fingers and her shoulders lift.
I cannot help musing that the world would be a happier place if we could all do the things we want to do. I like making hats. I do not want to be a maid to a spoiled Southern miss. Lizzie does not want to make hats. She wants to be the spoiled Southern miss. As for Mrs. English, her life would be easier if she just kept me and got rid of Lizzie. At least I would make her profitable.
A few more twists complete my butterfly, its wings spread as if to fly. I am just putting the finishing stitches in my arrangement when Mrs. Bell returns.
“It’s lovelier than I could’ve imagined.” Mrs. Bell turns her head from side to side in front of our mirror. “It’s a miracle you finished it so fast!”
I resist checking for Mrs. English’s reaction as she completes a row of sums next to me.
“Thank you, ma’am. You should always wear a little color, because—”
Mrs. English clears her throat loudly.
I bite my tongue, realizing this is the kind of opining that cooked my goose. “Because, well, we all should.”
Mrs. Bell smiles and holds out a nickel to me.
“I—I couldn’t,” I stammer. I occasionally receive tips, but it doesn’t feel right to take money from her when I owe her so much. Her smile wobbles, and I realize I am acting suspicious. I accept the coin. “Thank you.”
She says in a low voice, “May God always keep you in His palm.”
With that, I am back to worrying that she does know about Old Gin and me. Has she just given her implicit approval that the situation may continue? But why say something so final unless she thought we would not meet again? Is she planning to reveal us after all?
Her face betrays nothing. She is back to admiring her hat in the reflection.
Three
Mrs. English drops two Lady Libertys into my palm and snaps the cash register shut.
My tired fingers curl around the coins on their own. “Thank you. Ma’am, won’t you reconsider?” I cringe at the desperation in my voice, but I’d hoped millinery held great promise for me. Making hats, you could make statements without saying anything at all. Plus, a hatter can pay her own way without marrying. A good Chinese wife is expected to cook, bear sons, and be willing to “eat bitterness.” I have enough of that on my plate right now.
“I’ll work twice as hard and try not to have so many opinions and—”
“Jo, you simply do not make economic sense.” With a handkerchief, she pats the moisture from her neck, then swabs the space between us, as if to rub away the sight of me. I’m reminded of the dreaded G-word that accompanied my last dismissal. But instead of go, Mrs. English says, “Good luck.”
Disappointment weighs heavy as a box of blocks on my heart. My chin quivers, but I hide it under the brim of my hat as I hurry toward Union Station, a brick hangar with a fan-shaped arch. The sooner I get home, the sooner I can eavesdrop on Mrs. Bell to ascertain whether her visit was more than a coincidence.
The Western & Atlantic Railroad was the first of several cuts in the pie that divided Atlanta into six wards. We live near the center of the pie. A uniformed man herds a noisy mass of carriages, carts, and pedestrians through the crossing. I hurry to make it through before it closes. A woman holds a handkerchief to her nose and shrinks away from me, and I know it is not the soot she is worried about.
My feet tingle as I cross the tracks and I cast my eyes toward Yankee country. North of the Mason-Dixon Line, even the dogs attend school for manners, and in New York, women are so fashionable, they change hats several times a day. I could’ve opened my own millinery in Madison Square, had I the right training.
Saucebox, I snort. I barely utter one word to every ten Lizzie speaks, and that’s the chattiest I get all day. Chinese people can’t afford to be sauceboxes, especially Chinese people who are trying to live undetected.
“Oh!” Past the tracks, I nearly collide with an old man perched upon a crate. He jerks, and a newspaper hat slides off his head. “I am sorry.” I pick up the newspaper hat, though he makes no move to take it from me.
“Pa, you a’right?” A young woman with sun-beaten skin snatches the newspaper hat.
The man’s yellowing eyes adhere to me like spots of glue. It occurs to me the two might not have a home, given their open rucksacks and dirty fingernails. The woman bends the hat back into shape and sets it gently onto her father’s head.
Suddenly, I see Old Gin and myself in these two, reduced to begging, with not even proper hats to shade us. Please let it not come to that, I implore both the Christian God and our ancestors. The sky looks coolly down on me. Unlike yesterday, there is no ombré in its sunset or tulle in its clouds. A thin puff of vapor resembles a stuck-out tongue. I’m gripped by the urge to run headlong into the sky and wipe that smug off its face.