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Forms to be Filled out for Eacn Interview
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF vOlUFFA Dorothy West
ADDRFS 131 1. 110 S:. New York City
DATE
Dec. 8, 1938
SUBJECT MY BABY
1. Date and time o intervlw
Personal narrative by staff -writer
based an a personal experience
2. Place of interview
3. Name and address of informant
4. Name and address of person, if any, wno put you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
FOLKLORE
NEIA YORE
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
T-xt of J.ite-sic. ‘Lnediz,
STATE NEW YORK
NAF. OF wo-.-AE? DOROTHY VEST
ADDI1ESS 131 W. 110 St. New York
DATE Dec. 8, 1938
Sn,JECT MY BABY
jne day during my tenth year a long time ago in Boston, I °am home
from school, lot myself in the back yard, stopped a moment to scowl at the tall
sunflowers which sprang up yearly despite my dislike of the, and to smile at the
tender pansies and marigolds and morning•glories which father set out in little
plots every spring, and went on into the kitchen.
The backgate and baokdoor were always left open for us children, and
the last one in was supposed to look them. But since the last dawdler home from
school had no way of knowing she was the last until she was inside, it was always
mother who locked them at first dark, and she would stand and loop up at the
evening stars. She seemed to like this moment of being alone, away from the
noise in the house.
We were a big house. Beside the ten rooms, and the big white -walled
attic, there were we three little girls and the big people, as we used to call them.
Father, our mothers, grandpa, and the unmarried aunts. Presently, as I shall tell
you, there, were two more little ones. Grampa used to say that if we lived in the
Boston Museum, which was the biggest building grampa had ever seen, weld still need
one more room. That was a standing joke in our house. For besides this permanent
collection, there were always visiting relatives and friends, for we had a nice house,
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and we were a hospitable family.
My room was the big third -floor front bedroom. Mostly I shared it with
mother. I remember everything in that room, the big brass bed that had been father's
wedding present to mother* the wicker settee and the wicker rocker and the wicker
armchair* that had once seen servioe in the parlor until superseded by mahogany, and
now creaked dolefully on damp nights, making me think of ghosts. There was a built-
in marble wash -stand in the room, and I think mother was very proud of this fixture.
There were taps for running hot and cold water, and on Saturdays and Sundays and
holidays the hot tap was really hot. The Now ngland winters were cold then, and
although our old-fashioned house had a furnace that sent up some semblance of heat
through the registers, there were coal stoves in nearly all the rooms. In my room
was a little pot-bellied stove, and I knew how to tend it myself. At night I would
sift the ashes and bank the fire, and in the mornings I would scoot out of bed on-
to the freezing carpet, run to the sLove, bLing the door shut, open the drafts, race
book to bed and lie on my belly doing my algebra until the room had warmed enough
for me to dress. My roam, for some reason, became the hub of the house. I think
it was because that little pot-bellied stove was one of the only two on the top
floor. And whereas l left my window for mother to open, so I wouldn't cool off
the house before it was bedded down for the night, my cousin, in whose room was
an ancient, evil, ugly stove* let her fire go out, flung open her window, and
shut her door against intruders. At night everyone earns into my room to warm
himself before going to bed, and an aunt stopping in to toast for a moment before
my banked fire and finding another aunt present would fall into conversation, and
by and by all the other members of the family, except father and grampa who couldn't
come in their nightshirts, would drift in and settle in the wicker furniture, and
the rocking chair would sing back and forth, and someone would ask* Is that ohild
asleep? And someone would answer, if she isn't, she'd better be.
They would sit there until the banked fire gave out no more heat. Then
they would sigh and heave themselves up, and their heavy bodies would pad out of
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the room. Mother would crack the window and let in the stars and turn out the
flickering gaslight. Sometimes she slipped in beside me, sometimes not. I would
lie and listen to the creaks and groans of the many bedsteads, and it seemed to me
a fine and safe thing to have a big family.
