The Hired Girl (2 page)

It was warm in the church, and I tried to keep my mind on the sermon, though my conscience was not too bad troubled when I couldn’t, because I am a Catholic, not a Presbyterian. Then I wondered if the Blessed Mother would be angry with me for being in a Presbyterian church, instead of St. Mary’s. So I said a Hail Mary to her inside my head, and told her I was sorry. I explained that I wasn’t there because I was going to turn Protestant, but because I wanted to see dear Miss Chandler. The Blessed Mother said she wasn’t worried about me turning Protestant, but she thought I might stop working so hard at hating Lucy Watkins and Hazel Fry. I thought about that and I supposed it was true. It’s not good to hate people in a holy place, when you’re asking God to forgive you the same way you forgive the ones who trespass against you. But it seems to me that if I stop hating Lucy Watkins and Hazel Fry, I might lose something. I decided I would stop hating them during the service and take it up again after I got out. I asked the Blessed Mother if that would be all right, and she said it would be an improvement. So with that settled, I tried to fix my mind on what the minister was trying to say.

The minister was a pink-faced man and he talked slow. He spoke about the Pearl of Great Price, and then he started talking about treasure and how where our treasure was, our hearts should be. I thought about how I didn’t go to St. Mary’s because it was nine miles off and how if I was a Christian martyr, I’d ask Father for the horses, even though he’d be unkind. Maybe I’d walk, even. I started to repent, but then the minister gave his sermon another twist, and it turned out what he was really after was more money in the collection plate. Then I felt awkward because I hadn’t brought any money with me, and I was worried that people would stare at me when the plate went round. Father never gives me any money because he says what does a girl who is given everything want with money. When Ma was alive the egg money was hers, and I’m the one who cleans the chicken house and gathers the eggs and makes the mash for the hens. But Father won’t let me have the egg money.

I fell into a daydream about what I’d do if the egg money was mine. I’d buy cloth for a new dress. A stripe would be best because if you match the stripes and set them right, you can make your waist look smaller. I think I could get it right if I tried. I’d buy books, too. There’s a store in Lancaster that has books that only cost a nickel. Miss Chandler says those books are trivial and unwholesome and she hopes I will never read them. I wonder what’s in them. I have three books — the ones she gave me — plus Ma’s Bible, and I just ache to read more. Miss Chandler used to lend me books. I’d hoped that if I gave back her handkerchief she might say we could go on being friends, even if I can’t come to school anymore.

Miss Chandler has a little bookcase full of books in her rooms. At the end of school, she invited all us older girls — Lucy and Hazel and Alice and little Rebecca Green, who has consumption but wasn’t too sick to come — to her boardinghouse. We had chicken salad and ice cream and looked at photographs of Europe on the stereopticon. And we passed around a beautiful poem called “The Eve of St. Agnes” and read it aloud, and I thought it was the most wonderful poem I ever read. Even Lucy and Hazel were civil to me, and I wished the evening would never come to an end.

But of course it did. And now I can’t go back to school. And Miss Chandler wasn’t in the church, not this week. I waited under the oak tree and watched everyone come out to be sure. Alice waved to me, and I waved back, but I didn’t go forward to speak to her. I went home and fixed dinner for the men.

Wednesday, June the fourteenth, 1911

I didn’t think it would be so hard to write in this diary every day. Late spring is always busy on the farm. I spend my days rushing from one have-to to the next have-to. When I can snatch a moment between them, I read one of dear Miss Chandler’s books. I’d rather read than write.

My books aren’t exactly prize books, because our school doesn’t hand out prize books. But for the past three years, Miss Chandler has taken me aside, privately, and given me a book at the end of the year. I told her we had none at home, and I think she was sorry for me. The books she gave me are bound in soft, limp leather, with thin paper, gold edged and elegant, like Bible pages. I have
Jane Eyre
— that was the first year — and
Dombey and Son
— that was the second year — and
Ivanhoe
— that was last year. I’ve read and reread them all, but
Jane Eyre
is the best, because it’s the most exciting and Jane is just like me.
Ivanhoe
has dull patches, but it’s very thrilling when Brian de Bois-Guilbert carries off the noble Jewess Rebecca because of his unbridled passion.
Dombey and Son
is good, but it makes me feel guilty because I’m not as good as Florence Dombey. I like best the part where her father strikes her and she runs away to Captain Cuttle. He takes such good care of her. Sometimes at night I like to pretend I’m Florence Dombey, lying beautifully asleep in a clean white bed, with Captain Cuttle tiptoeing around, making me a roasted fowl.

