The Richer, the Poorer

by Dorothy West

  For the overwrought child the day culminated in this. She snatched up her plate and flung it on the floor. Her speech was almost indistinguishably thick. She was never to know where she got the words.

  “I won’t eat funeral-baked meats! I won’t! Nobody can make me!”

  It was almost as if she saw the hot food turn to straw in their open mouths.

  “You march yourself out of here and go to bed,” shrilled the mother, “and God give me strength to spank you in the morning.”

  Judy went, with her head high and her spirit quaking.

  She went up the unlighted stairs with her eyes shut tight against the apparition of Uncle Eben. But the darkness so terrified her that she made a lattice of her fingers, and slowly opened her eyes on the lesser horror.

  She gained her room, and snapped on the light, and leaned against the door. She was so weak that for a long moment there was no sound nor movement save her strangled breathing and the beating of her heart. She dared not go into the closet for her nightgown, nor did she dare stand long on the treacherous floor. She got to the bed and huddled in its center.

  With one terrified motion she ripped off her dress. Her shoes followed, then her stockings. In her bloomers and waist she got under the covering and frantically hid her face under the sheet.

  She could not uncover it. Surely, if she did, a grinning ghost would swoop down upon her. She lay and shivered and tortured herself with the floating image of Uncle Eben. In sheer terror she began to sob, and went on sobbing, and could not stop.

  By and by she slept.

  THE PENNY

  The little boy ran happily down the village street. His bunchy sweater and gaping shoes were inadequate to keep out the cold, but he felt nothing but joy. For the first time in weeks he had a penny to spend. His father had given it to him just five minutes before.

  His father had brought home his piddling pay for his part-time job and dropped it into his mother’s lap. His mother had counted it carefully with her customary sigh. As usual, there was never enough to last the week. Midway through the week there would not be food enough or fuel enough to carry them until next payday.

  The little boy’s stomach would growl in school. His face and faded shirt would show the scarcity of hot water and soap. His mother would leave her unheated flat and her empty kerosene heater and sit by the glowing heaters of her neighbors, gratefully gulping the coffee they gave her, and slyly pocketing the big, buttered slices of homemade bread. His father would beg a beer from some familiar at the bar to steel himself against the heartbreak of his wife and the hunger of his son. There was no joy in any hour of their day.

  He was their husband and father. They had shared his good times. They loved him no less when his luck was bad. But his boy was so little, only six, and six was so young for sacrifices. Other boys had baseball bats and boxing gloves, and milk and butter in their bellies, and stout shoes and clean shirts, and pennies mixed with the marbles in their pockets.

  The man could not remember the last time he had given the boy a penny to spend. It was surely in another and better world. To this pale creature with the pinched face and hollow eyes he had never given anything.

  The man had snatched a penny from the aproned lap of his wife and folded the boy’s fingers over it. Instantly there had been a miraculous transformation. The gnome who clutched the penny had turned into a child.

  And so the child raced toward the candy store, and his heart almost burst with happiness. There were beautiful things in the candy store. All the wonderful things the other kids pulled out of their pockets at recess. The things that could make a boy’s mouth water with wanting.

  He could have his choice of any of these. He could show his penny to the shopkeeper and take as long as he liked to choose. He could stand outside and press his nose against the glass and not feel bad, for after a while he could go inside and put his penny on the counter. He could turn the knob of an ordinary door and walk straight into heaven.

  The little boy’s head was in the clouds. He did not know he had reached the curb. His feet slid into space. When he picked himself up, his hands were empty. His frantic eye saw the penny rolling toward the gutter. It vanished as he lunged.

  He limped back to the curb and sat down. A bruise was swelling on his cheek. His body was wrenched and sore. But just as he had not felt the cold, now he did not feel the pain. The penny, the round, shining penny, was gone. The end of the world has come at its bright beginning. The boy dropped his head on his knees and whimpered like a whipped puppy.