That day in my tenth year when I came home from school, my mother was not
in the kitchen. This seemed odd, for the children in our Irish neighborhood were
often bellicose, and mother stood ready at all times to rush out and rescue us. I
could not fight rthen I was a child. I shook too much and was too ashamed. .1311t my
mother and the cousin who was eleven months older than I were great battlers. It
was wonderful to hear my mother tearing into an Irish termagant with a sailor's
tongue, and to see my girl cousin triumphantly straddling a thirteen -year -old bully.
My mother and my cousin were so much alike that sometimes I had the mean
thought that I was not really my mother's child. And oddly enough, my mother's
sister was shy and soft and dark like myself. My cousin and I used to wonder quite
seriously if our mothers, for some reason, had switched us.
When I could not fiLd my mother in the kitche, I went softly down the hall
to the parlor. I di a not cull her in the fear that i1 there were company, I would be
summoned. The parlor door stood open but my cautious peeking revealed no one inside.
Suddenly, I hoard movement in the upstairs sitting roan. I went bank down the hall
and up the tack stairs, and sitting dawn on the top step, I had a clear view of the
front room.
Now, looking back, I do not remember the room's furnishings. I can only
recall that almost center in the room was a big tacle-desk that had once been in
father's offioe, and beside this desk sat a strange white woman with a little brawn
girl in her arms. I could not see my mother, but I was aware of her presence in that
room. Grampa was probably in the grandfather chair, chewing tobacco, spitting into a
tin can when it was summer and into the stove when it was winter, not listening to the
conversation of the women. My father and my widowed aunts were at work.
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My mother and the woman spoke in low voices, and I did not hear anything
they said. I wished I could see the baby more clearly, for I loved babies. She was
good, hardly stirring, and never uttering a sound. Presently the woman rose. I
scrambled dawn the back stairs as quietly as I could.
That niht at supper my mother asked us how we ould like a baby boy and
girl to play with. We were wildly excited, for we were beginning to think we were
too big to play with dolls and it was hard not to have something to fondle. Well,
we'll see, said my mother and sent us out front to play, with grandfather at the
parlor window to watch us so that the roving bands of Irish boys from Mission Hill
way- would not bother us. We knew that the big people were going to talk about the
white lady and wanted us out of ear -shot.
ihe day the babies came is as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday.
It was a Sa'6u4.Oz„,,.he had not come home from dancing school, held in the span-ious
home of a Negro woman who had known a better day, where we were taught parlor
prancing by a young and lovely Irish 6irl, whose mother accompanied her to class
because some of thc, seniors were boys oi eighteen, and our teacher was only twenty-
one. She was engaged and was not interested in the boys at all except as one boy
danced better than another. Nor were the boys interested in her since they were
all in school and there were several prettier girls in the class. Now it seems
strange that we had a white dancing teacher, but in tnose days it was he fashion.
If you went to a Negro teacher, it was an admission that you r,o1,,ld not afford to
pay a white one.
When We rang the frunt bell, mother came to the door. She smiled and
said that the baeies had come, and that they were to sleep with me because my
bedroom was the bi_zest. My cousins raced upstairs to see the newcomers. I stayed
behind to ask questions. Actually I could not bear the exquisite moment when I
would hold two real babies in my arms. I asked my mother haw long they would stay.
She said they would stay indefinitely for their mother had gone to work to support
them. She was, in fact, going to work as nursemaid for a friend of my unmarried
aunt's employer. I asked my mother where their father was. She hesitated for a
moment, then said that -their father had not teen very good to them, and that was
why they were here, and I must love them a lot so they would not miss their mother
too much.
With my. heart -Lursting with love for these babies, I went slowly upstairs.
Finally, I reached my room, and I heerd my cousins crowing delightedly. At the foot
of my bed at a little be" in pajamas. He looked about three. His hair was very
blond and curl -,y, his skin very pink and white. He looked like a cherub as he bounced
about outside the cr_nrers and chattered in utmost friendliness to my cousins. I
started toward him, for I wanted nothing so much us to hug him tight. My cousins
began tellik, me excitedly what 4 darling he was.
