The Hired Girl(42)

I felt like thirty cents. I guess I’d had some fool idea in my head that the way we met, with him rescuing me, would forge a link between us. I’d started to think that Mr. Solomon was a little bit like Mr. Rochester. Well, he isn’t, and that’s all there is to it. Mr. Rochester knew that Jane Eyre was his equal, even though she was a governess. But when Mr. Solomon looks at me, all he sees is a hired girl. He even forgot my name!

I watched him descend the stairs, and I noticed something. The hair on top of Mr. Solomon’s head is getting a little bit thin. He’s going to have a bald spot there. I didn’t know that a man so young could be losing his hair. I wonder if he knows. The idea that he might not suspect makes me feel a little bit sorry for him. It seems very melancholy. Of course, a bald spot wouldn’t matter if he were more like Mr. Rochester, but —

Altogether it was very unsettling.



Thursday, July the thirteenth, 1911

Today was busy with shopping and getting ready for the return of Mr. Rosenbach — Mrs. Rosenbach’s husband, that is, not Mr. Solomon. Malka was determined that the master should have all his favorite foods. She sent me to the market three times to get things she’d forgotten — allspice for red cabbage, Jamaica ginger for the beef, and peaches for dessert. In the midst of all this, the child Mirele complained of a sore throat and asked for a tray of cinnamon toast. It seems that cinnamon toast is invalid’s fare in the Rosenbach household. Malka was exasperated because she said Mirele was no more sick than she was, but she had me make the toast and carry up the tray.

I wasn’t sorry to be sent upstairs, because I’m curious about Mirele, who seems to do nothing but change her clothes and play with her friends in Druid Hill Park. I iron her dresses and tidy her room, and the one thing I know for sure about her is that she’s a slob. Of course slob isn’t a very refined word, but slatternly is too harsh. And in fact, the child isn’t slatternly; she is dainty in her person, but her room is the room of a slob. It’s nothing to find her hairbrush in her unmade bed and orange peels all over the dresser.

I found little Miss Rosenbach in bed. She wore a summer nightdress decorated with pale-green ribbons, and she was playing solitaire.

“Oh, good,” said Mirele, reaching for the tray. “I’m famished. You can put the tray on the bed.”

I didn’t want to. Those sheets were changed on Tuesday, and I didn’t want them full of crumbs and sugar grit. I coaxed, “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable at your desk, Miss?”

“No,” answered Mirele promptly. “I like eating in bed. When you’re sick, you get to have cinnamon toast in bed. That’s part of the fun.”

I sighed and put down the tray, but Mirele had no intention of letting me leave. “Sit down and talk to me,” she commanded.

“I can’t,” said I. “Malka needs me in the kitchen.”

“If you leave, you’ll have to climb the stairs to take the tray back,” Mirele pointed out. “It’s easier if you stay. It won’t take me long to eat two slices of toast. Stingy old Malka, I wanted three. I’m glad you’re here, because I want someone to talk to. Are you really eighteen? Mama says if you’re a day over sixteen, she’ll eat her hat. Are you sixteen?”

“No,” I said, with perfect truth. “Your mother’s mistaken.”

“I’m twelve,” she said, and took a gulp of milk.

I stared because she didn’t look twelve. She might have been ten or even nine, she was so tiny. It was funny to think she was only two years younger. “I guess you’re small for your age,” I said.

“Yes. It’s good in a way,” Mirele explained. “People treat me like a baby, but I get away with more. I don’t believe you’re eighteen years old. You played with my dollhouse, didn’t you?”

I had, actually. It was more cleaning than playing, but I’ll admit it: I’ve never seen anything like that dollhouse. It’s four feet tall, with three floors full of perfect miniature furniture: needlepoint carpets, and cunning little chairs upholstered in striped silk, and a kitchen full of tiny willowware plates stuck with cardboard food. I could never have imagined such an elaborate and expensive toy. If it had been mine — when I was little, I mean — I’d have kept it in apple-pie order.

But Mirele is a slob, and her dollhouse is a mess. That’s a problem for me, because the house has only three walls and you can see inside. The first time I cleaned Mirele’s room, I stood in the doorway and checked to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. My gaze fell on that dollhouse: a pigsty and an eyesore. The dolls were lying on the floor like drunkards, and the chairs were tipped over, and the dolly beds weren’t made — the little quilts and pillows were all over the floor.