The Downstairs Girl

by Stacey Lee

  “I have thought of those things, of course. There will be no gambling odds on him, as the odds are written for twelve players. The suffragists will be matched to Sweet Potato. They are fortunate to be in the race and won’t complain.”

  So much for a random draw. “Actually, I have met their president, and she is not exactly a shrinking violet.”

  “I don’t require advice on this matter. Old Gin is a grown man. You should respect his decision.” There’s a warning in her tone. Her black slippers peek out from her dress hem, two arrows pointing to the exit. She crosses her arms, drawing an X over her center.

  My eyes fall to her planner, still open on the desk beside us. She seems to be writing a letter of some sort. At the bottom, she has signed it with a loop. A lowercase e.

  An e for Emma.

  Mrs. Payne’s eyebrows clothespin together, and noticing my interest in her planner, she reaches over and closes the book.

  But it is too late. I have already seen.

  My mind churns like a loom, drawing threads, weaving connections, finding patterns. “You wrote the letter.”

  Her face twists in confusion.

  “You asked him to forgive you.”

  She begins to say something but swallows it back down. “You—you’ve seen this letter?”

  “Yes. You wrote his name in Chinese. Shang.”

  I watch the way hearing the name tears at her face, causes the delicate planes to tremble. She covers her mouth. Her wedding band draws my eye, a worry bead for her adultery.

  Mr. Q was right. She had an illegitimate daughter.

  But it was not Caroline.

  My head begins to swim, and my knees give way, but Mrs. Payne collapses on the floor, one step ahead of me.

  Thirty-Three

  The sharp odor of smelling salts rouses me from my deadened state. Etta Rae helps me into a seated position on the floor of the study. “Wh-what happened?”

  “You fainted. Both of you did. You were only out for a few minutes. How are you feeling?”

  My head throbs, but nothing feels broken. On the outside, at least. Mrs. Payne comes into view, propped up a few feet away with her back against the desk, her hair slipped from its knot. “I’ll be okay,” I say, not bothering to hide my anger.

  Mrs. Payne lifts her gaze to meet mine, but the effort is too great. “It was for the best,” she whispers hoarsely. The similarities are undeniable. Our bony fingers, our bumpy shoulders, even our widow’s peaks, and the pearl at the center of our upper lips. Apparently, we even faint alike. More pieces tumble together: her yearlong melancholic spell, during which she left to live with her parents in Savannah; the story about the filly she was forced to give up, the one she named Savannah Joy. Jo is a bastardization of Joy. A bastard, like me.

  Shakily, I rise, despite Etta Rae’s protests. It’s not clear to me why the woman’s here, only that Etta Rae has always been here. Her lips purse, and a prick of regret dulls her light brown eyes.

  Mrs. Payne still doesn’t look at me. I sway, pummeled by emotions that leave me breathless. Anger, hurt, shame, each takes its turn on me, bruising me deep in my core. The truth is worse than I imagined. In all my years here, she has been watching me grow with no more regard than for a thickening meadow. Each glance was a denial; every word, a rejection. Her gaze skitters over my pebbled-goat-leather boots, perhaps noticing for the first time how my toes have stretched them to the breaking point.

  My mother didn’t leave me. She abandoned me. Women like her do not, cannot form affinities with people like me, not if they wish to remain on the top branch. They are knots that slip out easily with the barest of tugs.

  Etta Rae pulls over a chair and helps Mrs. Payne into it. Caroline bursts into the study. “Maid, you forgot the utensils. What’s going on here? Mama, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  No one answers. Caroline glares at the housekeeper, as if prodding her to explain, but Etta Rae’s lips remain closed. Caroline blows out a frustrated breath.

  When four winds meet, there is only silence.

  Mrs. Payne’s eyes plead with me to understand. And though I know well the fences that corral us into our designated squares, I also know there are the chains we are born into, and those we choose to wear.

  I take off my apron and set it on Mrs. Payne’s desk.

  “No.” Caroline snatches it back and pushes it toward me, but when I don’t take it, she drops it and grabs my arms. “Don’t go. What did you do, Jo? Why is Mama crying?”

