HANNA DROVE THE WAGON into the alley behind the shop. Papa came out to meet her.
“What kept you?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, Papa. I didn’t mean to be so long.” She climbed down from the wagon seat. “Those Indians I met, the day before we got here? I saw them again.”
“The same ones?”
“Yes.”
In silence, Hanna put away the tools, and Papa lifted down the washtub full of plants.
“I’ll take the wagon back for you,” Papa said. He shook his head. “We need to get a stable built before winter. Where did you see the Indians?”
Hanna shrugged. “Five miles out? Maybe a little farther. On the road we came in on.”
“Five miles, huh? I’ll lay odds they didn’t have a pass.”
“A pass?”
“That’s what they need if they want to leave their land. They have to get special permission from the Indian agent. In Yankton.”
Immediately, Hanna’s mind filled with questions. Was it difficult for them to get a pass? Was the agent’s permission required no matter what the circumstances? Did each of them need a pass, even the children?
Papa drove off to take Chester and the wagon back to the livery. When he returned, Hanna had decided which of her questions was the most pressing. “What happens if the Indians don’t have a pass?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. That’s the agent’s lookout.”
“They were harvesting turnips. Wild ones that don’t belong to anyone. Would they have to have a pass for that?”
“If they’re off their land, they need a pass—didn’t you hear me say it the first time?”
She sensed his impatience. “Yes, Papa.” She had more questions, but if his mood was turning, she’d have to wait and ask them later.
As he went into the kitchen, he spoke over his shoulder. “I’ll go see Harris later this afternoon, if I can spare the time.”
She looked up. “Pardon me, Papa?”
“He’s the one who’ll get word to Yankton.”
The kitchen door creaked shut behind him.
Hanna stood staring at the closed door.
Papa was going to tell Mr. Harris that those women might have been off their land without a pass. It was her fault, for telling him that she’d seen them.
She opened her mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. I mustn’t start hollering—that will only make him angry. I have to figure out what to say first.
In the next second, she completely disregarded her own advice.
“Papa!” she cried out as she threw open the door. “Papa, do you mean to say that you’re going to report them? To Mr. Harris?”
Her outburst startled Papa, who was in the midst of pouring himself a cup of tea. The hot brown liquid sloshed over the edge of his tin cup, onto the tabletop and then the floor.
“What the blazes, Hanna!” he shouted, banging the teapot down and spilling still more tea.
“It’s not fair! They were digging up turnips. They weren’t doing anything wrong!”
“If they didn’t have a pass, they were breaking the law, plain and simple!” His face was red now, and the anger in his voice made her flinch. To steady herself, she summoned the image of the two little Indian girls and the baby. That first time, we stared at each other, me and one of the girls. Her eyes so dark, like Mama’s, like mine . . .
“But Papa, you’re the one who told me that the land around here used to be theirs. Maybe they didn’t even know they were in the wrong place.”
“That’s no excuse! What’s got into you, Hanna—since when did you care so much about the Indians?”
It was a reasonable question. I always cared about the unfairness. But I used to think only of how white people treated Chinese people. Now I know it’s about how white people treat anybody who isn’t white.
She couldn’t bring herself to say that to Papa. Her momentary silence gave them both a chance to take a breath. She spoke again, carefully.
“Papa. It might be different if—if I’d seen a big group of men riding out. But I saw women and children. There was even a baby, on his mama’s back.” She tried to smile winningly.
“Hmph.”
Hope sparked inside her as she sensed his anger dissipating. “Please, Papa, don’t report them. They’re only trying to feed their families.”
“You’re not to tell me what to do,” he retorted, but the abrasive edge in his voice was gone. “The truth is, I likely won’t have time to bother with it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.” He left through the door into the storeroom.
Not a total victory.
But not a defeat, either.
The next few days were frantically busy. Papa organized the goods in the shop, Hanna took charge of the storeroom. On Wednesday, she baked dozens of cookies. Two kinds, molasses clove and sugar vanilla—the one brown and spicy, the other light and crisp. She stored them in tins to await Tuesday’s opening. She also made two strings of bells to hang on the double doors; they would jingle cheerfully to announce the arrival of customers.
The following day, as Papa handed Hanna his plate after dinner, he said, “Had some visitors today—well, not exactly visitors. They just stopped by to chat.”
