“I’m hungry!”

Jane looked up at the clock in the little girl’s playroom. It was just after nine in the morning, but then again they’d eaten breakfast at six. A mid-morning snack seemed like a reasonable request.

Adele had already been in bed when Jane arrived the night before. After a brief tour of the house, Jane had been shown to her own room, and she’d decided to go to bed early herself, unsure what the morning would have in store for her.

Sleep hadn’t come easily though. She’d lain awake in the narrow twin bed and felt her mind drift back over the events of the day. The image of the gardener, with those tattoos and those dimples and that sardonic smile, kept popping unbidden into her head. At least this place came with a view. She’d felt her cheeks warm a little at the thought, wondering how often she would even see him. Probably better if it wasn’t too often, considering what an asshole he was, the way he kept grinning to himself at some private joke the whole time they were driving. What was so damn funny anyway? Definitely laughing at her, not with her.

She’d shaken her head to clear his image from her mind and picked up her book instead, sitting up and switching on the bedside lamp. It had been years since she’d last read Jane Eyre, but it seemed like a logical choice to bring with her on her first assignment as a live-in nanny.  She could certainly identify with the heroine – another Jane, a young woman living in 19th century England who goes to live with a family as a governess.

Jane had flicked the book open to where she’d left off and felt a shiver run down her spine at what she read. Adele. She’d forgotten that the little girl in the story was named Adele too. What were the chances? She wasn’t superstitious by nature, but still she’d fallen asleep with an unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach. What else from this story was going to end up coming true?

Her dreams were disturbed at barely 6:00 AM by the sound of otherworldly shrieking. She’d cracked her eyes open to see a little girl in a nightgown jumping on her bed and shouting wildly, “WAKE-UP-WAKE-UP-WAKE-UP-WAKE-UP!” This must be Adele. Jane sat up in the bed and stretched, struggling to gather her thoughts. In the whirlwind of motion, she could only take in a few vague impressions – liquid brown eyes that seemed to take up an inhumanly large proportion of the childish face, and a mass of dark curly hair floating in an untamed cloud around her head.

“Good morning,” Jane had said.

“You’re my new nanny. Do you like Dora the Explorer? My last nanny was called Susan but I called her Susie ‘cause I couldn’t say Susan ‘cause I was a baby, but I can say it now. She had to leave because Daddy yelled at her and she called him bad words. You shouldn’t say fuck. It’s OK for daddies to say it though. I have Dora on my pajamas. Your hair is pretty. Can we have breakfast now? My daddy is famous. Is your name Amy?”

Jane could only laugh at this soliloquy. She’d been worried that it might take a while to get her new charge to warm up to her, but this little girl was definitely not a shy one. The biggest problem was going to be getting a word in edgewise.

“No, my name is Jane.”

“Daddy said your name was Amy.”

“Oh, I think there was some mix up.” The gardener yesterday had called her Amy as well. The nanny agency must have sent the wrong paperwork, she realized, wondering if she’d traveled all this way for nothing. Would Mr. Levine send her away when he found out she wasn’t the one he’d been expecting? In any case, she was here now and Adele was hungry, so she decided to make herself useful.

“I’m Jane,” she told the little girl again, scooting out of bed and throwing on jeans and a t-shirt. “Come on, I’ll make you breakfast.”

They’d played together all morning – Adele flitting excitedly from one activity to the next in a playroom so overstocked it would have put most toy stores to shame. She was clearly bright, but attention span was going to be an issue. They were going to need some projects to hold her attention. For the first morning, though, Jane was content enough to follow along on the wild ride through Adele’s unremitting stream-of-consciousness.

Tactfulness – that was going to be another issue they’d have to tackle. Every so often, the endless chatter about fairy princesses and cartoon characters would turn to some tidbit of information that made Jane cringe. She would probably get fired on the spot if her boss knew half the things that Adele let slip.

“Daddy likes to walk around in his underpants, but he says he has to put his pants on when there’s a nanny ‘cause it would be in a puppet.”

Jane squinted at the little girl for a moment, trying to decipher the childish words. “You mean ‘inappropriate’?” Jane corrected, pronouncing the word slowly and clearly.

“Yeah. In a puppet. That’s what he said.” She shrugged. “Silly Daddy. I have Dora underpants. Do you like Dora?” There had already been quite a bit of discussion on the topic of Dora the Explorer this morning. “Daddy has Superman underpants. He says they don’t make Dora underpants for boys. You don’t mind if Daddy walks around in his underpants, do you?”

Jane couldn’t help laughing. “I think maybe your daddy is right about that, sweetie.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Why don’t you show me your Dora doll again?” Jane asked, but Adele’s mind was already whirling on to the next topic of conversation.

“Do you like to sing?”

“I love to sing.”

“Do you know the lullaby Daddy taught me?”

“I don’t know. How does it go?”

I’m sorry, I did not mean to hurt my little girl.

Dum di dum dum di dum di dum di dum

So goodnight goodnight goodnight goodnight

Goodnight goodnight goodnight goodnight goodnight…

“I don’t sing it as good as Daddy,” Adele confessed. “I forget the words sometimes.”

She actually had a remarkably good singing voice for such a young child. She could carry a melody, even if the words of the song did seem a little off. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to hurt my little girl?” What kind of a lullaby was that?

In any case, there was something Jane had been meaning to find out, and all this talk about Adele’s father brought it back to mind. “Your daddy’s famous?” she asked Adele. “Do you know what he’s famous for?”

“For singing, dumdum.”  

“That’s not polite to call people dumdum,” Jane gently admonished.

Adele had looked up at her then with a quivering lower lip and those impossibly big eyes growing even bigger. Jane immediately felt a pang of guilt for scolding. She pulled Adele to sit in her lap, and the little girl immediately curled up and buried her face in Jane’s neck. She began talking again but her voice was muffled, and Jane had to strain to make out the words. “My mommy is famous too.”

“Is she?”

“My mommy is the most beautiful singer in the whole world,” Adele said, looking up at Jane with those bright liquid eyes. The most beautiful singer in the world, was it? Jane could almost believe it, looking down at this pretty little girl with her clear high singing voice. “She lives in England. Or maybe Egypt. I can’t remember. It’s one of those. She can’t come home ‘cause she’s very busy singing but she misses me a lot.”

Jane felt her blood start to boil yet again now, thinking back to the little girl’s words. What kind of a mother leaves her child behind like that? Why bother reproducing in the first place if you don’t want to deal with the consequences? Adele clearly worshipped her father, the way she went on about him, but Jane could see how much she longed for a mother in her life as well.

Jane took a deep breath to quell the burst of anger. The placement counselor at the nanny agency had warned her how important it was not to judge the lifestyle choices of her employers. Anyway, this was her own personal baggage speaking.  She knew firsthand how it felt to be the little girl with the mother who went away one day and never came back.

She made her way toward the kitchen now in search of a mid-morning snack, but she knew she wouldn’t rest easy until she found a way to offer Adele a far deeper kind of comfort.