  Etta Rae glances at Mrs. Payne, who gives her the barest nod. “Let your sister go, child,” says Etta Rae.

  She knew, too. Shame takes another jab at me. Who else? Has the world conspired against me?

  “My sis—” A soft gasp releases from Caroline’s mouth. “Oh my God.” She gapes, searching my face for the truth, but the truth is in the details we both missed while she was gazing in the mirror and I was looking away.

  I descend the staircase for what I know will be the last time. A sob builds in my chest, but I bar it from leaving. Dignity can only be surrendered, and when it is gone, we are like the snail who has lost its shell. All it can do is find the nearest leaf and hope it’s not parade day. At least the snail never need care who its parents are.

  The front door fights me, and the paved stones of the driveway scheme to trip my feet. The jangle of an approaching carriage pulls my attention. A vehicle painted a distinctive cabbage green with gold lettering sets off an alarm bell in my head. I conceal myself in the shade of a magnolia, watching the carriage swing into the Paynes’ driveway. What would Crump’s Paints be doing in this neighborhood? The Paynes do not buy discount paints, even if their house needed a touch-up, which it does not.

  The passenger pushes aside her curtain, and I catch sight of her heavy-lidded eyes, her thin nose, and the withered rind of her mouth. Something icy chills my stomach.

  Mrs. Crump is here because of me. I recall the way the woman looked at me when Nathan suggested Lizzie find another escort, as if I were to blame. Lizzie must have told her my secret, and now she is here to expose me, the troublemaker. She does not know I have nothing to lose now.

  If only the same could be said of the Focus.

  I hurry away, barely noticing Sully’s streetcar until it is rolling briskly past me with clangs that make my ears ring. The ever-present reek of sewage strangles the scent of the magnolias and overwhelms my sinuses. Too much morning light pours into my eyes. Yet Peachtree rolls along as always, heedless of the pain coursing down its veins.

  My thoughts race. Leading the pack is the question of how my parents met. Old Gin said Shang was a groom, too. Maybe he’d even worked at the Payne Estate. Did Shang know about the baby he left behind? I imagine the man, two hands taller than me but not much wider, a shadowy figure shaking dice in his loose fist, a maverick who desired more than his earthly allotment. A bitter fluid burns my throat, and tears fill my eyes. I grip my damask bag to me like it is the only thing that might keep me anchored to this world.

  And what about Mr. Payne? How did she hide a pregnancy from her husband? A deep-enough pocket can hide many things, and just as her husband is ruthless, Mrs. Payne is shrewd. And sometimes the eye sees what it wants and skips over what is in plain sight. Mr. Payne had the biggest house on Peachtree Street, the most successful mill in Atlanta, the belle of the ball for a wife, a son, and a daughter. Why fix what was not broken?

  So many questions. So many lies.

  A crow squawks from somewhere nearby, but I hardly hear it. Old Gin knew, that’s for certain. Lucky Yip’s urn almost dances before me, a child’s lie compared to this whopper. Why else would Mrs. Payne allow him, a lowly and aging servant, to ride in her race? Guilt. Was he ever going to tell me? There are many arrows of blame in my bow, and without the proper targets, many are pointed at him. All my life, Old Gin knew exactly who I was. He lied to me
for seventeen years, even when I was desperate to know who left me on his doorstep. I hear myself whimper and wonder if I am collapsing into myself.

  Bile rises again in my throat, and I force it back down.

  Instead of going home, I steer my rudder toward Whitehall. It is still early enough that most shops haven’t opened, though the cloth-covered food stalls by Union Station have begun unfolding—one row of white sellers and another row of colored farther down. With few pedestrians out and a sky as clear as glass, there’s a crystalline quality about the city that I feel like shattering with a kick of my heel.

  When I was seven, Robby’s mother, a washerwoman, built a contraption for spinning the water out of laundry using a barrel with a crank. Once, I tried stopping the barrel with my hand—it was going too fast for my eyes to track—and got a scolding that burned more than the raspberry on my palm. “You got no business trying to stop this. Run along and do the things you supposed to be doing.”

  Maybe the world is like that spinner, and I should stop touching it so much and let it spin.

