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Cindy came through the Han gate with a folded list in one gloved hand and her mother’s coin purse held beneath the other.
Jennifer was waiting several yards beyond the house, where the pavement widened near the corner and winter sun reached between two bare maples. Nicola stood close against her left leg. Bart had already inspected the base of the nearest fence post, three frozen wheel marks and a crust of grey snow beside the gutter. His lead moved constantly through Jennifer’s hand as he searched for anything the cold had preserved beneath the dust.
Cindy stopped long enough to fasten the gate behind her.
She wore her dark wool coat buttoned high and a scarf tucked beneath the collar. Her hair had been pinned firmly away from her face, but the wind had lifted one short strand beside her glasses. The list had been folded twice, the outer crease sharpened by her thumb. She looked toward Jennifer and the dogs, then along the road leading into town.
Bart noticed her.
He came forward at once, checked by the length Jennifer allowed. His tail struck the air, and the eager movement travelled through his shoulders and hips until his whole body seemed to wag around the fixed point of his collar.
Cindy placed the coin purse inside her coat pocket before reaching down to him.
“You waited.”
Bart pressed his head beneath her palm.
Jennifer looked at the folded list. “Do you have an errand?”
“Several.”
Cindy opened the paper and glanced at the first line. Her mother’s handwriting was narrow and deliberate, the items placed one beneath another with prices written beside two of them and a reminder along the bottom concerning change. “Soap, lamp oil, flour, dried beans and two spools of thread. Mama wants me to see whether the onions are better than last week.”
Jennifer shifted Nicola’s lead from one hand to the other. “Which way first?”
Cindy looked at her.
“The shops.”
“I’ll have to miss the walk.”
“We can walk there.”
Cindy looked down the road again. The centre of town would be busier than their usual route. The grocer’s entrance was narrow, and deliveries often stood beneath the awning. The lamp oil would have to be carried upright. Flour and beans would make the final parcel heavy enough without Bart’s assistance.
“You brought both dogs,” she said.
“Yes.”
“They can’t go inside.”
“We’ll wait outside.”
Cindy examined the list once more, though nothing had changed on it. “It may take a while.”
“That’s all right.”
Jennifer said it as plainly as she might have agreed to take the mill lane rather than the field road. She didn’t suggest that the errand be hurried, divided or postponed. She turned Nicola toward town and shortened Bart’s lead before he could wrap it around Cindy’s ankles.
Cindy folded the list and returned it to her glove.
“I have to count everything before I leave each shop.”
“Yes.”
“And Mama wants the thread checked against this.”
She drew a narrow piece of blue cloth from the same pocket as the list. The fabric had been cut into a rectangle scarcely larger than two fingers, its edge pinked to prevent fraying.
Jennifer looked at it. “For matching?”
“Near enough. It’s for the inside of a cuff.”
Bart stretched his nose toward the cloth.
Cindy raised it. “You aren’t choosing.”
She put it away and took his lead when Jennifer offered it. The repaired clasp sat securely against his collar. Cindy tested it once before winding the loop around her wrist.
They started toward town.
Bart walked beside Cindy for the first half block, pleased enough by her presence to delay investigating the road. Nicola remained on Jennifer’s far side, her thick grey coat brushing the girl’s skirt whenever the pavement narrowed. The cold had hardened the remaining snow into ridged patches along walls and hedges. Wagon wheels had broken some of it into grey chunks, and salt marked the busier crossings in pale scattered lines.
Cindy kept the folded list in her right glove and Bart’s lead in her left. She opened the paper whenever they reached a corner, checking the order she had chosen. Soap and thread could be carried without trouble. Lamp oil would be bought last, so the small stoppered tin remained upright for the shortest distance. The flour and beans belonged at the grocer’s, along with whatever onions passed inspection.
“Thread first,” she said.
Jennifer nodded.
The dry-goods shop had a deep window crowded with bolts of winter cloth, packages of stockings, ribbon cards and folded blankets. A paper snowflake left from Christmas remained taped to one upper corner, its edges curled inward from weeks of window damp. Cindy tied Bart’s lead temporarily to the iron ring beside the entrance, but Jennifer immediately took it into her own hand.
