The Downstairs Girl

by Stacey Lee

  Have I done something to displease her? Perhaps I need another reminder about my place in this house.

  Caroline scowls. Even her blisters manage to look grumpy.

  I hand her a towel. “Noemi didn’t do it. But I have a hunch I know who did.”

  She sits very still. “Pray tell.”

  “Miss Saltworth. I think she peppered your Beetham’s.”

  Her eyes dart to the empty spot where her vanity used to sit. “Melly-Lee? My Beetham’s . . .”

  “It is in your vanity, which, as you know, Solomon has placed in storage along with all the other looking glasses. Your mother believes you might shatter one.”

  For once, she fails to pounce on my innuendo. “How do you know this?”

  “It’s a hunch. Noemi may not like you, but if she were to even the score, it wouldn’t be by peppering your food, which is as subtle as a flying brick. Especially not with a bicycle to pay off.” I let that one burrow in her ear before adding, “Not even your mother believes it, which of course is why she hasn’t fired her.”

  Caroline’s eyes glaze, as if she is replaying the memory. “That goosey, whey-faced sneak.” She clenches her towel into a knobby ball. “If Melly-Lee knows, surely she will break things off with him. I must be ready.”

  “Yes. She could ruin you.”

  She snorts. “He would not let that happen.”

  “A man who cheats is not the most reliable of knights.”

  “Edward loves me.” She wiggles her hands free of the towel. “And anyway, it’s none of your business.”

  “As you say. But now that you see Noemi didn’t harm you, you can ask your mother to bring her back.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  She grimaces. As if that argument ever worked with Caroline Payne.

  “And because if you don’t, I shall need to tell your mother of my suspicions regarding Miss Saltworth.”

  “You are pushing the limits of your blackmail.”

  “I could’ve kept my thoughts to myself and let Salt take her time brining you.”

  She purses her lips, which I hope means she concedes the point.

  “I suggest you get Noemi back sooner rather than later. Miss Saltworth also enjoys Noemi’s cooking. In fact, I bet Noemi could tell Miss Saltworth a lot about you.”

  She growls. But then I hear a bump. Her head rolls back against the headboard, hair scattered like threshed wheat. The sharpness has left her eyes. “Stay,” she murmurs in speech that has begun to thicken.

  I scoot beside her and press a cool towel to her face. She blinks sluggishly at me. “Jo, you used to be on my side. Remember the plums?”

  When we were children, a traveling salesman with a cart of instruments came upon Caroline and me playing in a wooded area where we had run away for the afternoon. He gave Caroline a clarinet, but when she put it to her lips, he grabbed her from behind, a wet grin upon his face. She shrieked and hit him with the clarinet, while I grabbed a trumpet and clocked him on the knee.

  Then we fled back to the house, hand in hand. Caroline would not loosen her grip until Noemi’s mother pulled us apart and stuck plums in our palms.

  “I remember,” I say, but she has already begun to snore.

  * * *

  —

  ASIDE FROM THE apprehensive stutter of my heart, the cogs of the Payne Estate are running smoothly. Nature’s groundskeepers—the chickens—scratch and fertilize the grass, while the hired groundskeepers trim branches and repair fences. Squirrels run patrol over their trees.

  A group of men that includes Jed Crycks and Merritt watch Johnny Fortune ride the defiant Arabian across an expanse of pasture. The jockey shows Ameer his whip. “This is what you’ll get next time you go lazy in the lead,” he yells, his voice high and whiny. Ameer snaps at the whip.

  In front of the stables, Mrs. Payne leans over the corral fence, where Sweet Potato and a few other horses are kicking around a ball blown from a sheep’s bladder. There’s a crane-like gracefulness to her slender figure, a breathless hovering as if she might fly away if I approach too quickly. On the other side of the corral, Old Gin oils a saddle with even strokes of his skinny arms.

  Mrs. Payne doesn’t acknowledge my presence. It’s as if her eyes have turned inward, and instead of watching the horses, she’s watching another scene evolve in her mind.

  When I am two paces away, her gaze finally drifts to mine. In the streaky light filtering through her straw bonnet, she is as hard to read as vapor, unlike Caroline, who hangs her wet feelings around her. “That Sweet Potato sure has legs on her. Old Gin has done an excellent job.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She lifts her petal-like cheeks to a cloud, adjusting the rim of her hat to shield her eyes from the glare. “She reminds me of another filly I used to have, Savannah Joy, named for the city in which she was born.” She speaks slowly, as if reading the words from a faded page. “She was a beauty, just like her mama. From the sweet curve of her cheek to the nap of her hair, you could see the hand of God in her shaping. Good-natured, too. A good nature can make or break a horse, not just in a race, but in life.” The trace of a smile tugs at her face.

  “What happened to Savannah Joy?”

  “They made me give her up.” Her fingers twist her gold ring. “I wept every night for a year.”

  Why would Mrs. Payne’s parents make their only daughter give up a filly with whom she was so smitten, especially when they were in the business of horse breeding? It makes no sense. But then, trying to understand Mrs. Payne is like trying to unfold a wet newspaper, impossible to do without tearing the pages.

