The Downstairs Girl Page 9

  Most sincerely,

  Still Slurping

  Dear Still Slurping,

  Stir your soup for two minutes before attempting to consume it and not only will you avoid burnt lips, but you will be spared regular updates on the state of your husband’s mastication. Since one does not eat soup year-round, you’d make out like a bandit by accepting your husband’s proposal.

  Yours truly,

  Miss Sweetie

  * * *

  —

  I wait a quarter of an hour at the water trough, and Caroline still doesn’t appear. Perhaps she didn’t hear the bell chime from the chapel at Our Lord’s Cemetery. Or perhaps she did hear, but simply does not care to be on time. Or perhaps she was kidnapped by a band of kangaroos, and a ransom note will be punched through the door shortly.

  I steer Sweet Potato back toward the cemetery.

  Sounds and smells always feel amplified when one walks through a graveyard. It would seem that Death, having visited each of these souls already, has no more business here. But the Chinese believe death simply moves a soul to an ancestral state of existence, and that the dead cause mischief if not properly appeased. So there could be plenty of trouble to be found among these tombstones, and I should watch my step.

  The stony angels of the Innocenti vault implore me to relieve them with their pupil-less eyes. Frederick and Thief are still tucked in the wooded area behind the vault, minding their own business. Poor spoony Salt, with no idea that her beloved is dipping his pen in the neighboring inkwell.

  Assured that Caroline has not been kidnapped by kangaroos, I’m about to steer Sweet Potato back to the water trough but stop when I hear a voice coming from the vault. “She’s warming to the idea of Thief. But you won’t be paying much attention to the race anyway, with Miss Saltworth to distract you.”

  Thief throws back his head, his black mane splashing like a wave. The horse has good bone structure and a well-muscled back end, but does he have the kind of ruthlessness required to cross the finish line?

  “She means nothing to me.” I expect Mr. Q to have a velvety baritone, but his voice has the soft tenor of a snake charmer, the kind of voice that could coax the gray out of the clouds. “Her father will be moving them to New York soon, and of course she will understand that I cannot go. We shall tell your parents then.”

  The words are chased by amorous murmurings, and I hastily exit before my ears start to burn.

  * * *

  —

  FRIDAY NIGHT JUST after five o’clock, Mrs. Payne gives me three dollars, which I secure in the waist pocket of my russet dress. Old Gin must stay the weekend at the Payne Estate. Noemi bundles a wedge of cheese and crackers in a handkerchief for me to carry to Old Gin, who neglected to come by for lunch. “This cheese will fatten him up for sure.”

  I bundle myself into my cloak, then hike to the stables.

  In the corral, a whip of a man with ears that stick out like maple pods puts the stallion through his paces. A jockey’s cap is pulled nearly to a small hill of his nose. This must be Johnny Fortune, the best jockey in the States. His squinty black eyes track me, his expression landing squarely on disapproving. The two are watched by Merritt and Mr. Crycks, an old cowboy who is all legs, door-knocker mustache, and hat.

  Sighting the curly oak where Billy Riggs accosted Old Gin, I squeeze past the low hedge to inspect the trunk. Below eye level, two squares have been carved, one containing four dots, the other, five. They must be dice—maybe lucky numbers. The scratches are small, but it will be hard not to think of them each time I see this tree.

  I hurry into the stables, but not finding Old Gin there, I head to the barn next door. Springtime means occasional work helping the caretaker with newborn kids and lambs. In the barn, animals warm the air, their bleating and baaing a peaceful kind of music. I am surprised to find Old Gin, his back to me, in a horse-riding stance. I thought he had given up those strenuous exercises after Hammer Foot left. He holds the stance a full minute before rising. “If you want to sneak up on old men, you should not bring such powerful cheese, hm?”

  “I wanted to make sure you ate something.” I hold out the food to Old Gin.

  He takes it with a sigh. “Thank you, Jo.” He unwraps the bundle and offers me some.

  I shake my head. “That’s for you to eat, and I won’t leave until you do.”