“I’ll keep both.”
“He may pull if somebody carries food past.”
“I won’t tie him.”
Cindy passed her the loop. “Don’t let him near the display.”
Bart had already noticed a low crate containing wooden clothes pegs and two brushes. His nose extended toward it.
Jennifer moved him back.
Cindy stepped into the shop alone.
Through the glass, Jennifer could see her approach the counter and unfold the blue cloth. The shopkeeper, a narrow man with silver-rimmed spectacles, took the cloth and held it beneath the hanging lamp. He selected a spool, compared it, rejected it and reached for another from the shelf behind him. Cindy placed the two side by side, then shook her head. The man’s mouth moved. Cindy answered and pointed toward a darker row.
Jennifer didn’t watch every exchange. She kept Bart from pressing against the door whenever somebody entered and moved Nicola aside for an elderly woman carrying a parcel beneath one arm. Nicola disliked the doorway’s constant opening. Each time the bell sounded and another pair of feet came close, she drew nearer to Jennifer’s leg, making herself narrow against the wall.
Jennifer rested one hand briefly over the top of her head.
Bart attempted to smell the elderly woman’s parcel.
“No.”
Jennifer drew him back before his nose reached it.
The woman glanced down. “Friendly, is he?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s got the look.”
Bart wagged at her voice.
“He can look from there,” Jennifer said.
The woman entered the shop.
Cindy remained at the counter. The shopkeeper brought down a third spool. This time she placed the thread directly over the cloth, considered it beneath the lamp and nodded. She counted coins into his hand, watched him write the amount on a paper slip and waited for the correct change.
When she came out, she carried a small packet folded around the two spools.
“Did you find it?” Jennifer asked.
“Near enough.”
She placed the packet inside the deep pocket of her coat. “He wanted to sell me the first one.”
“It was lighter.”
“He said nobody would see it inside a cuff.”
Jennifer looked at her. “Your mother would.”
“Yes.”
Bart moved toward the door as it opened again.
Cindy brought him back. “We’re done here.”
They continued to the household shop for soap. This doorway was quieter, and Nicola waited more easily while Cindy went inside. Bart discovered a length of straw frozen beneath the edge of a barrel and worked at it with his teeth until Jennifer removed it from his mouth.
“You can have a stick when we’re home.”
Bart watched the straw after she threw it into the gutter.
Cindy emerged with two wrapped bars of soap and a small packet of washing soda. “It was cheaper if she bought the two.”
“Did your mother ask for two?”
“She wrote one, but the second cost less than half.”
Jennifer didn’t question the choice. Cindy knew the purse, the household and the price better than she did.
The grocer’s stood nearer the centre of town where wagons, pedestrians and the occasional automobile crowded the road into a constant shifting noise. A delivery truck had stopped beside the curb, and two men were carrying crates beneath the striped awning. Flour sacks, potato baskets and wooden boxes of canned goods had been stacked temporarily beside the shopfront, narrowing the passage to the entrance.
Bart saw them before the girls crossed the road.
His head rose. His nose began working.
Cindy shortened his lead. “No.”
They waited for an automobile to pass, then crossed.
A sack at the outer edge of the delivery stack had torn near its upper seam. Pale grain pressed through the opening, and a thin trail had spilled onto the boards beneath it. Bart pulled toward the smell with sudden determination.
Cindy turned him sideways.
“Leave it.”
He leaned past her leg.
The sack held something coarser than flour, perhaps meal or animal feed, but the distinction meant nothing to him. He lowered his nose and strained until the repaired clasp drew tight against the collar ring.
Jennifer took Nicola farther from the entrance. The grey dog had already pressed against her leg as deliverymen moved between the truck and shop, their boots striking the boards and crates passing close above her head.
“Bring Bart here,” Jennifer said.
Cindy led him around the outer side of the stacked goods. He tried to turn back toward the torn sack.
“I have to go inside.”
“I’ll keep him away.”
“He knows it’s there.”
“I know.”
