Desperate by Sylvia McDaniel Page B

the cabinet separating them. “This is the last time I’m asking you, when will I see some cash from you?”
    “I pay when you finish.”
    “I’m finished,” she replied.
    He glanced around at the stacks of mending. They were gone. Everything was done. She’d worked long and hard to clear up the stacks of repair work he had around the laundry.
    Frustration gripped her insides, yet this was a job. She needed it so she could make next year’s bank payment. She needed it to help feed her sisters. She needed this job so she could develop a reputation as a good seamstress.
    “Go home, come back tomorrow.”
    “I’ve been working for you for two weeks. I did all the mending; now it’s time for you to give me my wages.”
    He glanced around the laundry in disbelief. “Everything done?”
    “Yes, everything’s done.”
    “Go home, come back tomorrow.”
    “Pay me now!” she demanded.
    “No,” he said. “More work tomorrow.”
    A fierce burning sensation fired through her at the injustice of everything in the last few weeks. Her father’s death, the bank note, and working so hard to take care of things and being thwarted at every move she made. Jumping over the counter, she watched as his eyes grew large, and he stood.
    “What are you doing? Go home now!”
    “I’m collecting my wages.” She opened up the cash register. “I finished. You need to pay me.”
    For two weeks, she’d worked twelve to sixteen hours a day to complete the mending so the money she earned could help at home, but now she wasn’t even sure he would ever give her the cash due her. It was time to collect.
    He came up behind her and grabbed her hand to keep it from getting inside his cash drawer. “Go home. No pay today.”
    She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pushed him to the laundry rack where there was a hook on a pulley that lifted the laundry basket. The laundry maids would pull the baskets into the back where they proceeded to wash the clothes.
    “Stop,” he yelped.
    She’d put up with him for over two weeks, checking each piece, making sure she had done it perfectly, bringing some back and saying redo, carrying mending home, and working late at night to get his laundry caught up for naught.
    Holding him by the shirt, she put his vest through the hook, lifted him off the ground and then pushed him toward the back, sending him zipping into the back along the wire.
    He screamed in his native tongue at her. Finally, his English kicked in. “You fired. Do not come back. You fired.”
    Meg opened the cash register and counted out what was owed her and left the rest. It was tempting to take what wasn’t hers, but that wasn’t money she’d earned. She only took her wages and then slammed the drawer shut.
    “Goodbye, if you ever need another seamstress don’t call me.” She walked out the door.
    The money she’d earned was less than sixty dollars. Not enough to pay off the loan completely. If they paid off the bank loan in full, there would be no pressure to save the farm. There would be no pressure to take jobs that were demeaning and paid less than a crib girl’s salary.
    *
    Ruby heard the gunshots and rushed outside to see who was shooting. Annabelle had set up the tin cans on the fence where Papa had taught them to shoot. One by one she knocked off the cans.
    “Hey,” Ruby called.
    “Hi,” Annabelle fairly grunted.
    “You okay?” Ruby asked, noting the rigid set of Annabelle’s shoulders and the tense lines around her mouth.
    Annabelle raised her pistol; her eyes focused on the target and then pulled the trigger, knocking the can to the ground. “See the face on that can?”
    “You drew a face on a can?”
    “Yes,” Annabelle raised her pistol, sighted her target and fired at the can. It flew off the fence and landed with a bounce on the ground. “I’m killing my boss.”
    Ruby gave a little laugh. “You’re speaking figuratively, right?”
    Not sensible, logical, and rational Annabelle. Of the