Chapter Ten

Margaret’s father was a constant worry. Although he’d never remarried after his wife deserted him, leaving behind their children, seven-year-old Margaret and ten-yearold Frank, Angus had done a good job of raising them. Until Frank was stabbed to death in a street brawl when he was fifteen.

From then on, Angus O’Shea might as well have crawled into the grave. Nevertheless, Margaret knew that her father had made every effort to give her a good Catholic upbringing and ensure that she had what he considered life’s essentials.

Above all, he’d wanted Margaret to have respect, and for that reason alone, he had arranged a marriage for her into one of Colorado society’s blue-blood families, albeit a poor one now. He’d even gone so far as to guarantee his son-in-law a substantial yearly stipend.

In the last few years, her father’s once strapping frame was weakening from age and his powerful handshake was now just a memory. It had become Margaret’s turn to do for him. For the last two weeks, she’d worked with him afternoons in his dry goods store. It also gave her an opportunity to try and talk with him about his past.

All her life, he’d been so secretive about where he’d grown up and the people he’d come from that it created a craving in her for the answers. He even refused to tell her his age.

Of course, any questions about her mother were treated with an icy dismissal. “Now leave it be, lass,” he’d say, “No good can come of it.”

It had taken Margaret years of prayer to forgive her father for the years he’d virtually neglected her after her brother’s death, but now she utterly revered her father. She thought his slight Irish brogue charming, and considered it an honor to have inherited his flaming red hair.

She was especially proud that Angus was one of Denver’s most successful and respected businessmen. He was likewise known for his philanthropy. Their church parish, an annex to the city orphanage, and a wing of the veterans’ home were a testament to his generosity.

He was a particularly easy touch for any old-timer claiming to have served in war. He practically cried into his ale at the mention of the War Between the States or the Civil War, as it now was called.

Even that old black woman who’d been peering into the store’s windows daily for several weeks had received the benefit of Angus’s soft heart by forbidding Margaret to shoo the woman away.

If in another day or so the woman still wasn’t gone, Margaret was going to have to take matters into her own hands. They simply couldn’t afford to have coloreds loitering outside the store.

Although, today there were too many customers to worry about extraneous nuisances. Margaret set the basket with her father’s lunch behind the counter, tied on an apron, and pitched in to help him and his clerk Will.

“Why, Mrs. Myers, it’s so lovely to see you.”

“No sir, we don’t seem to have that size, but I’ll be happy to see if we can get it for you.”

“Why, thank you. My father opened O’Shea’s Dry Goods over thirty years ago. He’ll be pleased to know of your compliment. We hope you will come again.”

Before Margaret knew it, she had rung up a number of sales and nearly two hours had passed.

“Papa. Why don’t you rest a bit and eat? Will and I can handle things on our own for awhile.”

“Not a bad idea, lass,” Angus said. “I’ll just tend to the gent who came in to pick up the firearms he ordered, then set myself down for a bit. I’ll just be in the back getting his merchandise.”

Margaret’s stomach knotted. She recognized MacDuff’s tangled mane of blonde hair the moment he’d come into the store, but she’d hoped that he had decided against making any purchases. For an instant, she even wondered if MacDuff was following her. Why had he chosen this store to buy his guns?

She avoided making eye contact with him, but she knew that he had already seen her. He was standing at the gun counter and rapped the glass so hard that it rattled loudly and caused Margaret to jump with alarm.

“Can I get a little help here?” MacDuff shouted.

A man and a teenage boy examining fishing rods were two feet away from MacDuff. The man grabbed the rod in the boy’s hands, stuck both of their rods back in the wooden barrel filled with other rods, and moved the boy along.

“What is it we can do for you, Mr. MacDuff?” Margaret said, looking around nervously.

“Why, Mrs. Browne, I’d no idea you were affiliated with this fine emporium.”

“It’s my father’s store. He went in the back to get your … your …”

“Rifles, Mrs. Browne. Rifles. Can’t be too prepared you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. MacDuff. At any rate, is there something from this case you want to see?”

MacDuff started to point to something on display, but Angus emerged from the storeroom carrying two long, shallow boxes. Angus set the boxes on the countertop and opened one that contained four new hunting rifles.

Margaret looked at her father, but he was looking at MacDuff who was already examining firearms. With a grunt of satisfaction, MacDuff lifted a rifle from the box, and pressed the butt against the socket of his right shoulder.

Holding the underside of the barrel with his left hand, MacDuff hooked his right forefinger into the trigger, squinted his left eye closed, then fixed his right eye on the sight scope. He pointed the rifle around the store like a hunter in a forest aiming at live game.

First, he settled on two shoppers with their backs to him and then on a wall shelf with a display of toy soldiers. Two children, a boy and a girl, each richly dressed but poorly mannered, were orchestrating a duel between two of the soldiers.

An elderly woman looked up from her shopping to see MacDuff pointing the rifle in the children’s direction. “Noooooo!” the woman screamed as she dropped a bolt of fabric onto the floor.

