The Hired Girl Read online

  PART ONE

  Girl with a Cow

  PART TWO

  The Spirit of Transportation

  PART THREE

  The Maidservant

  PART FOUR

  The Warrior Goddess of Wisdom

  PART FIVE

  Joan of Arc

  PART SIX

  Mariana in the Moated Grange

  PART SEVEN

  Girl Reading

  Sunday, June the fourth, 1911

  Today Miss Chandler gave me this beautiful book. I vow that I will never forget her kindness to me, and I will use this book as she told me to — I will write in it with truth and refinement.

  “I’m so sorry you won’t be coming back to school,” Miss Chandler said to me, and at those words, the floodgates opened, and I wept most bitterly. I’ve been crying off and on ever since Father told me that from now on I have to stay at home and won’t get any more education.

  Dear Miss Chandler made soft murmurings of pity and offered me her handkerchief, which was perfectly laundered, with three violets embroidered in one corner. I never saw a prettier handkerchief. It seemed terrible to cry all over it, but I did. While I was collecting myself, Miss Chandler spoke to me about the special happiness that comes of doing one’s duty at home, but I didn’t pay much heed, because when I wiped my eyes, I saw smears on the cloth. I knew my face was dirty, and I was awful mortified.

  Then all at once, she said something that rang out like a peal of church bells. “You must remember,” she said, “that dear Charlotte Brontë didn’t have a superior education. And yet she wrote Jane Eyre. I believe you have a talent for composition, dear Joan. Indeed, when I used to mark student essays, I always put yours at the back of the pile, so I could look forward to reading them. You express yourself with vigor and originality, but you must strive for truth and refinement.”

  I stopped crying then, because I thought of myself writing a book as good as Jane Eyre, and being famous, and getting away from Steeple Farm and being so rich I could go to Europe and see castles along the Rhine, or Notre Dame in Paris, France.

  So after Miss Chandler left, I vowed that I will always remember her as an inspiration, and that I will write in this book in my best handwriting, with TRUTH and REFINEMENT. Which last I think I lack the worst, because who could be refined living at Steeple Farm?

  Sunday, June the eleventh, 1911

  Today I thought I might go up to the Presbyterian — mercy, what a word to spell! — church and return Miss Chandler’s handkerchief. It has been a bad week for writing because of the sheepshearing and having to stitch up summer overalls for the men.

  I washed Miss Chandler’s handkerchief very carefully and pressed it and wrapped it in brown paper so my hands wouldn’t dirty it. I’m always washing my hands, but I can’t keep them clean. Sometimes it seems to me that everything in this house is stuffed to the seams with the dirt that the men track in. Even though I clean the surfaces of things, underneath is all that filth, aching to get loose. It sweats out the minute I turn my back. I scrub and sweep the floors, but the men’s boots keep bringing in the barnyard, day after day, year after year. Luke is the worst because he never uses the scraper, and when I look at him fierce, he smiles. He knows I hate to sweep up after him. Father and Matthew never think about it one way or the other. Mark is my favorite brother because he wipes his feet sometimes, and when he doesn’t, he looks sorry.

  But it isn’t just the men. They bring in the smells from the cowshed and the pigsty, but I’m the one who has to clean out the chicken house and scrub the privy. My hands are always dirty from blacking the stove and hauling out the ashes. They’re as rough as the hands of an old woman.

  But this kind of writing is not refined.

  I put on my Sunday dress and took the packet with Miss Chandler’s handkerchief. I so hoped she would be in church. It seems a hundred years since I saw her last.

  We don’t go to church at Steeple Farm. When I was little, and Ma was alive, she used to take me to the Catholic church in Lancaster, but that’s nine miles off, and Father says the horses need to rest on Sunday. They aren’t resting today; they’re harrowing the lower field. But the Presbyterian church is less than three miles away, so I can walk.

  Ma married outside her Faith, but she told me Father used to be very pious and religious before I was born. That’s why he named my brothers Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and if I’d been a boy, I’d have been John, instead of Joan. When I was a baby, we had three bad harvests in a row, and Father made up his mind that religion was hogwash. So when Father wants to work on Sundays, he does, and we never go to church anymore.

