The Hired Girl (13 page)

That pleased her. I could tell because her mouth tightened and she bent over the cat to hide her face. “The last girl was Irish. Would she get her hands dirty?” She gave me one of those piercing looks as if she expected an answer. “All she wanted was money to waste on cheap finery.”

“I wish I had some finery,” I said. I hadn’t meant to say it. The words just slipped out.

“Not cheap finery,” Malka argued. “You wouldn’t want that.”

“I can’t afford the expensive kind,” I pointed out, and I saw her mouth twitch. I pinched my skirt between my thumb and forefinger, inviting her to admire the blurred flowers on my horrible dress. I clowned a little, rising on tiptoe and twirling like a ballet dancer.

She uttered a musty sound, something between a guffaw and a snort. She couldn’t fool me. It was a laugh; I’d made her laugh. I pressed my advantage. “Will you teach me how to do
kashrut
?” I coaxed. “Miss Chandler — my old teacher — said I could learn just about anything, if I set my mind to it. I’d work hard to please you. I need a place, and I think this one will suit me just fine.”

The idea of teaching me wiped the smile from her face. “I can try to teach you,” she said as if it was a threat, “but it’ll be up to you to learn.” And she glowered at me, but it was that smack-her-lips kind of glower, as if her pessimism was as tasty as her fried fish.

Friday, July the seventh, 1911

Today was Shabbos — or getting ready for it — and now I know why Malka was so tired last Saturday night, because preparing for Shabbos is hard work. No one is supposed to work
on
Shabbos (which isn’t on Sunday at all), but you have to work like a horse to get ready for it. The food for Shabbos has to be especially good and plentiful. So all the cooking for Friday supper and Saturday breakfast and Saturday lunch has to be done by Friday before sundown, with the food stored away in refrigerators or warming ovens.

And the house has to be spotlessly clean. Malka and I were on our feet all day, dusting and sweeping and ironing the table linens, polishing the glasses and the silver, only Malka won’t let me touch the Shabbos candlesticks. They came from Germany, from the days when Mr. Rosenbach was poor. Even though they’re plainer than the other silver, they’re precious, because they’ve been in the family so long. I asked Malka if she was afraid I’d steal them. She said I was so rough I’d rub the pattern off.

I think that was meant to vex me, but I laughed as if she’d said something very witty, and a pinched little smile came over her face. She gave me the glasses to polish, first with whiting and leather, and then with a silk handkerchief. I rubbed them until they sparkled. Then there was the cooking — grating apples for pudding, and chopping onions, salting the beef, and making noodles for
frimsel
soup. She had me pluck the fowls and dress them, and she showed me how to make fish balls with lemon sauce, which will be eaten cold tomorrow.

She kneaded the bread and made me watch while she braided it. Then she made cucumber salad while I beat the eggs for sponge cake. Sponge cake is a cake without butter or milk, so it’s good for
kashrut.
It’s all eggs, but you have to beat them a full half hour. I beat them until my arms ached, but then Malka said I’d
overbeaten
them, and I had to go to the market on Whitelock Street to buy more. I hated the thought of those good eggs going to waste, and I set Malka off on a tirade by saying that we ought to keep a pig. It seems that pigs are very bad for
kashrut.

But visiting the market was the best part of the day. I’ve been indoors all week, mostly down in the kitchen. Going to the market by myself felt like having an adventure. Malka told me not to dawdle, and I didn’t, but I
looked.

The worst part of the day was when dinner was almost ready. Malka told me there was just time for me to run upstairs and change my dress. Everyone is supposed to wear their nicest things for Shabbos, but I don’t have any nice things. I’ve worn my chocolate-brown twill ever since I came here. At night I wash out the parts where I’ve perspired and hang it by the window to dry.

I had to tell Malka that I didn’t have another dress. That isn’t really true, but I can’t wear the dress I left home in, because it’s so short and childish looking. I wish I hadn’t told everyone I’m eighteen, because if I’d said I was fifteen, maybe even sixteen, I might have been able to get away with it. But no girl of eighteen would show so much leg, and if the Rosenbachs saw me wearing it, they’d know that I lied about my age.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practice to deceive!

Miss Chandler taught me that, and it’s true. When I told Malka I had only one dress, her eyebrows rose so high I thought they’d crawl up under her kerchief and vanish. Her eyes got that tragic, shocked look. I said that I was hoping to buy another dress with my wages, but she frowned at me sharply and said it was wrong to talk about money so close to the Sabbath. So that was that. I don’t know what I’m going to do about my wages. I could buy myself a dress with my Belinda money if I had an afternoon off, but I can’t ask for an afternoon off, because Mrs. Rosenbach hasn’t told me I can stay.

At suppertime, I felt kind of lonesome. On Shabbos, Malka dines upstairs with the Rosenbachs: Mrs. Rosenbach, Mr. Solomon Rosenbach, and Mirele, who is Mr. Solomon’s little sister. (I’ve only caught glimpses of her, but she wears perfectly sweet frilly clothes. It takes hours to iron them.) Mrs. Rosenbach’s husband is in New York with her other son, David. It turns out that Mr. Rosenbach owns a department store — Malka was
affronted
when I told her I’d never heard of Rosenbach’s Department Store. There is also a married daughter, Anna, who comes to Shabbos supper when her husband is away and brings her two spoiled children — that is, Malka says they’re spoiled. She was there, too.

So I ate dinner by myself. Malka filled a generous plate for me, but I wasn’t at the feast. I was a kind of Gentile Cinderella. Upstairs there was candlelight, and wine in shining glasses, not to mention my sponge cake, but there I was, alone in the kitchen. If I’d had a book to prop up beside my plate, I wouldn’t have felt a bit lonely. But as it was, I kept thinking of how much my feet hurt. I kept glancing at all the dishes on the sideboard. Once Shabbos starts, Malka can’t do any dishes, because it’s work, but Mrs. Rosenbach says it’s all right for me to do them, because I’m not Jewish.

