The Hired Girl(11)

And then — when she was shut of him — Thumbelina found the poor dead swallow, resting in its tomb below the ground! I knew it would be shameful to cry in school, and I didn’t want the teacher to think I was a baby, so I bent my head to hide my tears. But I couldn’t bear the sorrow of the dead swallow. And the joy I felt, when Thumbelina nursed him and he turned out not to be dead after all! The joy and the wonder and the rightness of it!

Only, after that, the stuck-up mole with the black velvet coat wanted to marry Thumbelina. She had nothing but trouble with the men, poor thing! Luckily the swallow rescued her, flying her away to a land of orange trees and butterflies and freedom. Oh, that story! I never, never could have thought of anything so beautiful. When it was over — I couldn’t help myself — I forgot to raise my hand, and I cried out, “Oh, please, teacher, read it over, read it over!”

Then I was aghast because I had called out, and I thought Miss Lang would punish me. But she gave me a lovely smile and said, “When you learn to read, you will be able to read that story all by yourself.”

I became a scholar that day. I hung on Miss Lang’s words and did whatever she told me to do. Miss Lang said that learning the letters was the beginning of reading. So when I lay in bed at night, I stroked my ABCs on my pillowcase and made consonant sounds under my breath. I learned to read — quickly, quickly. So quickly that Miss Lang came to visit Ma.

I was peeling potatoes for supper. Ma told me to take them outside, so that she could talk to Miss Lang alone. I went out, wondering if I’d done something bad and what it might be. Ma told me nothing until later, when she put me to bed.

Ma was different that night. She had a fierce look on her face that frightened me a little because Ma was usually so meek. But I sensed that she was happy in some way I couldn’t understand. She stroked my cheek and said in a low, proud voice, “Miss Lang says you have a keen intelligence.”

I didn’t know what that was. Ma saw the question in my eyes. “She means you’re right smart,” she whispered, “real smart. She never had a child learn to read so quick. And she says you work hard, and have”— she paused to recollect the phrase —“real intellectual curiosity.”

“What does that mean?” I whispered.

“It means you needn’t marry a farmer,” Ma said, and her eyes were far away. “You needn’t marry anyone, unless you’ve a mind to it.” She brought her hand down and squeezed my chin harder than was comfortable. “You could be a schoolteacher, like Miss Lang.”

I considered this. I admired Miss Lang, with her crisp white shirtwaists, and her dark hair, and her silver-rimmed glasses. I liked the way she could rap her ruler three times on the desk and make everyone fall silent. I tried to nod my head to say that I was willing to be like Miss Lang, but Ma’s hand was still on my chin.

“That’s settled, then,” she said. She bent down and kissed me. From that day on, she had a vision of my future life, and she made sure I lived up to it. I loved reading and arithmetic, and history gave me no trouble, but I disliked spelling and didn’t care about geography. Ma made me spell words, and she pestered me with questions about cities and countries and capitals. She didn’t know the answers and I knew she didn’t, so sometimes I made them up. But that made me feel bad inside, so the next day in school I’d find the true answers in the big dictionary or Miss Lang’s atlas. When I was eight, I won the primary grades’ spelling bee. By the time I was nine, I’d come to love geography; it was the igloos and the whale blubber that caught me. I could draw any continent in the world, freehand, and label the countries and the capital cities.

I loved school, and I loved coming first in all my classes, but it wasn’t my studies that excited Ma the most. She had a vision of the life I would live. “You’ll board somewhere, likely,” she would say, and I’d see her eyes narrow as she pictured the boardinghouse where I would live. “You’ll be able to choose a respectable house, and you won’t have to dirty your hands with the ashes or the privy. You’ll send out the laundry.” She looked almost dreamy-eyed when she said that. We always hated washday. It’s fifty buckets of water for every load of laundry. The scrubbing hurts your back, and the lye soap eats the skin right off your hands.

“You’ll have pretty clothes and you’ll buy them with your own money,” Ma went on. “You’ll send them out to be washed, and you’ll be able to keep them nice.”