But Father never strikes me, thank heavens. He used to whip the boys when they were younger, but Ma wouldn’t let him lay a hand on me. She said it wasn’t modest for a man to whip a girl. So Father never did, but he said I was too big for my britches even though I didn’t wear any. That’s his idea of humor — to say something insulting and unrefined. I wish I hadn’t written it in this book.

Today I will contemplate the view from the kitchen window and describe the beauties of nature. I guess that’s refined enough for anybody. I’m sitting on the kitchen table because I just gave the floor a good scrub, and it’s still wet. Father is in town buying a part for one of his machines, and the boys are working in the lower field. I can watch them from the window, so they won’t come back to the house and catch me idling.

The panorama from the kitchen window is very striking because the ground falls away from the house and the barnyard on all sides. Our house and barns rest on the top of a steep hill. The hill is so steep that the land wasn’t too dear, and my great-grandfather got a bargain when he bought it. He named it Steep Hill Farm, but after a time it became Steeple — there isn’t any steeple nearby, so the name would be confusing to strangers, except that strangers seldom come this way. The farm is fourteen acres and has been in the family for nigh on eighty years. The youngest son is always the one to inherit the property. Luke will have Steeple Farm some day, though Father says he’s lazy and a disappointment.

The strawberries are close to ripe just now. I half fancy I can smell them, sitting here by the open window, with my diary on my knee. The breeze is very refreshing. The sky is lofty and celestial blue, with gossamer clouds o’erhead, and the wind chasing them all over the sky. The fields are verdant green, and —

Later that evening

Oh, oh, oh! I am in the most miserable
pain
! My whole face is swollen and throbbing and I would cry my eyes out, except that screwing up my face pulls my stitches. And oh, how horrible I look! I am accursed — the unluckiest girl who ever lived! I have often thought so, but this proves it.

How contented I was, writing in my book and contemplating the view of Steeple Farm from the kitchen window! How little I dreamed that this was the beginning of another misfortune! I looked out the window and saw that Cressy, the Jersey cow, had escaped from the cow pasture and was heading up the hill to the farmyard.

It would be Cressy, of course. Luke says Cressy and I are alike — both of us too smart for our own good. Cows were meant to be stupid creatures, Luke says, and so were women, but Cressy and I are the exceptions that prove the rule. I abominate Luke for saying that, but I agree with him about Cressy. She’s a bad cow. She never stays where you put her. She’ll find the weakest section of fence and lean her fat red rump against it, swaying back and forth until she works the top rail loose. I’ve seen her do it. Last year she got out and trampled the strawberry bed and there were no strawberries to sell. Father was awful angry.

I leaped off the table and ran out the door to catch her. I didn’t think to put my boots on — I was in the slovenly slippers I wear around the house. I seized her by the halter and started to drag her back to the pasture. She balked. She gazed at me as if she couldn’t imagine what I wanted.

I wanted to slap her, because she knew perfectly well. Of all the cows in the world, she’s not stupid. But I said, “Cush, cush,” in my best cow voice, and tugged her halter, and she started forward — only her great, heavy hoof came down on my foot. Heaven knows it’s not the first time a horse or a cow has trod on me, and it won’t be the last, but I don’t recollect the other times hurting so bad. I guess it was partly my slippers and partly the way her hoof came down. I yelled with pain and slapped her shoulder, and she blinked at me with those long cow-y eyelashes, playing stupid. I leaned on her and shouted at her and tried to make her get off, but she was like a stone cow, she was so still — and all the while my foot felt as if every bone was splintering.

What I did next was stupid. I won’t say it wasn’t. I bent over and tugged at that leg of hers, as if I could pull her off my foot. It was a brainless thing to do, because a cow’s strength is ever so much greater than a girl’s, and even if it weren’t, cows’ legs don’t move sideways. But I guess I startled Cressy, tugging on her leg like that. So she decided to move forward, and her other front leg came forward, swift as lightning, and kneed me in the eye.

