Vera by Carol Edgarian (year 7 reading list TXT) 📕

“Shh, I know.” Morie went on rocking as she set her eye on Rogue. “The Haj, he is a vicious man. I heard this woman, when she couldn’t pay, he slit her doggie’s throat and strung it up in her window like so, by the neck.” Glancing at me, making sure I understood, Morie made another steeple of her hands. “Vera, you must tink very hard for us.”

Going to The Rose

But if not a beggar, what was I? All night I tried, as Morie put it, to tink. By dawn, I had only one idea, and not a very promising one: I’d ask Rose for the money myself. It wouldn’t be a gift. I’d tell her I was ready to work.

The next morning was Tuesday, Tan’s day at our house. As soon as I heard him banging in the kitchen, I went down. I was already dressed, with a satchel packed with nightclothes, a dress, and a few other necessities, in my hand.

Tan had his own bundles neatly stacked by the kitchen door.

“I’m going with you to The Rose,” I said, hoping my voice sounded more commanding than I felt.

Tan pretended not to hear me. He dipped a rag into a bowl of steamy water and wrung its neck. If Rose had beaten him or made him grovel, he didn’t look punished. He looked exactly the same. Black fez, black silk tunic and pants. As usual he was in a foul mood, disgusted by our mediocre housekeeping, and therefore beating the life out of the kitchen table.

“What you think you know, gurrl,” he said, smacking the wood table with a rag he’d folded into the heel of his hand. I hated the way he called me gurrl, low like a growl.

“What’d you take this time, Tan?” I asked. I pointed to his stash.

He lunged, shoving me against the wall, his face so close I could smell the fish on his teeth. He laughed in my mouth. “You know nothing, gurrl.”

“I know what you do. I know you steal from Rose.”

He followed with a string of Cantonese invective. Switching to English, he called me a pushy thing. He said I should learn how to be a gurrl, not a snake.

“Ha!” I cried. “You’ll take this snake with you, won’t you!” And wiggling from his grasp, I added, “I’ll go where you go—”

“Nahh,” he said. No gurrl would go where he went.

I said that was a stupid rule.

He said, “Stupid is you.”

We were partners in this negotiation, each bound to play a part. The fact of our mutual and abiding loathing only heightened our performances. I made faces. I stuck out my tongue. Tan grunted. I grunted back, imitating him.

Then, before our pantomime turned truly ridiculous, I slapped the gold coin Rose had given me for Christmas on the kitchen table. Tan’s brow raised ever so slightly and, knowing I’d impressed him, I was satisfied.

I hooked Rogue to his leash and went out the back door. It was a profound sorrow to give up that money, and I had no guarantee that Tan wouldn’t just take the coin and claim he never saw it. But I understood enough of the world to know that for a girl to have any life outside the house, she had to risk. I had to pay for my future—Pie’s, Morie’s, and mine, that is—in gold.

I kept my eye on Tan all afternoon. At last he finished his chores, fed General a bucket of oats, and disappeared into the kitchen to fetch his bags. I seized my chance. Making sure neither Morie nor Pie saw me, I climbed into the buggy and hid on the floor, hugging my bony knees. My heart pounded with a heady mix of terror and joy.

Tan mounted the driver’s bench in front. Through the buggy’s small square window, I could see the back of his head, his black fez and narrow shoulders, his long braid brushed aside so he wouldn’t sit on it.

If I wondered for even a second whether Tan knew he had a passenger trembling inside the carriage, he turned around and shook his fist at me through the window.

“All right, all right,” I grumbled, and realizing there was no point in hiding, I climbed onto the narrow leather seat.

Tan showed General the whip and we set off at a trot.

I had never ridden alone in a hack—that was just how small my life had been. I’d never been downtown without a chaperone either. I decided I might as well enjoy this bit of freedom, for which I’d paid dearly.

The hack had been Rose’s chief mode of transportation before she bought the motors; the walls were upholstered with her favorite red silk jacquard. Her perfume, thick and floral, pervaded the tight space, that and a rich mix of horse sweat and leather and grease from the large spoke wheels.

A ray of afternoon sun poured through one of the side windows and warmed my face. I took it as a sign of my bright future. I was giddy and I was on my way to The Rose.

I figured we’d go direct, down Columbus Avenue, but Tan had another route in mind. We wound our way toward the marina, then turned sharply onto Van Ness Avenue, the widest boulevard in town. Trees lined the curbs, with ornate and gabled mansions on either side, and six lanes of traffic—buggies and motors and horses cutting every which way—converging all at once. It was a beautiful dance with the pedestrians making way for the horses, the horses making way for the buggies and coaches, the coaches making way for the motorcars, which in turn blasted their horns, claiming their superiority. Everyone on the street expected everyone else to go around.

Tan wasn’t having it. He whipped General into a quick trot and plowed ahead, forcing the other vehicles to veer sharply or halt. I gripped the bench with both hands as Tan made another