  I find I’m in two minds about this. I remember how when I was a little thing, the services seemed so long. My legs hurt from sitting still, and I wasn’t allowed to swing my feet. If I fidgeted, Ma would put her hands on mine to stop me. But St. Mary’s had stained glass in the windows, and the light glowing through the colors was so beautiful it made me feel holy inside.

  After the service Ma would light a candle in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother, and I loved her, because she was as slender as a girl, with a smile that looked as if she was teasing someone she loved very dearly. I still pray to her — I carry a picture of the statue in my mind — and sometimes she answers me back, though I’m never sure if the voice is hers or Ma’s, or if the whole thing is my imagination.

  It was warm this morning. I tried not to walk too fast, because I didn’t want to look red faced and hot when I saw Miss Chandler. My Sunday dress this year is heavy cotton. I declare, that dress is a sore spot with me. Father always asks the storekeeper what’s cheap, and that’s what he buys. This year what was cheap was a chocolate-brown twill with little bunches of purple flowers on it. Something went wrong with the printing, and the flowers are all blotched and don’t look like flowers at all. Because the pattern was spoiled, the cloth was so cheap that Father bought the rest of the bolt and says it can be next year’s new dress, too. I was so despairing that I went upstairs to cry. One of my books, Dombey and Son, is about a girl named Florence and her awful father that she loves even though he never pays any attention to her. But Florence has pretty clothes and she doesn’t have to work as hard as I do, so I guess it’s easier for her to love her father.

  Father says I grow so fast there’s no use wasting money on my clothes. He calls me an ox of a girl, and I wish he wouldn’t, because when I look in the mirror, that’s what I see. I wish I weren’t so tall and coarse-like. Even my hair is ox colored, reddish brown and neither curly nor straight, but each strand kinked and thick and standing away from the others. My braids are almost as thick as my wrists, and my wrists are all thick and muscled from scrubbing.

  The Presbyterian church isn’t as pretty as St. Mary’s, because there is no colored glass. But it’s very clean and bright inside, and the morning was fine, and the ladies wore their best hats. I looked for Miss Chandler’s hat, which has the wing of an arctic tern on it, but I couldn’t see it. I saw two girls from school, Alice Marsh and Lucy Watkins. I sat down in the back and was glad they couldn’t see me. Alice isn’t so bad; she will speak to me quite pleasantly if Lucy and Hazel Fry aren’t with her, and she doesn’t tease. But I think Alice is a coward, because she lets Lucy and Hazel decide who her friends should be. I wouldn’t let another girl make up my mind for me like that. I can never decide whether to be grateful to Alice because she is kinder than the others, or whether I ought to despise her for being such a poltroon. So I do both.

  I hate Lucy Watkins and Hazel Fry. After Ma died I didn’t do the washing as regular as I might because there was so much else I had to do — all the cooking and putting food by. The men didn’t seem to mind so much if I was behind with the laundry, and I guess that first
year I looked slatternly, because Ma wasn’t there to help me with my clothes. That was when the other girls set their faces against me. I remember we had to read a poem by William Shakespeare, and the part about spring was so beautiful, with flowers called lady’s-smocks painting the meadow with delight. But the second part of the poem was about winter, not spring, and it was about someone called Greasy Joan keeling the pot, and that’s when Lucy Watkins started giggling, and the other girls joined in. At recess they called me Greasy Joan. I told the teacher. It was Miss Lang then, and I loved her dearly, though not so much as dear Miss Chandler. Miss Lang said that now that I was growing up to be a young lady, I must work hard to keep my hair neat and my clothes pressed. She said — I remember how she lowered her voice when she said it — that my things were not so fresh as they might be. I knew she meant to be kind. But I also knew that what she meant was that I smelled bad. I was dreadfully ashamed, and I never felt the same toward Miss Lang after that. She must have rebuked Lucy and Hazel, and she made them stop calling me Greasy Joan. But sometimes they’d put their heads together and giggle, and I knew they were still thinking it.

