“They sleep in the bunkhouse.” Bubby pointed to the little building that Miriam had noticed on the way to collect the eggs. “They eat with us because they don’t have time to cook.”
“I help Mama cook dinner every night,” Miriam said. “But there are only three of us, so we don’t have to make very much. Do you have to make lots of food for the hired men?”
Bubby nodded solemnly. “They work hard—and they eat a lot.”
“I think it would be fun to cook for lots of people,” Miriam said. “I can help you! Can I help you?”
“That would be lovely,” said Bubby. She reached down and hugged Miriam. “If you’re as good at cooking as you are at gathering eggs, those hired men will be in for a real treat.”
THREE
At lunchtime seven men followed Zayde into the house. They hung their coats in the front hall and left their boots on the rug under the coat hooks. Bubby had made the rug out of old rags.
The men were all dressed like Zayde, in denim pants with suspenders over faded plaid shirts. Miriam couldn’t tell which ones had jumped off the train that morning. They were all younger than Zayde, with full heads of hair—blond, brown, black, even gray. When Zayde took off his cap, you could see he had only a few silver wires sticking straight up from his otherwise shiny head.
Some of the men had funny names like Stretch and Banjo. Some of them were black. They were all tall and broad-shouldered and looked as if they could easily pick up her much smaller grandfather and swing him around the kitchen the way Papa used to swing her.
Most of them were probably about as old as Papa, or older. Only the smallest and clearly the youngest of the men, Joe, didn’t have deep lines etched into his face. His skin was dark and as smooth as a polished stone.
Joe reminded Miriam of the porter she’d met on the train the day before, but that man had been older than Joe, and louder. He had joked with Miriam as he helped her off the train, calling her “little lady” and warning her that Utica was “a speck of a town compared to New York City.”
I’m going to Sangerfield, Miriam had explained, and the porter had thrown back his head and let out such a howl that for a moment Miriam had been frightened. Then she realized he was laughing, though she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why. When he finally caught his breath, he’d said, Sangerfield is too small to even count as a speck! Bubby seemed to find that amusing, but it had made Miriam even more anxious.
When Joe caught Miriam looking at him, he quickly turned his attention back to his plate. Miriam wondered if he thought she was staring at the amount of food he was eating. His plate was swimming with stew, and he had helped himself to so many of Bubby’s warm, fluffy rolls that some were falling into his lap.
She looked to see if Bubby had noticed, but Bubby was busy telling one of the men sitting near her that she had used water and yeast to make the rolls, not butter.
“That’s a lot of fuss you go to,” said the man—Miriam thought he might be Stretch. “My mama, she used to make buttermilk biscuits to sop up gravy. Flakiest biscuits you ever did taste, and she whipped them up in no time. Didn’t have to knead them or nothing.”
Was he saying that his mama’s biscuits were nicer than Bubby’s rolls?
“But yours are mighty fine too, ma’am,” he said. As Bubby thanked him, he helped himself to the last one in the basket.
Miriam turned her attention back to Joe. He was the skinniest hired man at the table. That’s probably why he ate so much. But if he ate that way all the time, Miriam thought to herself, he shouldn’t be skinny. She wanted to smile at him. She wanted him to know that she would have taken even more rolls if she had to work all afternoon building a new barn, but Joe didn’t meet her eyes for the rest of the meal.
“I got a little girl about your age,” said Banjo, who was sitting on the other side of Miriam. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded-up square of paper. He unfolded it to reveal a well-creased, faded photograph of a smiling girl. Her golden-blond hair hung in braids that nearly reached her waist. She was cradling a kitten.
“Her name’s Meg,” Banjo said. “That’s her kitten, Jojo, though I expect Jojo’s a full-grown cat by now.”
“It’s an awfully nice picture,” Miriam said. Meg looked friendly. Miriam wondered if they could be friends. She’d never been friends with anyone who owned a kitten or even a cat. “Do they live nearby?”
