The Mortgaged Heart Page 25

  Mac opens the beer. Because of the warmth, the foam geysers up over the neck of the bottle and spills on his hand and arm. He holds out his arm to Sugar, and she licks it daintily. Evidently the taste pleases her, for very slowly she raises her right paw and begs for more; he draws her in between his knees and scratches her behind the ears. To-morrow Sugar will be sent on the train to Mac's brother in Delaware.

  For a long time we are silent. When Mac speaks his voice is controlled and quiet:

  "They say we know what we are fighting against, but that we don't make ourselves plain about what we are fighting for. They want us to stop off to form slogans. It is like asking a man who is being choked and in danger of suffocation why he puts up a struggle. He does not say to himself that he fights because with his wind-pipe clutched he can not get air. He does not remind himself that air contains oxygen, and it is by the process of oxidation that the body derives the energy by which it functions. He does not lie still and tell himself that he has three minutes of grace in which to find out his reasons for wanting to fight off his oppressor and to breathe. A man in such peril simply fights. He fights for release, for air, for life, and he struggles with every ounce of power in his body. He does not stop fighting until all trace of consciousness has left him, or until breath has been granted him once more."

  Dark comes on. An airplane cruises in the deepening sky. Mac does not say anything further, there is no more need to talk. To-morrow he will be in the Army.

  And Mac, the thousands of others like him, does not face the struggle ahead of us with hopped-up, specious feelings of glory. He knows what it will cost his generation in personal self-denial and in suffering. But he is done with questioning, finished with doubt.

  [Vogue, July 15, 1941]

  OUR HEADS ARE BOWED

  ON THANKSGIVING, this November 1945, the day that is set aside for ritual gratitude to God, our heads are bowed. This day of thanks is a national day, and never has our country had more to be grateful for, and at the same time never have we so needed godly counsel. After the long years of universal agony and waste, the war is ended; today we rejoice in peace. But there is a gravity in our rejoicing, the sense of loss, the quiet sternness of power when combined with conscience. In a world of shattered cities and ruin, our land is one of the very few that has escaped the physical destruction of this war, a country of unblemished wholeness on this globe of misery and stunned want. It is with the deference proper to the suffering of unreckoned others that on this day our heads are bowed.

  Thanksgiving is essentially a family day. It is the Thursday of November when the separate members of the family assemble to join in a day of shared feasting, mutual prayer. It comes at the end of the harvest season, when the bright grain is barned and the fruits of the earth have matured in all their lavish varieties—a season of golden richness before the fallow of the wintertime. But although our earth has been undisturbed by the wreck of war, we have known a more insidious disruption. These last Thanksgivings have been marked by absences. Our husbands, brothers and loved ones have been missing from the family gatherings; the strength of the nation has been away. So that at best our feasts were bleak. A great part of those who have been absent will not be in our homes today. They will observe another Thanksgiving in unfamiliar weathers and distant lands. And there are others coming homeward on the seas. But peace for most of us has restored a measure of serenity. The torn nerves can become more tranquil, the individual anguish of suspense has been eased or put at rest. It is in the time of greatest calamity, war, that human beings realize how fugitive is personal happiness and what a fragile grasp we bring to the guidance of our personal lives. For war and chance are indivisible. The sense of hazard is now quieted, and on this day of gratitude the homes of most of us can be free of anxiety and alarm. Many of us are fortunate in having our soldiers close to us at home and able to lead our prayer. For our soldiers, whether at home or far away, who have endured the ghastliness of war and suffered the terrors and miseries of battle that made possible the peace, our heads are bowed.