I was almost upon them when suddenly I stopped. I did not do it will-
fully. Somu joree ou'Aside me jerked me to a halt. the smile left my face and
involuntarily I turned and Icoked toward the head of the aid.
There Was that baby girl, staring solemnly at me. I went slowly toward
her. I had forgotten the boy was on earth. I stood above her. She was no more
than two. Hur hair was as curly as the boy's but softer and longer and brown, ter
wide serious eyes were brown, too. She was copper -colored. In all of my life I have
never seen a lovelier child. I do not know how long we stared at each other unthink-
ingly. As olearlr as if I had spoken aloud, I heard a voice inside myself say to the
inward ear of that child, I am going. to love you best of all. Then I turned away
without touching her and in a minute had joined my cousins who had already decided
the boy would to he ',test fun.
The months passed, and the girl and I ecame inseparable. When I came
home at half -past two there was her little face pressed to the window -pane, and no
one had told her the time. From the moment I entered the house, Iwas her mother
and she was my child.
Their own mother 041111k to see the children on the one day a week that she
was free. But she was so youk;, only twenty-one and she had been caring for babies
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all week, and so after a few minetes with them, mother sent her out to see her
young friends. My mother treated her like a child which seemed odd to me then. I
learned that my mother was her aunt by marriage, and that she remembered the day
she was born. I was told she had played with us when we were babies just as we
played with her children now. I knew then that she was not white.
The hard winter had set in when father had to shovel a path from the
house to the sidewalk before we children could leave for school. he snow was
banked as high as our shoulders. There are no such winters now. We were little
girls and we wore boys storm boots that laced to our knees as did all the other
little eirls. Ae wore flannel shirts and drawers that made us itch like mad and
red flannel petticoats. Some bitter moraines the leans sounded over the city which
meant it was snowing too hard for school.
The babies scarcely left the house that winter, for mother said they were
packed with cold. I think the house was warmer that it over had been, and sometimes
father grumbled about the cost of coal. Grampa gave the babies a mixture of white
veseline, lemon juice and sugar. leother borrowed my allowance money regularly for
patent medicines. They worked on those children all winter. Then it, was spring,
it seemed that erampa and my mother had succeeded, for the children had gained and
grown teller.
The 6irl was as much a part of me now as my arm. She had grown even
closer to me after the lone, uncertain winter. I had forgotten the years when she
had not been nith me. I coeld not imagine a life without her. As young as she was,
and as young as I was, there was an understandiee oetween us of amazing depth. The
family remarked out oneness. Her awn mother knew without jealously that the baby
loved me best.
Death came on her quietly, and on whut mild gprin6 breeze it could have
blown we never knew. There was a day when she whimpered and sucked on her thumb, a
habit we had broken. I do not remember if the doctor care; I only remember that it
seamed to me I could not bear to see her lying there, not whimpering now, but still
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suoking on her thumb lath nobody tolling her not to, and her eyes enormous and with
a look of suffering.
Then one day it may have been the next day, it may have been the next
year, for the pain I suffered with hereeey mother wrapped her up and took her to the
hospital.
When mother had gone, I slipped out of the house and trailed her like
a little dos. It was a short ralk from our house to the Children's Hospital, Mother
went inside, and I stood on the sidewalk opposite and stared up at the hospital
windows.
I guess the waiting roam was on the second floor, for suddenly I saw my mother
in line at a seoond floor window. She did not see me, and I cannot say if the baby
saw me or not. She Lay listlessly in mother's arms pulling on her thumb. I stared
at her with my hands pressed tiLht in prayer until they had passed out of sight.
Then I ran home and crawled under the bed end lay there quivering, unable to cry,
until I heard mother's weary step in the hall.
We children ran to her, and when we saw she had returned without the baby,
we could not bear to ask her what the doctor had said. She would not tell us. She
only said the doctor would take good care of her and that she would soon be well.
