<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/a/a1/Onnecamug2.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Onneca de Goni<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Unknown<br/><strong>Date:</strong>Two days before game start<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Morning<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Bodega de Goni<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Jia Li<br/><hr/><br/>"The polish comes from Tennessee, senora. I will need to order it." Onneca occupied a small space against the counter of the bodega in a state of distress, arms close to her body and two fingers to her brow. The slow movement of her hand was no good at disguising how she trembled like a leaf in these altercations of personality.<br/><em>"Very good, see that you do." </em>The lawyer's wife was firm of voice, darkly dressed in Eastern fashions that Onneca had not made, but a very skilled rival somewhere at the end of the railroad. There were very few things she came to the bodega for. Every one of them was sold at dead even, or a slight loss.<br/>"Si. It will be a little while." The Mexican tailor's fingers clenched and fret. Her mind melted and her body revolted at the idea of disappointing a customer. It was not just her business, anymore, but her responsibility to carry the goods that the people of Gomorra needed. That oxblood pine tar was a special order. But she could get it for cheaper, and a little bit faster, than the lawyer's wife could order it from Montgomery Ward.<br/><br/><em>"How little a while? You tell them to pony up, don't be so timid. You'll never thrive here if you can't stand the gaff." </em><br/>"Four weeks," she estimated, a pen to the order sheet and populating it with curling shorthand.<br/>The woman clucked her tongue.<em>"I swear you entertain the slowest routes on purpose. The old mail coach will reach us in half that. What on earth is the delay?" </em><br/>Examining the words on the sheet again and again, Onneca wondered how to answer. She knew the answer- that Tennessee was a Confederate state, and the rail choked by mountains and in great demand, and under Union scrutiny as it chugged out to California. She knew that the order service did not physically hold the product, either, but commissioned it from another company that did not entertain mail orders. She also knew that there was nothing she could say that would make the lawyer's wife happy with her, and so she kept a tight lip, subservient, a sponge for abuse.<br/><br/>There was a shrill scream from the woman, so urgent that Onneca's head plinked into the lantern behind her and a hand went up to make sure she hadn't gouged a wound in her skull.<br/><em>"Look! Did you see?" </em>Onneca leaned over the counter, expecting to see a mouse.<em>"In the window! Oh, a horrid little ragamuffin. Is that the kind of place you run?" </em><br/>There was nothing outside when she looked up, but she felt obliged to go and look. "Si. I mean, no." She finished the form, and with a tightening tug on the laces of her dust apron, she shuffled through the bodega aisles to the front door. "The niñas come to peep at the elegant ladies." Her bit of flattery seemed to fall on deaf ears, but you never could tell.<br/><br/>The little brass bell jingled over the door as Onneca opened it and stepped out into the Gomorra dust. A scent of Maze mildew, of cleaning agent, of a girl who might secretly be becoming a woman betrayed who it had been that made the lawyer's wife scream. "Hola?" Her weaver's hands went into the pockets of the apron, behind a sequined red heart surrounded by a mosaic of eggshell white, made with Indian beads. "Are you here? It is no problema. I can hand you the things in the back." She raked her frazzled brain for the crude etchings of a fourth language, those few words of Mandarin she had inferred the meaning of to help her communicate with the laundry runner. "Zài hòumiàn?"<sup>1</sup><br/><br/>She gave a smile back into the shop window, rubbed the back of her head again, and waited a bit out in the sun where there was nobody to make her feel like a useless idiot. The laundry runner was a nice girl. Had she ever made Jia Li feel like this?<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Translations</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>1:</strong> In the back</div></div>