Cindy looked toward Nicola, who stood nearly beneath Jennifer’s coat now, her shoulder touching the girl’s shin. “She doesn’t like this.”
“No.”
“You could wait across the road.”
“I can see the door from there.”
Jennifer took Bart’s lead. Managing both required her to hold Nicola close in her left hand and Bart shorter in her right, keeping her own body between his interest and the delivery stack. She crossed to a quieter patch beside the chemist’s window where the pavement widened.
Bart looked back at the torn sack through the space between passing legs.
Cindy watched long enough to make certain Jennifer had him, then entered the grocer’s.
The shop was warm and smelled of coffee, onions, damp wool and the sawdust scattered over the floor. Cindy removed her gloves and placed them beneath one arm before opening the list. Three people waited ahead of her. She stood behind a woman ordering sugar and listened to prices being called, adjusting the coins in her mind before she reached the counter.
Outside, Bart attempted twice to return toward the deliveries.
Jennifer didn’t jerk him back. She stepped in front of him, changed the angle of the lead and made him turn toward her.
“No.”
He looked around her.
She turned again.
Nicola shifted whenever somebody passed too near. Jennifer kept the quiet dog behind her legs and moved both of them closer to the building, where the window gave some protection from the traffic of feet.
A deliveryman carried a crate past Bart.
The dog followed it with his whole head.
“It isn’t yours,” Jennifer said.
The man looked down and grinned. “He thinks it might be.”
“He often does.”
Bart wagged at the attention.
The man went inside with the crate.
Through the window, Jennifer saw Cindy reach the counter.
The grocer was a broad man who moved slowly until several people waited, then faster in a manner that made every exchange appear inconvenient to him. Cindy placed her list before him and asked for flour first. He leaned over the paper, looked at her and said something Jennifer couldn’t hear.
Cindy repeated herself.
The grocer cupped one hand behind his ear.
Cindy’s face didn’t change. She spoke again, each word shaped clearly.
The man looked toward the woman waiting behind her and smiled faintly, as though inviting somebody else to share his difficulty.
Jennifer remained outside.
Bart moved toward the torn sack once more. She drew him back without taking her eyes from the shop window.
Cindy pointed to the flour bin, then held up two fingers and indicated the smaller measure. The grocer answered slowly, exaggerating the movement of his mouth.
Cindy took the pencil attached to the counter by string. On the back of her list she wrote a number and the word FLOUR in firm block letters. She turned it toward him.
The grocer’s smile disappeared.
He measured the flour.
Jennifer looked down at Bart. The muscles in her jaw had tightened, but her hands remained gentle on both leads.
Inside, Cindy checked the scale before the flour left it. She watched the grocer fold the paper bag and write the price on the outer wrapping. Then she asked for beans.
He appeared to understand her immediately this time.
The onions came next. The grocer brought a scoop from the crate, but Cindy stopped him before he tipped them into a bag. She selected the onions herself, pressing near the stems, turning each one beneath the light and rejecting two that felt soft. The grocer waited with visible impatience.
Cindy counted five.
She placed them in the bag and asked the total.
The man named it.
Cindy looked at the prices on her list, added them again and shook her head.
The grocer repeated the amount.
Cindy pointed to the flour, then the beans, then the onions. She calculated each on the paper, drew a line beneath the figures and wrote the correct sum.
The woman behind her leaned slightly to see.
The grocer took the list, looked at the numbers and checked the marks he had made on the bags.
He had charged for a larger measure of beans.
He corrected the total without apology.
Cindy counted the coins one at a time and placed them on the counter. She kept the remaining money in her palm until he gave her the receipt and change. Then she counted the change too.
Outside, Jennifer shifted farther from the door as the deliverymen brought another stack through. She didn’t enter. She didn’t tap the glass, call to Cindy or stand where the grocer would see he was being watched by somebody who might speak differently to him. Cindy had the list, the money and the arithmetic. Jennifer’s anger had no useful place at the counter unless Cindy asked for it.
Bart sat at last, though his eyes remained fixed on the torn sack.
