The Hired Girl(126)

I stared down at my empty plate. I couldn’t think. I’d offered myself to David and he didn’t love me; I’d been mortified before the entire family; Mimi had read my diary. I was fourteen again, and in danger of being sent home. Now there was something new: I was to go to school. I ought to have been glad, but I felt numb. I wanted to climb the stairs and go back to bed.

“You’ll go to school and get an education,” persisted Malka, “and then we’ll see. Who knows what you’ll become? The world’s changing — not for the better, if you ask me — but in these crazy modern times, a girl can be anything. A doctor, even.”

“I don’t want to be a doctor.” I knew I sounded sullen and ungrateful, but I didn’t care. “I hate sick people. And I can’t take a scholarship from Mr. Rosenbach. He patronized me. I won’t accept charity.”

“Yes, you will,” Malka said threateningly. She got up and came around the table and locked her arms around me. “You take that education,” she said against the top of my head. “When life offers you something good, you take it, you hear me? You go to a good school, learn everything you can, and grow up to be a woman. That’s what you’ll do,” she finished, and she held me so close I felt her old heart beating.

So I gave in. I even took a crumb of comfort, because she loves me. It wasn’t what I would have chosen. I wanted David to love me, not Malka. But I guess I’m a beggar and can’t be a chooser. Being proud belongs in novels. In real life, you eat the cinnamon toast, even if your heart is burning.

And my heart is burning. It isn’t just a figure of speech. When I think of David going away, the pain is like a fist against my breastbone, hot and sore. A mist rises before my eyes as I write this, and teardrops splash onto my inky words. He’s going away. He’ll see Paris and forget me; I know he will. I’ve lost him, my only love: the artist who was going to show me Paris; the man who was going to teach me to draw. I weep for the conversations we never had and the kisses I wanted to take from his lips. We never even said good-bye.

But in a year’s time, I will go to school. I don’t seem to care about it, but it’s what Ma would have wanted. It’s what I wanted, once. I wanted it more than anything.

In a year’s time, I will go to school.





Sunday, September the twenty-ninth, 1912

This morning Mimi bought me a present, a blank book from Rosenbach’s Department Store. She plunked it down on the ironing board and said, “Here. Now you can write another diary.”

I retorted, “Why? So you can read it behind my back?” which I thought was very cutting. But Mimi only flicked open her lorgnette and answered, “So you can be an authoress.”

I’ve never been able to get Mimi to feel any remorse over reading my diary. Whenever I try, she flashes me one of her starry-eyed, admiring looks (she’s practicing that look so she can use it on boys) and says my diary was the best book she’s ever read. That’s where I lose ground. I’m unmanned by flattery.

I thanked her for the blank book, which is handsome: crimson leather with stiff creamy pages. I didn’t promise to write another diary, though. Once someone reads your diary, you’re never the same again. You realize you’re not alone when you write, and you start to write for the person who will read your words. I think that’s a bad thing, but I’m not sure, because I do think of being an author someday, and authors have to commune with their readers.

After Mimi left and I finished the ironing, I went to my room and took Anna’s old dressing case from under the bed. Anna gave me the dressing case after she found out that Mimi read my diary. It has a lock and key, so I can be private.

It’s been almost a year since I opened this diary. So much has changed since I locked it away! There are nine blank pages left at the end: I’m going to fill them up with everything that’s happened, lock up the book, and begin the new year. I’ve become very Jewish, because it seems to me that the real New Year begins in the fall, with housecleaning and Rosh Hashanah.

And school! I’m starting school tomorrow, and I’m very excited. I’ll be studying Algebra and Latin, Ancient History, Art, English Literature, and Creative Expression. Mr. Rosenbach took us to see the school building, and it’s sumptuous. The house on Auchentoroly Terrace used to be a mansion. There are high windows everywhere, so the rooms are full of light, and at the foot of the grand staircase, there’s a statue of the Roman god Mercury. I expect to feel very aristocratic, going up and down those stairs.