Mary came later, in the new house, with her little boy, James.
But house is accordion-pleated on house and the dream follows simple yet very subtle devices. We put Mary in the old house and we can not reach beyond the band of her apron where it is fastened round her waist. Mary, help us. We must go further than Helen, than Helle, than Helios, than light, we must go to the darkness, out of which the monster has been born.
The monster has a face like a sick horrible woman; no, it is not a woman. It is a snake-face and the teeth are pointed and foul with slime. The face has touched my face, the teeth have bitten into my mouth. Mary, pray for us. It is so real that I would almost say an elemental had been conjured up, that by some unconscious process my dream had left open a door, not to my memories alone, but to memories of the race. This is the vilest python whom Apollo, the light, slew with his burning arrows.
This is the python. Can one look into the jaws of the python and live? Can one be stung on the mouth by the python and utter words other than poisonous? Long ago, a girl was called the Pythoness; she was a virgin.
“What is a virgin, Mama?”
“A virgin is — is a — is a girl who isn’t married.”
“Am I a virgin, Mama?”
“Yes, all little girls are virgins.”
All little girls are not virgins. The python took shape, his wings whirred overhead, he dropped his sulphur and his fire on us.
“Why did you cut out the picture from this book, Mama?”
“I–I—is it cut out?”
“Mama, someone cut out the picture from this book.”
“What book, Sister?” She calls me Sister, but I am not her sister. She calls Aunt Aggie Sister, but Aunt Aggie and Aunt Laura are really her sisters. There are sisters in the Sisters’ House and if I sing in the choir when I grow up, I will wear a cap and be one of the real Sisters. The Sisters open the big doors at the end of the church, when the church is dark on Christmas Eve and Papalie says I am the light of the world and the Sisters come through the two open doors with candles on trays. Then each of us has a candle with a different colored paper cut-out ruffle around the candle so that we do not spill the wax, which is beeswax and is made from the wax the bees get when they are getting honey from flowers.
I have not forgotten that she has cut out the picture, for no one else would dare cut out a picture from our book, from any book, with a pair of scissors.
“Why did you cut it out, Mama?”
“Oh — I–I thought you would forget.”
Listen — it was a picture of — it was a picture of a nightmare. It was a picture of a little girl who was not married, lying on a bed, and a horrible creature that was like an old witch with snarling face, was riding on a stick, like a witch rides on a broomstick. She was going to stick the little girl right through with her long pointed stick and that was what would happen in the night if you went to sleep and had a bad dream which the Simple Science (which explains things like why does a kettle boil, which we do not have to have explained) calls a nightmare.
Look at its face if you dare, it is meant to drive you crazy. It is meant to drive you mad so that you fall down in a fit like someone in the Bible and see a light from heaven. It is terrible to be a virgin because a virgin has a baby with God.
The snow was not whirling round the lamppost when the old man sent his sleigh. The young man drove the horse; he was perched up on the seat, I sat with my back to him, Mama sat opposite with Gilbert on one side under the fur rug and Harold on the other. The snow lay very quiet, it did not whirl round the lampposts; it’s made like stars, you can see them if you get them separate, if you get one stuck to the other side of the window; they have different shapes although there are so many that if you wrote 1 and then 000 forever, you would never write out a number, that would be the number of the snowflakes.
One snowflake shall not fall to the ground without your father.
But that was not a snowflake, that was a sparrow, but it means the same thing. Your father walks a little way; we wait under the light of the lamp that falls in a circle on the snow. I hold Harold’s hand. He tugs at my hand, he does not say, “Why are you waiting?” but that is what he means when he pulls at my hand in my mitten, with this hand in his mitten. He does not speak very often. Mama says she is worried because Harold is so quiet. But Harold can talk. He is not dumb, he is a small child, he is a year younger than me. I hold his hand. He has on his new blue reefer. He wore a white coat only a little while ago, but now he wears a blue reefer.
Gilbert has gone ahead. That is our father. No, I do not say that to Harold. I do not think it. I am so happy that I am not saying anything, I am not thinking anything. I am alone by a lamppost, Harold has hold of my hand.
Our-father is half way between this lamp and the next lamppost, and Gilbert has run out in the road and is making a snowball.
If this was Mama or Aunt Jennie, taking us down Church Street, they would turn round, they would say, “Come along, children.” He does not turn around. I will stand here by the lamppost because I am so happy. When you are too happy in the snow, Uncle Hartley told us, you might feel warm, you might think you were warm, then you might lie down in the snow and go to sleep, “So you children must race around in the snow.” As if he had to tell us. We race around in the snow. But I am not warm, not warm enough to lie down on the snow like on a bed, yet I am warm. The light makes me warm, but not warm enough to lie down on the snow, which is dangerous, if you are too happy, like that man in the snow where the dog brings him a barrel on his collar. Papa will maybe turn round now but he does not, but Gilbert shouts, “Hi, you better catch up, you’ll be late.” He throws his snowball at the next lamppost but it does not hit the next lamppost. Papa does not say, “Hurry, come along,” but on the Lehigh mountains he walks fast, so you have to run sometimes to catch up, but he does not say, “Don’t get lost.” He lets us get lost under the bushes and by the little stream when we go for pansy-violets and mayapples which have a white flower and two big leaves. The mayapple leaves are like an umbrella for the bunch of pansy-violets or the real violets we get.
It is not certain if he sees us. It is not certain if he knows that we are here.
Uncle Fred makes a doll out of the three corners of his handkerchief and it dances shadow-dances on the wall when he puts the lamp on the floor. Aunt Jennie threaded the smaller needle because the big needle was too thick to string the beads on. Indians have bead belts and moccasins. He walks ahead like an Indian who walks so quietly in the forest you do not hear him. Some boys (not the cousins) tied me to a post and played a game I do not remember. I know about it because Aunt Aggie told me how Gilbert rescued me from the strange boys in Aunt Aggie’s street, before they moved to Washington; Aunt Aggie said, “He brought you in the house, and said, ‘Aunt Aggie, will you take care of Sister, we are playing rough in the garden!’ ”
I can seem to remember being tied to a stake and wild Indians howling, and I do not know how soon they will strike at me with their tomahawks, but never in the snow.
Surely, I have not remembered this, only the lamppost stands there and Harold and I stand there and Gilbert is about to run back and say, “Come on, come on,” he will rescue us, though we do not need to be rescued; we were never so happy, could never be happier! The light from the lamp is a round circle.