The Downstairs Girl

by Stacey Lee

  Hearing nothing, I move to the stove. While I fill the tinderbox with newspaper, a draft from the barn entrance blows at my face. My pulse begins to trot. It is too early for Old Gin to return.

  Someone is here.

  Thirty-Four

  I drop the kindling, scattering branches on the floor. My eyes rummage the room for our new hand ax, trying to shake off my panic.

  If trouble’s coming through the barn door, I’m not running to meet it. I hurry down the western corridor to the tree exit and am soon gulping in cold Atlanta air.

  But now what?

  Scaredy-cat. Perhaps it was an animal. Though no animal I know can open a trapdoor, except perhaps a bear, and I’ve never seen a bear in Atlanta or anywhere.

  Well, I’m not staying in this tree. Branches grab me as I dislodge myself less gracefully than usual, then casually walk toward the street. For the first time, I actually hope to see people. A pair of women with baby strollers shriek when they see me and hurry their strollers away. I must look like a demon spat up from hell, unshod, my hair like a monsoon on my head, and wielding an ax, no less. I would run from me, too.

  My teeth chatter. I need to get ahold of myself. Hammer Foot would hate to see me this way—afraid, and worse, stirring up fear in people around me. I quickly twist my hair into a knot, and then tuck the ax under my arm. My socks have grown soggy with dew and make sucking sounds as I walk.

  After a few more aimless paces, my fear ebbs away. The basement is our home. I might have lost my job today, not to mention my belief in the steadfast nature of motherly love, but I shall not give up my home without a fight.

  I shin around to the barn entrance, the sharp gravel picking up my feet.

  Hiding behind a snaggle of pine trees, I watch the abandoned barn for movement. The exterior warns people away with its blackened walls, only half standing, and caved-in roof. A margin of thistle provides a further deterrent, if you don’t note the spaces to place your feet. Inside the barn, however, the beams are solid and dry, the rotting wood long ago carted away.

  Our interloper was probably a drunk making himself at home inside the horse stall, somehow finding the concealed pull that unlocks the trapdoor. Just because it never happened before doesn’t mean it couldn’t. If I make profits from the knots, I shall buy a real lock. Maybe one day, a home with a real locking door.

  Mustering my courage, I tiptoe to the entrance.

  A moan breaks through the hush. Blood spatters the earth, like rubies on dirt.

  From the stall with our trapdoor, two skinny legs stick out. One foot is missing a boot, its flannel-reinforced sole twitching like a half-dead fish.

  I rush into the barn. “Old Gin!” I cry.

  The trapdoor is open, but he could not climb down into it. I bend over his crumpled form. Blood leaks from his mouth, and red bruises puff out on his face. “Who did this to you?”

  “The turtle egg,” he spits. “His man caught me on walk home.”

  “Knucks.”

  Old Gin nods. He glances at an empty green bottle lying a few feet from his head. “He gave me that.”

  I set down the ax and pick it up. Pendergrass’s Long-Life Elixir.

  All feeling drains out of me, except guilt, whose sharp points stab me from all angles. Billy figured out that I double-crossed him. All this over a fifty-cent bottle of barley water. I think back to the day he asked me who the most important person in the world to me is. Now I realize why. I bite back angry tears. “Coward. Beating up an old, defenseless man.”

  Old Gin grimaces. “Not so defenseless. You should see him.”

  Despite his words, he is panting, and one eye oozes tears and blood.

  “It’s my fault. I wanted to know more about Shang. I’m sorry.”

  His good eye dribbles over me and my ax. “When you go to chop wood, please remember shoes, hm?”

  “Where does it hurt?”

  “Who says it hurts?”

  I hiss in exasperation.

  “Rib might be cracked,” he concedes. “Maybe a few other things.” He clicks his tongue at the tears spilling over my cheeks.

  Pull it together! Old Gin needs me. I dash back into our basement to fetch clean water for his thirst and rags for his wounds. With cooled barley tea, I make a compress for his injured eye and then pick debris from his wounds. Fresh tears spill out again when I view the state of his torso. Bruises cover every bit of his skin in even patterns of four, marking each blow of Knucks’s brass knuckles. Old Gin has grown so thin, his ribs stick out like a pair of open shutters.

