The Hired Girl(2)

After the service Ma would light a candle in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother, and I loved her, because she was as slender as a girl, with a smile that looked as if she was teasing someone she loved very dearly. I still pray to her — I carry a picture of the statue in my mind — and sometimes she answers me back, though I’m never sure if the voice is hers or Ma’s, or if the whole thing is my imagination.

It was warm this morning. I tried not to walk too fast, because I didn’t want to look red faced and hot when I saw Miss Chandler. My Sunday dress this year is heavy cotton. I declare, that dress is a sore spot with me. Father always asks the storekeeper what’s cheap, and that’s what he buys. This year what was cheap was a chocolate-brown twill with little bunches of purple flowers on it. Something went wrong with the printing, and the flowers are all blotched and don’t look like flowers at all. Because the pattern was spoiled, the cloth was so cheap that Father bought the rest of the bolt and says it can be next year’s new dress, too. I was so despairing that I went upstairs to cry. One of my books, Dombey and Son, is about a girl named Florence and her awful father that she loves even though he never pays any attention to her. But Florence has pretty clothes and she doesn’t have to work as hard as I do, so I guess it’s easier for her to love her father.

Father says I grow so fast there’s no use wasting money on my clothes. He calls me an ox of a girl, and I wish he wouldn’t, because when I look in the mirror, that’s what I see. I wish I weren’t so tall and coarse-like. Even my hair is ox colored, reddish brown and neither curly nor straight, but each strand kinked and thick and standing away from the others. My braids are almost as thick as my wrists, and my wrists are all thick and muscled from scrubbing.

The Presbyterian church isn’t as pretty as St. Mary’s, because there is no colored glass. But it’s very clean and bright inside, and the morning was fine, and the ladies wore their best hats. I looked for Miss Chandler’s hat, which has the wing of an arctic tern on it, but I couldn’t see it. I saw two girls from school, Alice Marsh and Lucy Watkins. I sat down in the back and was glad they couldn’t see me. Alice isn’t so bad; she will speak to me quite pleasantly if Lucy and Hazel Fry aren’t with her, and she doesn’t tease. But I think Alice is a coward, because she lets Lucy and Hazel decide who her friends should be. I wouldn’t let another girl make up my mind for me like that. I can never decide whether to be grateful to Alice because she is kinder than the others, or whether I ought to despise her for being such a poltroon. So I do both.

I hate Lucy Watkins and Hazel Fry. After Ma died I didn’t do the washing as regular as I might because there was so much else I had to do — all the cooking and putting food by. The men didn’t seem to mind so much if I was behind with the laundry, and I guess that first year I looked slatternly, because Ma wasn’t there to help me with my clothes. That was when the other girls set their faces against me. I remember we had to read a poem by William Shakespeare, and the part about spring was so beautiful, with flowers called lady’s-smocks painting the meadow with delight. But the second part of the poem was about winter, not spring, and it was about someone called Greasy Joan keeling the pot, and that’s when Lucy Watkins started giggling, and the other girls joined in. At recess they called me Greasy Joan. I told the teacher. It was Miss Lang then, and I loved her dearly, though not so much as dear Miss Chandler. Miss Lang said that now that I was growing up to be a young lady, I must work hard to keep my hair neat and my clothes pressed. She said — I remember how she lowered her voice when she said it — that my things were not so fresh as they might be. I knew she meant to be kind. But I also knew that what she meant was that I smelled bad. I was dreadfully ashamed, and I never felt the same toward Miss Lang after that. She must have rebuked Lucy and Hazel, and she made them stop calling me Greasy Joan. But sometimes they’d put their heads together and giggle, and I knew they were still thinking it.

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.