I screamed. There was blood everywhere, and I screamed so loud that Cressy took off. I put my hands to my face and at once they were coated slick with blood, and blood was running down my cheek and inside the collar of my dress. I didn’t know if my eyeball had been knocked out of the socket or if I was going to be blind. I
couldn’t
know, and I couldn’t think. I only knew I hurt and there was too much blood, so I kept screaming. It was Mark who got to me first, thank God, and he hurt me, swiping the blood away with his rough sleeve and shouting at me, demanding to know what happened. Finally I heard him say, “Thank God, Sis, it’s not your eye. It’s the skin above it. It’s not your eye.” And then, as if he couldn’t quite believe it, he covered my good eye with his hand and asked, “Can you see?”

I could. My eyelashes were sticky with blood, and already my eye was swelling up so that the world looked bizarre. It was too colorful, the green grass and the blue sky and the blood beads on my eyelashes. I gulped, “Yes,” and Mark put his arms around me. It was just for the moment, but I loved him for it. The last time he held me like that was the day of Ma’s funeral. And he said, “Thank God, thank God.”

Then Matthew and Luke were there, and Mark said I ought to have a doctor, and Luke took off like a shot to bridle a horse, and Matthew went to catch Cressy. Mark took me inside and tried to stop the bleeding with a rag dipped in cold water. Even though I was in pain and terribly frightened, I remembered I’d left my diary on the table. I made Mark wash his hands and hide it under the dish towels.

When Dr. Fosse came, the wound was still bleeding. He wanted to stitch it — Dr. Fosse’s a great one for stitching — but I couldn’t bear the thought of a needle so close to my eye. Dr. Fosse said not to make a fuss, and he told me how earlier this week he put fifteen stitches into the arm of a seven-year-old boy, and the boy never shed a tear. That shamed me, but I still couldn’t stand it. Luke held me down with one knee and Mark held my head still, and Dr. Fosse stitched me up, and all the while he was going on about that seven-year-old boy and asking why I couldn’t be brave like him. With all my heart, I hated that nasty, unnatural, unfeeling little boy. But at last the stitches were all done, and Dr. Fosse wiped my face clean and checked to see if my toes were broken. None of them were.

Afterward, I was horribly ashamed that I yelled so loud. Luke said I bawled like a heifer. I have always thought that if something dreadful happened, I would be very brave, but when someone has a needle next to your eye, it’s different. I might have been brave if it hadn’t been my eye. All the same, I was mortified because Rebecca in
Ivanhoe
wouldn’t have carried on like that, and I don’t believe Jane Eyre would have, either. But Florence Dombey would’ve. She cries her way through all eight hundred pages of
Dombey and Son.
Just because she’s unloved.

After the doctor left, I went to my room and slept a short while, but then Matthew rapped on my door. He said it was suppertime and they’d all agreed to make do with a cold meal, because of my eye. He seemed to think that was handsome of them, which aggravated me. I thought about not answering, pretending to be asleep, and not coming down. But then I remembered last winter, when I had the grippe and couldn’t get out of bed for four days. The men made an awful mess of the kitchen. They left the dirty dishes in the sink, and everything was sticky and greasy and crumby by the time I was well enough to come downstairs. And in four days they never once cleaned the privy. Oh, dear heavens, that is vulgar again! But how am I to be anything but vulgar, living in such a house?

I went downstairs and sliced ham and bread and cheese and made sandwiches. I put out jelly and pickles and cold baked beans. I couldn’t chew, because my face was too sore, but I had a glass of milk and some of the beans. Father looked at me and said, “That eye’s near swollen shut. Maybe that’ll keep you from reading instead of doing your chores.” How heartless he is! He was vexed with Mark for sending for the doctor, because the wound might have mended without stitching, and now there’ll be a bill to pay.

All through supper, Father reminded Mark of the expenses we’ve had this spring. Mark didn’t answer back. He just shoveled in his food. Every now and then Father would fall silent, and we’d think it was over, but then he’d start up again.

It was an unpleasant meal, even for Steeple Farm. But the men ate just as much as usual. When I stood up to clear away the plates, I felt frail and shaky. I wondered how much blood I’d lost and if it was enough to make me faint. I wished I could faint, right in front of everyone. But I didn’t. I cleared up the dishes and slipped my diary out from under the dish towels and brought it upstairs.