  Miss Hester Halsey came down the street, walking in her prim way, with her nose, as always, a little disdainful. She had worked in the same office for twenty years and saved her money. She had no patience with people who were poor. They were simply shiftless.

  Miss Halsey saw the huddled figure of the boy. His back was to her, but she recognized his rags. He was the son of that worthless drunk and that lazy slattern. Miss Halsey’s mouth grew grim. Her small, neat feet quickened their pace. Presently she stood over the boy. Delicately she touched him with her foot.

  “Little boy?”

  His head jerked up. He scowled and snuffled. His grief was too immense for speech with this strange woman. He turned his face away and went on whimpering quietly.

  Miss Halsey saw the ugly bruise. She touched the boy with her foot again.

  “Who hit you?” she asked in a soft, strained voice.

  The boy did not answer.

  “Your mother?” she urged. “Your father?”

  The little boy was frightened. He could not have answered if he had wanted to. He moved crabwise along the curb.

  Miss Halsey moved along the curb with him. She did not move crabwise. She made a fluid movement after him. Her gloved hand touched his cheek. He winced and drew a sobbing breath.

  “Does it hurt bad?” asked Miss Halsey eagerly. “Anyone who could beat a child …” her voice grew hoarse with righteousness, “ought to be reported to the proper authorities.” She stooped, and her mouth was level with his ear. “Tell me, who did it, little boy?”

  The boy took a quick, terrified look at her. Her burning eyes pulled him to his feet. He tried to escape, but his stiffening leg buckled under him. He sat down hard on the curb again.

  “Your leg, your leg, too,” the relentless voice insisted. “Did they take a stick to you? Did they take a … a poker?”

  The little boy felt as if he were drowning. This strange woman was pushing him down, down, and he was too tired to struggle. Once when he was three he had leaned too far over the rain barrel. He had fought his way to the surface, and his father had heard his cries. How he wanted the water to close over him to shut this woman out of sight and sound.

  Feverishly Miss Halsey dug in her purse. She selected a coin, a shining penny, and held it out to him.

  “Look, little boy, a nice, new penny. Wouldn’t you like a nice, new penny?”

  Once more he looked at her. His eyes were black with pleading. He did not want the penny. He only wanted to drown.

  “You can have the penny,” said Miss Halsey warmly, seeing the pleading look. “You can have it as soon as you tell me what happened. Poor little neglected boy, you’d be better off in a Home.”

  Home, thought the little boy. If he drowned, he could never go back home. Tonight there would be fire and food. There would be hot water and a bath. He didn’t want to drown. Oh, why didn’t this lady let him go?

  Miss Halsey was purring softly. “You can go and buy candy if I give you the penny. If you tell me what happened, you can go and buy candy.”

  He could feel the water receding. She was going to let him go. She was going to give him a penny for candy. Everything would be as it was before. He stood up and smiled shyly at Miss Halsey. He was not afraid of her now. He felt happy and excited. Heaven was half a block away. In another minute he would enter it.

  Miss Halsey let the penny lie in her open palm. The boy looked at it with an open mouth that began to moisten with
wanting. Miss Halsey was as happy and excited as the boy. In a moment the long day would have some meaning. The dreary day of dull endeavor would end on a high note of moral victory.

  “It was your father, wasn’t it?” said Miss Halsey in a rich, full voice. “He came home drunk as usual and struck you with a poker. Your mother wasn’t there to stop him. She was off gallivanting at some neighbor’s. You crawled as far as this corner, and I found you.”

  The thought of candy was driving him crazy. He was a timid little boy, but he could not restrain his hand any longer. The penny snuggled inside it, but Miss Halsey’s fingers did not quite release it. He looked at her brightly, expectantly, ready to die for the penny.

  “That’s how it was, little boy, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes’m,” he said joyously.

  Miss Halsey released the penny. The little boy turned and scooted away. His leg was not sore anymore. He was not walking on earth anyway. He was walking on air.

  Miss Halsey continued down the street. She, too, was afloat in the clouds. She was thinking about the letter she would write to the minister.