  There is no family on this day who will not reflect the sorrow of those of us who have been dealt a deeper loss. There are our men in hospitals; most of these can with the aid of science—that science that can work equally for darkness as well as light—be cured and returned to us soon. But there are others who will never be whole again; the mutilated, blind and permanently maimed. For those who have suffered such affliction, we can only promise that the acknowledgment of our debt will endure through all our generation. The prisoners of war are home or soon will be here; we pray that those who have suffered the willful torments of our enemies will, with our love and patient care, soon overcome the shock, the debilitation, and regain the peace of health again. There are those loved ones who will never join with us in prayer again, those who have made the mute and final sacrifice of life. For the families of the dead only exquisite understanding of a poet can be trusted now.

  All the whole world is living without war,

  And yet I cannot find out any peace.

  We pause in the voiceless prayer that those who have known this extremity of loss will find the strength to resist lasting despair, and will, through patience and sorrow, succeed to peace. For the grieving today our heads are bowed.

  This is a national day, and we are a proud nation. Our land is broad, a country of many toils and many weathers. In another way our land is varied. We have not grown strong from bigotry and reasonless exclusions. We have grown mighty, not through prejudice and insularity, but by the peoples of many nations and the genius of varied racial strains. Our pride is not the narrow, distrustful pride of the weak. It is the pride of a generous nation, able to absorb the human gifts with which it has been endowed; and we pray that our pride will be free of all bigotry—the pride of the great as well as the strong. For this our heads are bowed.

  On Thanksgiving, 1945, we pray for a rare wisdom. The last of the weapons of this past war have made it certain that, if peace cannot be maintained, the future of mankind is precarious as it has never been in all of history. This past war has left whole continents of hunger, of the dazed lost. We pray that as a nation we will have the wisdom to justly and generously use our power, to work with others so that a lasting order can be secured. With the grave knowledge of our responsibility we pray for clarity of spirit, moral might. The soul of humanity must not be exceeded by the amoral mind. And so it is for the greatest of all blessings, wisdom of heart, that today, in humility, our heads are bowed. Amen.

  [Mademoiselle, November 1945]

  CHRISTMAS

  HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

  SOMETIMES IN AUGUST, weary of the vacant, broiling afternoon, my younger brother and sister and I would gather in the dense shade under the oak tree in the back yard and talk of Christmas and sing carols. Once after such a conclave, when the tunes of the carols still lingered in the heat-shimmered air, I remember climbing up into the tree-house and sitting there alone for a long time.

  Brother called up: "What are you doing?"

  "Thinking," I answered.

  "What are you thinking about?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, how can you be thinking when you don't know what you are thinking about?"

  I did not want to talk with my brother. I was experiencing the first wonder about the mystery of Time. Here I was, on this August afternoon, in the tree-house, in the burnt, jaded yard, sick and tired of all our summer ways. (I had read Little Women for the second time, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, Little Men, and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. I had read movie magazines and even tried to read love stories in the Woman's Home Companion—I was so sick of everything.) How could it be that I was I and now was now when in four months it would be Christmas, wintertime, cold weather, twilight and the glory of the Christmas tree? I puzzled about the now and later and rubbed the inside of my elbow until there was a little roll of dirt between my forefinger and thumb. Would the now I of the tree-house and the August
afternoon be the same I of winter, firelight and the Christmas tree? I wondered.

  My brother repeated: "You say you are thinking but you don't know what you are thinking about. What are you really doing up there? Have you got some secret candy?"

  September came, and my mother opened the cedar chest and we tried on winter coats and last year's sweaters to see if they would do again. She took the three of us downtown and bought us new shoes and school clothes.

  Christmas was nearer on the September Sunday that Daddy rounded us up in the car and drove us out on dusty country roads to pick elderberry blooms. Daddy made wine from elderberry blossoms—- it was a yellow-white wine, the color of weak winter sun. The wine was dry to the wry side—indeed, some years it turned to vinegar. The wine was served at Christmastime with slices of fruitcake when company came. On November Sundays we went to the woods with a big basket of fried chicken dinner, thermos jug and coffee-pot. We hunted partridge berries in the pine woods near our town. These scarlet berries grew hidden underneath the glossy brown pine needles that lay in a slick carpet beneath the tall wind-singing trees. The bright berries were a Christmas decoration, lasting in water through the whole season.