  I apply more barley-tea compresses to his bruises, wishing we had pepper. Noemi said pepper solves a lot of problems you don’t expect it to, including bruises. He winces as I wash his bloodied knuckles. Perhaps he did manage to inflict some damage.

  “Mr. Buxbaum told me about Shang. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

  He sighs, an invisible thing more felt than seen, like water. “Some burdens are too heavy for young shoulders.”

  “Did he know about me?”

  “No. That letter was the last he heard from your mother before she left for Savannah.” His voice has dropped to a hush. “I’m sorry for bringing you back. I wished for a bond between sisters, one that could outlast parents.”

  Caroline’s shocked expression materializes before me, lit by the faintest glimmer of understanding. Old Gin’s eyes flutter closed.

  “Grandfather,” I call, feeling the cold finger of fear press against my heart. “Wake up.”

  He doesn’t move. I fetch blankets and pillows. Under a folded blanket tucked in one corner of his room, I discover the Balmorals. He never sold them. They are, after all, one of the few remembrances of his son. I return to his side and arrange the bedding around him. Then I hold his hand, a hand that seems to have grown smaller over the years. A hand that has patiently guided me through life.

  With a gray blanket tucked around his body, he looks so frail, like an injured fruit bat. My heart floods with love for Old Gin, who did the work of two people, asking nothing in return. I was so mad at him, when he’s the one who changed my diapers and soothed me to sleep. When I caught the influenza, he scared off the devil winds, coaxing the fire within me to life with soup and his own gentle humming. He wanted me to have a sister so that when he was gone, I would still have a family.

  My chest begins to hiccup and pull. Not wanting Old Gin to see me cry, I duck back into the basement and collapse onto my bed in a sweaty, grimy heap. I take in huge gulps of air and sob and try to think of a plan. How will I get him back into the basement? Trying to lower him down the metal rungs without injuring him further will be as difficult as climbing down a ladder with a barrel of water. I need to find him medical attention. But how? We don’t have money for a doctor, even if I could find one that would treat a Chinese man.

  He will die in the abandoned barn, of cold or infection or exposure, when he should be resting on the finest feather mattress, with clean sheets and cooling ice for his bruises. I will need to find his boot. The thought of it lying abandoned and alone in the streets somehow makes me cry even harder.

  I mop my face on my quilt. My eyes stick on the word grievous, “shockingly cruel or brutal,” written when Mrs. Bell told Nathan that the combination of whatever he had thrown on was grievous to her eyes.

  Grievous is the word that fits our predicament, but I am not grieving yet. There is work to be done. I will bring a warm brick to Old Gin, and then find help. Creakily, I get to my feet, when another sound freezes me in place.

  A woof.

  Thirty-Five

  A giant snowball of fur bounces up to me, and I fall back against the bed. “B-B-Bear?”

  Woof! Out rolls the pink herald of her tongue.

  “H-how did you—?” My eyes fly to the listening tube. In my haste to leave the basement, I forgot to plug it.

/>   I reach for the wool stopper, but Nathan’s voice drifts down to me. “Where is she? Must’ve gone out the window again. It’s that new cat across the street, I bet.”

  I stuff in the plug before Bear woofs again. She looks from the speaking tube to me, and her ears lift, as if she is waiting for an explanation.

  “Oh, Bear,” I say, my voice shaking. She puts her head on my lap, and I swear that creature knows exactly what I need. I fling my arms around her, and she doesn’t move away until my sob is spent.

  “Thank you,” I tell her at last. “But I must get help. And Nathan will be worried for you. Come.”

  Old Gin has not moved an inch. Bear circles him, then sits by his feet, and when I make for the exit, she does not follow.

  “Bear, come!” I slap my thigh twice the way I’ve seen Nathan do.

  She looks from me to Old Gin.

  “Come!”

  This time, she lowers her belly to the ground.

  Now what? Well, I can’t worry about her right now. I must get help for Old Gin. But from who?

  Bear lifts her head, watching me from somewhere under that shag.

