The Hired Girl(113)

“Somebody has to clean the oven!” exploded Mr. Rosenbach. I realized David was right: he does aggravate his father. “Do you want Malka to get down on her knees and clean it, at her age? Janet’s young and strong and she gets a fair wage. About which she does not complain, because young as she is, she has more sense than you —”

“All the same, she’s better than that,” argued David. “She gets Sunday morning off for church, and one paltry afternoon. Has anyone even thought to tell her where the Pratt Library is? She could have a library card; she loves books —”

“I know she loves books,” Mr. Rosenbach broke in. “I lend her my books; she’s welcome to read anything in the house.”

“What if she wants to read a book by someone who isn’t dead?” demanded David. “The world is changing, Papa —”

“Since when has the world not been changing?” retorted Mr. Rosenbach. I never heard him sound so testy before. “Am I to assume you are now a Socialist? Because we have a zaftig hired girl cleaning the oven, you are unhappy with the rules of society? Last year, when the sales clerks wanted an increase in their wages, you refused to go over the books with me. You said it was tedious, and off you went with your tennis racket! Now you’re tearing your hair out because we hire someone to keep Malka out of the oven! Are you offering to clean it yourself ? And what, may I ask you, is wrong with a library of classic literature? Du lieber Gott, but you try my patience! First you flirt with the Gratz girl, and I have to go to New York and patch things up, and now you are full of half-hatched ideas about culture and the lower classes —”

“Janet,” said a voice behind me, “you are eavesdropping.”

It was Mrs. Rosenbach. I spun round to face her. I’d been so intent; I hadn’t heard the rustle of her petticoats.

My hands flew to my face. I know I was red as a brick, and I couldn’t defend myself. I fled. I felt so common, so much like an ordinary, vulgar servant girl. And that’s just what Mrs. Rosenbach thinks of me. How can I blame her? There I was, listening at doors. That’s what servants do.

No wonder she despises me. Now it will be worse, and she’ll never accept me as a wife for her son.

David defended me. That’s what I have to remember. He said I have brains and grit and imagination. He thinks I’m made for finer things than cleaning ovens; that I ought to have a library card, and go to the opera.

But he also said the opera was tatty, and that makes me feel ashamed, because I didn’t know it was tatty. I thought it was sublime.

I wish I weren’t so low-down and ignorant. I wish I were sophisticated and had poise like Mrs. Rosenbach, or even Mimi. I wish I had fine clothes and a slender waist and never lost my dignity. I wish I had some dignity to lose.

David likes me the way I am, I know. He says I’m a peach. But when he spoke to his father, he didn’t call me Janet; he never once used my name. He called me “the girl” as if I were any old hired girl, and not his girl.



Saturday, Rosh Hashanah, September the twenty-third, 1911

It’s quiet now. Everyone is at Temple. Even Malka went, though she doesn’t often go to services; she says they’re for the men. But she went today. The services for Rosh Hashanah are very long, and it’s a family tradition to take a walk around Druid Lake afterward. So I’m alone in the house, and I can write at the kitchen table.

My stomach is growling. I can smell roast chicken and brisket and potato kugel (no raisins!). I can smell the vinegar dressing for the cucumber salad and the honey from the cakes. That’s one thing the books have wrong about love. I haven’t lost my appetite. I’m hungry all the time. Last night Malka fussed at me because I ate all the almond cookies in the green tin. We don’t need them; we have honey cakes and pomegranates for dessert, and dough balls called tayglach.

The table’s set and the kitchen’s tidy. When I hear the front door, I’ll heat up the soup we made Friday morning, put the rolls in the oven to warm, carve the chicken and the brisket, and slice the apples.

It seems so strange to be sitting here, almost idle. I worked for a while learning my catechism, but it made me want to go to sleep. I wish I could sleep, but I have to baste the chicken from time to time, and I ought to think; these past two days have been so busy I haven’t had time.

Last night I dreamed about Ma again. I don’t remember much — only that she was displeased with me and wouldn’t look me in the face. Oh, Ma, I can’t help it! I can’t help being in love! I never knew that love was so irresistible, so desperate. It’s just like that song from La Traviata — rapture, rapture and torment. The torment’s worse than I expected, but I don’t want it to stop.