CHAPTER THREE: THE WOMEN IN THE GARAGE

At six fifteen, eight women entered our garage carrying grocery bags, notebooks, and the tired expressions of people who expected another disappointment.
I had set a kettle on a camping stove and covered a folding table with a clean sheet.
The first arrival was Rosa Medina, who had spent twelve years stitching formal dresses and could identify almost any seam by touch.
She handed me a brown envelope filled with handwritten time slips.
“My supervisor says the piece rate changed because the fabric is expensive,” she said.
“Fabric costs don’t change the hours you already worked,” I replied.
Next came Hawa Diallo, who repaired embroidered coats at home after caring for her mother during the day.
She brought a sweater with a label that read VEE PRICE STUDIO in narrow gold letters.


“I made this,” Hawa said.
“Not merely repaired it.”
Vivian’s studio was preparing to sell that sweater for nearly six hundred dollars.
Hawa had received thirty-eight dollars for four evenings of work.
The others arranged their receipts and sample pieces across the table.
I recognized the frustration in their voices because my own mother had once cleaned hotel rooms for a contractor who never explained the deductions on her payslips.
Still, I had not expected their evidence to lead into the house next door.
“Vivian told me the people who sew her clothes earn excellent money,” Maisie said from the doorway.
Rosa laughed without amusement.
“She tells buyers those clothes are finished in her own studio by highly paid specialists.”
“Aren’t they?” Adrian asked.
“Some are,” Hawa replied.
“Most of us have never stepped inside that studio.

”
A woman named Priya Shah placed a printed catalog beside her pay records.
The catalog advertised a limited collection called The Hands That Made Us.
Its introduction described Vivian as the designer who had personally restored nearly forgotten techniques of hand embroidery.
Hawa put her finger on a photograph of a coat.
“That sleeve is mine,” she said.
“My daughter drew the vine pattern for me before she left for university.”
“Could another person have made something similar?” I asked.
“Look beneath the fourth leaf,” Hawa said.
“I always bend the stem inward there because the thread must lie flat at the cuff.”
Rosa examined the picture and nodded.
“That’s her stitch.”
The garage went silent when we heard footsteps on the gravel.
Vivian stood in the doorway holding a paper plate of lemon biscuits.
“What a lovely little gathering,” she said.
No one reached for the plate.
Her eyes moved from the catalog to the envelopes.
“I hope you aren’t making promises you can’t keep, Lena.”
“We’re checking pay records,” I answered.
“That sounds rather legal for a kitchen-table conversation.”
“It’s only arithmetic and questions.”
Vivian turned to Hawa.
“You should have spoken to production if you had concerns.”
“I did,” Hawa said.
“Production stopped giving me work.”
For one second Vivian appeared to lose her practiced smile.
Then she placed the biscuits on the table and left without saying goodbye.
Maisie watched her cross the driveway.
“She didn’t come to see whether our pipes were fixed,” she said.
“She came to see whether the meeting happened.”