Nicola pressed her nose briefly against Jennifer’s glove.
“I know,” Jennifer murmured.
Cindy emerged carrying a parcel in both arms.
The grocer had placed the flour, beans and onions inside thick brown paper, but the wrapping had been hurried. One side bulged where the onions rested, and the string ran at an angle across the top. The knot was large, loose and drawn too near one corner. With each step, the parcel shifted against itself.
Jennifer brought both dogs farther from the entrance.
“Is that everything?”
“From there.”
Cindy adjusted the package. One onion rolled beneath the paper and pressed a round shape against the side. “He tied it badly.”
The string slipped another fraction toward the corner.
Jennifer looked at the parcel, then at the dogs. “Take them.”
Cindy put the bundle carefully against the wall before accepting both leads. Bart tried to return to the torn sack the instant the leather changed hands.
“No.”
She brought him beside Nicola and stood between the dogs and the stacked deliveries.
Jennifer crouched before the parcel.
She didn’t pull the poor knot tighter. She worked it loose with one fingernail, preserving the string rather than breaking it. The paper relaxed around the contents. She pressed the onions into a closer group, shifted the flour bag so its flat side formed the bottom and tucked the packet of beans into the space along one edge.
Cindy watched her hands.
April used the same movements at the worktable when wrapping finished mending or gathering fabric that couldn’t be allowed to crease. Jennifer folded the longer paper edge down first, pressed the side corners inward and ran the string beneath the parcel so it crossed at the centre rather than near the bulge.
She brought both ends upward.
The first turn held the paper in place. The second tightened it without crushing anything inside. Jennifer passed one end beneath the crossed centre, drew it through and formed a small compact knot that rested flat against the parcel.
She tested it by lifting the string.
The paper held.
“How does that stay?” Cindy asked.
“It pulls against itself.”
Jennifer tucked the short end beneath the crossing so it couldn’t catch on a coat button. “Mama uses it on fabric bundles.”
“It’s smaller than his.”
“He left too much at the top.”
Jennifer stood and lifted the parcel. The weight no longer shifted. She passed it to Cindy, then took Nicola’s lead back.
Cindy kept Bart. “I still need the lamp oil.”
“We can go there next.”
“The soap’s in my pocket.”
“And the thread.”
Cindy glanced at her. “You saw?”
“You put them there.”
They left the busiest part of the pavement by going around the delivery truck rather than between the stacked goods and the shopfront. Bart looked toward the torn sack until the building blocked it from sight.
At the hardware shop Cindy bought lamp oil in a small metal container with a stoppered neck and wire handle. Jennifer waited near the outer wall with the dogs and the parcel. When Cindy returned, she checked the stopper twice before taking the package from Jennifer.
The parcel fit beneath one arm. She carried the oil in the opposite hand.
“That’s all,” she said.
Jennifer looked at the road leading directly home. It was the shortest, but it passed the busy crossing again and narrowed beside the church where afternoon traffic often gathered.
“We can go by the pump house,” she said.
“That’s longer.”
“It’s quieter.”
Cindy looked down at the parcel. “All right.”
They turned away from the centre of town.
The quieter route took them behind a row of workshops and across a road where snow remained in the shaded wheel ruts. Jennifer walked nearest the road with Nicola. Cindy kept Bart on the outside, the parcel balanced against her ribs and the lamp oil held upright by its handle.
Bart’s interest in the shops faded once they were gone. He moved from fence to fence, investigating where dogs had passed and where kitchen scraps had been carried toward bins. Cindy couldn’t correct him with both hands occupied, so Jennifer shortened his wanderings by stepping near whenever he began to cross.
At the first narrow turn, Cindy handed her the lamp oil.
“Only until the road widens.”
Jennifer carried it without comment.
Cindy moved the parcel into both arms and adjusted its weight. The knot remained flat. Nothing rolled inside.
“The grocer charged for too many beans,” she said.
Jennifer looked ahead. “Did he change it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“He understood me after I wrote it.”
Jennifer’s fingers tightened around Nicola’s lead. “He understood before.”
Cindy walked several steps before answering. “I know.”
