by Dorothy West
LOVE
At Christmas there is giving, and in the happiest instances, giving with joy is part of it. This act of love is not a natural instinct. The baby never gives up anything unless the frailty of his fingers forces his greedy grasp to surrender to the strength of someone stronger.
The wanting to give is only learned by learning to love. Though Christmas is the occasion when love makes a spectacular showing, there are other times, on some quiet calendar day, when a gift is given that no money can buy.
There was such a time, on a summer day, at the Flying Horses. My niece and nephew were six and seven, and here in Oak Bluffs for the long holiday. Their mother sent them a weekly allowance, which they changed into silver, and kept in glass jars on my kitchen shelf.
The boy’s was gone by mid-week. I had to invent chores to help him exist until Saturday. His sister’s jar was never empty, it was often half-full. I did not see how one child could be so wasteful with money while the other led as full a life on so much less.
Every day we walked to the Flying Horses. When we were ready the children opened their jars, and took out whatever money they planned to spend. Their planning always included two rides on the Flying Horses.
The little girl would cross the threshold as if she were entering a sacred place. There was no one in the world of children to whom the Flying Horses brought such ecstasy. When she sat astride her favorite horse, her imagination took the reins and transported her to enchanted places. Her face reflected the wonders she saw in flight.
The little boy had one practical purpose in mind. In his whole life, as he phrased it, he had never caught a gold ring. That was the goal he set for himself the summer that he was seven. As he rode his horse, his determined hand outstretched, he was reaching for the solid feel of a real prize.
The girl had a voice like little golden bells. It was irresistible. If her brother bought himself a second ice cream cone before she had bought herself her first one, I would say to her protectively, Don’t you want one, too? The little golden bells would chime. I didn’t bring enough money.
I would promptly open my purse. It seemed unfair to punish her for her prudence, while he was eating his second cone as if cones were two for a penny.
The boy was as open as the day. He was spending his money in a perfectly acceptable way. I was helping his sister hoard hers by encouraging her to spend mine. It was almost summer’s end before I realized that I had let myself be beguiled.
I was firm thereafter, refusing to see my niece’s hopeful eyes searching my face when her brother spent his money while hers was snug at home. I was trying to teach her a lesson, and it was her brother who taught her first, in a way far better.
That was the day he caught the gold ring on his second ride. He came running to me, his sister running behind him, both of them overwhelmed by his remarkable achievement. I praised him mightily. In his hand was his long-sought prize, a Flying Horse ticket for a free ride, the first time in his whole life that he would have three rides in one afternoon. I said, Run quick, before it starts.
He turned, then turned back and looked at his sister. He saw no envy, only awe. In her whole life she had never had three rides on the Flying Horses either.
He thrust the ticket into her hand. Here, Sisty, you can have it.
She stared at him unbelieving. She could never have given a Flying Horse ticket away. He was giving her one that he won with a gold ring. Her eyes filled with tears. My brother loves me, my brother loves me, she said. The golden bells had the sound of a heart running over.
That was the day she learned that all the money in her jar could not have bought that gift.
THE FLIGHT
One Monday in March I found myself at Logan Airport, sitting relaxed and even drowsy while waiting to board the plane that would return me to this blessed Island after a full and pleasant Sunday in Cambridge. All the unreasonable weather—snow, sleet, winds of high velocity, hazardous conditions—that had been projected for Sunday had never come to pass. The plane to Logan from the Martha’s Vineyard Airport made perfect time, rode the air without a ripple, the view unmarred by the slightest film of fog, the blue sky and the cloud formations of extraordinary beauty.
Sunday having turned so fair, it would seem to follow that Monday, which had been projected at the time of Sunday’s forecast as a morning of moderating winds and dissipating clouds with sun and rising temperatures by noon, would present no atmospheric problems. My plane should depart without delay and land at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport at twelve-twenty, with Marlene’s Taxi depositing me on my brick walk in less than twenty minutes, and my tea kettle on the boil shortly thereafter and then my familiar chair ready to soothe me into a catnap that would start the unwinding process and restore me to a peaceful pace again.
When I awoke Monday morning in the Sheraton Hotel and raised the shade to examine the day, I saw that a few snowflakes were falling halfheartedly, leaving very little trace of their failed life. I chose to believe that it had probably snowed lightly during the night to give some credibility to Sunday’s forecast, and now, with Monday’s promised rising temperatures, this was the dying end of it.
It was only the beginning. The snow began to fall a little faster and stick to the ground, which meant that the temperature had fallen on its face, too, and the earlier snow that had melted as it fell was now turning to ice.