  He sits on a bale of hay and takes a nibble so small, I despair of it making it all the way down the hatch. He catches me glaring at him and pats the space beside him. “Let me tell you a story, hm?”

  Reluctantly, I sit.

  “A farmer whose crops had not bloomed sent his son to buy a peach to entice the bats of fortune. And so the son found a fruit the color of a setting sun, one so large he could hold it with both hands without the fingers touching.” He demonstrates, holding an imaginary ball between his hands.

  “On the way home, the son passed a lake. In the lake, a water nymph with golden hair and eyes that looked cut from the lake itself bathed among the lotuses. Noticing the son, the nymph swam to the edge of the lake. She looked at the son with such longing that he felt his heart stir. But it was not the young man she wanted.” Old Gin stretches out his skinny arms and makes his voice high. “‘I must have that peach. I have wished to taste such a fruit for so long.’”

  I bury a giggle.

  “‘What will you give me in return?’ asked the son. ‘A kiss,’ she said. So his shaking hands passed her the peach.”

  “The fool,” I mutter. “Let me guess. She takes the peach, he doesn’t get his kiss, the bats don’t come, and the father’s crops die. Is that the end?”

  Old Gin grunts. “For now.” He cocks an ear toward me, waiting for me to dig out the hidden meanings.

  “Am I the fool or the nymph?”

  “You are too sentimental, and so you are the fool. I am the nymph, because I don’t need the peach, hm?”

  I imagine knock-kneed Old Gin as a nymph, his scraggly beard dripping with water, and burst out laughing. Soon, his own acorn face is split in a grin, and we are rocking back and forth like the time we tried balancing on a cut log for fun. But then Old Gin’s laughter sets off a cough, and my happiness drains away.

  Ameer screams from somewhere far off, somehow part of this conversation.

  Old Gin drinks from his water jug, and then replaces the cork. “You will be okay minding the burrows?” He rubs at his mouth, more as if trying to erase his grimace than dribbled water.

  “The burrows will be secure under my watch.” I polish up a smile, despite the worries digging around my skull.

  Ameer shrieks again, though more half-heartedly, as if he is beginning to tire. “How’s the new jockey?”

  Old Gin’s shoulders stretch the fabric of his coat. “Good at coaxing speed, not so good at coaxing character.”

  He lowers himself back into a horse-riding stance.

  “You forgot the cheese.”

  “I will eat cheese later. It has already waited a long time.”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN I HIKE back up the paved path, Noemi is half riding the safety by the work shed. “This is going to be more fun than a frog race once I get the hang of it. Probably even beats riding a horse.” Her bushy eyebrows wiggle.

  “I doubt that.”

  “Only one way to find out. Oh, I forgot.” She puts a hand to her cheek. “You ain’t ready to break your legs.”

  The safety does look fun, its paint as glossy as a candied apple.

  “After a week with the porcupine, maybe I am ready to break my legs.” Jo Kuan might not have taken such risks, but Miss Sweetie embraces the future, including newfangled machinery. “As long as it doesn’t buck, I’m game.” I unclasp my cloak and set it on a stump. Then I take one of the handlebars, laying my other hand on the triangle seat. The leather feels smooth, almos
t slick, and it’s attached to the frame with metal coils to take the jounce out of the bounce. A metal plate partly covers the back wheel to prevent one’s skirt from being violently “freed” from one’s body. I begin to worry that might be the reason for the term freedom machines.

  “They say you’re supposed to coast first, with your feet hiked up to practice balancing.” Noemi holds her hands out as if to imitate her feet. “That means we need to face downhill.” Both the stables and the house lie at a slight decline from where we are standing.

  I face the bicycle toward the stables. If I start flying, I would rather break my legs a little closer to Old Gin so he doesn’t have to travel far to rescue me. Noemi holds the seat steady while I climb aboard. The frame curves low, allowing me to pass my leg through to the other side instead of swinging it over as with a horse. I tuck my skirts between my legs so they don’t cause trouble.