  Buxbaum’s brick façade and long display windows stretch before me, its neat appearance somehow anchoring the chaos in my head. Before entering the shop, I attempt to breathe away some of my anger.

  Even the sight of Robby folding a bolt of cloth at the far wall only cheers me a little. He is filling in again, which must be a good sign.

  “Don’t tell me you finished those knots already,” he says.

  I nod, not trusting my voice. I set down my damask bag, containing a hundred knots, on the waist-high table where Robby has been cutting fabric. “I no longer work for the Paynes,” I spill.

  His eyes soften. It’s funny how one glance of sympathy can trigger an avalanche of self-pity. I worry my finger into a knot in the oak, refusing to give in to my grief.

  “I told you not to stand so close to Noemi.”

  I can’t even smile. When we were children, we would joke with each other not to stand so close—him, because I used to swing my braids around, sometimes clipping him in the face; and me, because he had a gangly phase that put my feet in constant jeopardy.

  My face must crumple a little, because his own expression wavers. He smooths a bolt of fabric with his hand and sets it on a shelf. “What happened?”

  I reach for my handkerchief, grateful there are few customers around, and then unload my grief.

  He leans his forearms against the table as he listens, his thick eyelashes blinking now and then. When I am done, my handkerchief is soaked.

  From a cabinet, he pulls out a box of thin paper and places it on the table. “Just got these in. Mr. Buxbaum calls them ‘disposables.’ They’re handkerchiefs you can throw away. Go on, help yourself. They’re samples.”

  The disposables feel rough on my nose, but I am grateful they do the job. I stare at the bolts of fabric. Each color occupies a different shelf. “Where would you shelve me?”

  Robby’s eyes sharpen, and he straightens his cuffs with quick tugs. “Don’t you dare let some self-loathing, chicken-livered blueblood make you doubt yourself. You know where you’re from, and I know where you’re from, and that ain’t a shelf or a country or even a place. Sometimes I forget you’re even Chinese.”

  “I don’t.” I help myself to another disposable.

  “That’s ’cause you care too much about what the world says. Listen to those who know you best, and you’ll be okay.”

  “It’s hard to do that when the person who knew me best was lying to me this whole time.”

  “If Old Gin did anything wrong, he was doing it for you.” His gaze drifts away. “Does seem strange him repaying that debt now, after all these years. Billy Riggs ain’t the sort to let a debt go that long. You should’ve never gone to see him. He’s so crooked, I bet his bones won’t even lie flat when he’s dead in his coffin.”

  I half listen as my mind returns to the years toiling at the Payne Estate. It’s not so much that I minded the mucking and scraping and serving, but did it have to be for that family? My insides roil at the thought of Merritt’s—my brother’s—constant flirting. He had admired me in a way that was ungodly and immoral. Maybe I had admired him a little, too, damn my mother’s cold, unfeeling heart. My stomach bucks, and I am thankful for the small mercy of not having eaten today.

  “You look a little green. Here, sit.” Robby pulls out a stool. “Bring you water?”

  I shake my head, knowing I won’t be able to keep anything down. Robby sweeps threads into a pile with his hand. “Sometimes things fall apart so better things can come together,” he says gently. “When Noemi was sacked, I thought it was going to break her. She spent the whole weekend pulling lint pills off the blankets. Thought we were going to have to reknit them from the piles she was making just to keep warm at night.”

  I still can’t smile.

  “But then Mrs. Payne wants her back. And Noemi tells her she’ll come back, but only if that bicycle is five dollars, not eighty.” A chuckle floats from his mouth. “My point is, a blessing loves a good disguise. And something tells me the Paynes are a stepping-stone for you, not a destination, just like for that woman of mine. Hello, Mr. Buxbaum.”

  I didn’t even notice the shop owner walking up behind me. Trim and quick, he’s the kind of man that could slip into a door before it closed and not get his coattails caught. His eyebrows sit high on his forehead, giving him a look of perpetual frankness, which works in his favor when it comes to doing business.

  “Slow morning?” he asks.

  “Just cleared out. We had a crowd earlier.”