  We warm in the afternoon sun, watching the horses, and I wonder if the reason Mrs. Payne called me out here was to tell me about her lost filly and nothing more. But then she sweeps a hand in front of her as if clearing away fog and says, “How are your rides with Caroline going?”

  “Fine, ma’am.”

  “You’re not letting her out of your sight, are you?”

  Merritt pops into my head, the only one who could expose my lie. Has he already said something?

  The longer I stand here saying nothing, the more suspicious I become. “No, ma’am, she’s stuck with me,” I hear myself say. “Your daughter rides as well as the comb on a rooster’s head. I expect she gets that from you.”

  I’m not sure why I lie. I owe Mrs. Payne much more than that crank. Probably because I am not a snitch.

  Mrs. Payne dimples prettily. “Yes, perhaps. Well, I’m glad to see you getting along.”

  Ameer tumbles closer into view, his jockey uttering curses. With a sigh, Mrs. Payne picks her way to them.

  Old Gin approaches, smelling of saddle soap and ruddy with the day’s efforts. “Notice something different?”

  “You’re skinnier.” He has knocked a new hole in his belt, bunching his canvas trousers at his waist.

  He brushes that aside with a wave of his chapped hand. “No more coughing. Even blew up that ball.” Sweet Potato tries to step on the sheep’s bladder, but it slips out from her hoof. “Seems we don’t need that refund.”

  You could take the smile from my face and hook it for the moon. “We should celebrate. Tomorrow, we could take Sweet Potato to the creek. Find where the quails are nesting? Or if you want to rest, we could play chess—”

  “I will need to stay here again this weekend. I am sorry.”

  “Well then, I shall keep the burrows secure—” I say, but Jed Crycks has already summoned Old Gin away.

  Twenty-Two

  Solitude is a frequent visitor here, often dragging along her companion loneliness. Tonight, the latter plants herself right in my lap.

  How many other lonely souls have taken refuge in this basement, enduring horrors that put my own troubles to shame? I trace a finger alon
g the word galaxy on the wall, a word that means all the stars in the heavens. May those who passed here have found their way. Like the stars, may they have claimed their own bit of sky.

  My letters of admiration form an uneven pile on the floor. I gather them up and reread them, hoping to ground myself in the inky pleas of others. What is it about a stranger that makes it easy for one to unburden oneself? Perhaps a stranger is less likely to gossip to people you know or judge you based on their knowledge of you. Or perhaps it is simply comforting to feel that a stranger cares to listen.

  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.”

  Before he starts to wonder about the coincidental timing, I pretend to hack up a viscous wad of phlegm in my throat. “Here is my Sunday column, and a few replies to my letters of admiration.”

  He takes the piles. “My, you are assiduous.”

  I frown with the effort of remembering what that particular word means.

  “Assiduous, meaning ‘hardworking.’”

  “Yes, I know, young man,” I snap, wondering how I got caught in the same trap twice. “I
’ve just never been fond of words that are led by an ass.”

  His face tightens, as if with the effort of trying to hold something back. “Ah. Then I shall assay not to assault your ears.” He opens the letter from Name Withheld. His eyebrows knit together as he reads, and when he reaches the end, he refolds the letter and taps it against his chin.

  “You are not pleased.”

  “On the contrary. Your concern for social inequity is admirable. In fact, the recent ordinance has led us to reconsider your article ‘The Custom-ary.’”

  “Oh?”

  He rubs a hand over his cheeks, as if unaccustomed to its smoothness. “The Focus has always erred on the side of restraint. But the moment that means siding with injustice, then we have lost our focus. You and I will never know how it feels to be judged by our race, yet we both feel a moral urge . . .”

  I am hardly listening as the warm ball in my stomach begins to cool. At least now I know the bottom half of my face doesn’t give me away as Chinese. I release my knees and elbows from their locked positions, suddenly longing for the basement, which, though lonely, beats the loneliness I feel here.

  “ . . . a method of subversion,” Nathan is saying. “We would be foolish not to use it.”

  “Speak plainly, young man. Do you want to print ‘The Custom-ary’ or not?”

  “Yes. I imagine you’ll get plenty of responses. Personally, I’d like to rethink the custom of fruitcake. All those nuts and fruits jumbled together gets confusing. What do you think?” A smile dances around his face.

  I squeeze my feelings into something very small, like a walnut, and chuck it behind me for some other silly squirrel to find. There are lines that others draw for us, and ones we should draw for ourselves, knowing only disappointment lies on the other side. Interracial marriage is forbidden. Old Gin knew an uncle who took a colored wife, but they moved to a remote community outside of Atlanta, farther from society’s relentless gaze. And anyway, haven’t I already decided this spider can spin her own silk?

  Stuffing my hands deep into my pockets—Shang’s pockets—I begin to turn away. But somewhere in my imagination, doorbells clatter. A chill lifts the hairs of my neck. We don’t get a lot of coolies here. Yet the ones that come always end up scratching at my door. If Shang is my father, that would explain why Billy Riggs is putting the squeeze on Old Gin. If anyone can help that old horseman, it’s you, Billy’s voice rasps in my ear.