The Hired Girl (43 page)

Then I cried because I wanted Ma. I cried until my nose was stuffed up and I couldn’t breathe. But I guess I cried myself out, because unconsciousness claimed me, and at last I slept.

It was still dark when I woke up. The skin on my face felt raw, and my mouth was dry. I was chilled with that queasy kind of cold that you only get very early in the morning, when you’re not supposed to be awake. I thought it might be four, maybe four thirty.

I tried to think what to do. I remembered Mrs. Rosenbach saying that they would send me back to the farm, and Mr. Rosenbach saying patronizingly that they’d find me a good home. A good home, as if I were a stray cat! I wasn’t fit to marry his son, but he’d find me a good
place
— somewhere else where I could keel the pots and dust the books I’d rather read. All at once my temper rose.

I slid out of bed and put on my dress. It was nasty-sodden, but I’d made up my mind what to do. I’d go to Corpus Christi and wait until Father Horst came to unlock the church for early Mass. Father Horst would help me escape from the Rosenbachs. With luck, I’d get away before they had a chance to send me back to the farm.

My mind was clear and hard, ticking off what I had to do. I’d go down to the kitchen to get my boots and stockings. Then I’d slip out the back door. The biggest snag in my plan was that all my things were back at the Marlborough apartment building. I’d left Anna’s easily enough, but it wouldn’t be so easy to get back in. I checked the pockets of my dress, but I didn’t have a cent.

While my mind was working out the best way to escape, my heart was telling me another story. The story was that somehow David would know I meant to leave and stop me. It was crazy, I know that now, but I wanted it so much that I believed it. It seemed impossible that David didn’t love me.

I descended the stairs slowly, pausing to listen every few steps. I imagined David coming out of his room. His eyes would look wild and tormented, because he wouldn’t have slept, either. He would grasp my hand and lead me back to his room, where we could shut the door and talk in whispers. He would confess to me that he
did
love me, but that he’d been afraid to say so before his family, because I was a
shiksa.
I would forgive him; he would kiss me, and we would run away to Paris.

I imagined it all. I strained to hear his footfalls on the stairs. I’d reached the first floor. My hand was on the newel post — and I heard the stairs creak.

“Janet!”

My heart leaped. And then it plummeted, because the voice wasn’t David’s. It was Malka’s voice, and Malka was hobbling down the stairs; Malka in her flannel wrapper and embroidered shawl. “I knew it,” she croaked. “I said to myself:
She’ll run away. She’s a headstrong girl; she’ll run out during the night, and we’ll never set eyes on her again.
I kept watch,” she added gruffly and proudly. “I’ve been sitting up in bed, listening. There’s a crick in my neck that won’t go away in a hurry.”

I started to say, “I’m leaving —” but she clamped her bony arm around me.

“No, you’re not. You’re going to come downstairs and let me make you a cup of coffee. And then you’re going to listen to me, because you’re a good girl.”

I’d cried all night. I’d thought I had no more tears to shed. But there was something about her calling me a good girl that started me howling again. She dragged me down to the kitchen, and I couldn’t shake her off, because she was clinging to me, smelling of camphor and onions and old age. My eyes were blind with tears, and I was afraid of treading on her bunion.

She sat me down at the kitchen table. She lifted Thomashefsky and plunked him down on my lap. Of course he wouldn’t stay. She made coffee — I watched dully — and she put in cream and sugar with a lavish hand: too much cream and sugar, which is what I like. I didn’t know she’d noticed how I take my coffee. She made me toast, sopping with butter and gritty with cinnamon and sugar: cinnamon toast, the Rosenbachs’ cure-all. “Now, you eat that,” she commanded.

I didn’t think I could. Heroines in books don’t eat when their hearts are broken. They pine away. But my stomach gave an agonized rumble, and I realized I was ravenous. I ate, and it was good. I drank two cups of coffee, one after another. Crying always makes me thirsty.

“Now what?” Malka said, after I’d finished a third slice of toast. “Have you given up on running away?”

That nettled me, because I hadn’t. “I won’t be sent back home, and I can’t stay here. Mrs. Rosenbach doesn’t like me. And David —”

“That good-for-nothing!” spat Malka, and she said a Yiddish word I’ve never heard before. I don’t know what it was, but you could tell from the sound that it was really bad. My anger leaped up. “Don’t you dare say that about David!”

Malka leaned across the table and poured herself a cup of coffee. “He’s a young fool, that’s what he is. And you’re another. Even if you weren’t a
shiksa,
it wouldn’t be right. He won’t be ready for marriage for another ten years, not that one. Fifteen, even. What do you want with him?”

“I love him.”

Malka rolled her eyes. “Love! You think it lasts, but it doesn’t. You forget about him, you hear me? You’ve got to think of the future.”

“I
am
thinking of the future. I tell you, I won’t be sent home —”

Malka made an impatient gesture with her hands. “Nobody’s going to send you home. There was talk about it, yes, but my little Moritz has another idea.” She leaned across the table, her witchlike eyes gleaming. “I talked to him while you were having your bath. He wants to send you to that fancy school he’s opening next year. He says if you’re only fourteen, you’re even smarter than he thought you were. You’re smart enough to do well, and they need Gentiles. The school’s meant to be half and half, but they’re short of Gentiles.”

She tapped her spoon against the table, punctuating her speech. “You’ll work for Anna another year. You’re good with Oskar. Once David’s out of the country, you’ll come back here every week; you’ll be our Shabbos goy. When the school opens, Moritz will see that you receive a scholarship. You’ll get your education, just as your mother wanted. You can grow up to be anything you want — not that there’s any shame in being a hired girl.” She glanced around the kitchen as if reviewing all the things we’ve cleaned together. “You’ve done a good job here. You talk back, and you oversleep, and you shouldn’t kiss the master’s son. But still. You’re a fine girl, and you’ve earned your way.”