With the ferocity of a mother lion, the woman lunged toward the children and grabbed each child by the scruff of the collar. The children kicked and bawled as she directed them out of the store.

Exasperated, Margaret stepped into MacDuff’s field of view, wrapped her hand around the rifle’s barrel, and pulled the rifle downward.

“Mr. MacDuff, you’re scaring our customers away, and I don’t blame them. You’ve managed to alarm me as well.”

Margaret laid both of her hands protectively on her bulging stomach. “Please, take your merchandise and go.”

MacDuff cocked open the barrel of the rifle, peered intently down the empty shaft, then clicked the barrel closed. “No harm meant, Mrs. Browne. After all, we’re on the same side.”

Margaret answered him with an icy glare. MacDuff seemed oblivious, but he did put the rifle back in its box. He slammed his hand down on the top of the box, and then held his hand out to Angus to shake. “If you ask me, old man, it’s times like these we white men have to stick together.”

Angus weakly clasped MacDuff’s open palm. “True, Mr. MacDuff. Most true.”

MacDuff took possession of his boxes of rifles. He seemed not at all bothered by the weight of the boxes, and walked directly to the door. With his hand poised to open the door, MacDuff turned back to Angus and Margaret with a last comment.

“By the way, Mrs. Browne, your pap and mine look so much alike, they could be brothers. Now, ain’t that a funny thought. If it were so, that’d make you and me cousins, wouldn’t it?”

Margaret chose to ignore MacDuff’s comment. Before the door closed behind him, her attention was back on her father. He looked tired and drained to her. She hoped he would agree to close early tonight.

The store was suddenly empty, but somehow that same colored woman who kept lurking outside managed to come inside.

Right then and there, Margaret decided that no matter what her father said, something had to be done about the woman. “Papa, I insist that we …”

Angus interrupted his daughter as if she hadn’t spoken. “Oh, lass, I almost forgot. I promised to let Mr. Hwang know the moment I’d finished making the birthday surprise he asked me to make for his missus.”

Angus reached under the counter and brought up an ornately crafted wooden birdcage. “Oh, Papa, it’s so beautiful.”

“Would you mind taking it over to him?” Angus asked.

“Of course not,” Margaret answered, and hugged him. Angus put the cage into a Del Monte Peaches box and handed the box to her.

She headed straight to the door with it. “I won’t be long.”

A few steps shy of the door Margaret remembered her resolution. She returned to the counter, where Angus had begun logging the day’s transactions into a thick ledger.

It took Angus a moment to acknowledge his daughter, but when he did, he closed the book and gave her his full attention.

She leaned close to his ear and whispered, “What about …?” she said, nodding toward the old colored woman. “Shouldn’t we call someone to come get her? The police or the asylum?”

“She’s an old woman, Margaret. Who can she hurt?”

“You’re probably right, Papa. But she’s so odd.”

“There’s no law against that, lass. Now stop worrying and get.”

The short trek to Hwang’s Laundry was one Margaret often traveled. So often and for so long that the Hwangs, who were first-generation Chinese immigrants, treated her like a second daughter. It was an honor she gladly accepted.

Ming, the Hwangs’ daughter, and Margaret had become best friends over the years. After a time, they considered themselves to be more like blood sisters than foreigners.

Probably not more than a handful of non-Chinese had ever been invited into the Hwangs’ living quarters, but the Hwangs had made Margaret feel more at home in their back-of-thestore apartment than she’d ever felt in her father’s home or now in her own home.

She waited patiently at the laundry’s counter until Mr. Hwang’s customer left with her husband’s package of freshly washed and pressed white shirts.

As was customary, Margaret bowed to Mr. Hwang. “My father hopes this is to your satisfaction, Mr. Hwang,” she said, bowing slightly, and handed him the Del Monte box.

Mr. Hwang returned the bow then accepted the box. “Your honorable father is a great artist, American daughter. His creation will delight my dear wife endlessly.”

Mr. Hwang bowed again. “Please thank him for me. Thank you for bringing it to me. Ming will be most sorry that she missed you. She is at the market. Would you care to wait for her?”

“Yes, I would love to wait for Ming, honorable Chinese father. It’s been months since I’ve seen her.”

“She misses you as well, my child. Please. Go inside and make yourself comfortable. It’s no good for soon-to-be mama to stand all day.”

Margaret smiled at Mr. Hwang’s acknowledgment of her pregnancy and bowed once more. After an exchange of several more bows between them, she walked down the narrow corridor leading to the Hwangs’ living quarters.

As Margaret went behind the beautiful red silk folding screens that divided the storefront from the apartment, she had the same thoughts, as always. How wonderful it must be to know other parts of the world … to walk down ancient streets, smell exotic scents, taste new foods, and hear unfamiliar words. To experience worlds upon worlds beyond the only one she’d known since birth. If only she’d had more courage when she was younger, she might have traveled, at least out of Colorado.

