Hilda Doolittle - The Gift

Papa did not tell us what he was doing. Mr. Evans seemed very surprised that we did not know all about it. “Your father is doing very important work,” he said. “I suppose he’s explained it to you, on variation of latitude.” We did not dare ask Mr. Evans what that was. Some day, I would ask Papa. I did not want to know really. What it was, was that he was separate, he was not really part of this table with the glass balls, with the tinsel paper, with the work-basket, with the paste pot, with the old gilt fir cones that Mama said we could paint over with some new gilt that she would get when she went in to shop in Philadelphia.

But once at Christmastime, he had taken us out, as if what he did must be different.

He said, “I want to take the children out.”

Mama said, “But now? It’s late, it’s snowing.”

He said, yes he wanted to take the children; we were surprised. Mama and Ida got our coats and mittens, there was snow on the ground and the lamps were lit along Church Street; we walked along with Papa in the snow, in the dark, after dinner along Church Street.

The snow swirled around the lampposts and ahead, you could see the circle like an island where the next lamp was. We got past the grocer’s and on down the empty street; we turned at the end by the seminary, up Main Street where the stores were. We stopped in front of the big toystore or the big store that had all the toys in the window for Christmas, and he told us to stand there and look at the toys and find out what we wanted.

We did not know what to ask for, for day after tomorrow or tomorrow was Christmas. We went in and he said, could we find something that we would all like, something that we could all have together. That seemed hard at first, but it was very easy really for we found a box of animals; then the lady in the store found a bigger box; there were animals set in cardboard, there were about twelve large animals.

The lady said they were from abroad.

There was a polar bear, a camel, an elephant, each an animal in itself, not like the Noah’s Ark animals.

We brought the box home. Mama said, “But it’s not Christmas.” Papa said he got us our present now. “But they better keep it,” said Mama. But we said we knew what was inside. Gilbert held the box, he would not let Ida take it, we took it upstairs, we could have it upstairs if we would go to bed, “It is very late,” said Mama.

Papa shook out the snow from his hat and put his cane in the hat rack. Ida said, “That was quite a treat going out after dark, wasn’t it?” We said, “Yes.”

Those animals were still in the box, and they had lasted, they had not broken, they were very good animals, a little larger than the usual animals, but not too large for the putz . How often had they stood on the putz under the branches, was it two times or was it three times?

We had divided them up, each taking one, then coming round again and each choosing one. Gilbert had first choice and took the elephant, but I did not care; for first, I wanted the deer with antlers, and Harold afterwards said, for first, he wanted the polar bear, so we each got our first animal; this was the way we divided things.

We had done this with the Punch and Judy show; of course naturally Gilbert had Punch and I had Judy and then Harold chose Joey, the clown, and he said he liked Joey better. In a way, I liked Joey better too, but it was natural for Gilbert to have Punch, me Judy, like Jack and Jill went up the hill.

Now there were these other animals, one had almost forgotten them, not quite; that was part of it; it was necessary almost-to-forget between the seasons, then the things came almost-as-a-surprise. There were those animals. Mama had given away the Punch and Judy show when we moved and some of our books. She had not given away the Christmas-tree things, they were still here, or weren’t they? Suppose we opened the box and found that the polar bear was gone or the deer with antlers? Must Papa wait? Yet it was Papa who took us out, everything was different, we had never been out in the snow at night. The snow whirled round the lampposts and each lamppost was an island with its circle of light on the snow.

Even the snow was different, it looked different, it smelled different. It swirled round the lamps and the circle under the lamps. We had crossed the road that runs across Church Street to the bridge and the way along the river to the boats, but we never went there in the winter, nor to the island where he took us on Sundays in the summer because he was very unhappy when he was a little boy on Sunday. That is what I knew about him; he was not happy on Sunday and he had not had a Christmas tree.

He went out in the dark, but that night it was snowing so he did not go to his observatory across the river but took us out. The snow blew round the lamps, and we had crossed the street that runs downhill to the bridge, we had passed Papalie’s house which was really next door to us. Uncle Hartley and Aunt Belle lived there too, and we were going down Church Street, past the Bell House and the Sisters’ House and the Widows’ House and the old seminary and the church where we had our Christmas-Eve candles.

This must have been on the day before Christmas Eve or was it Christmas Eve?

It was a day set apart; for the first time, we went out in the dark in the snow. Harold was small and had to be pulled a little, but Papa did not carry him. Gilbert ran ahead to the lamppost ahead and then turned round and waited for us. He scraped up some snow for a snowball and looked round, but there were none of the schoolboys to throw it at.

There was no one on the street, there were no marks of wheels or footsteps across the street.

There were lights in the Sisters’ House windows. The clock struck but I forgot to count it. It was the church clock. We turned round below the walls of the church that was built up, with steps going up. Then we were on Main Street and there were people in the snow, even with umbrellas and carrying packages. He stopped in front of the window where the toys were.

Papalie was dead. There would be some of the clay sheep he made for us, new each year, or maybe there wouldn’t be. The wool pulled off and got dirty but maybe Mama saved the last clay sheep; they would be the last, with the ram with the wire horns and the lambs with matchstick legs and one or two lambs lying down without legs.

That was the thing.

That was why I waited and why I wondered if maybe Mama had given away the animals, it would be terrible; it had been so terrible that I forgot to care, I did not really care after the first minute, when we came to the new house and everything was empty, with no curtains, and we slept on mattresses on the floor.

In the empty room, the next day, I said, when Ida and Mama were unpacking the wooden boxes, “Can I have my Grimm?”

Mama looked at Ida and Ida looked in the box where the books were, “I can’t find it,” said Ida, “there is so much to do, run along, run along, ask the packing-man where he put the hammer.”

Mama looked at Ida, there was something wrong.

“But I’ll look,” I said; then Mama said, “Oh, I remember now,” and Ida went out herself to find the hammer.

“I thought at the last, as the fairy book was all coming to pieces”—I knew the worst.

In the new house, with everything empty and no clock ticking in the hall, I knew that something dreadful was going to be told. It was so dreadful that I really didn’t care. Didn’t Mama say we were getting so old now, didn’t she add, “Some poor child who could not have a book,” didn’t she say — what did she say? It was the first thing I asked for when they began unpacking the boxes, but it did not matter. How could it? It was only an old book, it was falling to pieces, she had given it away, some other child. I forgot it then, or rather … the pictures came true in my head.