The Gift: Novel by Hilda Doolittle

Author:Hilda Doolittle [Doolittle, Hilda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811223584
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1982-11-16T20:00:00+00:00

THE SECRET

The stars?

“Well—there’s a …” and the voice stops, and they all stop talking. This is later in the new house. They are sitting under my window. I am in bed, they are under the window. My garden is under the window was in our first entertainment at the old school; I mean, they were my words to speak. They had made a window at the back of the platform, and we stood together in a row; we were from Kate Greenaway. I was in the middle with two boys, but the boys were in my first class at school and we were all six years old and they were not my brothers.

But this is the new house. They are sitting on the grass. They pulled their chairs out from under the big maple tree. It is summer, and they come to see us; Uncle Fred and Aunt Jennie are staying with us. Mamalie is here too, but she is not a visitor. “My” someone else is there but it does not matter who it is. I think Mamalie has gone to bed, too. I wonder if she hears them say “my,” then I seem to know what they are looking at, why they have stopped talking.

They always have so much to say; Uncle Hartley and Aunt Belle come too, but Aunt Jennie and Mama laugh most. Maybe that is Cousin Ed saying “It reminds me of. …” They always say it reminds them of. Papa is at the transit house, Eric is at the observatory looking for his double stars. The double stars stay together, but they go round one another like big suns; we know this, for he tells the visitors at the observatory Thursday evenings and we tell them to sign their names in the visitor’s book. This is not Thursday. You can almost tell what day of the week it is by the feel of something in the air, but it was easier to tell in the old town because of the church bells and the factory whistles, the other side of the river. Uncle Hartley is going to get a promotion and go to another place than Bethlehem Steel. They will have a new house like our new house when we came here and Papa left his little observatory for this new transit house, which has the only instrument (except in Greenwich, England) like he has. Mr. Evans lives in the wing of the house, and Eric has his room in the wing of the house over the empty library, but they are bringing out maps and books now for the observatory library from the university library.

“The first this year—the first real one, I mean …”

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