Banjo shook his head. “Oh no, miss,” he said. “Meg and her mama live in Kansas. That’s days away on the train. I haven’t seen them since last summer. I’m working for your grandpa to earn enough money so I can go back and be with them again.”
“You’ve been here since last summer?” Miriam asked.
“Oh no. I just rolled off the train this morning,” Banjo said. If Miriam hadn’t seen it with her own eyes she would have thought “rolled off the train” was just an expression.
“But where were you before?” Miriam asked. “I mean, between summer and now?”
“Picked corn in Indiana, pecans in Georgia, baled hay in Pennsylvania. Played some music on street corners and made a few pennies that way. Done whatever I could to earn a buck to send back home.”
“What kind of instrument do you play?” Miriam asked.
“See if you can guess,” Banjo said. When he smiled, his eyes crinkled.
Miriam figured it out right away and felt foolish for asking such a silly question. But then she decided to play along. “The clarinet?” she said, trying not to laugh.
“Try again, miss,” Banjo encouraged.
“The tuba?”
“Nope.”
“The accordion?” Miriam’s uncle Nathan, who lived in New York, played the accordion.
“Yessiree, you’ve got it!” Banjo said.
“I was joking!” Miriam said. “Why on earth are you called Banjo if you play the accordion?”
“I was joking too!” said Banjo, letting loose a belly laugh that caught the attention of everyone around the table. “I’ve been playing banjo since my hands was big enough to pluck the strings.”
Miriam felt her face grow hot. She looked across the table. Even Joe was laughing. She took a deep breath and tried to join in. She still felt silly, but it was hard to resist that laughter for long.
Bubby served apple and blueberry pies for dessert, and once they’d had their fill, the men filed back out the door, thanking her for the meal. Zayde stayed behind. Miriam noticed him looking over at Bubby in a way that made her curious.
Zayde turned to Miriam, his dark eyes warm and inviting. “How would you like to come see the barn?” The way he said “vud” instead of “would” reminded Miriam of Papa. Zayde had lived in the Old Country until he was almost twenty years old, the same age Papa had been when he sailed to America. In the Old Country they spoke Yiddish at home and Russian in the marketplace. That’s why they both talked funny. They learned to speak English when they were much older. Bubby had come to America when she was a baby. She sounded more like Mama, like Miriam.
Zayde winked at Bubby. Now Miriam was sure they had a secret. Maybe it was a surprise, like Mama had promised.
Miriam looked at her grandmother.
“Go ahead,” Bubby said, smiling as she nodded toward the door. “Just stay out of trouble, the two of you.”
FOUR
The barn was much bigger than the chicken coop—nobody had to duck to get in the door. Zayde stamped on the hard-packed dirt floor to get the snow off his boots. Miriam stamped too. Mazel shook his coat and wagged his tail.
Small, square windows high on the walls let in enough light for Miriam to make out her grandfather and the dog. Beyond that were shadows, silence and a smell that was hard to identify. Miriam scrunched up her nose, trying to place the odor, a mixture of sour milk and something almost sweet.
Zayde pulled a string next to the door and the room brightened. Suspended by wires from low wooden beams were bare lightbulbs. Miriam could practically reach up and touch them
. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. The room seemed to stretch on forever. It was divided into thirds—a center aisle wide enough for a railway car, and two narrower sections on either side. The floor in the center aisle was made of wood. The aisles were strewn with dirty, matted straw.
“Where are the cows?” Miriam asked.
“They’re out in the pasture,” Zayde replied. “We’ll go there another day. Or if you really want, you can come see them at milking time.”
“Aren’t they cold outside?” Miriam asked.
“They know how to stay warm,” Zayde said. “They huddle together if they have to. But would you want to stay in here all day, not able to walk around or see the sunshine? At least outside they are free to move as they please.”
He pointed to the long, narrow rows on either side of the center aisle. “When they’re in here, they have to be lined up next to each other.”