  No. The Bells can’t find out our secret. Old Gin had strict rules, rules meant to keep us safe.

  Yet, somehow, I don’t think he would mind a change in the rules today.

  The Bells’ front door is already open when I scramble up the porch steps. Nathan emerges, shrugging on his coat. When he sees me, his face loses all its scowl lines. “Jo? What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”

  “My grandfather,” I cry as a sob amasses in my throat once more. “Billy Riggs hurt him.”

  His mother appears behind him, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Oh, my dear.” She shoulders past him and takes my frozen hands in her slightly damp ones.

  “Where is he?” asks Nathan. A lock of hair sticks up from his cowlick like a question mark.

  “I will show you.”

  Back to the abandoned barn we go. If they are worried about its dilapidated appearance, they don’t show it, following right on my heels. Bear greets Nathan with a woof! and bounds to his side.

  “Ah.” He pats her head. “There’s a good girl.”

  Mrs. Bell crouches next to Old Gin, her eyes grim. If she feels disgust at the sight of Old Gin’s bloodied and battered form, she only tsks her tongue. “We must get Dr. Swift. Nathan—”

  “I will be back as soon as I can.” Bear and I watch him jog away, her tail motoring back and forth. When Nathan disappears from view, the dog plunks herself again at Old Gin’s feet, protecting her injured lamb.

  I take Old Gin’s hand again, placing myself on the side opposite Mrs. Bell. She still carries her dish towel, and there’s a streak of flour on her cheek. “Don’t worry, Jo.” She knows my name. “Dr. Swift is quite skilled and lives up to his name. He’ll have your grandfather fixed in no time.” She arranges herself in a more comfortable position, knees tucked under her, the hem of her herringbone skirt picking up the dirt of the barn.

  “Could I fetch you something to sit on?”

  “No, thank you. But, er, how would you do that?”

  She follows my gaze to the open trapdoor. A question lodges itself between her eyes.

  I take a deep breath. Then I tell her about our life downstairs. She does not flinch at my recounting or recoil or do any of the things one would expect from someone who has just discovered there are more than rats in her basement. Instead, she sits calmly listening, arms knotted into her marigold shawl.

  Old Gin’s eye has started to bleed again, and I wring out another barley compress, my own head a strange brew of helplessness, gratefulness, and shame. Now that we are discovered, I can’t expect the Bells to lie to their landlords. “I am sorry, ma’am.”

  Her gaze drifts to Old Gin. “Sometimes, I get dyspepsia and have trouble sleeping. I wander through the house, trying to get my stomach to settle. Many years ago, I swore I’d hear a young girl’s voice now and then whenever I’d go into the print shop.”

  I swallow hard, remembering the nights I’d fallen asleep to the lullaby of the printing press. Maybe I talked in my sleep.

  A smile forms on her face. “Mr. Bell told me it was probably the indigestion giving me gas. Have you been hearing . . . us?”

  I nod guiltily. “But not all the time. Just sometimes, when I need to.”

  She presses her hands over her crestfallen expression.

  “And only in the print shop,” I add hastily. “That’s where the abolitionists built the speaking tube.”

  “Abolition—” The word breaks off. She carefully shifts into a cross-legged position. “I wish I had figured it out earlier. I had seen you and your grandfather a few times before, and thought you must have lived around here. When the solicitor’s wife told me about the Chinese girl in the hat shop, well, I was curious about you, but I still couldn’t work out why you were so familiar to me.”

  I wipe my leaky eyes on my palm. She reaches over Old Gin and takes my wet hand in her warm one. “And at last, when Nathan told me you were our Miss Sweetie, I thought, well, of course. That girl is destined to be in our lives.”

  “So, you’re not upset?”

  “No.” There are tears in her eyes. “I am relieved.”

  The next half hour passes quickly as I answer Mrs. Bell’s questions about how Old Gin and I came to be living under her house. I tell her the truth about my relationship with Mrs. Payne. Now that the worst has happened, there is no reason to hide. Either that or I am too tired to think of one.