  The man frowns, pressing wrinkles into his forehead. I hope he does not attribute the slowness to Robby.

  His gaze lands on me. “Miss Kuan, your knots are enchanting, and I think you’ll see a nice profit given time.” He thumps the worktable with his fingers.

  “Thank you,” I say simply. The thought of making small talk exhausts me.

  “Mrs. English dropped off a special order this morning,” says Robby. “Selected the cord, too. Let me fetch it.” He glides to the register at the back wall.

  “I haven’t seen Old Gin around lately. Last time I saw him, he had a nasty cough. Is he over it?”

  “Yes. That Pendergrass . . . helped.” Billy’s steamy bathtub seeps into my mind, and I fight back a grimace.

  “Wonderful. You know I stand behind my products.” Mr. Buxbaum’s tan-and-white Balmorals squeak as he stretches high to straighten something on the shelf. His shoes are shinier than Shang’s black-and-white ones. I wonder if Shang bought his here. Buxbaum’s is one of the few stores that has always welcomed Chinese.

  A nervous sort of energy floods through me. “Mr. Buxbaum, did you ever meet a man named Shang?”

  The man squints, and his brow furrows like a wet book.

  “I’m not sure what he looked like, but he wore a size nine shoe. I am told he moved on about seventeen years ago.”

  He gives me a strange look. “Of course I met him.”

  Robby returns, holding a list in one hand and a box of cord in the other. He hands Mr. Buxbaum the list and is about to speak, but notices that I’m about to fall off my stool.

  “Er, you were saying, sir?” I prompt.

  Robby measures the cord against a yardstick hammered into the table, then cuts it with precise snips.

  “Shang is Old Gin’s son.”

  Robby’s scissors stop. The room spins around me, and I put a hand on the table to steady myself. If Shang is Old Gin’s son, that makes Old Gin . . . my grandfather.

  “They worked at the Payne Estate together,” Mr. Buxbaum continues, staring at the overhead fixture. “Nice young man. Liked practicing his English on me, especially the big words like glockenspiel.” He beams at me.

  I lick my lips. “Glockenspiel?” A G-word.

  “It’s a German xylophone.”

&nbs
p; Robby ties up my cord in neat bundles, sneaking me sympathetic looks.

  “Once, he asked me to order a few things from China to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Wanted to surprise Old Gin.” He ticks off his fingers. “Red melon seeds, joss sticks, dried shrimp, and fireworks.”

  “Fireworks?” says Robby. “What’s that?”

  “Pasteboard tubes filled with gunpowder that, when lit, produce colorful sparks. Boom!” Mr. Buxbaum throws back his arms. “Looked like the stars exploding.”

  Robby grins. “I’d like to see that.”

  “Course, he spent a day in jail for disturbing the peace, but those of us who caught the show have him to thank for a spectacular night.”

  More shoppers trickle into the store, drawing Mr. Buxbaum’s attention. “Old Gin said he’d left to strike it rich on silver in Montana. Surprised Old Gin didn’t tell you that himself.” He straightens his cravat and sets off toward the newcomers. “Don’t get too tied up in your work, Miss Kuan,” he calls back over his shoulder.

  “Yes, sir,” I manage to croak out.

  A customer solicits Robby’s help, and he finishes wrapping my cord in paper. “Remember what I said about things coming together.”

  I gulp down the lump in my throat. “Thank you, Robby.”

  * * *

  —

  BY THE TIME I slog home, a reluctant sun has begun to coax life back into the streets. I try to hold on to my anger at Old Gin, but it is as slippery as a fish. All this time, I have had family by my side. Memories of Old Gin flood my mind, the years of patient instruction on discarded newspapers and paper cartons. Old Gin wasn’t just teaching me out of duty, but devotion. Why would he not tell me that he was my grandfather? Probably he knew I would ask too many questions, making it harder to keep the secret about my parents.

  I slip carefully into the tree entrance and close the door behind me. In the basement, I step out of my boots and pull the pins from my hair, which weighs too heavily on my head. With a piece of chalk, I write the word glockenspiel on my wall before I forget it and, for comfort, unplug the listening tube.