She stopped talking for a minute and started looking me over real close. Then, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? I could swear your face is familiar. Where do you come from?”
I pointed in the direction of home and said, “Out Clinch Valley Road.” I was going to tell her how my mother had once worked as a maid for her, but she didn’t give me a chance. She jumped up, left the shoes on the floor and the dress on the chair, and shook her head.
“I don’t know anyone out that way. You can change your clothes in the maid’s room back there.” She waved her hand at a door on the other side of the kitchen. “And when you finish the dishes you’ll find me upstairs. I’ll show you how to do the bedrooms.”
The day wore on. I didn’t break any dishes and figured out on my own which button to push to start the machine. It sure gave me a start when it began churning and spattering behind its closed door, and I prayed it wouldn’t go breaking any of those twenty-dollar plates and blaming it on me. Mrs. Carpenter showed me all over that house and told me what I was to do. At noon, she showed me what to make for lunch. We both ate the same thing, cold roast beef left over from the night before and some potato salad, but she ate hers in the dining room and I ate mine in the kitchen.
I drank two glasses of ice-cold milk and could have drunk some more, but I didn’t want to seem greedy. In the afternoon she set me to washing windows. It wasn’t hard work, I worked harder at home, and it was a treat to be looking out at the roses in the back and all that green grass in the front while I polished those windows till they looked like they weren’t there at all.
Along about four o’clock she hauled me back to the kitchen and told me what Mr. Carpenter wanted for his dinner. “He’s very partial to fried chicken, but nobody seems able to make it to his satisfaction.
I know I can’t. And he has the most outrageous sweet tooth. I don’t eat dessert myself, but he won’t leave the table without it.”
Well. I set to work cooking up my specialties. I’d had lots of experience with chicken, and my peach cobbler was just about perfect, if I say so myself. Mrs. Carpenter left the kitchen to take a nap after telling me that Mr. Carpenter expected to sit down to his meal at 6:30 sharp.
At 6:30 sharp I brought in a platter of fried chicken and Mr. Carpenter whipped his napkin into his lap and dug in. He didn’t even look at me, but I looked at him. He was a freckly sandy man with gold-rimmed glasses and a tight collar. He still had all his hair, but it was fading out to a kind of pinkish yellowish fuzz.
His eyes were blue, or maybe green, it was hard to tell behind his glasses, and his nose turned up at the end like a hoe blade.
I’d fixed up a mess of greens to go with the chicken and he dug into those, too, dribbling the pot liquor down his chin and swabbing it away with his fine napkin. Mrs. Carpenter pecked at her food and watched to see how he was liking his.
When I brought in the peach cobbler he leaned back in his chair and sighed. “That’s the best meal I’ve had in years, Marcelline.”
“This isn’t Marcelline,” said Mrs. Carpenter. “Marcelline quit last night. This is Jenny.”
He looked at me then. First through his glasses and then without his glasses. And then he polished his glasses on his napkin and put them back on and tried again. “Ah, ha!” he said. “Jenny. Well. Very nice.” And he got up from the table and left the room without even tasting my peach cobbler.
Mrs. Carpenter was after him like a shot. “Paul! Paul!” she hollered. “What about your dessert?”
It didn’t matter to me. Peach cobbler is best while it’s hot, but it’s just as good the next day. I carried it back out to the kitchen, finished cleaning up, and got back into my going-home clothes. I did hope that Mrs. Carpenter would pay me my five dollars so I would have something to show, to Deucy and Earl and Wesley, so I hung around for a bit.
But it wasn’t Mrs. Carpenter who came into the kitchen. It was him. He stood in the doorway, pulling at his ear and looking at me as if he wished me off the face of the earth. Then he sloped into the kitchen and came right up to me where I was standing with my back against the refrigerator and took my chin in his hand. He held my face up so I had to look at him unless I closed my eyes, which I did for half a minute, but I opened them again because I was beginning to get scared. Then he put his hand on my shoulder and took the collar of my dress between his fingers and felt of it softly. At last he spoke.
“You’re a Taggert, aren’t you, girl?”
“Yes, I am. I’m Jennet Maybelle Taggert.” I spoke up proudly because I’d learned in the little bit of time I’d spent in school that lots of folks thought Taggerts was trash and the only way to deal with that was not to be ashamed.
Then he said something I didn’t understand. “Am I never to be rid of Taggerts? Will Taggerts hound me to my grave?”
“You look pretty healthy to me,” I said, adding “sir” so he wouldn’t think I was being pert.
He didn’t say anything to that, but took his wallet out of his pocket and opened it up. I thought he was going to pay me my five dollars, so I got ready to say thank you and good night, but he pulled out a photograph and handed it to me.
“Who do you think that is?” he asked me.
Well, I looked but I didn’t know who it was. The photograph was in colour and it showed a girl about my age with yellow curling hair and a big smile. She was wearing a real pretty dress, all blue and ruffly, like she was going to a party or a dance. I handed the picture back to him.
“She’s real pretty, but I don’t know who she is.”
“She’s my daughter, Claudia.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I said again, “She’s real pretty.”
“No, she’s not,” he said. “She’s a spoiled brat. She thinks she’s the most beautiful female creature that ever trod the earth. But she’s useless, vain, and unlovable. And it’s all my fault.”
I didn’t know why he was telling me all this, but it was making me fidgety and anyway I had to get home to get supper for the boys.
They’d be pretty upset that I was so late. “Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll be getting along.”
“Don’t go.” He grabbed my arm and hauled me over to where there was a mirror hanging on the wall and made me stand in front of it. “Look there,” he said. “Who do you see?”
“Well, that’s just me.” I tried to pull away from him, but he held on tight.
“That’s a pretty young woman,” he said. “That’s what a young woman is supposed to be, decent and clean and modest. I wish you were my daughter, Jenny Taggert, instead of that hellion who won’t stay home where she belongs and behaves so no man in his right mind would marry her. How would you like that? Would you like to live here and be my girl?”
Well, I felt my neck getting hot, ’cause Ace had told me that when a man starts paying compliments there’s only one thing he’s after, and I’d sure heard enough of Deucy speaking sugar words to his ladies on the porch swing.
“Excuse me, Mr. Carpenter,” I said, “but I got to be gettin’ home and would you please pay me my five dollars so I can carry home some supper to those boys?” I know that was bold, but he was making me nervous and it just came out that way.
He let go of me and pulled out his wallet again. “Is that what Clemmie’s paying you? Five dollars? Well, it’s not enough. Here and here and here.”
The bills came leaping out of his wallet and he stuffed them into my hands. When I looked, I saw I had three ten-dollar bills. Not only that, he started hauling out the leftover chicken that I had put away and shoving it into a paper sack.
“Take the peach cobbler, too,” he said, “and anything else you’d like. Take it all.”
“Now I can’t do that. What would Miz Carpenter say?”