At the hour arranged the taxi arrived, and when my bag and I were packed inside it, the cabman said, in reply to my nervous question, that the streets were getting very slippery, but he would take me on a route where the traffic was less intense than on the customary route. If it would cost a little more, though he said that it would not, these precious years still left to me were worth it.
We arrived at the airport in excellent time. I got my boarding pass and sat down for the short wait. But the waiting began to extend itself. The snow was now falling steadily, and the view outside the window was beginning to be eerie, as if seen through a descending fog.
Inside there was a lot of walking around by personnel, and talking back and forth, and talking over the telephone, and continuing shouts for a maintenance man, who was regularly appearing and disappearing through the exits and entrances. It was all a kind of bedlam, and since I had no idea what was happening, my advice to myself was to stay calm until, and if, there was reason for alarm.
There was finally an explanation from personnel. The runways were icy. The ice-cleaning machine had broken down. Maintenance had now fixed it. Very shortly the runway would be cleared. And those few of us scattered around the waiting room would be on our way to our separate destinations and, arguably, our destinies.
Through the window I could see the maintenance men behind the wheel, and thereby concluded that progress was now proceeding. In reasonable time I was told that my plane was ready for boarding. I was also told that I was the sole passenger.
I was struck by that. It seemed a sort of omen. Curiously I felt a great calm. I remember thinking, If something happens I’m glad I’m the only passenger. I’m glad there’s no mother with children aboard, and no man aboard with wife and children at home, whose lives would change completely if something happened to him, and no young Vineyarder on a college break, whose grown-up life is just on the verge of beginning.
I had some feeling for the pilot. But he knew when he took the job that nothing in life is certain except death, and opted to take the risk. As for me, on Sunday in that Cambridge setting, I had seen some of the people I love best. My love had been a clear statement in my greeting, in my face. That thought was very satisfying. My life has been a long one. I’ve never had any expectations of being singled out to live forever. Though I’ve never had a compelling urge to see behind the heavenly curtain, the very thought of staying on earth for unnumbered years is numbing. Lingering is the thing I most fear. The quick, clean death is my idea—indeed my ideal—of leaving life with grace.
I got aboard and sat two seats behind the pilot instead of
directly behind him, allowing him his space, allowing myself mine. He acknowledged my presence pleasantly, I, his. We made no other exchanges. If he wanted to be chatty, I knew he would be without my encouragement. As it was, I sensed that the plane and everything related to it was occupying his mind.
We were taxiing now, and he was busy with his instrument panel. Three times he opened his window, looked out and looked down, at what I could not determine. I did not ask the purpose of this procedure, my assumption being that he would have told me if the information would have been useful to me, and if my response would have been helpful to him.
It is a rule of mine never to ask unsolicited questions of people over twenty-one. I am only giving them the option of lying if they choose to. They would tell me the truth without my asking if they wanted me to know. To me that’s fair enough.
I did say one thing to him when we began the take-off. I said, “Are we flying by instrument?” I was trying to let him know I would be perfectly comfortable with his answer. His answer was “Yes,” without elaboration.
From that moment on we were flying in total invisibility. And from that moment and for the next hour as we soared above land and sea, the pilot and the controller in the tower never stopped talking to each other. Two blinking red lights on the panel board never shut themselves off. The pilot never ceased to search for help from the various instruments on the panel.
I could not hear what the pilot was saying to the controller. But three times I heard the controller say over the loudspeaker, “Use your own judgment.”
I had known from the beginning that we were due to find ourselves in trouble. Now I knew we were swirling in its center. I thought of the mother and her children, the man with a waiting family, the young college student with a still untested future. Just as before I had that feeling of calm and resignation that I had been chosen, not they.
The pilot and air controller kept up their nonstop exchange. The red lights relentlessly flashed their warning. The pilot’s hands never ceased to search for solutions from the panel. Minutes passed, how many was hard to measure in a frame of such high intensity.
Then came the moment when the controller said—my ear retaining the pivotal phrases—two thousand feet … turn right. Then a little while later the words were repeated. Then a third time that reinforced my sense of finally being on the right track. I now believed that we were holding course, a crashdown no longer an eventuality.
Above the noise of the plane, I spoke one more time to the pilot. I said in a clear and unexcited voice, “We were in a bit of trouble, weren’t we?” I think I was trying to tell him that I knew we were now out of it and were going to be all right, that I wasn’t frozen in terror behind him. I wanted him to know that I had known all along that it was touch and go with us. I think I wanted a pat on the back for being brave and behaving so beautifully as my phantom passenger might not have.
