The Hired Girl(4)

The panorama from the kitchen window is very striking because the ground falls away from the house and the barnyard on all sides. Our house and barns rest on the top of a steep hill. The hill is so steep that the land wasn’t too dear, and my great-grandfather got a bargain when he bought it. He named it Steep Hill Farm, but after a time it became Steeple — there isn’t any steeple nearby, so the name would be confusing to strangers, except that strangers seldom come this way. The farm is fourteen acres and has been in the family for nigh on eighty years. The youngest son is always the one to inherit the property. Luke will have Steeple Farm some day, though Father says he’s lazy and a disappointment.

The strawberries are close to ripe just now. I half fancy I can smell them, sitting here by the open window, with my diary on my knee. The breeze is very refreshing. The sky is lofty and celestial blue, with gossamer clouds o’erhead, and the wind chasing them all over the sky. The fields are verdant green, and —



Later that evening

Oh, oh, oh! I am in the most miserable pain! My whole face is swollen and throbbing and I would cry my eyes out, except that screwing up my face pulls my stitches. And oh, how horrible I look! I am accursed — the unluckiest girl who ever lived! I have often thought so, but this proves it.

How contented I was, writing in my book and contemplating the view of Steeple Farm from the kitchen window! How little I dreamed that this was the beginning of another misfortune! I looked out the window and saw that Cressy, the Jersey cow, had escaped from the cow pasture and was heading up the hill to the farmyard.

It would be Cressy, of course. Luke says Cressy and I are alike — both of us too smart for our own good. Cows were meant to be stupid creatures, Luke says, and so were women, but Cressy and I are the exceptions that prove the rule. I abominate Luke for saying that, but I agree with him about Cressy. She’s a bad cow. She never stays where you put her. She’ll find the weakest section of fence and lean her fat red rump against it, swaying back and forth until she works the top rail loose. I’ve seen her do it. Last year she got out and trampled the strawberry bed and there were no strawberries to sell. Father was awful angry.

I leaped off the table and ran out the door to catch her. I didn’t think to put my boots on — I was in the slovenly slippers I wear around the house. I seized her by the halter and started to drag her back to the pasture. She balked. She gazed at me as if she couldn’t imagine what I wanted.

I wanted to slap her, because she knew perfectly well. Of all the cows in the world, she’s not stupid. But I said, “Cush, cush,” in my best cow voice, and tugged her halter, and she started forward — only her great, heavy hoof came down on my foot. Heaven knows it’s not the first time a horse or a cow has trod on me, and it won’t be the last, but I don’t recollect the other times hurting so bad. I guess it was partly my slippers and partly the way her hoof came down. I yelled with pain and slapped her shoulder, and she blinked at me with those long cow-y eyelashes, playing stupid. I leaned on her and shouted at her and tried to make her get off, but she was like a stone cow, she was so still — and all the while my foot felt as if every bone was splintering.

What I did next was stupid. I won’t say it wasn’t. I bent over and tugged at that leg of hers, as if I could pull her off my foot. It was a brainless thing to do, because a cow’s strength is ever so much greater than a girl’s, and even if it weren’t, cows’ legs don’t move sideways. But I guess I startled Cressy, tugging on her leg like that. So she decided to move forward, and her other front leg came forward, swift as lightning, and kneed me in the eye.

I screamed. There was blood everywhere, and I screamed so loud that Cressy took off. I put my hands to my face and at once they were coated slick with blood, and blood was running down my cheek and inside the collar of my dress. I didn’t know if my eyeball had been knocked out of the socket or if I was going to be blind. I couldn’t know, and I couldn’t think. I only knew I hurt and there was too much blood, so I kept screaming. It was Mark who got to me first, thank God, and he hurt me, swiping the blood away with his rough sleeve and shouting at me, demanding to know what happened. Finally I heard him say, “Thank God, Sis, it’s not your eye. It’s the skin above it. It’s not your eye.” And then, as if he couldn’t quite believe it, he covered my good eye with his hand and asked, “Can you see?”

I could. My eyelashes were sticky with blood, and already my eye was swelling up so that the world looked bizarre. It was too colorful, the green grass and the blue sky and the blood beads on my eyelashes. I gulped, “Yes,” and Mark put his arms around me. It was just for the moment, but I loved him for it. The last time he held me like that was the day of Ma’s funeral. And he said, “Thank God, thank God.”