  It was warm in the church, and I tried to keep my mind on the sermon, though my conscience was not too bad troubled when I couldn’t, because I am a Catholic, not a Presbyterian. Then I wondered if the Blessed Mother would be angry with me for being in a Presbyterian church, instead of St. Mary’s. So I said a Hail Mary to her inside my head, and told her I was sorry. I explained that I wasn’t there because I was going to turn Protestant, but because I wanted to see dear Miss Chandler. The Blessed Mother said she wasn’t worried about me turning Protestant, but she thought I might stop working so hard at hating Lucy Watkins and Hazel Fry. I thought about that and I supposed it was true. It’s not good to hate people in a holy place, when you’re asking God to forgive you the same way you forgive the ones who trespass against you. But it seems to me that if I stop hating Lucy Watkins and Hazel Fry, I might lose something. I decided I would stop hating them during the service and take it up again after I got out. I asked the Blessed Mother if that would be all right, and she said it would be an improvement. So with that settled, I tried to fix my mind on what the minister was trying to say.

  The minister was a pink-faced man and he talked slow. He spoke about the Pearl of Great Price, and then he started talking about treasure and how where our treasure was, our hearts should be. I thought about how I didn’t go to St. Mary’s because it was nine miles off and how if I was a Christian martyr, I’d ask Father for the horses, even though he’d be unkind. Maybe I’d walk, even. I started to repent, but then the minister gave his sermon another twist, and it turned out what he was really after was more money in the collection plate. Then I felt awkward because I hadn’t brought any money with me, and I was worried that people would stare at me when the plate went round. Father never gives me any money because he says what does a girl who is given everything want with money. When Ma was alive the egg money was hers, and I’m the one who cleans the chicken house and gathers the eggs and makes the mash for the hens. But Father won’t let me have the egg money.

  I fell into a daydream about what I’d do if the egg money was mine. I’d buy cloth for a new dress. A stripe would be best because if you match the stripes and set them right, you can make your waist look smaller. I think I could get it right if I tried. I’d buy books, too. There’s a store in Lancaster that has books that only cost a nickel. Miss Chandler says those books are trivial and unwholesome and she hopes I will never read them. I wonder what’s in them. I have three books — the ones she gave me — plus Ma’s Bible, and I just ache to read more. Miss Chandler used to lend me books. I’d hoped that if I gave back her handkerchief she might say we could go on being friends, even if I can’t come to school anymore.

  Miss Chandler has a little bookcase full of books in her rooms. At the end of school, she invited all us older girls — Lucy and Hazel and Alice and little Rebecca Green, who has consumption but wasn’t too sick to come — to her boardinghouse. We had chicken salad and ice cream and looked at photographs of Europe on the stereopticon. And we passed around a beautiful poem called “The Eve of St. Agnes” and read it aloud, and I thought it was the most wonderful poem I ever read. Even Lucy and Hazel were civil to me, and I wished the evening would never come to an end.

  But of course it did. And now I can’t go back to school. And Miss Chandler wasn’t in the church, not this week. I waited under the oak tree and watched everyone come out to be sure. Alice waved to me, and I waved back, but I didn’t go forward to speak to her. I went home and fixed dinner for the men.

  Wednesday, June the fourteenth, 1911

  I didn’t think it would be so hard to write in this diary every day. Late spring is always busy on the farm. I spend my days rushing from one have-to to the next have-to. When I can snatch a moment between them, I read one of dear Miss Chandler’s books. I’d rather read than write.

  My books aren’t exactly prize books, because our school doesn’t hand out prize books. But for the past three years, Miss Chandler has taken me aside, privately, and given me a book at the end of the year. I told her we had none at home, and I think she was sorry for me. The books she gave me are bound in soft, limp leather, with thin paper, gold edged and elegant, like Bible pages. I have Jane Eyre — that was the first year — and Dombey and Son — that was the second year — and Ivanhoe — that was last year. I’ve read and reread them all, but Jane Eyre is the best, because it’s the most exciting and Jane is just like me. Ivanhoe has dull patches, but it’s very thrilling when Brian de Bois-Guilbert carries off the noble Jewess Rebecca because of his unbridled passion. Dombey and Son is good, but it makes me feel guilty because I’m not as good as Florence Dombey. I like best the part where her father strikes her and she runs away to Captain Cuttle. He takes such good care of her. Sometimes at night I like to pretend I’m Florence Dombey, lying beautifully asleep in a clean white bed, with Captain Cuttle tiptoeing around, making me a roasted fowl.

