Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

Aunt Jenny gave a “War Party” to raise money for some organization, perhaps the Red Cross. I was allowed to help set the table. All I remember were the red, white, and blue bonbons and the red, white, and blue flowers. Mrs. Barton’s mother continued to knit helmets and wristers and Grandma decided that I, too, should learn to knit. On a pair of needles that seemed awfully long I began to knit and purl some small squares to make an afghan, but I hated it. I cherish the memory of the colors, half bright pink and half pea-green, but knitting I thought almost as bad as the “numbers” game. It reached such a point that I would actually drop stitches when Grandma left the room, and so most of the afghan was finally knitted by her. She decided I wasn’t any good with my hands. I have never knitted since.

There were the war cartoons, several big books of them: German helmets and cut-off hands haunted us. Aunt Jenny spoke of such things and was shushed. Because of the “Belgians,” I ate my mashed potatoes. We were hoarders; in the closet under the front stairs were four barrels of sugar, which hardened like rock. In the kitchen one evening the cook hammered it with a rolling pin with all her might, redder than ever. There was something conspiratorial about the scene, which I associated with Aunt Jenny. Since she was rarely at home, I got the idea that her “War Work” was some kind of full-time profession. In Nova Scotia the soldiers, some of whom I actually knew, wore beautiful tam-o’-shanters with thistles and other insignia on them. When they got dressed up, they wore kilts and sporrans. One of them had come courting my young aunt in this superb costume, carrying a swagger stick, and let me examine him all over. The Johnny-get-your-gun type of soldier in Worcester seemed very drab to me. I missed black Nanny and the little gray cat, Tippy, named after the song. I liked “Tipperary” and “The long, long trail” and “Every nice girl loves a sailor” much better than the Worcester songs. I particularly hated “Joan of Arc, they are ca-alllll-ing you.”

They talked about high prices at the table; I heard that eggs were five cents apiece. And the price of clothes! I rarely spoke, but this time I felt I had something to contribute. I said, “The last time my aunt in Nova Scotia bought a pair of shoes, they cost three dollars.” Everyone laughed. I lost my courage about making conversation at the dinner table and I have never regained it.

Sunday morning there was always oyster stew and muffins. Afterwards Grandma and Uncle Neddy would argue; it seemed a Sunday-morning ritual. They always argued until it was time for Grandma to put on her high black satin hat and be driven to the Pilgrim Congregational Church. I was frightened; I thought they were really fighting and were about to come to blows. They would walk up and down together, round and round the billiard room, even out and around the house. Grandpa meanwhile would be reading the Sunday-morning papers, but would chip in a loud comment once in a while: “I told you that stock was no good, Ned. You’re throwing your money away.” “Jenny has no brains; never had. That woman is a damn fool.” Sometimes he’d snort: “Why don’t you two do your fighting someplace else? I swear I’ll go down to the hotel.” Finally I realized the sessions always ended with Uncle Neddy kissing Grandma, looking pleased with himself, and helping her into her black coat.

The dressmaker came. Her name, oddly, was Miss Cotton. Grandma was fond of her and she ate her lunch on a tray, while the fat orange canary shrieked overhead. She made me four hideous dresses, too long, too dark, and with decorations made from leftovers of Grandma’s dresses. (Forty-three years later I can scarcely bear to think of those dresses.) Even Grandpa said, “Aren’t that child’s skirts too long?” Blue serge, large pockets, everything outlined with a silver braid that had a thread of red running through it. Then Grandma decided I should have long hair and braids, like “nice little girls.” Emma had short hair, but that didn’t seem to count in my favor.

Grandpa once asked me to get his eyeglasses from his bedroom, which I had never been in. It was mostly white and gold, surprisingly feminine for him. The carpet was gold-colored, the bed was fanciful, brass and white, and the furniture was gold and white too. There was a high chest of drawers, a white bedspread, muslin curtains, a set of black leatherbound books near the bed, photographs of Grandma and my aunts and uncles at various ages, and two large black bottles (of whiskey, I realized years later). There were also medicine bottles and the “machines.” There were two of them in black boxes, with electric batteries attached to things like stethoscopes — some sort of vibrator or massager perhaps. What he did with them I could not imagine. The boxes were open and looked dangerous. I reached gingerly over one to get his eyeglasses, and saw myself in the long mirror: my ugly serge dress, my too long hair, my gloomy and frightened expression.

* * *

Then I became ill. First came eczema, and then asthma. At nights Beppo and I scratched together, I in my bed and he outside my door. Roll and scratch, scratch and roll. No one realized that the thick carpets, the weeping birch, the milk toast, and Beppo were all innocently adding to my disorders. By then I was so sick that I had my breakfast in bed. Sometimes, around ten o’clock, I would get out of bed from boredom and go downstairs to watch Uncle Neddy having his breakfast. His hair was parted in the middle, his face was shiny and lightly freckled, his shirt was dazzling white, and his cuff-links glittered. I loved and hated him at the same time. He’d say things like, “At your age I’d be out and up the hill picking up all the nuts,” and “What you need, young lady…” I wanted to be on good terms with everyone, but he would insist on making jokes I couldn’t understand, and talking about spankings and other horrors.

One night something marvelous did happen. I was asleep when Grandma came in and said, “Grandpa wants you to come downstairs and see the present he’s brought you from Providence.” The lights in the kitchen were very bright. On the white enameled table, dazed and blinking, stood three little hens — no, two little hens and one rooster. They were Golden Bantams, for me. When one hen pecked at some cornmeal on the enamel table, and made miniature but hen-like sounds, I could have cried with pleasure. Where to put them for the night? The problem was solved by using one of the “set tubs” in the laundry off the kitchen. But hens and roosters have to perch, and Grandma found a bleached stick that the laundress used for stirring her wash. It was stuck into one stone tub and the three tiny fowl immediately and obligingly hopped on and clung to it. They were reddish, speckled, with tiny doll-like red combs; the rooster had long tail feathers. They were mine, and they were to live in a special henhouse Ed would fix in the morning. I could scarcely bear to leave my little poultry.

One night I was taken to the window in the upstairs front hall to see the ice on the trees, lit by the street lamp at the end of our drive. All the maple trees were bent by the weight of the ice. Branches had cracked off, the telephone wires were covered with ice, and so was the row of thin elms that grew along the street — a great pale blaze of ice filling the vision completely, seeming to circle and circle if one squinted a bit. My grandfather, wearing his nightshirt and red dressing gown, held me up to the window. “Squint your eyes, Grandpa,” I said, “tight!” and he did. It was one of the few unselfconscious moments of that whole dismal time.

Then Agnes left. She was going back to Sweden to get married. I wept and clung to her skirts and large suitcase when she kissed me goodbye. After that, things went from bad to worse. First came constipation, then eczema again, and finally asthma. I felt myself aging, even dying. I was bored and lonely with Grandma, my silent grandpa, the dinners alone, bored with Emma and Beppo, all of them. At night I lay blinking my flashlight off and on, and crying. As Louise Bogan has so well put it: