6:10 a.m. — The Pepper-Tree Boardinghouse 🔍

At 6:10 in the morning in the rear kitchen of the Pepper-Tree Boardinghouse, I pump water into an enamel basin while sparrows quarrel beneath the eaves. The August air is already warm, and the room smells of boiled barley, lye soap, and oranges stacked in a slatted crate by the door. Before breakfast I scrub two shirt collars on the washboard, careful not to split my knuckles where yesterday’s work left them raw. I keep reminding myself that this is my first full day here and that watching closely is better than asking too many frightened questions.

4:40 p.m. — Sunroom beside the Packing Yard 🔍

At 4:40 in the afternoon in the narrow sunroom beside the citrus packing yard, I guide a white cuff beneath the needle of a treadle sewing machine as wagons rattle beyond the fence. A younger girl from the boardinghouse sounds out English words from an old reader while I repeat them softly, though the printed lines swim whenever the machine shakes the table. The keeper pays me a small coin for the finished mending, and I hide it in the inner seam of my skirt instead of buying a sweet from the street cart. When the light turns amber through the dusty glass, I press the cuff with a heated iron and feel, for the first time today, that my hands know what to do.