Wooden, fence-like structures ran the length of each row, but unlike regular fences, they had rails only on top. If they were fences, they didn’t look as if they’d be useful. Anything smaller than a giraffe or an elephant could have escaped with ease.
Miriam pointed to them. “What are those?”
“Stanchions,” her grandfather replied. “They help keep the cows in place at milking time.”
“How many cows do you have?”
“Almost a hundred. And one bull.”
“Why only one?” Miriam asked.
“You only need one bull,” Zayde said.
“He must be lonely,” Miriam said.
“He does just fine,” Zayde said. “He’s got all the cows to keep him company.”
At the end of the rows was a series of doors. Most led to stalls, but the one that Zayde stopped in front of opened into a small room about the size of Miriam’s bedroom in the farmhouse. Inside was a wood-burning stove and a box so big that Miriam wondered if something lived in it. Zayde lifted the cover and reached in. Miriam stood on her toes to peer inside. The box was full of fat brown seeds the size of rice.
“What’s that?” she asked as Zayde dipped a pail into the box and came out with it filled nearly to overflowing.
“Oats.” Zayde set the pail on the floor.
“This doesn’t look like oatmeal,” Miriam said, picking up a handful. It felt heavier than the rice Mama kept in a jar in the kitchen.
“These are whole oats,” Zayde explained. “Oatmeal is made from what’s inside.”
“So we’re going to make oatmeal?” Miriam asked.
Zayde laughed his merry laugh and shook his head. “These are for Betsy,” he said.
“Who’s Betsy?”
“Come along,” Zayde said. “I’ll introduce you.”
He unlatched the door to the stall across the hall and held it open. Miriam kicked through the hay at the entrance and then stopped abruptly. In front of her stood a butterscotch-colored horse so tall that Miriam’s head barely reached its shoulders. Its hooves were as wide as dinner plates.
“This is Betsy,” Zayde said.
Betsy tossed her head up and down as if nodding a greeting, but it was soon apparent that she was more interested in the oats than in the visitors. Pulling back her lips, she moved her head toward the bucket in Zayde’s hands. Her teeth made Miriam think of the rubber erasers she used back at PS 131, her school in New York. Unlike erasers, though, Betsy’s teeth were enormous, and they looked hard, like something that could crush bones.
Miriam backed away.
“She won’t hurt you,” Zayde said gently. “She only wants her food.”
He walked to the back of the stall and leaned over a wooden fence about a foot away from the wall. Then he turned the bucket upside down and emptied it. The sound the oats made when they landed reminded Miriam of the last time Mama had made popcorn, when she’d accidentally spilled the kernels on the kitchen floor. “Why are you throwing her food down there?” Miriam asked.
“It’s a trough,” Zayde said.
“What’s a troff?”
Zayde boosted her up so she could hang over the rail and see what was on the other side. What she had thought was a fence was the front of a long, shallow wooden box. She reached into it and felt the oats that had settled at the bottom. The box was about as deep as her arm was long.
“It’s Betsy’s cupboard and table at the same time,” Zayde explained. “It’s where she gets her food when she can’t go outside to eat grass.”
He looked up at the ceiling and pointed. Above them was an opening slightly wider than the trough. “That’s the hayloft,” he said. “We can drop hay from there right down here.”
Miriam looked up again, wondering if hay might fall right this minute. Two brown eyes stared down at her.
Before she could stop herself, she screamed. The noise startled Betsy, who whinnied loudly and stamped her massive hooves. Zayde picked up Miriam and hurried her out of the stall.
“Oy vavoy!” he said, setting her down on the floor. “What made you scream like that?”
“Someone was up there!” Miriam’s voice was shaky.
“In the hayloft?”
Miriam nodded.
“The men are often up there,” Zayde assured her. “They need to get the hay down for the cows.”
“But the cows are out in the field,” Miriam said. “Why would someone be getting them hay now?”
“To bring out to the field,” Zayde said. “All that snow—they can’t get at the grass, so we bring them hay. Whoever was up there must have heard our voices and got curious and looked down. You get curious, don’t you?”
