The Hired Girl(86)

Mimi at once went into a long description, dramatizing with gestures and tugging her curls. I concentrated on my soda. It tasted good, but it felt fizzy and funny in my stomach. It’s almost the time of the month for me to be unwell, and I wondered if I’d already begun. I was trying to work out exactly how many days it had been since the last time, when Mimi said, “I think David’s writing letters to a shiksa.”

I know now what a shiksa is. It turns out I really am one, but there’s nothing wrong with being a shiksa — it’s just a girl who isn’t Jewish. “He is?”

Mimi nodded. “She’s French,” she breathed as if this made matters worse, “and the name on the envelopes is Madame Jean-Baptiste Marechaux. Jean-Baptiste,” she repeated, and I felt a pang of envy because she pouted so prettily and sounded so foreign. “That means John the Baptist. It’s not a name a Jew would give his son. And it’s Madame Marechaux, so David’s exchanging letters with a married woman. I expect there will be another scandal,” she concluded placidly, and drew on her straw.

“Don’t suck your straw like that,” I said sharply. “That’s not a polite noise.” The truth was, she was getting on my nerves. “And stop talking about scandals and flirtations. You’re a little girl.”

Mimi put out her tongue. “You’re not much older,” she said. “I still don’t believe you’re eighteen. Just then you sounded like the worst kind of grown-up. I thought you were better than that.”

I didn’t know how I felt when she said that. I didn’t know whether I wanted to be a grown-up, or a child like Mimi, self-possessed and spoiled and happy so long as she had an ice-cream soda to drink. Luckily it was getting late, and I said so. Mimi consulted her little gold watch and said it was only half past three, but I pointed out it was half past four.

We bickered together on the streetcar. By the time we were home, I was thoroughly tired of her.

I found Malka very low. She’s decided that all the rugs must be taken up and beaten before the High Holy Days. Everything has to be very clean for Rosh Hashanah. The electric carpet sweeper would have made the carpets clean enough, but since we have only the ordinary kind, the carpets will have to come up. Malka made up a timetable of how many carpets we’ll have to do between now and the twenty-second. It’s a dreadful list, because this house is full of carpets. I know this is her way of punishing Mrs. Rosenbach — she’s going to shame her by working her fingers to the bone. But it’s really my fingers that are going to be worked to the bone, because I can kneel to get the carpet tacks up, and Malka can’t. And I’ll be the one beating the carpets and doing the lion’s share of dragging them up and down the stairs.

I felt exasperated, but Malka was crying hard. Sometimes the work is too much for her, but she’d rather die than admit it. I tried to make her laugh by flexing my arm muscles and boasting about how strong I was. She did laugh a little. I can’t help worrying, though, because some of those carpets will need two people to carry them, and Malka shouldn’t be one of those people. The natural thing would be to ask one of the Rosenbach sons for help, but I can’t ask Mr. Solly for anything, not after I almost ruined his life by sending that sonnet to Nora Himmelrich. I hate the thought of David seeing me in my oldest dress with my hair tied up in a handkerchief. Beating carpets makes you so dirty. Sometimes it seems to me that David’s more powerful than I am — not with his muscles but in some way I can’t put my finger on — and if he sees me beating carpets, he’ll be even more powerful.

I reckon Thomashefsky sensed I was trying to comfort Malka — I was kneeling on the floor next to her chair — because he actually came up to me and put his front paws in my lap. I was so surprised; I scarcely dared breathe. After all these months of not liking me, he walked straight into my lap, lowered himself into a crouching position, and began to purr.

I think that was the only really nice thing that happened today. That and the fact that I’m not unwell yet, though all the symptoms are there. I bet tomorrow will be awful.

Altogether it has been a most irksome day.



Wednesday, September the sixth, 1911

I thought today would be horrid, but I’m in a good mood tonight. Just as I expected, I felt poorly when I got up this morning, and after breakfast, Malka wanted to get started on the carpets. When she heard I wasn’t well, she took pity on me and said we’d start with the smallest ones, the ones from Mimi’s room and the room that used to be Anna’s. We tackled them before the bridge ladies came.