“Well, it’s just that you hear things.” Mrs. Harris waved her hand vaguely.

“What kinds of things?” Hanna asked. Once she had gotten started, she found it easier to keep on. I’m going to make her say it.

“Ma?” Bess said. She glanced first at her mother, then at Hanna, obviously anxious. Hanna felt a flicker of regret on Bess’s account, but tamped it down. She was too angry now.

“I’ve never said anything of the sort myself,” Mrs. Harris said, “but a lot of folks think that Chinamen simply don’t have the same standards of cleanliness as we do. I’m pleased to see that it’s not the case here.”

There. She’s gone and said it out loud.

Hanna had been called “dirty Chinaman” more times than she could count. Usually the cruelty twisted her gut so hard that she could not speak. But she had finally tired of being angry at herself for that response, so she had spent a lot of time thinking what she should say instead.

And now she would say it, with her face blank and her voice as neutral as she could make it.

“Do you remember the Golden Spike?” she asked, looking directly at Mrs. Harris.

Both Mrs. Harris and Bess appeared startled by the sudden change of subject.

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Harris replied.

“I was too young, but we learned about it in school,” Bess said. “The rail lines from the east and the west met in 1869, in Utah Territory.”

“That’s right,” Hanna said. “The rail workers from the east were white. The ones from the west were Chinese.”

She took a sip of her tea, trying to calm the pounding of her pulse. Over the rim of her cup, she could see that the other two were utterly mystified.

“The construction supervisor of the Central Pacific Railroad was a man named Mr. Strobridge,” she continued. “He wrote a report stating that the Chinese camps were cleaner by far than the white men’s camps, and that there was much less disease and sickness among the Chinese. And if you’re thinking that this is a story the Chinese tell each other, I’ll add that my father was one of the railroad’s suppliers, and he had it from Mr. Strobridge himself.”

She had been very young when Papa told her that story, perhaps six or seven years old, and she had never forgotten it.

Her voice had remained level, but she could feel that her face was hot. Bess was looking down into her lap. Mrs. Harris glanced somewhere beyond Hanna’s head and shifted in her chair, clearly ill at ease.

“I’m sure I didn’t mean to cause offense,” she said as she stood. “I think I had best be leaving. You needn’t see me out.”

She left the room before Hanna could say another word.