Miriam nodded. She didn’t ask any more questions. Zayde was so certain that it was one of the men. She’d only seen them for a second, but it had been long enough to be certain that those eyes did not belong to one of the men. She wished she had looked longer instead of screaming. Next time, she promised herself, she would be brave. Next time she would stare right back.
FIVE
“There’s something else I want to show you,” Zayde said outside Betsy’s stall.
Miriam was still thinking about what she had just seen. “How do you get into the hayloft?” she asked.
“There’s a ladder up there.” Zayde pointed to the middle of the barn. “And there’s a staircase outside, around the side.”
“Can I go up there?” Miriam asked.
“It’s not for girls,” Zayde said. “Come.”
A pile of wooden crates was heaped by the back entrance. Zayde took one and carried it to the back of the stall across from Betsy’s. Except for the hay all over the floor, the stall was empty. Miriam looked up at the ceiling. There was an opening, but no one looking down at her. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. She looked at Zayde. He was smiling at her.
Slowly Miriam turned around, inspecting the entire stall. She spent an extra-long time scanning the narrow opening to the hayloft. “There’s nobody—nothing in here,” she said finally.
“Oh, but there is,” Zayde said.
For just a minute she was frightened again, but when she saw the playful look on her grandfather’s face she knew he wasn’t talking about eyes in the hayloft. Putting a hand on her shoulder, he directed her toward the trough.
“Stand on that,” he said, pointing to the crate he’d carried into the stall.
Miriam did as she was told. When she peered into the trough, she almost yelled again, this time because she was so excited.
Seven kittens clustered around a solemn-looking mother cat. The mother was the same color as the straw lining the trough. Three of the kittens looked like her, and four were almost all white except for some black around their paws and eyes. Some of them looked like bank robbers. Others looked as if they’d forgotten to put on all of their socks.
“They were born about a week ago,” Zayde said. “Just in time for your visit.”
None were much bigger than Miriam’s hands. Their eyes were barely open. They were falling over ea
ch other trying to get to their mother, who rested, as still as a stuffed animal, on her straw bed.
Miriam turned to her grandfather. “Can I play with them?”
“Soon,” Zayde said. “They should be big enough by next week.”
The next question escaped Miriam’s mouth before she’d had a chance to even think what she was asking. “Can I have one?” As soon as she had spoken, she scolded herself. How greedy she sounded! “I didn’t mean to be impertinent,” she added.
“You weren’t,” Zayde said. “Your grandmother and I thought you might like one for yourself, at least while you are here. When they’re old enough to leave their mother, you can pick whichever one you want and bring it into the house to live with you.”
Miriam thought of Jojo, the kitten in the picture that Banjo had showed her at lunch. Banjo had been gone for six months before Meg’s kitten had turned into a cat. Miriam didn’t have that much time. “Next week?” she asked.
“Oh no,” Zayde said. “They’ll be big enough to play with next week, but they won’t be ready to leave their mama that soon. Around Passover, I would think.”
“But won’t I be back home by then?” Miriam asked.
Zayde shook his head. “That’s only six weeks from now. Your mama and papa won’t be back that soon. You’ll spend Passover here with us.”
Passover was Miriam’s favorite holiday. The weeklong festival started with a seder. Miriam and Mama and Papa celebrated with Mendel, Papa’s business partner. Mendel’s mother, Tante Malka, had an apartment big enough to fit all of Mendel’s brothers and sisters and their families. Everyone gathered around the dinner table to hear the story of how the Israelites escaped from slavery in Egypt. It took hours to tell. Usually Miriam and the other children were asleep by the time the special meal and story ended.
She didn’t remember Mama telling her she would have to spend Passover on the farm.
“Don’t look so sad, Miri,” Zayde said. “The seder will be extra special because you’ll be here.”
Miriam couldn’t imagine a seder on the farm, with only Bubby and Zayde and Mazel and a kitten.
Miriam's Secret Page 2