  The bicycle is heavy. Miss Sweetie assures Jo Kuan that means a more stable ride, like how a frigate feels less turbulence than a rowboat. Jo Kuan points out that heavier could also mean deadlier, as an ant might know when a foot comes along. Miss Sweetie ignores her and take a firm grip on the handlebars. A lever is attached to the right one.

  “That’s the brake,” Noemi tells me. “You squeeze it to stop.”

  I try it out and feel a mild resistance. “What about this button?” I run my finger along a metal piece the size of a doorknob attached to the left handlebar.

  “It’s a bell. Look.” She flips a switch on the doorknob, and a hammer strikes the metal with a satisfying ding!

  “What for?”

  “In case you want to ring for service, obviously.”

  “But who would come?” Only after my words fall out do I notice the smile riding up her face. She is as sly as the letter u, always sneaking in after q.

  Slowly, I lift one foot, then the other. I wobble to one side and catch myself.

  Noemi helps me pull the bicycle back to center. “Steady, August.”

  “You . . . named the safety?”

  “A name means respect. If you’re going to put your life into someone’s hands, best start off on the right foot.”

  I topple to one side again, and Noemi neatly catches me. “Or the left.”

  “Ah. You chose August because it means ‘respected.’”

  “No, I chose it because it’s the name of a month, the most powerful month on the calendar. When August comes around, it brings a wrath hot enough to jerky the cows while they’re standing in the fields.”

  “July’s not so balmy either.”

  She lifts an eyebrow so high, I wouldn’t be surprised if she could unhook it and throw it like a lightning bolt.

  “August, be easy on me.” I lift my feet again, and let gravity coax me down the incline. My toes touch down a few times, but soon, I am rolling! “I’m doing it, Noemi! I’m coasting!”

  “That’s ’cause I’m still holding you, you noodle.”

  “Well, let go!”

  She cuts me loose, and the bicycle picks up speed.

  August bobs one direction and then the other, but I keep my grip fused to the horns. A flock of chickens scatters before me with panicked squawks. And then I’m hurling down the road, fast as a spit seed. Before I hit anything, like the pavement, I squeeze the brake, and the contraption comes to a shaky stop.

  I set down my anchors, and Noemi comes up behind me. “Did you see that?” I ask breathlessly. “I was flying.”

  “You barely went ten yards.” She brushes a hand toward me, meaning get off.

  “August, you are hot enough to jerky the cows.” I roll the bicycle back to the work shed, and then Noemi climbs aboard. After scooting along with her toes and then coasting a few times, her feet find the pedals, and she’s pumping her way back toward the house. She is a natural.

  She disappears around a curve. When she doesn’t return, I work my way back toward the house after her.

  My step slows when I reach the courtyard. Noemi stands with the bicycle forming a fence of sorts between her and the Payne women. Judging by Caroline’s white-lipped scowl, August has brought a wrath after all.

  Thirteen

  The sun cowers in the west, and despite my exertions, the air suddenly feels too brittle against my skin. Mrs. Payne’s skirted coat looks hastily shrugged on, judging by how its collar traps her loose hair.

  “It was bad enough that you gave my maid my hat, but now you’re giving this uppity sass-mouthed nigra my bicycle?” Caroline’s face begins to blotch, even though she is the only one not wearing a coat.

  “We’re only lending the bicycle. Do be reasonable, Caroline. You wanted to give it away.”

  “If I had known it was going to her, I would never have given it up.”

  Noemi squeezes the handlebars, her knuckles bunching in her black leather gloves. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t wish to make trouble.” With her head bowed, it’s hard to tell that Noemi is the tallest of the three.

  “I said you can have it, and a lady is only as good as her word.” Mrs. Payne’s blue eyes cock like a pair of pistols.

  The moment holds an outraged breath. Caroline’s scornful expression has set in her face like a fly in the aspic. Digging it out would only make it worse.

  Noemi grinds her gaze into the dirt. “I’d be happy to pay for it.”

  We all gape at her.

  “How much does it cost, miss?” Noemi directs her question to the bow I tied at Caroline’s waist.

  “My papa bought it for a hundred dollars.”

  I cough out my shock, and everyone but Noemi looks at me.

