Hester(38)

I think she’s around thirty-five years old, but I cannot be sure. Her skin is smooth, but her hands are not. Her eyes are clear, but she’s missing two teeth in the side of her mouth.

“I like to work at my leisure and stitch what I want,” she adds.

“I’m making what I want,” I say.

“Are you?” Her eyes are flecked with tiny spots of amber. “The lady didn’t tell you what she wants?”

“She said flowers,” I admit. “But when I’ve mastered the form, I’ll sew the leopard and I know it will impress her. If not, then I’ll take it elsewhere.”

Mercy studies the animal as I’ve drawn it, then looks to the gloves where I tore out the stitches. She squints as if she sees something there in the ghost of the stitches, and I wonder if she can tell I’ve tried to imitate her work by hiding words in the threads.

“Leopard’s got strength,” she says, as if she truly can see the word I hid and then erased. “A hunter but always alone. Some say the leopard is death.” The colors of her words change as she speaks, darkening from elderberry to midnight. “My mama taught me about animals. Owls are wise. A hawk is a message from the dead. Foxes are wily.”

“What animal is courage and power?” I ask, for that is what I want to stitch.

Mercy thinks on it.

“Bear,” she says. “Big black bear.”

I look at the gloves, and at my sketches.

“A black bear will look terrible on a pair of gloves,” I say.

Mercy’s laugh surprises me; the sound is rusty and hard, like the bark of my dear pap’s laughter.

“Sure would.” She puts her hands in the air as if they are bear claws, and I do the same.

Soon we’re both laughing. I feel warm in a way I haven’t since coming to America. Mercy’s face is open, her smile as wide as her cheekbones.

“If the lady asks for flowers, you best do what she wants.” Mercy wipes the back of her hand across her eyes. “It’s fine what you have there, elegant and new so that Mrs. Adams will want them in her window.”

“I can’t thank you enough.” Now that there’s a thaw between us, I want to keep it that way. I take the pillow with Zeke’s words done in my colors and thrust it into her hands.

“For Zeke,” I say.

She scowls as she looks at the letters, but I misunderstand her expression.

“It says Plant a Rainbow—”

“I know what it says,” she snaps. “I learned my letters, but he can’t read.”

She thrusts the pillow back at me. “You keep it here; don’t make him feel less.”

I fear I’ve insulted her and her cousin at the same time—by assuming he could read and by assuming she couldn’t—and put the pillow away just as quickly as I can.

“I’ll pay Zeke to make me a form for the gloves as soon as I have the money,” I say.

“That’s better,” she replies. “My cousin’s always looking for money to put something new into the yard or a pretty ribbon in Ivy’s hair. You do that, he’ll be happy.” She lifts her chin and narrows her eyes. “Just don’t be bothering me at market day.”



* * *



FELICITY TURNS THE gloves inside out and inspects the cuff lining. After two long nights working by lamplight, I’ve delivered her gloves as promised. Two are elbow length with yellow-and-purple irises, the third sports a boat rendered in navy blue above a pea-green sea. A fish is freedom, Mercy told me. An iris is courage with a secret at its heart. I’ve hidden these words in bits of curved stitches so tiny only I can see them. But they are there. FREEDOM, a secret kept.

“They’ll do nicely,” Felicity says.

I wait for her to spot the tiny A tucked inside a fold of the seam, or for her fingers to run across the stitches and find the hidden letters, but they are all too small to notice.

In the shop window, we pair the flowered gloves with an open-brim yellow hat and put the gloves with the boat scenes beside a lace shoulder cape and matching veil. I’m satisfied with the sixty cents Felicity counts out as payment, until I see the price she’s marked on a white tag and attached to the gloves with a bit of string.

“Do you think a lady will pay two dollars?” This is ten times what she’s paid for my labor.

“If one lady pays it, others will follow.” Felicity’s words have color for the first time, brown with pink and burnt amber.

“Two dollars seems a very dear price,” I say.

There’s shrewdness in Felicity’s narrowed eyes.

“These are novelty and fancy.” Her voice seems to move like cloth, stretching as if to shred apart the stitches of her words. “We’ll know in a week if the price is too high. If necessary, I’ll lower it—else take them out of the window and admit that there is no desire for such impractical gloves.”

There’s a threat in what she says, and I don’t miss it.

“Someone will want them,” I say, for it must be so.

“And when someone does, they’ll buy them from me.” Felicity advances toward me, and although I do not mean to, I shrink away. “The commissions must come through this shop, that’s our agreement. You must refer the customer to me directly, and never tell them you are the stitcher. Otherwise, they’ll try to undercut me. And that can’t happen. Remember, Mrs. Gamble, I took a chance on you, and you must never take work behind my back.”