Hilda Doolittle - The Gift

Gilbert must have run down the wing stairs to get there first. That is what he had gone away for (perhaps even to the observatory or the transit house), he had not really left us alone, but Harold and me were alone for a long time.

Now they did not say, “Where did you find your father?” They did not ask, “Who found him?” They did not say, “But this is your father, were you alone with your father? Did you wash his face? Who got the basin? Who held the basin? Who washed his face?” They did not say any of this, because now Ida had spread a towel over his coat, as if it was the barber’s, and was pressing round his head with her hands.

No one said, “But who found him?” They said, “Run along, run along.” Mama did not look at us, she was looking at Papa. She did not say, “Oh, children, children, who was it found your father?”

What we did was, we sat on the sofa in the sitting room. There was the paint glass on the table and the paintbrush where Harold had dropped it when we ran out, and there was the shoebox with Gilbert’s soldiers. Now I heard the clock tick. I had not heard it for a long time, but it must even have struck because Mama was back and the car only ran once an hour. I did not hear the clock strike. It was long after our bedtime. Gilbert sat at the top of the sofa and I was next and then Harold. We did not say anything to each other.

Eric and Mr. Evans came in, they talked about “concussion” and they wondered how soon the doctor could possibly get here. Who had gone for the doctor? You would think it would be Eric or Mr. Evans; maybe they got Annie to go for the doctor. Where would the baby sleep tonight? What was “concussion”? Had he been out there a long time, had he maybe been on the streetcar before this one? Had it happened an hour before? Or had it just happened when it did? Had he fallen off the car? Had someone tried to kill him? Was he dead? How would they get him upstairs? What was Mama doing? What is concussion? Someone must ask but I did not know if it would be me or Gilbert.

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Eric, very fast, all in one word, and as if he were answering himself, “yes, yes,” very quiet. He stood there and Mr. Evans said, “Concussion of the brain and his collarbone is broken.”

Why did they stand here talking? Why didn’t they do something? Or had Annie been sent for the doctor? What was Mama doing alone with him, had they taken him upstairs, how would they get him upstairs?

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Eric over and over, and he felt for a cigarette packet in his pocket and he pulled it out and threw it on the table. The little bent green cardboard cigarette packet lay on the table. It was lying on the picture of the dog with the red collar. Someone must say something. Gilbert got up and picked up the packet; he said, “There’s a cigarette left, Eric, you threw away a cigarette.” Eric said, “Yes, yes,” and took the cigarette and did not light it.

Gilbert had got the cigarette packet and he had said, “Eric, you threw away a cigarette,” and Harold would not be expected to say anything, so I must say, “What is concussion?”

Gilbert was sitting there again and I said, “What is concussion?”

I heard my words and the way I said the word which I had never heard before and now we would know. It would be something that made him stare at the glass door of the bookshelf and not say anything. It was something to do with his head, “Concussion of the brain,” Mr. Evans had said. Maybe, it meant that he would be crazy and never speak any more, or maybe it meant that he would die.

Mr. Evans turned round as if he had not seen us. “What are you waiting for?” Mr. Evans said.

What did he think we were waiting for?

“Isn’t it time you went to bed?” Mr. Evans said. We were there in a row, and Eric was twirling the cigarette round in his fingers, then he dropped the cigarette. I waited for Gilbert to pick it up but he did not.

“Ah-er-er—” said Eric, that way he talks, “it’s not — it’s not—” He did not say, “It’s not dangerous,” he did not say, “It isn’t anything,” because he did not tell lies. He did not tell lies to us, he bought us Puck and Judge which are funny-papers and Mama would say, “You must not spend all your salary the first of the month on the children, you need some new socks,” but he went on buying us Puck and Judge and a bound volume of Saint Nicholas though it wasn’t Christmas or anybody’s birthday.

He bought me a big Little Women that had more in it about how they grew up and he took us for long walks and we found a violet-farm near Overbrook. The people there were French and they let us pick all the violets we wanted, though we couldn’t talk to them. We tried to understand and they tried to understand and they said, “pere?” to Eric and Eric told us he did know that that was French for father and he said, “No, no,” which we found was the same in French.

They asked us to have coffee in their little house and they had flat wooden trays for the violets. Then Mama said we must get some more violets and she was very happy and she gave us a dollar to buy them next time; it was too far for her to walk, but she kept telling the university ladies that called, “Think of it, it’s several miles, you can see the glass frames from the front porch when the sun is shining on them, and the children came on it quite by accident — it’s a violet-farm, they have double Parma violets, the children bought me almost a dozen different kinds of single and double violets, they can hardly talk any English but they got the children to understand they could come back and pick violets to take away.”

Those were the sort of big bunches that are very expensive in florists’ windows on Walnut and on Chestnut Street in the city and they sell them in tight bunches on the street, with silver paper round the stems and wires, but Mama said “Look they’re all loose, such long stems, I really never saw such lovely violets.”

It was like that, and she said violets were her favorite flower but roses were hers too, because June sixth was her birthday.

I had thought of birthdays and that they were a long way off and so they were, but Mama’s birthday was in June and so would come sooner than ours. The baby’s birthday was the second of May, but I was thinking of Gilbert and Harold and me when I thought of how we always had a white cloth on the round table where the paintbox was, and spread the presents on it.

Mama’s table was easy because we covered her presents with roses.

Eric said, “We don’t know exactly, I mean concussion of the brain is — is if someone gets hit very hard or — er — falls down, then when the head is struck very hard—.” I wanted to know exactly what it was and I could see that Gilbert’s shoe was kicking at the edge of the rug that wasn’t lying quite flat on the floor. If we wanted to get the rug flat, we would have to get off the sofa and lift the sofa, so the little wheel that was fastened in the sofa leg to push it around with would go straight on the rug. We could not get off the sofa, we could not move.

We were frozen stiff to the sofa, in a row, but Gilbert was showing that he could move, if he wanted, by scuffing with his heel at the rug, where it bumped a little, where it had not been pushed quite flat when Ida or Annie had moved the sofa in the morning when they did the sweeping. It was easier, anyhow, for Gilbert to scuff at the floor because his legs were two years’ longer. Harold’s feet were straight out and he was sitting straight up, as if he were having his picture taken.

I could not scuff at the carpet though my feet reached the carpet, but I pushed myself back so that maybe Harold would feel that I wasn’t really waiting so hard, and then maybe Harold would sit back.