Like a common pickpocket, I slip along alleys, keeping myself compact and unnoticeable. A copse of trees lies fifty yards beyond One Luckie Street, the home of the Bells’ print shop and attached house. Checking to see that no one is looking, I hasten to the center of the copse, where the heavy skirts of a Virginia cedar conceal a trapdoor. The door does not creak when I open it—we always keep it well-oiled. A rough staircase leads to one of the two tunnels looping to the basement under One Luckie Street.
Old Gin is perched, birdlike, at our spool table, home earlier than usual. Eavesdropping will have to wait. The Bells are probably in their kitchen eating dinner anyway, not in the print shop where I can overhear them.
“Evening, Father.” Lately, Old Gin’s garments have begun to hang on him, dark trousers and a shirt whose original color is hard to recall. With even strokes, he writes Chinese characters for me to copy. We use English with the uncles gone, but he wants me to keep up the mother tongue for the husband he hopes to find me one day.
His threadbare eyebrows hitch a fraction. Even at the barely audible volume that we use underground, he can tell I’m cross. It heaps insult onto injury that I can’t rail about my unjust situation at the volume it deserves. I scrub my hands and face in our wash bucket with more vigor than necessary, soaking my sleeves. Then I seat myself on the upside-down flowerpot I use as a chair, my knees bumping the table.
Old Gin has arranged on my plate two slices of ham, a wedge of cheese, one sesame seed roll, and a dish of peach preserves. Robby’s wife, Noemi, the Paynes’ cook, always gives Old Gin something extra to take home. We eat simply, avoiding foods that might release suspicious smells into the environment.
“It is better to save anger for tomorrow, hm?”
I sigh. Old Gin knows just how to press the valves that release steam. “Mrs. English dismissed me.”
While I pour out my story, he sips hot barley water, peppering my pauses with the musical hms that both loosen my speech and rob it of indignation. The hm appears so frequently that I forget it’s there. I think it comes from spending so much time with horses. “Hm?” is his way of showing them that he values their opinions.
“Guess it’s the cotton mills for me,” I mutter. The mills will hire anyone willing to work long hours spinning or spooling. Of course, it might cost a finger, or worse, one’s life, which is why they’re called “widow makers.”
Old Gin’s horrified gasp sets off another bout of coughing, and I immediately regret my words. It’s as if someone had grabbed ahold of his thin shoulders and is shaking him for loose change. It must be the damp. His old corner gets musty when it rains too much.
I travel the two steps to our “kitchen” to fetch the kettle off our coal-burning stove. The stove shares a chimney with the fireplace in the print shop overhead, which means we only use it when that fireplace is lit. Lucky for us, the printer’s wife prefers a warm room for her arthritis.
I pour more barley tea. Old Gin nods his thanks, his acorn-shaped face red and grimacing. The spasms have mussed his neatly kept gray hair.
“Robby says some of the new drafts are quite effective for the cough.”
“Best draft is time.” His gaze strays to an old pair of work boots neatly lined against the wall, where we hide our money. We have always been frugal, but lately Old Gin has become as tightfisted as a man gearing up to throw a punch. Last month, I lost a quarter out of a hole in my pocket, and he didn’t sleep well for a week. “We must save for your future.”
“Our future.” Old Gin is not my real father, and yet I cannot imagine a world without him by my side. Whoever my parents were, they must have known he was the most reliable of the Chinese bachelors in Atlanta when they left me with him. A former schoolteacher in China, Old Gin taught me everything he knew. The handful of “uncles” whom Old Gin permitted to live with us—fieldworkers, ditchdiggers, and rock drillers—took turns watching my infant self, but it was Old Gin who paid Robby’s mother to nurse me. It was Old Gin who stayed when the others moved on.
He sips his tea, chest calm once again. “Yes, our future.” He inhales a slow breath and sets down the tea. “How would you like to work for the Paynes again?”
I snort too loudly, but his face doesn’t alter its expression. “You are serious?”
Old Gin nods. “You could see Noemi every day.”
“That would be nice, but—”
“And you will be able to ride Sweet Potato.”
Our mare’s coal-black face appears in my mind. Old Gin had begged Mr. Payne not to let the head groom, Jed Crycks, shoot her as a foal after a lame leg caused her mother to reject her. Mr. Payne agreed, giving her to Old Gin and even letting him board her at the estate as long as Old Gin paid her keep.
“She has grown into a fine animal,” he adds. “Smart, like you.”
Aside from the awkwardness of being dismissed, a job at the Payne Estate is nothing to sneer at, with its luxurious surroundings, plentiful food, and a usually fair, albeit distant mistress. Of course, Mrs. Payne’s daughter, Caroline, was a horse of a different color altogether, but she was away at finishing school.
Old Gin swirls his cup, gazing at the contents.
Would Mrs. Payne really have me back? “Bad eggs, once tossed out, aren’t usually put back in the basket.”
Old Gin trains his placid gaze on the kerosene lamp above us, and it’s as if my words are standing in line behind another thought. But after a moment, he says, “You were never a bad egg.” He sniffs, as though verifying his claim. The sniff sets off a quake in his chest, but he clamps his mouth shut, refusing to let the cough boil over. He lifts himself from his milking stool and takes a moment to scoot it back in place. Instead of saying good night, he nods, then pads creakily toward his “quarters.”
After a rushed tidying, I retreat to my own corner under the print shop, passing through the curtain door Old Gin had embroidered with horses. When the uncles moved away, he suggested I move to a less noisy section under the main house where he lives, but I love my snuggery, softened by a rug I braided out of old flannel. Not to mention, I refuse to be parted from the speaking tube, the only way I can eavesdrop on the Bells.
After slipping into my nightgown and thick socks, I stretch over the raised platform of my bed. From the opening above my pillow, I remove the wool plug that stops sound from traveling up our end of the speaking tube.
A light draft flows in from above, and the flame in my oil lamp wavers from its place on my crate nightstand. Mr. Bell’s three-beat pacing echoes down to me. Though I don’t know the exact mathematical equation, Old Gin believes the “hearable” space encompasses the area around the Bells’ worktable, roughly matching my corner.
They’re arguing. I pray it has nothing to do with a discovery of rats in the basement.