The Hired Girl (5 page)

I loved school, and I loved coming first in all my classes, but it wasn’t my studies that excited Ma the most. She had a vision of the life I would live. “You’ll board somewhere, likely,” she would say, and I’d see her eyes narrow as she pictured the boardinghouse where I would live. “You’ll be able to choose a respectable house, and you won’t have to dirty your hands with the ashes or the privy. You’ll send out the laundry.” She looked almost dreamy-eyed when she said that. We always hated washday. It’s fifty buckets of water for every load of laundry. The scrubbing hurts your back, and the lye soap eats the skin right off your hands.

“You’ll have pretty clothes and you’ll buy them with your own money,” Ma went on. “You’ll send them out to be washed, and you’ll be able to keep them nice.”

“And I’ll have books,” I said, taking up the story. “Lots of them. And a hat with feathers, and I’ll go to the circus every time it comes to town.” I’d never been to the circus, and it was a sore point with me.

“You’ll have your own money,” Ma said again. “If you want to spend it on the circus, you won’t have to ask permission. Whatever happens, you’ll have your own money and you won’t have to get married.” She always came back to that. “People will look up to you. A schoolmarm is always respected. You’ll have money and respect and you won’t have to work yourself to death.”

I was always frightened when she talked about working herself to death. I might have been young, but I knew she was doing just that. She was so thin her bones stuck out, and often she got short of breath. Sometimes she’d turn a funny color and drop into a chair. But another part of me couldn’t imagine that she could ever die and leave me. It happened quite suddenly. There was a dry spell the summer I was ten, and we didn’t want to lose the tomato plants. We were carrying water to them. All at once I heard her cry, and I saw her drop both buckets. I ran to her at once. But she was dead before the water soaked into the ground.

I thought the world had come to an end. I didn’t know how I could bear it. I even had an idea that if I couldn’t bear it, if I couldn’t,
couldn’t
bear it, God might relent and give her back to me. But though I suffered as much as any child could, she was gone. And overnight, I’d become the woman of the house. There was so much work to do, and nobody to help me get through it. I think Miss Lang was very good to me that first year, because I often fell asleep in school, and she never punished me for it. But I never forgave her for telling me I had to be cleaner about my person. I ought to have been grateful, I guess. But I never was and still am not, to this day.

And I feel the same way about what Father did today. I’ll never forgive the sound in his voice when he said no one would marry me. It sometimes seems to me as if I live in a world where everyone thinks I’m worth nothing — Luke and Father — and there’s nobody on my side at all, with Ma dead and Miss Chandler sent away. But I know I’m not nothing. And somehow I’m going to fight my way forward, though I don’t know how, and I don’t know where I’ll end up.

Thursday, June the twenty-second, 1911

How hard it is to write with refinement, when my life is so sordid and melancholy! But today there was a glimmer of light, a rare flash and gleam: the presence of Hope. It was not that the black clouds parted, revealing a sky of celestial blue — no, the stage of my life is shrouded by curtains of Stygian darkness. But lo! For a brief moment, a crooked thread of lightning defied the gloom.

It happened like this. I was shelling peas, and I set the newspaper pages from Miss Chandler’s bouquet on the kitchen table so I could read while I was working. We don’t often see a newspaper at Steeple Farm. Father says they’re a waste of money. I can’t say I mind much, because what’s going on in the world is confusing and often dismal. But I sat down to read, and the first article I came upon was about the Amalgamated Railroad Employees striking in sympathy with some locomotive workers.

At first my eye just passed over the words, because I don’t know what
Amalgamated
means and I have no way to look it up. I don’t even know if it’s the employees that are amalgamated, or the railroad. When you see a big word like that, it’s like finding a cherry pit in your piece of pie — you want to spit it out and get on with what you know. Though that is not an elegant metaphor, and I’m ashamed of it. The metaphor about the lightning and the Stygian darkness is much finer.

But the newspaper article started me thinking about
strikes.
Father says that any man who goes on strike is lazy and not fit to call himself a man. But Miss Chandler — at least sometimes — is in sympathy with the strikers. She especially pities the coal miners, who are so often killed below the ground, and she thinks it’s dreadful when their wives are left widows, and their little children have to go down the mines. She doesn’t believe it’s right to strike, but she prays for the strikers, and she says the mine owners are in the wrong. I wonder if she would pray for the Amalgamated Railroad Employees. Railroad work is dangerous, and it occurs to me that maybe the strikers aren’t lazy but only desperate to change their lives, as I am.

