The Hired Girl(101)

We let him run, as it seemed easier than stopping him. After what seemed like an hour, he stopped. “I want,” he panted in his hoarse little voice, “to play with some toys.”

We didn’t have any toys. Malka asked him coaxingly if he’d like to take a nice little nap. Oskar said he wouldn’t.

Malka looked at me with desperation in her eyes, and I rose to the occasion. I remembered how Luke and I used to play on the days when Ma aired her quilts. “I’ll take Oskar up to my room. We’ll make a blanket tent and play Indians. He’ll like that, won’t you, Oskar?”

Oskar looked intrigued, so I led him upstairs. I rigged a tent by draping the bedclothes over the foot of my bed and the top of the dresser. We crawled inside the tent, and I told Oskar there was a blizzard outside (we made blizzard noises) with wild wolves howling (we howled). Then I was inspired to say that we were starving to death inside our tent, and that we would die if no Indian was brave enough to go out and hunt buffalo. Oskar took the bait. “I’ll go,” he said, and squared his shoulders. “I’ll go kill the buffalo.”

“I’ll make you a horse,” I offered. To tell the truth, I was starting to enjoy myself. I tore strips from my old sage-green dress to make a bridle, and I tied them to the back of a chair. Oskar rode up and down the prairie, rocking the chair back and forth and flapping the reins.

Then he demanded a buffalo. I produced my cardboard suitcase, which he beat to death with his bare hands. He dragged the slain buffalo back to the tent, and we pretended to gnaw on buffalo meat. “You’re good at playing,” Oskar said earnestly.

I felt terribly pleased. But of course, one buffalo was not enough; he had to hunt another one. Then we killed a few wolves. After the last wolf was dead, he collapsed in the tent beside me.

That was when he saw Ma’s crucifix. It had fallen to the floor when I stripped the bed. “What’s that?”

In a flash, I saw my opportunity. I don’t think I could ever persuade Mr. Rosenbach to turn apostate, and Mr. Solomon is going to study Talmud. But Oskar is young, and he looks up to me. I hoped I might be able to plant a seed of the True Faith in his soul.

So I told him about Our Lord. I told him how kind Jesus was to children and poor people, and how gentle He was, but Oskar only fidgeted. I told him how Jesus could walk on the water and feed thousands of people with only a few fishes and a few loaves of bread. “But why’s he bleeding?” asked Oskar, and I realized I was going to have to tell him about Our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection.

I began. I showed him the picture of the Crucifixion in my missal. I was afraid the cruelty of the story would scare him. It appalled me when I was a child and does to this day. I remember asking Ma why my salvation couldn’t have come without Jesus getting hurt. But Oskar didn’t feel as I did. He demanded, “How’d they get him to go so high up?”

It took me a moment to grasp what he meant. In the picture in my missal, St. John and the Blessed Mother stood below Christ’s feet. “They made Him lie down on the Cross when it was still on the ground,” I said. “Once He was on it, they stood the Cross up.”

“How’d they stand it up?” persisted Oskar. “Did they use a pulley? And how’d they stick the bottom part in the ground? Did they dig a hole?”

I shook my head, aghast. I couldn’t answer his question. It never occurred to me to wonder how the Cross was raised, or how it was anchored in the ground. For me, that’s not part of the story. The story is about His courage and His love.

I reminded myself that Oskar is very young. Jesus isn’t real to him. I skipped forward and told him about the glorious surprise of the Resurrection. I explained that Jesus had opened the gates of heaven to everyone who believed in Him. All at once, I saw that Oskar was looking past me, over my head.

Mrs. Rosenbach stood in the doorway. Mrs. Friedhoff stood just behind her, but it was Mrs. Rosenbach I saw. Her face frightened me. It wasn’t that her eyes flashed or her nostrils flared or any of the things you might read about in a novel. But it was stony still. It reminded me of a picture of Medusa I’d seen in one of Mr. Rosenbach’s books.

“Oskar,” she said crisply, “go downstairs and tell Malka to wash your hands and face.”

Oskar looked from her to me. Then he put down the crucifix, scrambled to his feet, and clattered out of the room.

Mrs. Rosenbach waited until he had gone. “This must never happen again.”

I flinched at the sound of her voice. All at once I felt stupid and childish, kneeling on the floor surrounded by the mess: the tent, the torn dress, the banged-up suitcase. I slid the crucifix under my apron, shielding it from her Greek-monster gaze.