The Downstairs Girl

Jo returns to the Payne house where Etta Rae tells her Mrs. Payne and Shang would meet in the cemetery close to the estate. When people got wind of a Chinese man meeting a white woman, they assumed the man was a criminal, giving rise to the legend of the “Rabid-Eyes Rapist” (305). Shang left Georgia, but another Chinese man paid for the supposed crime with his life. Mr. Payne had wanted Mrs. Payne’s illegitimate child to be sent to an orphanage; Mrs. Payne had Etta take the baby to Old Gin instead. Mrs. Payne told her husband the baby was a boy.

Jo tells Noemi that Old Gin was beaten up by Billy Riggs’s henchman. To her surprise, Noemi curses her “no-account brother” (307), revealing she and Riggs are half-siblings.

Riggs’s father was a white man, which is why “Billy came out fair as a lily” (308). Given Billy was white-passing, his father stole him from Noemi’s mother and made him join their family’s crime business. Noemi resolves to take Jo to Riggs later so she can confront him for assaulting Old Gin.

Jo tells Mrs. Payne about Old Gin dropping out of the race.