We were descending now, out of the turbulence and the blind sky. We were on the ground, the ground fog had lifted. Everything was visible, yet everything looked crazy. Nothing looked familiar to the Island. We were being signaled to a stop, and having gotten my bearings, I said in astonishment to the pilot, not even trying to keep my voice from squeaking, “We’re back in Boston.”
He turned briefly, answered hurriedly, “I’ll tell you about it in a minute.”
When he brought his plane to a stop, his face relaxed, his tension easing, his mission accomplished. “The front wheels had locked,” he said. I was glad that I didn’t know that, having only a knowledge of cars that cannot navigate on two wheels. “I had the option of taking a chance and going on to the Vineyard. I’d have done so in better weather,” he mildly boasted, “but I thought in zero visibility it might be too chancy. So I used my best judgment and brought us back here. It shouldn’t be long before we’re on our way again. The mechanics are standing by.”
I remembered seeing a stark white emergency vehicle, maybe two, standing by when we put down, but because we were down, their reason for being there did not really register. I did not know that until the pilot could bring his plane to a stop without crashing it, we were still at risk.
I entered the waiting room, reluctant to believe I was back where I started almost four hours ago, four hours later than the time of arrival at the Vineyard imprinted on my ticket. I saw it as an undeserved punishment, a sort of slap in the face for all I had gone through to keep the mother and children, the family man, and the young college student intact in their lives.
I found my original resting place, made my nest in it, and tried to settle into a nap. I was through with feeling sorry for myself. I just wanted to sleep. After Sunday’s long day, today’s long ordeal, and with the total of my years, nothing was a better panacea.
An hour or so passed while I dozed in and out. After a while somebody behind the desk crossed the room to tell me, with apologies, that I was being transferred to another line to spare me further waiting. There was telephoning back and forth between the two lines with the human callers willing to shift me from one line to the other, but the computers having difficulty dealing with such deviant behavior. One computer had already swallowed up my fare. The other was being told to accept me on faith. Anyway, it was finally settled. I crossed to the other waiting room, and in a short time a plane was ready to take Vineyard and New Bedford passengers aboard.
The skies had cleared. It was a perfect flight. I touched Vineyard soil.
I have lived in various places, but the Island is my yearning place. All my life, wherever I have been, abroad, New York, Boston, anywhere, whenever I yearned for home, I yearned for the Island. Long before I lived here year-round, in my childhood, in the years of my exuberant youth, I knew the Island was the home of my heart.
“The Typewriter” was published in Opportunity (volume 4, July 1926).
“Jack in the Pot” was published in the Daily News (September 29, 1940).
“Mammy” was published in Opportunity (volume 18, October 1940).
“The Richer, the Poorer” was published in The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers: An Anthology from 1899 to the Present, edited by Langston Hughes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).
“Funeral” was published in the Saturday Evening Quill (volume 3, June 1930).
“The Penny” was published in the Daily News (June 25, 1941).
“Fluff and Mr. Ripley” was published in the Daily News (August 9, 1944).
“About a Woman Named Nancy” was published in the Vineyard Gazette (volume 141, no. 23, February 13, 1987).
“The Roomer” was published in the Daily News (March 31, 1941).
“The Maple Tree” was published in the Daily News (August 23, 1957).
“An Unimportant Man” was published in the Saturday Evening Quill (volume 1, June 1928).
“Rachel” was published as “My Mother, Rachel West” in Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women 1860–1960 edited by Mary Helen Washington (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1987).
“The Gift” was published in the Vineyard Gazette (volume 138, no. 36, January 20, 1984).
“The Sun Parlor” was published in the Vineyard Gazette (volume 138, no. 36, January 20, 1984).
“An Adventure in Moscow” was published in the Vineyard Gazette (volume 140, no. 1, May 10, 1985, page 3c).
“Elephant’s Dance” was published in Black World (volume 20, November 1970).
“A Day Lost Is a Day Gone Forever” was published in the Vineyard Gazette (volume 141, no. 32, December 4, 1987).
“The Legend of Oak Bluffs” was published in On the Vineyard (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1980).
“The Flight” was published in the Vineyard Gazette (volume 140, no. 1, May 10, 1985).
Copyright © 1995 by Dorothy West
Preface copyright © 1995 by Mary Helen Washington
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday in 1995.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:
West, Dorothy, 1909-
The richer, the poorer: stories, sketches, and reminiscences / Dorothy West.
p. cm.
1. Afro-Americans—Social life and customs—Fictions. 2. Afro-American women authors—20th century—Biography. 3. West, Dorothy, 1990—Biography. I. Title.
PS3545.E82794R53 1995 94-44013
eISBN: 978-0-307-75491-2
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