Free A House of Tailors by Patricia Reilly Giff Page A

enormous steps. “Mrs. Koch is waiting. Waiting for you.”
    Downstairs he stopped at the door, looking at me, shaking his head. “The cake.”
    I brushed the crumbs off my mouth and straightened my old hat.
    â€œYour collar, not the cleanest.”
    I stopped there in the street, next to the building, and quickly unbuttoned the collar, turning it inside out. “What else?” I asked.
    â€œI think that’s all.”
    â€œWhat does she want, anyway?” I asked.
    â€œMrs. Koch does not tell me, and I do not ask,” he said. “I take care of her horses, her barn, her garden. And that’s enough.”
    Ten minutes later we were there, going up those steps, my hand on the railing, my pulse ticking somewhere in my throat. We stopped in Aunt Ida’s kitchen while she went upstairs to knock on the parlor door to tell Mrs. Koch I was there.
    The Uncle was already out the back door on his way to the garden when he turned. “Say yes, say no, and otherwise, don’t talk,” he said.
    â€œYou’re making me nervous,” I said.
    â€œYou don’t know what it is to be nervous,” he told me, but he was smiling just a little.
    I tried to smile, too. “You’re right.”
    â€œFor once,” he said, closing the door in back of him.
    I didn’t really have time to be nervous. Aunt Ida came bustling back, tugging at my skirt, straightening my hat, my sleeves. “You look fine. Go into the parlor.”
    â€œWhere . . .”
    She rolled her eyes. “I’ll take you, or you’ll end up in a closet somewhere.”
    Upstairs, Aunt Ida reached out to knock, and then she was gone.
    Mrs. Koch was waiting for me. I caught my breath. Dangling from her fingers was my hat. My pink hat with the droopy brim.
    I looked from the hat to her face. I hadn’t remembered what she looked like. It had only been a second or two from the time she screamed to the time Aunt Ida had rushed me out of there.
    Mrs. Koch had a friendly face, with large dark eyes, and she wore a white lace morning cap over her faded red hair. Old-fashioned, those caps; only people like Grandmother wore them now.
    She pointed to a chair and I slid into it. “Talk,” she said, leaning forward. “Tell me about yourself.”
    And so I did. I told her the terrible thing I had done, I told her about Breisach and Katharina, and sewing, and a machine for straw hats. I told her about my river as it rushed along its cement banks, and König, my cat, and Franz and Friedrich. Mrs. Koch nodded all the while.
    I stopped suddenly and closed my mouth.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” she asked.
    I swallowed. “I think I wasn’t speaking English.”
    â€œNo matter, I came from Heidelburg a long time ago.” She waggled her hand. “You are speaking both, half German, half English.”
    â€œThe Uncle said I don’t speak well.”
    She laughed, leaning even closer. “I can just imagine. He’s a little irritable.”
    Irritable. I ran my tongue over the word. I didn’t know what it meant, but I liked the sound of it.
    â€œTell me about this,” Mrs. Koch said, patting the hat in her lap.
    â€œThe hat?”
    I was off again, speaking one sentence in my own language, supplying the few words I knew in English here and there. I told her about the hat I had given to Katharina and the pattern from Elise. I leaned forward to explain how I had snipped away the bottom drawer of the dresser, and as I told her, she reached up to take off her morning cap and put my hat on her head.
    I stared at her, and then—how did I have the nerve—I moved forward to tilt the hat just a bit, fluffing the lace, and shook my head at her.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” she asked.
    â€œWrong color,” I told her slowly. “And the brim . . .”
    She went to the mirror. “You’re right about the color, but the brim is what makes this