The Hired Girl(50)

By the time Mr. Rosenbach rang for me, my stomach was all tied up in knots. My heart beat fast as I opened the library door.

Mr. Rosenbach was standing over his desk, reading the newspaper, but he whirled around when I came in. He is mostly bald, but he has a dark mustache that is pointy and waxed and turns up at the ends. He shouted, just as I’d feared he would. “So! This is the little girl who loves books so much that she stays up all night and sets the house on fire! Come here!”

I said that he shouted, and he did. But it was kind of a joyful bellow, and he beckoned in a friendly way. I stumbled forward — I don’t mean I tripped or anything, but I felt off balance. He said, “Closer!” but I couldn’t think why he should want me to draw near. There was a far-off corner in my mind where I wanted to laugh because he called me a little girl and the top of his head is about level with my ear.

Up close, he is almost handsome. Not his features, which are irregular, but if you subtracted his face, he might be called handsome. He has good shoulders and he smells like cedar, and his shirts are so beautifully starched.

He said, “Which side?”

“Which side?” I echoed.

“You set your hair on fire. Which side of the head?”

I pointed and he stepped nearer and peered at me. I was too embarrassed to look at him. At last he stepped back. “You were not burned? You were not hurt?”

“No, sir,” I said. It struck me that neither Mrs. Rosenbach nor Malka had asked whether I was hurt. I guess they could see for themselves that I wasn’t.

He persisted. “Hands? Show me.”

I held up my hands for inspection. There’s a nasty blister on the web of my left thumb. He saw it and made sympathetic noises. They were like the noises Mr. Solomon made when I was crying in the park. At that time, I thought they were foreign noises, but now I know they’re Jewish noises.

“That’s a bad burn. Did you put anything on it?”

“I ran cold water on it,” I said. “But that’s from yesterday. From ironing.”

“Ah,” he said, in the German way, as if he were clearing his throat. Then he shouted, “Sit down, sit down!” as if he’d just thought of us sitting and couldn’t wait a single minute for it to happen. I sat down quickly and he bounced down opposite me. The way he moves is very energetic and rubbery, and he perched on the edge of his seat as if he was ready to jump up again. “So you love to read?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not dime novels, but Ivanhoe? The classics?”

“Yes, sir.” I took a deep breath. “I want to better myself.”

“She wants to better herself,” Mr. Rosenbach announced, although there was nobody for him to say it to except me. “She wants to be an educated young lady. So after a hard day’s work, she sits up late and sets the house on fire.”

“It wasn’t the house,” I said. I was contradicting him, but by then, I wasn’t afraid of him one bit. “It was just my hair. I should have been more careful with the candle, and I’m sorry I woke everyone up. I’m especially sorry that Mrs. Rosenbach’s book was ruined. But I’m going to buy her a new copy as soon as I can. I’m not sure I can fix the quilt, but —”

He interrupted me. “Enough about the quilt. There are hundreds of quilts in this house, hundreds. They’re a nuisance — that’s how many we have. No. I have thought it all through, and I know what must be done.” He gestured energetically. “We will order you a kimono.”

“A kimono,” I repeated.

“A kimono, a bathrobe, a dressing gown,” he said impatiently, as if I didn’t know the word. “Something that covers you from head to toe. Then, when the house is quiet, you can creep downstairs and read in the library, where there are electric lights. In this way, you will continue your education without setting your hair on fire.”

I stared at him with my mouth open. He began to laugh. “You would rather I scolded you? To accuse you of — what were the words my poor Malka used — setting us ablaze in our beds?”

I blurted out, “I thought you’d send me away.”

“You did?” He cocked his head. “You think I am the kind of man who will send away a little girl — an American girl! — who loves books so much that after a long day of putting up with my old friend Malka — Do you like her, my Malka? She’s an old torment, isn’t she? But I love her very much, and she’s fond of you, though now she’s angry, so you must eat humble pie. Will you do that? If you do, I think she will forgive you, and you will forgive her, and we will get you a bathrobe, so everything will be all right. I love books myself; do you think I should send away a servant because she wants to read?”