I stared down at my empty plate. I couldn’t think. I’d offered myself to David and he didn’t love me; I’d been mortified before the entire family; Mimi had read my diary. I was fourteen again, and in danger of being sent home. Now there was something new: I was to go to school. I ought to have been glad, but I felt numb. I wanted to climb the stairs and go back to bed.

“You’ll go to school and get an education,” persisted Malka, “and then we’ll see. Who knows what you’ll become? The world’s changing — not for the better, if you ask me — but in these crazy modern times, a girl can be anything. A doctor, even.”

“I don’t want to be a doctor.” I knew I sounded sullen and ungrateful, but I didn’t care. “I hate sick people. And I can’t take a scholarship from Mr. Rosenbach. He
patronized
me. I won’t accept charity.”

“Yes, you will,” Malka said threateningly. She got up and came around the table and locked her arms around me. “You take that education,” she said against the top of my head. “When life offers you something good, you take it, you hear me? You go to a good school, learn everything you can, and grow up to be a woman. That’s what you’ll do,” she finished, and she held me so close I felt her old heart beating.

So I gave in. I even took a crumb of comfort, because she loves me. It wasn’t what I would have chosen. I wanted David to love me, not Malka. But I guess I’m a beggar and can’t be a chooser. Being proud belongs in novels. In real life, you eat the cinnamon toast, even if your heart is burning.

And my heart is burning. It isn’t just a figure of speech. When I think of David going away, the pain is like a fist against my breastbone, hot and sore. A mist rises before my eyes as I write this, and teardrops splash onto my inky words. He’s going away. He’ll see Paris and forget me; I know he will. I’ve lost him, my only love: the artist who was going to show me Paris; the man who was going to teach me to draw. I weep for the conversations we never had and the kisses I wanted to take from his lips. We never even said good-bye.

But in a year’s time, I will go to school. I don’t seem to care about it, but it’s what Ma would have wanted. It’s what I wanted, once. I wanted it more than anything.

In a year’s time, I will go to school.

Sunday, September the twenty-ninth, 1912

This morning Mimi bought me a present, a blank book from Rosenbach’s Department Store. She plunked it down on the ironing board and said, “Here. Now you can write another diary.”

I retorted, “Why? So you can read it behind my back?” which I thought was very cutting. But Mimi only flicked open her lorgnette and answered, “So you can be an authoress.”

I’ve never been able to get Mimi to feel any remorse over reading my diary. Whenever I try, she flashes me one of her starry-eyed, admiring looks (she’s practicing that look so she can use it on boys) and says my diary was the best book she’s ever read. That’s where I lose ground. I’m unmanned by flattery.

I thanked her for the blank book, which is handsome: crimson leather with stiff creamy pages. I didn’t promise to write another diary, though. Once someone reads your diary, you’re never the same again. You realize you’re not alone when you write, and you start to write for the person who will read your words. I
think
that’s a bad thing, but I’m not sure, because I do think of being an author someday, and authors have to commune with their readers.

After Mimi left and I finished the ironing, I went to my room and took Anna’s old dressing case from under the bed. Anna gave me the dressing case after she found out that Mimi read my diary. It has a lock and key, so I can be private.

It’s been almost a year since I opened this diary. So much has changed since I locked it away! There are nine blank pages left at the end: I’m going to fill them up with everything that’s happened, lock up the book, and begin the new year. I’ve become very Jewish, because it seems to me that the real New Year begins in the fall, with housecleaning and Rosh Hashanah.

And school! I’m starting school tomorrow, and I’m very excited. I’ll be studying Algebra and Latin, Ancient History, Art, English Literature, and Creative Expression. Mr. Rosenbach took us to see the school building, and it’s sumptuous. The house on Auchentoroly Terrace used to be a mansion. There are high windows everywhere, so the rooms are full of light, and at the foot of the grand staircase, there’s a statue of the Roman god Mercury. I expect to feel very aristocratic, going up and down those stairs.

It’s strange and wonderful to be a student again. On Thursday, Anna and Mrs. Rosenbach took Mimi and me to buy clothes — schoolgirl clothes, not maid uniforms. We began at Slesinger & Son’s, because the school letter says all pupils must wear comfortable shoes with a flexible sole, so we can exercise in the gymnasium. We are also required to have thick wool sweaters made to a particular pattern, because the fresh-air classrooms will be cold. Mine lacks half a sleeve. Malka’s helping me with it. Dear Malka! I am still her Shabbos goy, but a Russian girl comes in twice a week to help her with the heavy work. Malka says the Russian girl is a
klotz,
and she only loves me.

After Mimi and I bought our shoes, we went to Rosenbach’s Department Store. I bought a holly-green sailor suit, a waist with Gibson pleats, and half a dozen hair ribbons — I haven’t worn hair ribbons for a year and a half. Anna bought me a rose-plaid jumper suit and a primrose silk that will be good for school dances, if anyone asks me. She insisted on paying for them because she says looking after Oskar has been hard on my clothes. That’s true, but I’ve come to
love
Oskar. We have splendid games together. He’ll start kindergarten tomorrow, and I expect he’ll do well, because he’s very clever. Every Monday we visit the Pratt Library and read the snake books in the children’s section. I taught him to sound out the letters, and one day — it was astonishing, how fast it happened — he began to read! I was never so proud of anyone in my life.