  But Father never strikes me, thank heavens. He used to whip the boys when they were younger, but Ma wouldn’t let him lay a hand on me. She said it wasn’t modest for a man to whip a girl. So Father never did, but he said I was too big for my britches even though I didn’t wear any. That’s his idea of humor — to say something insulting and unrefined. I wish I hadn’t written it in this book.

  Today I will contemplate the view from the kitchen window and describe the beauties of nature. I guess that’s refined enough for anybody. I’m sitting on the kitchen table because I just gave the floor a good scrub, and it’s still wet. Father is in town buying a part for one of his machines, and the boys are working in the lower field. I can watch them from the window, so they won’t come back to the house and catch me idling.

  The panorama from the kitchen window is very striking because the ground falls away from the house and the barnyard on all sides. Our house and barns rest on the top of a steep hill. The hill is so steep that the land wasn’t too dear, and my great-grandfather got a bargain when he bought it. He named it Steep Hill Farm, but after a time it became Steeple — there isn’t any steeple nearby, so the name would be confusing to strangers, except that strangers seldom come this way. The farm is fourteen acres and has been in the family for nigh on eighty years. The youngest son is always the one to inherit the property. Luke will have Steeple Farm some day, though Father says he’s lazy and a disappointment.

  The strawberries are close to ripe just now. I half fancy I can smell them, sitting here by the open window, with my diary on my knee. The breeze is very refreshing. The sky is lofty and celestial blue, with gossamer clouds o’erhead, and the wind chasing them all over the sky. The fields are verdant green, and —

  Later that evening

  Oh, oh, oh! I am in the most miserable pain! My whole face is swollen and throbbing and I would cry my eyes out, except that screwing up my face pulls my stitches. And oh, how horrible I look! I am accursed — the unluckiest girl
who ever lived! I have often thought so, but this proves it.

  How contented I was, writing in my book and contemplating the view of Steeple Farm from the kitchen window! How little I dreamed that this was the beginning of another misfortune! I looked out the window and saw that Cressy, the Jersey cow, had escaped from the cow pasture and was heading up the hill to the farmyard.

  It would be Cressy, of course. Luke says Cressy and I are alike — both of us too smart for our own good. Cows were meant to be stupid creatures, Luke says, and so were women, but Cressy and I are the exceptions that prove the rule. I abominate Luke for saying that, but I agree with him about Cressy. She’s a bad cow. She never stays where you put her. She’ll find the weakest section of fence and lean her fat red rump against it, swaying back and forth until she works the top rail loose. I’ve seen her do it. Last year she got out and trampled the strawberry bed and there were no strawberries to sell. Father was awful angry.

  I leaped off the table and ran out the door to catch her. I didn’t think to put my boots on — I was in the slovenly slippers I wear around the house. I seized her by the halter and started to drag her back to the pasture. She balked. She gazed at me as if she couldn’t imagine what I wanted.

  I wanted to slap her, because she knew perfectly well. Of all the cows in the world, she’s not stupid. But I said, “Cush, cush,” in my best cow voice, and tugged her halter, and she started forward — only her great, heavy hoof came down on my foot. Heaven knows it’s not the first time a horse or a cow has trod on me, and it won’t be the last, but I don’t recollect the other times hurting so bad. I guess it was partly my slippers and partly the way her hoof came down. I yelled with pain and slapped her shoulder, and she blinked at me with those long cow-y eyelashes, playing stupid. I leaned on her and shouted at her and tried to make her get off, but she was like a stone cow, she was so still — and all the while my foot felt as if every bone was splintering.