After I finished the dishes, I tidied the kitchen and swept the floor, and now I’m upstairs, feeling melancholy. I think I’m homesick. I never thought I would be that, but when I think of Miss Chandler, my o’ercharged heart seems to swell. I miss the country: the fresh air and the birdsong in the morning. I miss the food. Malka’s a good cook, but her meals are all spicy and rich, and my stomach longs for something
plain.
I miss ham, but ham is
treif,
which means the Jews aren’t allowed to eat it. And I miss starting the day with a glass of real milk. The city milk tastes kind of faded. There’s no life in it.

I miss Mark, a little. But not very much, because I’m still mad at him for not taking up for me. I imagine Mark’ll get stuck looking after my chickens. I’m glad of that, because he’ll take good care of them. I wonder if anyone will think to pick the hornworms off my tomatoes. Malka has a little patch of garden out back, but her tomatoes are spindly and poor-looking — I’d be ashamed of tomatoes like that, but she seems to think they’re thriving.

What I miss most of all is my books. Jane Eyre and Florence Dombey — they were like my sisters. And I wish I had
Ivanhoe
again, because there are still many things I don’t understand about the Jews.

Sunday, July the ninth, 1911

Today was a downright awful day. I woke up feeling prickly and queasy, with a familiar pain in my stomach. I felt outraged, because I didn’t want all
that
again. But of course, there’s no way out of it. It seems to me that God was very hard on Eve, punishing her so cruelly just for eating an apple. He wasn’t nearly as strict with Adam. I don’t think it was fair. But that is probably a wicked thing to write, and not refined.

I put on my chocolate-colored dress, because what else is there for me to put on? That frets me, too, because in spite of my best efforts, that dress is beginning to smell. Last week I thought if I could only please Malka and win my right to work here, I’d be content. Now it seems I’m likely to stay, but I’m as full of worries as a hive is full of bees. Nagging, buzzing, stinging worries they are, too.

On top of that, the weather was perfectly awful. It was very hot and damp with a white sky, which is my least favorite weather in the world.

After I finished the breakfast dishes, Malka told me Mrs. Rosenbach said that I could have Sunday mornings off so I could attend church. I ought to have been grateful, but I wasn’t. It isn’t that I don’t want to go to church, but if my only time off is to be Sunday mornings, I’ll never go anywhere
but
church. I won’t be able to visit a library or a picture gallery, and all the stores will be closed.

However, since I had the morning off, I thought I’d better take it. I put on my hat and gloves and went out. Malka said there was a Catholic church nearby, and she told me where it was but I got lost. The streets were so hot my head ached, and the sight of families in their Sunday clothes made me feel lonesome and sour and envious.

I tried to work out whether I could tell Mrs. Rosenbach that I wanted a different day off, and how I could bring up the question of my salary. Thinking about it got me worried, because in
Ivanhoe
the Jews have a lot of money, but they’re very close with it, though Rebecca isn’t, of course. Sir Walter Scott says that the Jews have a great
love of gain.
I began to worry that Mrs. Rosenbach might not give me any money. It would be a sneaking, stingy thing to do, to make a poor girl work all week and then not give her any wages.

I can’t think — I don’t
want
to think — the Rosenbachs are like that. Mr. Solomon was very good to me, and anyone can see that Mrs. Rosenbach is a real lady. And Malka’s not stingy. There are little money boxes all over the house, charities for the poor Jews and immigrants and orphans. Malka’s always putting coins in them. But then, it isn’t Malka who’ll be paying my salary.

I soon grew tired of walking in the heat, so I came back to Eutaw Place. Malka had passed the morning making a big
kugel
(which is a kind of noodle pudding) for Sunday dinner. I could tell she was proud of it, so I said it looked beautiful, but I secretly hoped I wouldn’t have to eat any, because it was full of raisins and I hate raisins, always have. Of course she spooned a big helping onto my plate, and I had to worry it down. She saw that I wasn’t eating very fast, and I had to confess that I didn’t like raisins. I was careful to say how delicious the
kugel
was; it was only the raisins that I didn’t like.

But that wasn’t good enough. Touchy old Malka was offended and said that raisins were a treat, and who did I think I was, to turn up my nose at them? Then I had to listen to a long story about when she was a little girl, when her Mama — only, she pronounces it
Mah-meh
— would give her a handful of raisins on Shabbos as a special treat. I had to hear about what a good girl she was, not spoiled, like young people today. Before I’d heard the end of that, Mrs. Rosenbach came down to the kitchen to tell Malka that she was going out and to remind her that she’s having her bridge ladies for luncheon on Wednesday. She said she wanted Malka to serve oyster patties.

Then Malka just about
threw a fit,
because oysters are
treif.
She said that over her dead body would oyster patties be cooked in her kitchen (which made a very strange picture come into my mind). Then Mrs. Rosenbach turned steely and said that it wasn’t Malka’s kitchen at all, but hers. I suppose that was her way of reminding Malka that she (Malka) is only a servant, and that if she (Mrs. Rosenbach) wanted oyster patties, then she (Malka) would have to cook them. Then Mrs. Rosenbach swept out of the room and Malka dissolved in tears. The whole time we were cleaning up the kitchen, she was sniffing and muttering. I tried to sympathize, but she was still angry with me about the
kugel.
Somehow, because I hadn’t eaten the raisins, I was on the same side as Mrs. Rosenbach, wanting to serve
treif
in a good Jewish home.