The Hired Girl(43)

I couldn’t stand it, so I put it to rights. It didn’t take five minutes, and that was the fun of it — you could clean a whole mansion in five minutes. I made the little beds and rearranged the furniture and set the dolls in chairs so that they looked comfortable. And the next day — well, I guess it was silly — I cut up a tiny section of Malka’s Yiddish newspaper so the papa doll could have something to read. He did look comical, sitting with that newspaper. After that — well, I allow myself one little change every day. Once I put the baby doll in the bathtub, with the mother kneeling next to him — I rolled up her sleeves to the elbows. Another time I made the china cat sleep on top of the piano. The Thomashefsky cat does that, and I think it’s cute.

I guess I do play with the dollhouse, just a little. It makes cleaning that sloppy room more interesting.

“It looked awful the way it was,” I defended myself. Then I remembered that I was a hired girl and added, “Miss.”

“Don’t call me Miss,” said Mirele. “We’re not very formal here, in case you haven’t noticed. I want you to call me Mimi. That’s what my friends call me.”

“Malka calls you Mirele.”

“That’s Yiddish. We all know a little Yiddish, because of Malka bringing up Papa, but Yiddish is vulgar, Mama says. She prefers Hochdeutsch. That means High German. My real name is Miriam, but I like Mimi better. I’m like the girl in the opera.” She put down her toast, clasped her hands, and sang in a small, true voice. “‘I call myself Mimi!’ Have you ever been to the opera?”

“No, but I’m going to, someday. And a Russian ballet, too.”

“I’ll call you Janet, because we’re almost the same age,” she said. She took a wolfish bite of toast. “Mmmm.” Then she began to gobble.

While she ate her toast, I took the opportunity to look at her. Nobody looks her best when she’s chewing, and I tried to take that into account, but even if you subtracted the chewing, Mirele Rosenbach was no beauty. She was small and nimble and wore her frilly clothes beautifully. But she had freckles, and her features weren’t regular. The lower part of her face came forward in a way that reminded me of a monkey. Her mouth was wide, and her little white teeth were crooked. Though her hair was curly, it was a disorganized kind of curly that made her look windblown.

And yet, if she wasn’t pretty, she didn’t know it. She spoke and walked and moved her hands as if she were bewitchingly pretty. And for some reason, it was hard to take your eyes off her. I guess a novel would have said it was the play of her features. She was lively; she was animated; her lips curved with mischief, and her small eyes sparkled.

I wonder if my features ever play. I bet they don’t.

I waited for her to finish her toast so that I could carry the tray downstairs. She set down her milk glass and said, “You do your hair too tight. It makes your ears stick out.”

I agreed with her. The new hairpins are good; my knot of hair no longer lurches or tumbles down. But those little caps aren’t becoming, and my ears look funny sticking out below.

“It’s not really your ears,” Mirele said, with belated tact. “They’re all right. It’s the way you do your hair. I’ll show you.” She slid out of bed and went to fetch her brush and comb. “Sit down. I love doing hair. I’m good at it. It won’t take a minute, and you’ll look ever so much better.”

I thought of Malka downstairs, but the temptation was too great. I sat down and let Mirele — Mimi — pluck off my cap. Never for a moment did I doubt that she would be better at arranging hair than I was. Skillfully she brushed and puffed and coiled. In a matter of seconds, my hair was a burnished crown, and my ears looked smaller.

“That’s better,” Mimi said judiciously. “You need to grab the hair like a rope, and let your hand slide up, down . . . twist, puff, and pin. It makes all the difference, having your hair nice. You have good eyes and a pretty complexion and your bruises are fading. I think your father is just terrible. I complain about Papa, but he would never, never strike me. He never even spanked me when I was little.”

“Then why do you complain?” I shouldn’t have asked, but it was hard for me to remember that I was the hired girl when Mimi didn’t seem to.

“Because he wants me to study all the time — and I de-test reading. It makes my head ache. Even during the summer, when I ought to have some peace, he makes me read.” She went to her desk and picked up a stack of books. “Papa gave me these before he left. He told me I had to read one of them. Little Women and Black Beauty and Huckleberry Finn. They’re all dreadfully long, and Huckleberry Finn isn’t even written in proper English. He left me arithmetic, too.” She held up a much-smeared page of sums. “Geography and spelling, and German and Hebrew — Hebrew’s impossible; I’ll never be able to learn it. Did your papa make you learn such awful stuff ?”