It is so long now that I cannot remember how long it was. Perhaps a
week passed, perhaps a month. One nilit in my sleep I heard the front door bell
or the telephone ring. The next thing I remembered was the soft sound of my nother's
sobs. I sat up and stared at her. The boy's blond head lay on the pillow, his facie
sweet in sleep. My mother looked at me. I do not know ahoy she had come into my
roam unless to reassure herself that there was life in death. she came to me and
hugged ma tight, and said in a choked whisper that the baby was dead. Then she
straightened almost bterry and told me to go back to sleep. I did not cry.
just felt surprised for a minute and then went to sloop almost instantly.
I was ten and I 7as smart for my 5ge• I had been told that the baby
vas dead, and I had seen the grown-ups strained faces, but did not know what death
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was. The last time I had seen the baby she had been alive. It was not until I looked
down at her little white coffin that I knew that she was not. Had she died without
pain, she might have looked otherwise. Liut the sudden swift disease had ravaged
her. A bandage covered her eyes, and the agony had left its mark on her mouth.
She did not look like a sleeping child. Perhaps the undertaker had not yet perfected
his art. This was death unbeautiful and unmistakable. The only mourners were my
family.
The mother came hone with us that night. I remember her white, frightened,
little -girl's face, and my mother's tenderness. She did not go back to work. There
was a week of family conferences, for we children practically spent the whole week
outdoors.
Then one day we came home from school, and the boy and his mother had
gone. My mother said they had gone far away to another city. She talked to us
very seriously, and her eyes were filled with sadness and something that looked
like shame. Her words oane out slowly, as if reluctantly. Sometimes she could not
look at us.
She said the boy and his mother would never came back. They had gone
away to begin a now life. If anyone asked us about them, we must say we had never
known the. 14 knew by her face that we must not ask any questions. We went away
from her, and we could not play, nor could we look at each other.
So summer came again, and an aunt from the South came to visit us,
bringing her two little boys. My cousins had a child apiece and were wildly happy.
Mother and the aunts were happy, too, for they had not seen their sister in years.
One day a strange dark man came to our house and talked in an angry
voice to my mother. She talked back to him the same way she talked to the Irish
termagants. I heard her toll that man that his baby had died because he had neglected
it. She told him that his wife and son had gone away, and thrust him out of the house.
Sometime after that a letter cane ppm my mother. I saw her hands tremble
when she opened it. She did not say anything to us, but that night she read it aloud
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to her assembled sisters. My uousins were in the attic playing with the two little
boys, and my mother thought I was with them. Actually I was lying underneath my bed,
crying for that dead baby. There was not a night for a good six months that I did
not cry for her. When I heard my mother and my aunts. I crammed my fist into my
mouth. Haw could I tell them I was crying for a child I was supposed never to have
heard of?
My mother and the aunts settled in the wicker furniture. Somebody
carefully shut the door. Then mother read the letter. I do not remember everything
it said. All that I remember is something about a marriage, and something about
a new life, and something about a husband's being white. Mother opened my little
pot-bellied stove, thrust the letter in, and struck a match to it. Suddenly the sisters
silently converged and watched the letter burn. When the letter was ashes, mother
shut the stove door. I heard my unmarried aunt murmur, Gold help her to be happy.
Then they filed out, and one of them called upstairs sharply for the children not
to make so much noise. They went back downstairs.
I took my fist out of riky mouth, and I cried even harder, for now there
was much more to cry about.
Forms to be Filled out for Eacn Interview
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Dorothy West
ADDRESS 131 W. 110th St. New York City
DATE Dec. 21, 1938
SUBJECT TEMPLEOF GRACE
1. Date and time c' interview
Dec. 18, 1938 from 7:30 to 1030
2. Place of interview
Cult Temple of Daddy Grace, 20 W. 115th St.
3. Name and address of informant
4. Name and address of person, if any, wno put you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accowpanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK