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Both items met with glowering disapproval from the townspeople, but Uncle Charlie ignored them. However, Leah saw young boys lobbing stones at the windows one afternoon, and when she flew out of the store to stop them, their mothers met her with stony, unrepentant faces.
To Leah’s relief, no matter what verbal abuse the barber and the mercantile owner heaped on Charlie, the sunny little man paid no attention.
The dry summer heat increased, and along with it came sharper and more angry objections to Uncle Charlie’s presence. Leah began to see that what had started as the townspeople’s unease over the bakery venture was escalating into outrage, exacerbated by the growing realization that the farming community was experiencing a severe drought.
Carl Ness resented Uncle’s presence not only on the main street but anywhere in the community, and he was unpleasantly vocal about it. “Go back to China where you belong,” the mercantile owner muttered. “No damned Celestial’s gonna bake my cakes.”
At the following Saturday knitting circle, Verena Forester plunked her teacup on its saucer and remarked in a piercing, acid-laced voice, “You let one foreigner in and when you’re not looking, you’ve got all their relatives, too.”
The remarks stung Leah, but they did not daunt Uncle Charlie. Sometimes Leah wondered if her uncle was deaf.
She, however, was most certainly not deaf. And as the hot, searing weeks of summer progressed, tempers and frustrations mounted. Every single gathering of the Ladies’ Knitting Circle ended in an uproar.
Verena always started it. “That man has no business coming here to Smoke River. There isn’t another Chinaman within a hundred miles, except for the railroad crew over in the next county, and they’ll be gone come winter.”
Each time the seamstress lashed out, Leah remembered what Teddy had told her about the pies Verena had brought when Hattie had died. And what Verena had apparently meant to Thad before his marriage to Teddy’s mother.
“Charlie came because the last of his family is here,” Leah replied quietly. “Charlie is my uncle. My mother’s youngest brother.”
“Well, then, why don’t you both go back to China where you belong?” Darla snapped out the question and the others—except for Ellie and Jeanne, and even Noralee Ness—nodded their heads in agreement.
Leah decided at that moment that she would not be polite and refuse to respond, but that she would not back down, either. “I would not be welcome back because my father was not Chinese. Besides, my father did not want me to stay in China all my life. He wanted me to come to America.”
“One wonders why, since you are obviously Chinese,” Verena spit.
Leah paused to calm herself. “I am only half Chinese. The other half is American. My father was an American missionary.”
It went on and on until tempers wore thin and hurtful words began to fly. Leah finally excused herself and escaped down the stairs, but all the way to the boardwalk she could hear the rising voices, like a hive of angry bees.
Some days, like today, she wondered whether her mother had really believed in the power of water dropping onto stone. Part of Leah wanted to give up and hide herself away in Thad’s house for the rest of her life. But another part deep inside made her grit her teeth and come into town the next Saturday, and the next, and the one after that.
No matter what, she would keep moving forward with her plan to become part of Smoke River.
Chapter Seventeen
Summer turned so hot and dusty Leah dispensed with the tight corset Ellie had talked her into wearing. Being laced up into the whalebone garment felt like being imprisoned; she could not bend or reach or even breathe on the hottest days. True, she looked more like the other women in town, more American, but Thad did not even notice.
In fact, Leah reflected, these days she might be dressed in feathers and oilcloth and Thad would not notice. The thought nagged at her, and as the days progressed, she felt more and more rejected.
On this Saturday afternoon she rode into town beside Teddy on his new colt, which he had named Red. The scorching air was so suffocating that once they reached the main street it took her some minutes to recognize the enticing scent of something floating from the bakery.
Teddy sniffed the air. “Man, somethin’ sure smells good, don’t it?”
“Doesn’t,” Leah gently corrected.
The boy reined his colt up close to her mare. “Leah?”
“Yes, Teddy? What is it?”
“There’s, uh, somethin’ I wanna ask you, but I don’t rightly know how.”
Leah studied her eight-year-old stepson’s tanned face under the brim of his boy-size Stetson. “Yes? You may ask me anything, Teddy. Except,” she added with a grin, “how to learn to ride a horse.”