  In December the windows downtown were filled with toys, and my brother and sister and I were given two dollars apiece to buy our Christmas presents. We patronized the ten-cent stores, choosing between jackstones, pencil boxes, water colors, and satin handkerchief holders. We would each buy a nickel's worth of lump milk chocolate at the candy counter to mouth as we trudged from counter to counter, choice to choice. It was exacting and final—taking several afternoons—for the dime stores would not take back or exchange.

  Mother made fruitcakes, and for weeks ahead the family picked out the nut meats of pecans and walnuts, careful of the bitter layer of the pecans that lined your mouth with nasty fur. At the last I was allowed to blanch the almonds, pinching the scalded nuts so that they sometimes hit the ceiling or bounced across the room. Mother cut slices of citron and crystallized pineapple, figs and dates, and candied cherries were added whole. We cut rounds of brown paper to line the pans. Usually the cakes were mixed and put into the oven when we were in school. Late in the afternoon the cakes would be finished, wrapped in white napkins on the breakfast-room table. Later they would be soaked in brandy. These fruitcakes were famous in our town, and Mother gave them often as Christmas gifts. When company came thin slices of fruitcake, wine and coffee were always served. When you held a slice of fruitcake to the window or the firelight the slice was translucent, pale citron green and yellow and red, with the glow and richness of our church windows.

  Daddy was a jeweler, and his store was kept open until midnight all Christmas week. I, as the eldest child, was allowed to stay up late with Mother until Daddy came home. Mother was always nervous without a "man in the house." (On those rare occasions when Daddy had to stay overnight on business in Atlanta, the children were armed with a hammer, saw and a monkey wrench. When pressed about her anxieties Mother claimed she was afraid of "escaped convicts or crazy people." I never saw an escaped convict, but once a "crazy" person did come to see us. She was an old, old lady dressed in elegant black taffeta, my mother's second cousin once removed, and came on a tranquil Sunday morning and announced that she had always liked our house and she intended to stay with us until she died. Her sons and daughters and grandchildren gathered around to plead with her as she sat rocking in our front porch rocking chair and she left not unwillingly when they promised a car ride and ice cream.) Nothing ever happened on those evenings in Christmas week, but I felt grown, aged suddenly by trust and dignity. Mother confided in secrecy what the younger children were getting from Santa Claus. I knew where the Santa Claus things were hidden, and was appointed to see that my brother and sister did not go into the back-room closet or the wardrobe in our parents' room.

  Christmas Eve was the longest day, but it was lined with the glory of tomorrow. The sitting-room smelled of floor wax and the clean, cold odor of the spruce tree. The Christmas tree stood in a corner of the front room, tall as the ceiling, majestic, undecorated. It was our family custom that the tree was not decorated until after we children were in bed on Christmas Eve night. We went to bed very early, as soon as it was winter dark. I lay in the bed beside my sister and tried to keep her awake.

  "You want to guess again about your Santa Claus?"

  "We've already done that so much," she said.

  My sister slept. And there again was another puzzle. How could it be that when she opened her eyes it would be Christmas while I lay awake in the dark for hours and hours? The time was the same for both of us, and yet not at all the same. What was it? How? I thought of Bethlehem and cherry candy, Jesus and skyrockets. It was dark when I awoke. We were allowed to get up on Christmas at five o'clock. Later I found out that Daddy juggled the clock Christmas Eve so that five o'clock was actually six. Anyway it was always still dark when we rushed in to dress by the kitchen stove. The rule was that we dress and eat breakfast before we could go in to the Christmas tree. On Christmas morning we always had fish roe, bacon and grits for breakfast. I grudged every mouthful—for who wanted to fill up on breakfast when there in the sitting-room was candy, at least three whole boxes? After breakfast we lined up, and carols were started. Our voices rose naked and mysterious as we filed through the door to the sitting-room. The carol, unfinished, ended in raw yells of joy.