Bart stopped at a gatepost. Cindy let him smell it, then brought him onward.
“He does it when Mama goes too,” she said. “Not every time.”
Jennifer kept her face turned toward the road. “Does she write it?”
“She makes him say it right.”
The smallest movement touched Cindy’s mouth, not amusement exactly, but recognition of her mother’s method.
Jennifer looked at her. “What does he do?”
“He says it right.”
They continued.
No plan was made to confront the grocer. Jennifer didn’t say she would go inside next time or threaten to tell April. Cindy didn’t need another person to transform what had happened into a display of rescue. The corrected receipt lay in her pocket. The proper amount of beans rested inside the parcel. She had left with all her change.
At the pump house road, Jennifer returned the lamp oil. The way widened enough for the girls to walk side by side.
Bart crossed behind Cindy once, but the parcel prevented her from turning quickly. Jennifer moved his lead over Cindy’s shoulder before it could circle her legs.
“Thank you.”
He came back to the correct side.
Nicola walked nearer Cindy than usual, choosing the space between both girls whenever a wagon passed. Her discomfort at the shop had eased, though she still looked over her shoulder at any approaching footsteps.
The afternoon light had begun to thin. Bare trees cast long narrow shadows over the snow, and windows along the quieter road showed yellow at their centres. Woodsmoke gathered between the houses rather than rising cleanly, carrying the smell of coal, supper fires and damp bark.
“This is still a walk,” Jennifer said after some time.
Cindy looked toward her.
Jennifer nodded at the dogs.
Bart had found a stick beneath a hedge and was carrying it at an angle, one end striking the frozen grass. Nicola moved with her usual steady pace.
Cindy considered the road behind them. “It’s an errand.”
“It can be both.”
Cindy shifted the parcel. “Bart nearly ate the delivery.”
“He didn’t.”
“He would’ve.”
“Yes.”
“The grocer took twice as long as he should.”
“Yes.”
Cindy looked down at the flat knot. “We’re farther from home than the proper road.”
“Yes.”
Her expression softened. “It’s still better than missing it.”
Jennifer nodded.
They passed the church by the back wall rather than the front steps. Bart dropped the stick near a patch of snow, smelled the hollow beneath it and then returned for the stick before continuing. Cindy kept him close whenever the oil container swung near his head.
At the Han street, she began counting the purchases aloud under her breath.
“Thread, soap, soda, flour, beans, onions, oil.”
Jennifer listened without adding anything.
Cindy checked the coin purse through the outside of her coat pocket. “And the change.”
The gate came into view.
Eun-jung wasn’t waiting outside, though the front curtain stood open by several inches. Smoke rose from the chimney. The path remained clean from the previous day’s sweeping.
The girls stopped before the gate.
Cindy shifted the lamp oil to the ground and balanced the parcel against one hip while reaching for the latch.
Jennifer looked at the string.
“Wait.”
Cindy stopped.
Jennifer took the parcel from her and rested it carefully on the top rail. She loosened the compact knot without tearing the paper. The first turn opened easily beneath her fingers. She drew the string free from beneath the package and folded it once, then again around two fingers until it formed a small neat coil.
Cindy watched. “The paper won’t hold.”
“It will to the door.”
Jennifer retucked the overlapping edges so the weight pressed them shut. She returned the parcel, then placed the folded string in Cindy’s gloved hand.
Cindy looked at it.
Jennifer said nothing about hiding the help. She didn’t need to. The bundle no longer carried a knot made in another household’s manner, and the string hadn’t been discarded as though it possessed no value.
Cindy put it into her coat pocket.
She opened the gate.
Bart moved forward.
Jennifer held him outside. Nicola waited beside her without testing the opening.
Cindy carried the parcel and oil along the path. The brown paper shifted slightly without its binding, but she kept one forearm beneath it and reached the porch without difficulty.
The door opened before she knocked.
Eun-jung looked first at Cindy, then at the purchases. Her eyes moved over the parcel’s folded paper, the upright lamp-oil tin and the two dogs waiting beyond the gate.
“You were longer,” she said.
“We went by the pump house road. The shop street was crowded.”
Eun-jung took the oil container.
“Did you get the right thread?”
Cindy removed the packet from her coat pocket and showed it with the blue cloth.
Her mother compared them under the doorway light.
“This will do.”
Cindy handed her the coin purse and receipt. Eun-jung read the grocer’s figures before counting the remaining coins.
“He charged wrong first,” Cindy said. “I corrected him.”
Eun-jung looked up.
“For the beans.”
“And he changed it?”
“Yes.”
Her mother returned the receipt. “Good.”
She reached for the parcel. As she took its weight, one folded edge opened enough to show the inner flour bag.
Eun-jung stopped.
Her fingers pressed the paper back into place. She examined the folds along the bottom and the way the contents had been arranged to keep the onions together.
Her eyes moved toward the gate.
Jennifer stood outside with Bart’s lead held short and Nicola resting near her leg. Neither dog had entered the yard.
Eun-jung looked at Cindy’s coat pocket, where the shape of the folded string made a slight line beneath the cloth.
She said nothing about it.
“Come inside,” she told Cindy. “The flour must be put away.”
Cindy turned before crossing the threshold.
“I’ll see you.”
Jennifer nodded. “Yes.”
Bart raised his head at Cindy’s voice. His tail moved against Jennifer’s skirt, but he remained beyond the gate.
Cindy went inside.
Eun-jung closed the door.
Jennifer stood for another moment while the sounds of the household shifted behind it: paper placed on a table, the oil tin set down and cupboard doors opened. Then she turned homeward with both dogs.
Several days passed before Cindy came again.
A fine snow had fallen during the night, scarcely enough to cover the road but enough to soften the old dirt along the fence and lay a white line over the shed roof. Jennifer was in the yard scattering feed near the hedge for winter birds. Nicola stood nearby watching sparrows approach and retreat. Bart had been tied temporarily beside the pump because he regarded bird feed as another form of food intended for him.
The gate clicked.
Jennifer looked up.
Cindy entered carrying a small paper packet.
She shut the gate immediately and waited until Jennifer had gathered the seed tin. Her coat carried several small snowflakes along the shoulders, already melting into darker spots. The packet in her hands had been folded from plain brown paper.
Bart recognized her and pulled once against the lead.
Cindy came to him first.
“You can say hello.”
Jennifer untied him but kept hold of the leather. Bart pressed against Cindy’s coat, smelled both gloves and then discovered the packet.
“No.”
Cindy raised it above his head.
“What is it?” Jennifer asked.
“Something for your parents.”
She held it out.
The paper had been shaped around several small pieces of food, firm enough not to bend beneath their weight. A length of string crossed the centre, ran neatly around the underside and returned to a compact flat knot at the top.
Jennifer looked at the knot.
It was the same string she had removed at the Han gate.
Cindy had wound it tightly enough that the old bends remained visible near one end. The knot wasn’t perfect. One side stood a little higher than the other, and the crossing had shifted half an inch from the true centre. It held.
“What’s inside?” Jennifer asked.
“Rice cakes. Mama made them this morning.”
Jennifer took the packet carefully. “Are they for something?”
“For eating.”
Cindy looked toward the kitchen window. “Mama said your mother and father should have some.”
Bart rose on his hind legs, trying to smell the paper.
Jennifer moved it beyond him. “Not you.”
“He thinks everything wrapped is his now.”
“He may remember the market.”
Cindy reached for his lead. “Let him walk.”
Jennifer passed it to her and kept Nicola beside herself.
The packet remained in Jennifer’s free hand, its string firm beneath her fingers.
They left through the gate and turned toward the usual corner. Bart moved ahead, eager after being tied near the pump, though Cindy kept him from pulling. Nicola followed close enough that her lead never tightened.
Jennifer didn’t ask whether Eun-jung had tied the parcel or whether Cindy had practised the knot herself. Cindy didn’t explain.
The brown packet travelled between Jennifer’s hand and her coat, held carefully away from Bart’s nose. At each step the little knot stayed in place.