  In the whole town there were no two people happier than Miss Halsey and the little boy.

  THE BIRD LIKE NO OTHER

  Colby ran through the woods. He ran hard, as if he were putting his house and family behind him forever. The woods were not a dark forest of towering trees. They were just scrub oak and stunted pine with plenty of room for the sun to dapple the road. The road, really a footpath worn by time, was so much a part of Colby’s summers that at any point he knew how many trees to count before he reached the one with the hollow that caught the rain and gave the birds a drinking cup.

  As the clearing came in sight with its cluster of cottages, Colby began to call Aunt Emily, the stridency in his voice commanding her to shut out the sweeter sounds of summer.

  Whatever Aunt Emily was doing, Colby knew, she would stop what she was doing. Wherever she was, she would start for the porch, so that by the time Colby pounded up the stairs, she would be sitting on her old porch glider, waiting for him to fling himself down beside her and cool his hot anger in her calm.

  Aunt Emily was a courtesy aunt, a family friend of many years. When Colby’s mother was a little girl, she played with Aunt Emily’s little boy when they came on holiday from their separate cities. Then Aunt Emily lost her little boy in a winter accident on an icy street. When vacation time came again, it took all her courage to reopen her cottage. But she knew she must do it this saddest summer of all if she was ever to learn to live in a world that could not bend its tempo to the slow cadence of grief.

  Colby’s sister made frequent visits with her dolls. She brought the dolls that didn’t cry or didn’t wet because they were always rewarded with a tea party for their good behavior. She eased the summer’s sorrow for Aunt Emily, who felt an obligation to show this trusting child a cheerful face and to take an interest in her eager talk.

  All the same, though Aunt Emily felt a bit ungrateful thinking it, a little girl dressing her dolls for a tea party is no substitute for a little boy playing cowboys and Indians at the top of his lungs.

  Colby’s family would have agreed with her. His mother adored him because he was her long-awaited son, five years younger than the youngest of his three sisters. His father was pleased and proud to have another male aboard.

  But Colby couldn’t see where he came first with anybody. As far as he was concerned he was always at the bottom of a heap of scrapping sisters. No matter how good he tried to be, his day most generally depended on how good his sisters decided to be. His rights were never mightier than their wrongs.

  Aunt Emily had been Colby’s sounding board ever since the summer he was four. One day that summer, his mother postponed a promised boat ride because his sisters had fought with each other all morning over whose turn it was to use the paint box that somebody had given them together. When they began to make each other cry, they were sent upstairs as punishment, and the outing was postponed.

  Colby felt he was being punished for blows he hadn’t struck and tears he hadn’t caused. He had to tell somebody before he burst. Since he knew the way to Aunt Emily’s, he went to tell her.

  She took a look at his clouded-over face, plumped him down on her old porch glider, then went inside to telephone his mother that Colby wasn’t lost, just decamped. His mother told her what had happened, and Aunt Emily listened with uncommitted little clucks. She wasn’t any Solomon to decide if it was more important to punish the bad than to keep a promise to the good.

  She could hear him banging back and forth on the glider, waiting in hot impatience to tell his tale of woe. The old glider screeched and groaned at his assault on its unoiled joints.

  Standing inside her screen door, wincing in sympathy, Aunt Emily knew that neither she nor any nearby neighbor could take that tortured sound much longer. She tried to think of something to distract Colby’s mind until he calmed down. A blue jay flew across her line of vision, a bird familiar to the landscape, but the unexciting sight bloomed into an idea.

  Shutting the screen door soundlessly, approaching Colby on whispering feet, she put her finger to her lips and sat down beside him.

  As he stared at her round-eyed, his swinging suspended, she said softly, “Colby, before you came the most beautiful bird I ever saw was sitting on my hydrangea bush. He almost took my breath. I never saw a bird of so many colors. When you came running, he flew away. But if we don’t talk or make any noise, he may come back.”

  After a moment of reflection, Colby’s curiosity pulled out the plug in his sea of troubles, and he settled back.