  The Christmas tree glittered in the glorious, candlelit room. There were bicycles and bundles wrapped in tissue paper. Our stockings hanging from the mantlepiece bulged with oranges, nuts and smaller presents. The next hours were paradise. The blue dawn at the window brightened, and the candles were blown out. By nine o'clock we had ridden the wheel presents and dressed in the clothes gifts. We visited the neighborhood children and were visited in turn. Our cousins came and grown relatives from distant neighborhoods. All through the morning we ate chocolates. At two or three o'clock the Christmas dinner was served. The dining-room table had been let out with extra leaves and the very best linen was laid—satin damask with a rose design. Daddy asked the blessing, then stood up to carve the turkey. Dressing, rice and giblet gravy were served. There were cut-glass dishes of sparkling jellies and stateliness of festal wine. For dessert there was always sillabub or charlotte and fruitcake. The afternoon was almost over when dinner was done.

  At twilight I sat on the front steps, jaded by too much pleasure, sick at the stomach and worn out. The boy next door skated down the street in his new Indian suit. A girl spun around on a crackling son-of-a-gun. My brother waved sparklers. Christmas was over. I thought of the monotony of Time ahead, unsolaced by the distant glow of paler festivals, the year that stretched before another Christmas—eternity.

  [Mademoiselle, December 1949]

  THE DISCOVERY OF CHRISTMAS

  THE CHRISTMAS of my fifth year, when we still lived in the old downtown Georgia home, I had just recovered from scarlet fever, and that Christmas Day I overcame a rivalry that like the fever had mottled and blanched my sickened heart. This rivalry that changed to love overshadowed my discovery that Santa Claus and Jesus were not the kin I had supposed.

  The scarlet fever came first. In November my brother Budge and I were quarantined in the back room and for six weeks' time hovered over thermometers, potties, alcohol rubs and Rosa Henderson. Rosa was the practical nurse who cared for us, as Mother had deserted me for my hated rival—the new baby sister. Mother would half-open the door and pass the presents that came to the house to Rosa, calling out some words before she shut the door. She did not bring the baby and I was glad of that. There were many presents and Rosa put them in a big soapbox between the beds of my brother and me. There were games, modeling clay, paint sets, cutting-out scissors and engines.

  Budge was much littler than I was. He was too little to count straight, to play Parcheesi, to wipe himself. He could only model squashed balls and cut out easy, big round things like magazine pictures of Santa Claus. Then his tongue would wi
ggle out of the corner of his mouth because of the difficulty. I cut out the hard things and paper dolls. When he played the harp it made a sickening shriek. I played Dixie and Christmas carols.

  Toward dark Rosa read aloud to us. She read Child Life, storybooks or a True Confessions magazine. Her soft, stumbling voice would rise and fall in the quiet room as firelit shadows staggered gold and gray upon the walls. At that time there were only the changing tones of her colored voice and the changing walls in the firelight. Except sometimes the baby cried and I felt as if a worm crawled inside me and played the harp to drown out the sound.

  It was late fall when the quarantine began and through the closed windows we could see the autumn leaves falling against the blue sky and sunlight. We sang:

  Come, little leaves, said the wind one day,

  Come o'er the meadows with me and play...

  Then suddenly one morning Jack Frost silvered the grass and roof tops. Rosa mentioned that Christmas was not long away.

  "How long?"

  "About as long as that settlelord chain, I reckon." Toward the end of the quarantine we had been making a Celluloid chain of many different colors. I puzzled about the answer and Budge thought and put his tongue on the corner of his mouth. Rosa added, "Christmas is on the twenty-fifth of December—directly I will count the days. If you listen you can hear the reindeers come galloping from the North Pole. It's not long."

  "Will we be loose from this old room by then?"