The Hired Girl(64)

I shut Moonstone in my room and started downstairs. I tried to think how I might catch Mr. Solomon alone. It wouldn’t be easy because he often goes to Temple in the morning. I was still pondering when I reached the stair landing. Then impulse seized upon me. I tiptoed down the hall to Mr. Solomon’s door and stood outside, listening.

I heard a drawer open and shut. He was awake and humming one of those sad-happy Jewish tunes. I knocked. Now that I look back, it strikes me that going to his bedroom was a bold thing to do. But at the time, I didn’t think about it. Every day I go into Mr. Solomon’s room and make the bed, and dust the furniture, and pull the shades down so the room won’t heat up. I gather his dirty clothes and check to see if his shoes need polishing, and I comb the hairs out of his hairbrush. Mr. Solomon is tidy except for his socks. For some reason, he likes to roll them up in little balls and toss them around. I never know where I’ll find them. I don’t know why I’m writing this. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it would be easier for me to be shy about men’s bedrooms if I weren’t a hired girl.

All the same, I jumped when the door opened.

He was dressed and shaved, thank goodness. He looked at me quizzically and said, “Janet?” I could see him trying to work out why I was knocking on his door.

I thought I’d better be quick. I said, “Oh, sir, I’m sorry to trouble you, but I don’t know what to do and —”

“Is something wrong downstairs?” he asked. “Is Malka ill?”

“No, no,” I said. “But I need your help something awful — I don’t know who else could help me.” My eyes filled up with tears. I thought of how little Moonstone was, and how he didn’t have anyone but me, and how I didn’t have anyone but Mr. Solomon.

Mr. Solomon said, “Can’t this wait? Surely after breakfast —” But then he switched to making consoling Jewish sounds. I told him how Mimi and I rescued Moonstone together and how Mrs. Rosenbach said we couldn’t keep him. I told him how Malka made me shoo him outside and how in the night I couldn’t bear it and I had to rescue him again.

“The kitten’s upstairs?” he said, before I’d quite finished. “In your room?”

“I couldn’t leave him out in the dark,” I said. “He’s just a tiny little kitten.”

“Let me see him,” said Mr. Solomon.

He followed me to my room. When we opened the door, Moonstone was up on the windowsill, watching the sparrows. He leaped onto the chair and down to the floor, and crossed the linoleum with his little tail held high. My heart swelled at the sight of him. He was so bold, so curious, and so pretty.

Mr. Solomon hunkered down and tapped his fingers on the floor. Moonstone pricked up his ears. Then Mr. Solomon took his handkerchief from his pocket, shook it loose, and tickled the floor with it.

The kitten was delighted. He began to frisk and scamper and pounce. Mr. Solomon played with him — oh, so gently! Ma used to say that men were rough because that was their nature. I wish she could have seen Mr. Solomon playing with Moonstone.

“He’s a pretty little fellow,” said Mr. Solomon. With one deft hand, he caught hold of the kitten and turned him on his back. “Actually, it’s a she. She’s friendly, too. No wonder you lost your heart to her.”

I knelt down across from him. “That’s just it — that’s exactly what happened. I’ve lost my heart. I can’t part with him — her. I just can’t!”

He made a soft noise with his tongue against his teeth and dangled the handkerchief over Moonstone’s head, so she had to leap for it. Then he waved it in a circle, so that she chased her tail. I couldn’t help laughing. Most of the time when you laugh, it’s because something is amiss — clumsy or wrong or sad — but when you laugh at a kitten, you laugh for pure joy. “Do you think you can persuade your mother to let me keep her?”

He looked me straight in the eye. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry, Janet, but I know my mother. When I was a boy, I was always bringing home stray animals. Then it became Malka’s job to care for them, and Mother’s job to find them new homes. A kitten is more work than you think. They get into everything, and they need to be watched.”

“I’ll watch her,” I vowed, but I felt my eyes fill with tears. Malka keeps me busy all day long.

“You can’t,” said Mr. Solomon gently. “You have work to do. Besides, Mother won’t allow it. She’ll be even more set against the kitten when she finds out it’s a girl. That means kittens later on. And then there’s Thomashefsky. Cats don’t like sharing their homes.”