The Downstairs Girl

  ALSO BY STACEY LEE

  Under a Painted Sky

  Outrun the Moon

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2019 by Stacey Lee.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lee, Stacey, author.

  Title: The downstairs girl / Stacey Lee.

  Description: New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2019]

  Summary: “1890, Atlanta. By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady’s maid for the cruel Caroline Payne, the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for ‘the genteel Southern lady.’”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018018881 | ISBN 9781524740955 (hardback) | ISBN 9781524740962 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Household employees—Fiction. | Wealth—Fiction. | Advice columns—Fiction. | Authorship—Fiction. | Chinese Americans—Fiction. | Atlanta (Ga.)—History—19th century—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L43 Dow 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018881

  ISBN 9781524740955

  Design by Kirin Diemont and Eileen Savage. Text set in Dante MT Pro.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For my sisters, Laura Ly and Alyssa Cheng, and all the other fierce women who hold up the sky.

  CONTENTS

  Also by Stacey Lee

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  One

  Being nice is like leaving your door wide-open. Eventually, someone’s going to mosey in and steal your best hat. Me, I have only one hat and it is uglier than a smashed crow, so if someone stole it, the joke would be on their head, literally. Still, boundaries must be set. Especially boundaries over one’s worth.

  Today I will demand a raise.

  “You’re making that pavement twitchy the way you’re staring at it.” Robby Withers shines his smile on me. Ever since the traveling dentist who pulled Robby’s rotting molar told him he would lose more if he didn’t scrub his teeth regularly, he has brushed twice daily, and he expects me to do it, too.

  “Pavement is underappreciated for all it does to smooth the way,” I tell his laughing eyes, which are brown like eagle’s feathers, same as his skin. “We should be more grateful.”

  Robby gestures grandly at the ground. “Pavement, we’re much obliged, despite all the patty cakes we dump on you.” He pulls me away from a pile of manure. It was Robby’s mother who nursed me when I was a baby, God rest her soul. And it was she who told Old Gin about the secret basement under the print shop.

  Whitehall Street, the “spine” of Atlanta, rises well above the treetops with her stately brick and imposing stone buildings—along with the occasional Victorian house that refuses to give up her seat at the table. Business is good here, and like the longleaf pine forests, being burned by Sherman’s troops a quarter century ago only made the city grow back stronger.

  “You look different today.” I pretend to appraise him from his cap to his tan trousers. “You forget something?” It is rare to see him without the mule and cart he uses as a deliveryman for Buxbaum’s Department Store.

  “They’re down a clerk. Mr. Buxbaum’s letting me fill in until they find someone new.” He straightens his pin-striped jacket, though it’s already straight enough to measure with.

  “You don’t say.” Mr. Buxbaum is popular among whites and colored alike, but hiring a colored clerk isn’t done in these parts.

  “If I do a good job, maybe he’ll let me fill in on a more permanent basis.” He gives me a tight smile.

  “If you don’t stick your foot out, you’ll never advance. You’d be perfect for the job. I myself am fixing to ask Mrs. English for a raise.”

  He whistles, a short low sound. “If Mrs. English had any sense, she’d give it to you. Of course, common sense was never very common in these parts.”

  I nod, a surge of righteous blood flooding my veins. Two years I have worked as a milliner’s assistant at the same wage of fifty cents a day. Measly. It is already 1890. Plus, Old Gin has lost too much weight, and I need to buy him medicine—not a booty ball or buckeye powder, but something legitimate. And legitimate costs money.

  One of the newly electric streetcars approaches, bringing by an audience of Southerners in various stages of confusion at the sight of me. An Eastern face in Western clothes always sets the game wheels to spinning between curiosity and disapproval. Most of the time, the pointer lands on disapproval. I should charge them for the privilege of ogling me. Of course, I’d have to split the fee with Robby, whose six-foot height also draws attention, even as he keeps his eyes on the sidewalk.

  He stops walking and squares his cap so that it’s flat enough to play chess on. “Here’s my stop. Good luck, Jo.”

  “Thanks, but keep some for yourself.”

  He winks, then slips down a narrow alley to use the back door to Buxbaum’s. Old Gin tells me things have changed for the worse since I was born. After good ol’ President Hayes returned the South to “home rule,” Dems told colored people t
hey should use the back alleys from then on, which pretty much sums up everything.

  Fluffing the sleeves of my russet dress, which have lost their puff and hang like a pair of deflated lungs, I carry myself a block farther to English’s Millinery. The shop stands between a candle maker and a seed store, meaning it can smell like a Catholic church or alfalfa, depending on which way the wind blows. This morning, however, the air is still too crisp to hold a scent. The picture windows are as clear as our Lord’s eyes—how I left them last night—with several mauve hats displayed. Mauve is having a moment.

  Instead of going through the front, I also trek to the back entrance. Folks care less about which door Chinese people use nowadays, compared with when the laborers were shipped in to replace the field slaves after the war. Perhaps whites feel the same way about us as they do about ladybugs: A few are fine, but a swarm turns the stomach.

  Three boxes have been left by the back door, and I gather them in my arms, then enter. The sight of Lizzie trying on the nearly finished “sensible” hat I’d been designing stops me in my tracks. What is she doing here so early? She barely traipses in at nine, when the shop opens, and it’s not even a quarter past eight.

  “Good morning.” I set the boxes on our worktable, which is already weighed down with reams of felt. The broadsides for the charity horse race are barely dry, and orders are already flooding in. Fashion is supposed to rest on Lent, but God will surely make an exception for the event of the year. The proprietress will probably want me to stay late again or work during the lunch hour so she can sneak off to nip her coca cordial. Well, not without a raise, I won’t.

  “Mrs. English wants to speak with you,” Lizzie says in her breathy voice. She smooths a hand down the rooster tail I’d pinned to the sensible hat with an eternity knot. Ringlets of strawberry-blond hair play peekaboo under the saucer brim.

  I remove my floor-length cloak and black hat, one of the misfits that Mrs. English let me purchase at a discount, this one made possible through Lizzie’s clumsy hands. Then I tie on a lace apron.

  The velvet curtain separating the store from the workroom jerks to one side, and Mrs. English bustles in. “There you are,” she says in her haughty schoolmarm’s voice.

  I dust off my drab shop cap. “Good morning, ma’am. I had an idea. What if, instead of wearing these toadstools, we model our latest styles? See how fetching my sensible hat looks on Lizzie—”

  Mrs. English frowns. “Put the toadstools on, both of you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lizzie and I say in unison. I slip my cap over my head. I should ask now, before she asks me to stay late, so my request does not appear a hair-trigger reaction. I wipe my palms on my skirt. “Mrs. English—”

  “Jo, I will no longer be requiring your services.”

  “I—” I clamp my mouth shut when her words catch up to me. No longer required . . . I’m . . . dismissed?

  “I only need one shopgirl, and Lizzie will do.”

  Lizzie draws in a sharp breath. Her normally sleepy eyes open wide enough to catch gnats.

  “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 t
he 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.”

  The solicitor’s wife? I stop fidgeting. Perhaps our residence is still a secret.

  Mrs. Bell gestures at her hat. “I was hoping you could do the same for me.”