I started to think of what would happen if I went on strike. It seems to me the household would fall to pieces. If I just sat and folded my hands, the fire in the stove would go out and we’d have no hot water. There’d be no meals cooked, and no butter churned, and no clean clothes. Nothing would get mended or tidied. The privy would be filthy, and the garden would go to seed, and the birds would get the cherries and the blueberries and — well, I’d
have
to feed the chickens and give them fresh water, but I wouldn’t gather the eggs. Everything would be as nasty and untidy and inconvenient as it could be.

I thought about going on strike until Father promised me a better life. That’s when the lightning flashed against the Stygian darkness. Father needs my work here; he said so to Miss Chandler.

But then I thought what Father would do if I refused to work.

And I knew I would never dare. It came to me with heavy shame that I’m a coward where Father is concerned. Even the thought of defying him scares me. I think of his face, dark as thunder, and the rough contempt in his voice, and my stomach feels small and shriveled, like a grape turning into a raisin. I don’t know what Father might
not
do. He might do something worse than anything he’s ever done.

I turned over the pages of the newspaper. My heart was palpitating and I’d forgotten about the peas. I hoped there might be some pictures of dresses on the other pages, because I needed something to calm me down. But the other pages were advertisements. There was Situations Wanted and then there was Help Wanted Female. I read those, and they didn’t calm me at all, because some of the jobs in the newspaper, I didn’t even know what they were. I read “Experienced TIPPERS wanted,” and I didn’t know what that was. And —“YOUNG LADY of Ability for STENOGRAPHIC POSITION.” I’m not sure what
stenographic
is, but the ability of the young lady must be perfectly staggering, because that job pays fifteen dollars a week. Then there was “GIRL for GENERAL OFFICE WORK to use REMINGTON MACHINE”— I think that must be one of those typewriting machines Miss Chandler told me about — and “GIRL to run FOLDING BOX GLUING MACHINE.” I suppose there must be a machine somewhere that folds cardboard boxes and glues them at the same time. I can’t imagine who was clever enough to invent such a thing.

But then there were advertisements that I understood quite well — advertisements for hired girls. “White girl to cook and help with housework, no washing or ironing, $6 a week.” Six dollars a week! I thought maybe that was a mistake, but there was another one: “First-class white girl for COOKING AND HOUSEWORK, wages $6.” I laid the paper down and went back to shelling peas, but though my hands were busy, my mind was in a daze. Six dollars a week! With no washing or ironing, either!

I wish I was a hired girl. Of course, I’d rather be a schoolteacher. But I bet those hired girls — foreigners, most of them — don’t work a lick harder than I do, and they get paid six dollars a week. And here I am, without a penny to call my own.

Then the idea of a strike beckoned again. I imagined myself telling Father that I wouldn’t work unless he gave me six dollars a week. I almost laughed aloud, because Father would cut his throat before he separated himself from six dollars a week. Even two dollars a week, he’d cut his throat — or mine. I imagined myself saying, “I won’t lift a finger unless you let me have Miss Chandler as my friend and give me a dollar a week”— and then an idea flashed into my head.

I thought about Ma’s egg money. Ma always had the egg money for her own. Raising chickens is women’s work, and it’s the lady of the house that gets the egg money — the butter money, too, often as not, but I wouldn’t dare ask for that. I tried to picture myself asking Father for the egg money. The last time I asked him, I was only ten or eleven, a little girl, really. But now I’m almost a woman. And if I went on strike — maybe not a whole strike, but a small strike — he might be persuaded to let me have the egg money.

It’s not as if I’d be asking for six dollars a week. Eggs are cheap in the summer, eight or nine cents a dozen. And I wouldn’t be asking him to take a whole new idea into his head. It’s traditional, the woman pocketing the egg money.