  “Is there something you wished to say, Jo?” Mrs. Payne asks.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, only that you could buy a horse for a hundred dollars, not a good one, of course, but at least it’s got four working legs.”

  Caroline’s outrage pops like a faulty incandescent bulb. “Since when does my domestic’s opinion matter? Her soul’s even blacker than this nigra’s, and I wish you hadn’t hired her back.”

  Mrs. Payne sweeps her hair free from her coat. “That’s enough, Caroline. Maybe you will think about the value of things before you cast them aside. Now, the bicycle cost more like eighty dollars, but that was new.”

  “Ma’am, I’ll pay for it,” Noemi says without a hint of emotion. “I insist.”

  I furtively shake my head at Noemi, but she won’t meet my eyes.

  A smile slithers up Caroline’s face. “Half now, half next week.” She picks a thread off her sleeve and feeds it to the breeze.

  Outrageous. Noemi doesn’t have eighty dollars to throw away. The lengths the haves will go to in order to deprive the have-nots boggles the mind. Even Miss Sweetie has no answer for it.

  Noemi clears her throat. “Ma’am, how about you withhold my wages until it’s paid?”

  Mrs. Payne’s gaze passes between Caroline and Noemi and then lands on me. She pulls her coat closed, and suddenly she looks smaller. It’s as if battling with Caroline has wrung her out. She twists at her wedding band, an old habit. Mrs. Payne gives Noemi an exasperated smile. “That will be fine. Well, good evening, then.” With a shake of her head, she returns to the house.

  “Move it back to the work shed for now, you hear?” Caroline wags her finger toward the shed, as if Noemi doesn’t know where it’s located even after working here all her life. “Only hussies ride bicycles,” she hisses as Noemi rolls August away.

  * * *

  —

  NOEMI MARCHES DOWN Peachtree as if the world were depending on her to turn it. Her gloved hands are balled into fists, and the skirt of her brown-checkered dress doesn’t dare tangle in her legs. When we reach the streetcar stop, she sails right by. She glances back at me, half walking, half trotting to catch up. “Robby’s delivering on the other side of town today, and I feel like walking. You don’t ha
ve to come.”

  If Robby’s delivering, then he must not have gotten the clerk job after all. I don’t mention it—there are more pressing issues to discuss—but this is exactly the kind of injustice Miss Sweetie must speak to. I march doggedly alongside her, trying to catch my breath. “You didn’t ask for my opinion, but it’s free for the taking.”

  “Go on.”

  I’m about to tell her the hazards of spending money she doesn’t have for things she doesn’t need to spite people she shouldn’t spite. But her grim expression blows the words like dust from my mouth. “Never mind.”

  Noemi sighs. “Mama’s been dead for almost ten years, but Caroline still counts the silverware every night.”

  I was seven when we lost Noemi’s mother, Caroline’s mammy. At her burial, the world seemed to grow colder and more distant on that dark October day, and the scrape of the shovel sounded like a hawk sharpening its claws. Caroline had insisted on attending, even though the cemetery was for colored only. But when the reverend began eulogizing, she began keening so loud, her father had to take her away.

  Twenty yards in front of us, a terrier strains at its leash, its fierce expression at odds with its stubby body. I instinctively shrink away. The dog’s owner strolls leisurely behind, chatting with another white lady. Ignoring Noemi, who steps into the busy street, their collective gaze sweeps over me, surprise tinged with distrust. I’m about to follow Noemi into the street when the terrier lunges at me, scaring me there faster.

  “Fluffers!” The dog’s owner tugs him back with a snap of her ruffled wrist. She hurries after her friend, but the terrier throws an extra snap in my direction.

  “Cocky mutt,” Noemi mutters. “You okay?”

  I nod, though my heart could probably beat Ameer in a sprint. A carriage barrels toward us, and Noemi pulls me back to the sidewalk.

  I’m about to bring up the subject of the bicycle again when Noemi’s stout boots stop marching. In the grassy yard of a brick law office, men are hoisting up a statue. Weakening sunlight glints off the bronze figure of a Confederate officer, his chest puffed out like a sail.