The Hwangs’ sitting room furnishings were secondhand, but the walls were decorated with original watercolors of cranes and mountainous landscapes. The desk set up with Ming’s ancient typewriter, where nightly she completed her correspondence school assignments, sat against a wall.

Pushed against another wall was a card table where Ming had spent countless hours teaching Margaret the Chinese game of mahjongg, and where Margaret and Ming filled out crossword puzzles as a way of helping Ming learn English.

It was a genealogy chart, which nearly covered a third wall, that most intrigued Margaret about the room. Mr. Hwang had painstakingly accounted for more than 250 years of Hwang ancestry.

Margaret couldn’t read Chinese characters, but she knew that each set of brush strokes named an actual person. The record of so many generations never failed to capture her imagination. What she wouldn’t give for Angus to tell her about her own relatives.

She closed her eyes and tried to visualize at least one of her grandmothers, but her efforts were futile.

⟞ • ⟝

Angus knew it would be a while before Margaret returned from the Hwangs, so he told Will to go on home. He would finish the closing duties of straightening and restocking on his own. He just hoped the old Negro woman would leave without him telling her to leave.

She was camped in the chair outside the changing room, slumped to one side of the chair, as if she were sleeping. Half an hour later, when the clock struck six, she was still there. Angus walked over to her. “Auntie, you have to move along. We’re closed.”

The old woman didn’t answer.

“Listen, old woman,” he said, leaning in closer to her, “Didn’t you hear me? It’s time for you to go home. We’re ...”

The old woman put a frail hand on Angus’ forearm and squeezed it, causing him to choke back the rest of his statement.

The strength of her grip surprised him. “Brother, it’s me. Euphrates.”

Angus looked at the woman like she was crazy. Margaret had been right and he’d been wrong to let the old woman take advantage of his kindness. He yanked his hand from her hold.

“All right, old woman. I don’t know what it is you want, but you won’t find it here. Happily for you, I’m a peaceable man. You have one more chance to leave before I call the authorities.”

The old woman stared up into Angus’ face. Tears brimmed from her eyes. She seemed unable to catch her breath.

“Brother,” she said, again. “I’ve prayed and prayed for this day. For just one more glimpse of you before I pass on. Are you so truly lost that you cannot embrace your own sister?”

Angus’ patience was exhausted. How dare this decrepit mammy assault him with such a ridiculous claim? He should have allowed Margaret to have her carted off in a straightjacket. He forced the woman up with an unsympathetic yank at her arm.

“You’re going to regret this mischief, Auntie.”

“No, Brother. On our dear mother and pap’s graves, I swear it is you who will regret this moment.”

The woman unloosened her arm from his grasp and placed her hand over the silver locket pinned on the bodice of her dress. She unpinned the locket and held it out to Angus.

Angus stepped back from the woman, but the display counter behind him trapped him. Undaunted, the woman stepped toward Angus and forced the locket into his hand. “Open it,” she insisted, and waited patiently until he did.

Angus began trembling as he worked the clasp that held the two sides of the locket together. He seemed in danger of letting the locket fall, but eventually he succeeded in opening it.

On one side of the locket was a tintype of a white man whose angular features were an exact likeness of the old woman’s … that is, except for her very dark brown skin.

On the opposite side was a tintype of a very dark-skinned colored woman whose coarse hair, broad nose, and thick lips were an exact replica of Angus’.

“God rest their souls,” the old woman said and crossed herself. “You do recognize our folks don’t you, Angus? Surely, you remember this locket Pap gave Mama? She never took it off, not even when she worked in the fields. I just couldn’t stand to bury it with her, though. It was all I had left of them.”

The proof of his relationship to the old woman was too much for Angus to bear. He stole a look in the changing room mirror and saw a likeness he’d hidden from for more than sixty years. First one tear rolled onto his cheek, then another. Within seconds it was a torrent of tears.

“What do you want from me, Euphrates?” Angus asked.

With her fingertips, Euphrates tenderly traced the long scar that ran across her twin brother’s right cheek.

“Only to love you, dear brother. For whatever time I have left. And to thank you, for saving my life, that awful night so many, many years ago.”

Angus was as distraught as an injured child. “But, but, I’m a … I mean, I live as a white man now,” he said quietly. “For my daughter’s sake, it must remain so.”

“I didn’t come to hurt you or your daughter. After all, she’s my niece. Nevertheless, it has taken most of my life to find you. God willing, I have enough time left for you to find yourself.”

⟞ • ⟝

Margaret rushed into the darkened store, frantic because she had lost track of time. Devin would be furious that she had been away from home the entire day, but she had to say good-bye to her father.

Margaret found Angus still in the store sitting alone in the chair by the changing room, staring into the mirror. He looked to her like a man who had just received his death sentence.

“Papa,” she said to him, and gently touched his sleeve.

Angus did not look at her. He seemed lost in his image in the mirror. Go home, lass. It’s late,” Angus said to his daughter. “You’ve no business being here now.”