  The sounds of clopping hooves and grinding wheels hasten toward us. Then a bear-size man with a grizzled beard appears in the doorway, smelling of cigars and swinging a large carpetbag. He takes one look at Mrs. Bell’s and my tear-streaked faces and says, “Hope I’m not too late.”

  Mrs. Bell pushes herself to her feet. “No, Doctor. But please hurry.”

  Thirty-Six

  From the outside, the Bells’ two-story house features cheerful curtains in its white-framed windows. Two potted cypresses stand guard on either side of a stout brown door. I always imagined Mrs. Bell kept her house the way she dressed—plain and neat. But while the house is neat, its contents are like a field of wildflowers to my eyes. Knitted throws in whimsical colors like meadow green and tulip pink drape the couch and two fireside chairs. A bucolic landscape pieced from cheerful feed sacks has been stretched onto a wooded frame and hung on the wall. Braided rugs stitched with a stout needle cause each footfall to feel lovingly supported. There’s even a tufted cushion on the floor by the fireplace, perfectly sheepdog-size.

  After Dr. Swift patched up the worst of the injuries, including Old Gin’s eye, Nathan helped him cart Old Gin to the Bells’ front door. We did not find the boot; it was probably already picked up by a street urchin. The men carried Old Gin into a spare bedroom on the first story with a view of the street, and laid him upon a mattress made of ticking with sheets that look freshly ironed.

  Dr. Swift rolls his sleeves back down. “Elevate his back. It’ll make it easier to breathe with that punctured lung. We must pray that infection does not set in.”

  I help Mrs. Bell tuck pillows behind Old Gin’s back and under his knees. “What about his eye?”

  “Keep it clean and be thankful the good Lord gave us two.”

  My toes grip the floor extra hard. Oh God, please save his eye. A sympathetic noise feathers from Mrs. Bell’s mouth.

  The doctor takes a bottle of antiseptic from his bag and sets it on a dresser, along with a blue vial. “This tincture will help with the pain, though start small—a teaspoon or two. I never gave it to a yellow man before, but I expect he’ll tolerate it like the rest of us. He needs two months of rest and good soup. How’s he at chess?”

  “Chinese or American, if he loses, it’s on purpose,” I say weakly.

  “Really. Well
then, maybe it’s time for the old horse to learn a new trick.”

  Maybe it’s the way the last of the sunlight falls when Nathan adjusts the shutters, but despite the news about his eye, I swear a smile ghosts around Old Gin’s face. I hope he knows he’s in the best of hands. Not quite home, but home just the same.

  * * *

  —

  MRS. BELL GIVES me a rice-root brush and then shows me to a washroom on the first floor. “Take your time. I will prepare dinner.” She leaves, and soon I hear the clang of a pot meeting a stove.

  The washroom matches the size of my basement corner and contains a bin of towels, a basin, and a catching tub, meant for the dribbles from washing and rinsing. Another door conveniently leads to the garden, where used water can be deposited, and an outhouse.

  I glance into a looking glass, and my own face scares me, my eyes painfully loud, my mouth chewed up with worry.

  Nathan brings two buckets of steaming water, which he sets by the catching tub. He edges past me to the doorway, as if he is suddenly conscious of the close quarters.

  “I could fill the tub if you don’t mind waiting.” He takes in my matted hair, maybe wondering if he’ll be boiling water all night.

  “This is more than enough. Thank you.”

  “Jo, I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about your grandfather, but I’m glad you’re here. I couldn’t stand . . .” He grips the doorframe, and his gray eyes are not sure where to land. “Er, I should let you get on with it.” He winces and then closes the door.

  My limbs ache, but I make every drop of water count, scrubbing my skin with a washcloth until it turns pink. My discovery this morning seems a lifetime ago. Who knew so many moments could happen in the span of one day? I will need to inform the Paynes of what happened, though the thought of going back blows more smoke on my mood.

  Did she ever love me?

  I never loved her, only the idea of her. I dreamed of having a mother like Mrs. Payne, someone with a smile in her eyes and a song on her lips. Someone who smelled like summer peaches. What a fool she has played me for these seventeen years. I detest the woman. Maybe even more than Billy Riggs.