The Hired Girl (44 page)

I did a wicked thing on Saturday. While the Rosenbachs were at Temple, I went to the store and bought one of those watch lockets I’ve been hankering after. It’s dark-green enamel, with pansies on it. My heart beat fast when I put down the nine dollars, but I told myself I’ll be needing a watch, with work and school and Oskar to look after. I
know
I won’t look like a scholarship pupil with that locket around my neck.

After I came home, I put on my first-day-of-school clothes and peered at myself in the mirror. A schoolgirl smiled back at me: a wide-awake-looking girl, with a pink hair ribbon and a locket round her neck. She looked happy and prosperous, as if she’d never known passion (only I have) or worked like a drudge at Steeple Farm.

Father has written. Mr. Rosenbach made me write and tell him I was safe. At first I was terrified that Father would make me go back to the farm. But when Father wrote back — and it took him three months! — he wrote that Mark is married to Carrie Marsh, and she does the woman’s work now. He added that if I wanted to live with a pack of dirty Jews, it was all right with him, only I’d better not think I could come sashaying home when it suited me. Well, I have no notion of sashaying home. When I left Steeple Farm, I left forever. And I don’t think a man who never washes his neck has any right to cast aspersions on the Jews.

I didn’t want to show Father’s letter to Mr. Rosenbach, because of the anti-Semitism, but Mr. R. asked to see it. I think he was surprised that Father is so horrid. I wasn’t surprised. At first the nastiness hurt my feelings, but then I felt relieved. I’m glad Father doesn’t love me, because I don’t love him. Father Horst says I must find it in my heart to forgive him. I’m going to someday, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

The good thing about writing Father was that afterward I was free to write Miss Chandler. She was overjoyed to hear from me, but I think she is a little bit prejudiced, because she’s worried that the Rosenbachs are educating me so they can convert me to Judaism. I sent her a copy of
Daniel Deronda.
Dear Miss Chandler taught me so much! Maybe she’ll let me teach her about the goodness of the Jews.

Mr. Solomon married Ruth Kleman last April and moved to New York so he can attend yeshiva. I still think he’d be better off with Nora Himmelrich (except they don’t love each other), but he and Ruth seem to be happy so far. David is in Paris, studying at the Académie Colarossi.

Moonstone has become my cat. She wakes me every morning, purring and tickling my face with her whiskers. I think I would rather have a cat than a sweetheart, after all. They are less trouble, and even the handsomest sweetheart is sadly lacking in fur.

I still think about David. When I flipped through this diary, I came across the passage where I wrote that his kiss changed me from a girl into a woman. That seems like the sort of thing that should turn a girl into a woman, but now that I look back, it seems to me that I was awfully young at the time. I’m almost sixteen now, but I don’t feel grown up. All the same, it was passion that I felt for David, not a childish crush. It was thrilling and painful and beautiful. Being in love was one of the most interesting things that ever happened to me.

But it wasn’t the only interesting thing. Last Easter I was confirmed, and that was not only interesting, but important. It’s an awe-inspiring thing to take the Sacrament. Each time I approach the altar rail, I feel reverent and buoyant, as if my body were recalled to life, as well as my soul. But the sad thing is now that I’m a true Catholic, I sometimes lack religious fervor and am apt to oversleep on Sunday mornings. Kitty and I say the rosary together (she is Catholic, too), and when we hear the church bells, we stop work and pray the Angelus. I’m glad to be religious, because religion is tremendous. Sometimes it doesn’t feel tremendous; sometimes it feels like being inside a fence. But God is spacious and mysterious.

I have seen the Ocean! This past summer, after Oskar and Irma had chicken pox, we went to Atlantic City, and I beheld the majesty of the
unplumm’d, salt, estranging sea.
Often I got up early so that I could watch the sunrise. I would walk barefoot at the edge of the water and think about David — not just David, but myself and love and art and death. When I behold the ocean, I
know
that the world isn’t just the grind of small tasks and small thoughts. The world is wide and wild and grand. Someday I will sail my little bark into the great ocean of life, braving the winds and the tide. And while the waves may dwarf me, they will not belittle me, because I will be the
master of my fate
and the
captain of my soul.

Mr. Rosenbach is determined that I shall learn philosophy. I read several of the Socratic dialogues and I liked them, but eventually I got tired of Socrates winning all the arguments. So I wrote a dialogue where I taught Socrates some important things about the nature of true love. The dialogue ended with Socrates saying submissively, “Yes, that is so.” When Mr. Rosenbach read it, he laughed so hard he nearly died. Just now we are reading Shakespeare together. First we read
Macbeth,
which is thrilling, and then we read
As You Like It.
I like it when Rosalind says, “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” That’s exactly how I feel about David Rosenbach.

I thought I would love David forever, but now I’m not so sure. I think of him often, but not as much as I did. He sends me postcards from Paris, but they are identical to the ones he sends Mimi. There isn’t a particle of sentiment in them, and I know why. He’s afraid of inflaming my propensities. Mimi says her friend Maisie Phillips’s brother, Sam, would be sweet on me if I gave him a little encouragement, but I’m not going to do it, because he’s a Methodist and not interesting. Also, I’m busy: I’m planning to write an epic poem about the life of a Vestal Virgin. I was hoping to start it tonight but decided to finish this diary instead. I’ll begin it tomorrow, in Mimi’s new book.

Tomorrow, oh, tomorrow! What will my destiny be? Maybe I’ll be a teacher, as Ma encouraged me to be. Or a great novelist, like Charlotte Brontë. Or perhaps I’ll be a famous journalist like Nellie Bly and investigate insane asylums and fascinating places like that. One thing is sure: after I’ve paid Mr. Rosenbach for my schooling, I mean to go to Europe. I’ll see the bridge where Dante met Beatrice, and the Alhambra, and the slate-gray roofs of Paris. Maybe in Paris I’ll pay David to paint my portrait — because by then I’ll be ever so stylish and self-possessed, and maybe he’ll fall in love with me, and I’ll
spurn
him.

Or maybe I won’t.

Fortunately, I don’t have to decide just now, because my immediate tomorrow dictates only that I start school. School! As Shakespeare would say,
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!

I think about Ma, telling me to get educated, and dear Malka, who told me to grow up and become a woman.

And so I will.