  That was the way this gentle fiction began. When Aunt Emily decided that the beautiful bird was gone for the day, Colby was wearing an agreeable face of a normal color. Taking the initiative, a shameless triumph over a small boy, Aunt Emily plunged into a story before Colby could get his mouth open to begin his own.

  For the rest of that summer, and in the summers that followed, when Colby came glad or when Colby came only a little bit mad, the right to speak first was his automatically. But when Colby came breathing fire, by uncanny coincidence, the bird like no other had just left the yard.

  It was soon routine for Colby to seal his lips and settle down to wait.

  Now he was eight, and on this angry morning when he flung himself up Aunt Emily’s stairs, and flung himself down beside her on the poor old glider that responded as expected to a sudden shock, it was plainly a morning to search the sky for the bird like no other.

  Before Aunt Emily could comb a fresh story out of her memory, Colby got a speech in ahead of her. He said in an excited whisper, “I see it, I see it. I see the bird you said was so beautiful. I guess he’s every color in the world.”

  Jerking upright in stunned surprise, making the glider wearily protest, Aunt Emily asked in a shaken voice, “Where?”

  “On that tree over there, see, over there.”

  By a confluence of golden sunlight and blue sky and green leaves and shimmering summer air, a bird on a swinging bough took on an astonishing beauty.

  For a moment Aunt Emily couldn’t believe her eyes. But in another moment her eyes stopped playing tricks. And suddenly she wanted to stop playing tricks, too.

  “Colby, look again. That’s a jay. There never was a bird like the one I told you about. I made him up.”

  As if to give credence to her confession, the bird on the bough released itself from its brief enchantment and flew away in the dress of a blue jay.

  Colby spoke slowly. “Why did you make up a bird to tell me about?”

  Aunt Emily started to answer, but asked instead, “Don’t you know why, Colby?”

  “I think so,” he said soberly.

  “Will you tell me?”

  “To make me sit still so I wouldn’t say bad things about my family when I was mad. But you didn’t want to make me sit still like a punishment. So you made me sit still like we were waiting to see something wonderful.”

&nbs
p; “I see the wonderful thing I’ve been waiting for. I see a little boy who’s learned about family loyalty. It’s as beautiful to look at as that bird.”

  Colby got up. He scuffed his sneakers. “Well, I guess I’ll go home now. See you, Aunt Emily.”

  He bounded down the stairs and began to run home, running faster and faster. Aunt Emily’s eyes filled with sentimental tears. He was trying to catch up with the kind of man he was going to be. He was rushing toward understanding.

  THE HAPPIEST YEAR, THE SADDEST YEAR

  She did not remember ever playing with dolls. But she did not remember much of anything before she was four. That being so, she would not have denied—if the facts were paraded before her—that in the year she was three, her mother had come toward her, cradling a doll to show her the art of cradling a doll, and then attached it to her unready arms, wrapping her weak embrace around the china creature, and thereupon stepped back to admire the picture of miniature mother and make-believe child.

  What, she asked, was Deedee going to name her new baby, helpfully reciting a list of lovely real-life names for her to choose from. Deedee brushed them aside. “Her name is ‘Doll,’” she said in a voice that would have sounded dry had she been older.

  Maybe in time she gave her doll a more agreeable name and learned to treat it tenderly. Or maybe in time, a surer guess, she abandoned it, leaving her mother with no choice but to threaten to give the poor thing away to some more worthy child, and to have to follow through in the face of Deedee’s instant acquiescence.

  If her mother worried about Deedee’s rejection of mothering, she tried to find an explanation in the fact that Deedee, the youngest of three daughters, was probably holding fast to her special place as the resident baby, and was simply not ready to share it with a blond and blue-eyed doll. Deedee’s family was colored—the description “black” not yet in compulsory use—and “colored” fitting them perfectly since they ran the whole spectrum of colors, every shade and variation, with Deedee at the farthest end from the blond and blue-eyed doll.