“Oh?” She stacked his plate on hers and rose to put them in the basin.
“Didn’t stay long. Let’s see, it was Miss Walters, Mrs. Tanner, and Mrs. Grantham.”
Mrs. Tanner was married to the town’s doctor. Mrs. Grantham owned the furniture shop with her husband.
Hanna turned in surprise. “Miss Walters was here?”
“Yes. Like I said, they didn’t linger.” Pause. “Miss Walters asked if we were going to be making dresses as well as selling dress goods, and the other ladies wanted to know the same.”
She tried to speak nonchalantly. “What did you say to them?”
“Well, what was I supposed to say?” he demanded, but there was no real heat in his voice. “They sort of ambushed me. If they had asked me one at a time, I could have said something different. But they came to me in a group, and . . .” He spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
She waited, holding her breath.
“I told them I was looking into it,” he said. “So that’s what I’m going to do.”
Her brows drew together in puzzlement. “How?”
“I’m thinking about hiring a seamstress.”
I mustn’t shout at him—it will only make him angry.
But this was an important moment: If she wanted him to think of her as old enough to be the Edmunds Dress Goods seamstress, she would have to act that way.
“Papa,” she said, keeping her voice as quiet and controlled as she could. “I know you don’t want me to sew for the shop, but I don’t know why.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m your father. You do as I say, and I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
Breathe. “I don’t mean to be impudent, but I need you to know something. Mama taught me to sew. It’s what she gave me, and I’m proud of that. I think she would have wanted me to help you make the new shop a success. She would have wanted me to sew for you.”
Papa scowled, and for the space of a long breath, she thought he might either start yelling or storm out of the room. Instead, he looked at her and jerked his chin toward her chair. She put the plates in the basin and sat down again.
“People talk,” he began. “When I married your mama, folks said things. About how it wasn’t right, a white man marrying a Chinese woman.”
She nodded. She knew about that, having seen it and heard it and sensed it as long as she could remember.
“There’s more. They said I was taking advantage. Making sure I had a . . . a servant for life.”
Her eyes widened. “But that’s not true!” she blurted out.
Even as a child, she had understood that her parents were partners in the shop. She had often heard them discussing business. As she grew older, she realized that Mama was not only a talented seamstress, but also had an intuitive grasp of how the right clothes could bring people great satisfaction—and how the wrong ones made them unhappy. Papa consulted Mama on every order he took.
Not a servant. Not Mama. She had been his true partner.
“They were wrong, whoever said that!”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “That’s what I think too. But I can’t change the plain facts. I’m white. She was Chinese. Folks will think what they think, and I hate to say it, but there are times when I wonder if they might have been right—if that’s maybe what some small part of me was thinking, without me even really knowing it.”
Hanna had never before seen that expression on Papa’s face. Puzzled, uncertain, full of something like sadness or maybe longing . . . but in the next second, his brow had hardened again.
“Is that it, Papa? Because people might say the same now, maybe even worse, seeing as I’m only fourteen?”
He shrugged. “That, and a fourteen-year-old girl shouldn’t have to work like a grown woman.”
This is my chance.
“But Papa, I love the work. It’s more like . . . like play for me.”
“See, that’s the problem! When folks are paying you good money, you can’t act like it’s play. You need to be responsible.”
She would have to try another approach.
“Well, Papa, it’s certainly not sensible to pay a seamstress when you’ve got one in the family,” she said. Desperation was making her bold. “You have to admit that. So I have a business proposal for you.”
He looked skeptical but said nothing, so she went on. “I want to make a sample dress to hang in the window. There’s only three more days until we open, not counting Sunday, so to finish it in time, I’ll need help. We’ll have to hire someone—an assistant, not a seamstress. If folks put in orders because they like the look of the dress, I get to sew for the shop. If not, I’ll pay you back every cent of what it costs, the fabric, the help, everything.”
She had no idea where she would get the money to repay him, but she kept going.
“Mama must have known what people were thinking about you and her, but she went ahead and worked in the shop anyway. I want to do the same. Please at least let me try.”
The silence that followed seemed to last forever. Papa’s eyes were cast down, as if he were studying his sleeve. Finally he raised his head and looked at her.
“Who are you thinking of hiring?” he asked.