My Husband Loaded Our Costumes Into Trucks And Handed Me A Receipt

The first thing they carried out was the king's coat.

I had spent six nights fixing its cuffs. Now a man folded it across a hand truck, with the heavy wheels almost touching the gold braid.

"Hang that up," I said.

He looked at Emeka.

That was how I learned my husband had told people I no longer had a say.

I was Folasade Ogunleye, a fifty-six-year-old Nigerian American woman with deep brown skin, broad shoulders, and silver hair braided close to my head. I worked as a theatrical costumer in our warehouse off Pass Road in Biloxi. Tiny fabric samples lived under my watchband. That morning, a square of green wool pressed against my wrist.

It came from the king's coat.

Emeka Okafor stepped between me and the truck. My husband was a tall, trim Nigerian American man of fifty-nine, with a smooth brown face, a silver beard, and a smile he turned toward whoever was watching.

"Let them work, Sade. The drivers charge by the hour."

"Who hired drivers?"

"Lantern Pier Holdings. My new company."

He handed me one sheet. It called the move a transfer of assets. Below that were the words ALL COSTUMES AND RELATED STOCK.

The price was one dollar.

"You sold our stock for a dollar?"

"I moved my stock. The company owns everything now."

Around us stood thirty years of hems, fitting marks, and little repairs nobody saw from the cheap seats. Pirates for school plays. Church pageant robes. Beaded jackets that had crossed the Coast more often than I had.

"Gulf Hem owns these," I said. "We both own Gulf Hem."

"You did the sewing."

He said it gently, for the men near the loading door.

"I handled purchases. You kept the house bills. Those are different skills."

Maren Pike came out of my fitting room carrying the brass hook where I hung my tape measures. She had been our booking clerk until June. Since then, she had been Emeka's reason to work late.

She set the hook in a crate.

"Personal things stay," she told a mover. "Business things go."

"That hook was my mother's."

She took it back out.

Emeka sighed as if I had delayed a show over a loose button.

"I left you the machines. You can still take in alterations."

Three sewing machines stood against the far wall. He had put a white kitchen chair beside them. Even my good cutting table was headed for the truck.

Outside, the air smelled of wet pavement and the Sound. A gull pecked at a split bag near the curb. I watched a rack of sailor suits roll over the door track.

"Where are they going?"

"A safer location," Maren said.

I took pictures of the truck plates, the racks, and the transfer sheet. Then I counted as they loaded.

"Still counting buttons?" Emeka asked.

"Thirty-seven racks. Four trunks. Nine hat boxes."

His smile slipped.

Years before, I had learned to keep a second record. Paper got wet on the Coast. Computers failed. Emeka lost things when a question made him tired.

The original acquisition register was somewhere he had never bothered to look. So were the bank-validated deposit duplicates he called my old household scraps.

He thought records began when he printed them.

I knew what had been written first.

"Sign here," he said, offering a pen.

Under the line was a sentence saying I accepted the transfer and had no claim against Lantern Pier.

"No."

"Don't make this ugly."

"Then stop handing me ugly things."

One mover coughed into his fist. Emeka lowered the pen.

After the trucks left, he put $200 on my cutting stool.

"Get dinner. On me."

He said that loudly enough for the last driver to hear. His gifts always needed witnesses.

I left the money there.

At home, I opened the cedar chest under our spare bed. Under folded church cloth lay a flat steel lockbox. The key was sewn inside the case that held my best pinking shears.

I placed the green wool on the kitchen table, then opened the box.

The register smelled faintly of starch. Each purchase had a date, seller, price, payment number, and fabric square. Behind it lay our signed partnership agreement and envelopes of deposit slips bearing the bank's machine stamps.

I called a number an old theater manager had given me.

"Patrice Dunleavy," a blunt voice answered.

"I need someone to follow money."

"How old is the paper?"

"Some of it is thirty years old."

Her voice softened.

"Don't flatten any folds. Bring it as it is."

Before I could answer, my phone lit with a message from Maren.

It was a sale notice. Our entire costume collection would be offered to buyers on Friday.