If I had a little money, the first thing I’d do would be improve the stock. Of course I’d rather have books, right off the bat, and a new dress, but I’d start with the stock. We have Leghorns now, and they’re spindly, ill-bred things, and there’s no meat on their bones. They’re not bad layers, but they’re scarcely worth the trouble of cleaning and plucking. When Ma was alive, we had Buff Orpingtons and Spotted Sussex. The Buff Orpingtons were big, handsome birds, friendly and good to eat. And the spotties were like pets: they used to make me laugh with their antics. Leghorns are the most boring chickens on earth. So if I had a little money, I’d buy bigger, better-looking chickens, and I’d work up to a flock I could be proud of.

I saw myself with that flock of chickens — Buff Orpingtons and Spotted Sussex and maybe a Rhode Island Red or two — and I imagined the egg money bringing in new books and a new dress, rose colored with white stripes. I even started to think about going back to school, but there my imagination balked, because Father’s set his mind against that so hard he’ll never relent. Even if I were to strike, he wouldn’t agree to that, because he’d lose too many hours of work from me. It would be a bad bargain.

But if I did strike — if I dared — I might be able to get him to give me the egg money. And maybe I could get permission to be friends with Miss Chandler. I wouldn’t ask her to the house, because Father frightened her. But perhaps I could visit her. If I had her to guide me, and I could borrow books, I could better myself.

I’d save money, just as Ma did. I’d add to that stash of bills inside Belinda’s apron. The time might come when I could take that money and use it to change my life. If I had books, if I could scrape together an education, I’d have a future, whether any man ever asked me to marry him or not.

But I’d have to strike first.

I think about going on strike, and how to go about it, and what Father will say. And there is hope, but I am cold with fear.

Sunday, June the twenty-fifth, 1911

Last night, the heat broke. I felt the change before dawn. I woke because my skin felt cool, and I wanted the sheet to cover me. It was a blessing. This morning, the sky was a clear, strong blue, and the air was fresh. Even Father allowed as he was glad of the change in the weather, though of course he went on to grumble about how we need rain. I believe Father thinks that if he ever approved of the weather, God would take a mean advantage of him and make it worse.

But the men went out to work in good spirits, and I took heart, because of the breeze coming in the window, and the billow and sway of the curtains. It occurred to me that the idea of the strike might be too brazen — at least, to start with. I thought it might be better to reason with Father and ask him politely for the egg money. I don’t
think
this was cowardice but only good sense. It seemed, on so fair a morning, that it wouldn’t hurt to ask nicely. I told myself that if he said no, I could go on strike later.

It struck me, too, that there would be no harm in trying to put Father in a good humor. So I decided to make a chicken pie for Sunday dinner. I don’t know that Father’s ever gone so far as to come out and say he likes chicken pie, but he scrapes the plate whenever I make one. And two of the old hens haven’t been laying. I hate wringing their necks, and the business of plucking their feathers is irksome. But I killed them and dressed them and into the pot they went. I steamed them and strained the broth and burned my fingers taking the meat off the bones. Then I stirred up a milk sauce, and rolled out the pastry, and added a little salt pork for flavor, because heaven knows those chickens need all the help they can get.

I fairly flew around the kitchen. I shelled peas and added bacon, because Father likes peas with bacon. I made light biscuits — Father prefers bread, but we have rye bread fresh from yesterday, and the boys and I like biscuits. I sliced the bread and put out butter and honey and cherry preserves and pickles. The whole time I was working, I was planning what I’d say to Father when I asked for the egg money. By the time the dinner was cooked, I’d lost my appetite, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine Father saying yes to me. Every time he said no — in my imagination, that is — he said it more cruelly. I was afraid that when the time came to ask, I wouldn’t dare.

But I did dare. By the time the men came in, the kitchen smelled like heaven. The crust on the pie couldn’t have been bettered. It was golden and flaky and tempting looking, and there were one or two places where the gravy oozed through and made rich-looking puddles on the crust. I saw the boys’ faces when they looked at it. Father didn’t say anything but sat right down to eat. He didn’t even take off his hat until he’d had a helping of pie.

I let them eat. As I said, I didn’t have much appetite, but I tasted the pie and worried down a biscuit with cherry preserves. It was a good dinner, and the men were silent as they ate. I didn’t speak. I was busy rehearsing what I was going to say. I knew it wouldn’t be wise to be too brash.