The Hired Girl(63)

My last hope was that Malka might let me keep the kitten in the kitchen. But Malka said the Thomashefsky cat wouldn’t like it, and as if to prove her right, the wretched cat hissed and growled at that poor little kitten. Malka told me to put the kitten out. She said it would find its way back to its mother.

I didn’t believe that for a minute. I’m sure that kitten has no mother. Somehow I know that Moonstone is like me, all alone in the world. It was wrong to put him back outside, where there are big dogs and automobiles and nasty little boys who throw stones. I really could not bear it, and I cried. At last Malka relented and said I could give Moonstone a little milk before I turned him out.

So I poured out a saucer of milk — I forgot to say that by that time Moonstone was tired of being held and was mewing and scratching. I took one of the cold fish balls we made for supper and broke it up for him. Malka said it was a crime to waste her good fish balls like that, but I told her I wouldn’t have any; Moonstone was only eating mine. I put the food on the floor, but the Thomashefsky cat came slinking over, the greedy thing. So I had to feed Moonstone outside, in Malka’s miserable little plot of a garden.

I was afraid he would run away but he didn’t. At first he hid behind the garbage bins, but I was able to coax him out again. When he tried to lap the milk, he sneezed. I squatted down and dipped my hand in the milk and let him lick it off my finger. I know he’s too young to face the world by himself. It hurts my heart, what a baby he is.

I could have stayed with him forever, but Malka called me in and made me shuck corn. All evening she scolded me because I kept looking outside to see if he was still there. The last time I looked — just before nine — he wasn’t, and I can’t bear thinking of that little, little darling thing out in the dark.

I can’t bear it. It’s past midnight, but I’m going to go search for him. No one will hear me creep downstairs and go out the cellar door. And if I find Moonstone, I shall bring him upstairs to my room, where he’ll be safe — and if I lose my job for saving his life, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.



Thursday, August the third, 1911

I am so bereft. I miss Moonstone, though my time with him was so fleeting. I wouldn’t have thought I could love anything so much in such a short while. Miss Chandler once told me about a great Italian poet named Dante Alighieri, who fell in love with a girl he saw on a bridge. He never got to know her; he just saw her crossing the bridge and fell in love. I thought it strange and wonderful that a poet could fall in love so quickly and stay in love his whole life long. The girl — her name was Beatrice — was little more than a child. But maybe he loved her just because she was so young. Maybe her youth made him feel tenderhearted, the way Moonstone made me feel.

When I went to search for Moonstone, I found him behind the garbage bins. I coaxed him out and smuggled him upstairs. I’m sure he was glad to see me, because he purred when I picked him up. And oh, he was so cunning in my bedroom, so bright-eyed and graceful that I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Even though it was past midnight, he wanted to play. After an hour or so, I was sleepy. I put him in bed with me and blew out the candle, but he didn’t sleep. He thought I was a mountain range, and he wanted to explore. I tried to keep still so he’d go to sleep, but I have a way of twitching my toes back and forth when I’m drowsy, and that made him think there was a mouse under the sheet. He pounced on my toes again and again.

But by and by I slept, and he did, too. When I woke the next morning, there was a little circle of golden fur by my side. How can cats make themselves into such perfect rounds? I looked at him and he was so soft and stripy and golden and young; I kissed him again and again.

Only, when I got up, I found he’d been a bad cat in the night. He’d tried to cover it up, but he’d been bad on my stockings. I couldn’t blame him because he was a prisoner in my room, but the smell was nasty. I began to see how difficult it was going to be to hide him, with the messes and the meows and having to steal food from the kitchen.

I didn’t know what to do, so I prayed. I begged the Blessed Mother to show me a way to save Moonstone. I know she heard me, because all at once I remembered what Mrs. Rosenbach said my first night here. Oh, Solly! It used to be cats and dogs! I saw the significance of those words. Before he rescued me, Mr. Solomon must have brought home stray cats and dogs.

So then I knew what to do: ask Mr. Solomon for help. Perhaps he could talk Mrs. Rosenbach into letting me keep Moonstone. After all, he’s her firstborn son, and anyone can see how proud she is of him. I don’t always like Mrs. R., but she’s a very devoted mother.