Pearl Buck: The Mother

Then the mother rose quickly and taking the gray towel that hung upon a wooden peg driven into the wall she dipped the end of it into the basin and slowly wiped the girl’s eyes. The child whimpered soundlessly and only with her breath, and the mother thought to herself as she thought every morning, “Well and I must see to the balm for this child’s eyes. Some time or other I must see to it. If I do not forget it when that next load of rice straw is sold I will tell him to go to a medicine shop — there is one there by the gate to the right and down a small street—”

Even as she thought this the man came to the door drawing his garments about himself, yawning aloud and scratching his head. She said, speaking aloud her thought, “When you carry that load of rice straw in to sell do you go to that medicine shop that is by the Water Gate, and ask for a balm or some stuff for such sore eyes as these.”

But the man was sour with sleep still and he answered pettishly, “And why should we use our scanty money for sore eyes when she can never die of it? I had sore eyes when I was a child, and my father never spent his money on me, though I was his only son who lived, too.”

The mother, perceiving it was an ill time to speak, said no more, and she went and poured his water out. But she was somewhat angry too, and she would not give it to him but set it down on the table where he must reach for it. Nevertheless, she said nothing and for the time she put the matter from her. It was true that many children had sore eyes and they grew well as childhood passed, even as the man had, so that although his eyes were scarred somewhat about the lids as one could see who looked him full in the face, still he could see well enough if the thing were not too fine. It was not as though he was a scholar and had to peer at a book for his living.

Suddenly the old woman stirred and called out feebly, and the mother fetched a bowl of hot water and took it to her to sup before she rose, and the old woman supped it loudly, and belched up the evil winds from her inner emptiness and moaned a little with her age that made her weak in the morning.

The mother went back into the kitchen then and set about the morning food, and the children sat close together upon the ground waiting, huddled in the chill of the early morning. The boy rose at last and went to where his mother fed the fire, but the girl sat on alone. Suddenly the sun burst over the eastern hill and the light streamed in great bright rays over the land and these rays struck upon the child’s eyes so that she closed them quickly. Once she would have cried out, but now she only drew her breath in hard as even a grown person might have done and sat still, her red eyelids pressed close together, nor did she move until she felt her mother push against her a bowl of food.

Yes, it is true that all days were the same for the mother, but she never felt them dull and she was well content with the round of the days. If any had asked her she would have made those bright black eyes of hers wide and said, “But the land changes from seedtime to harvest and there is the reaping of the harvest from our own land and the paying of the grain to the landlord from that land we rent, and there are the holidays of the festivals and of the new year, yes and even the children change and grow and I am busy bearing more, and to me there is naught but change, and change enough to make me work from dawn to dark, I swear.”

If she had a bit of time there were other women in the hamlet and this woman due for birth and that one grieving because a child was dead, or one had a new pattern for the making of a flower upon a shoe, or some new way to cut a coat. And there were days when she went into the town with some grain or cabbage to sell, she and the man together, and there in the town were strange sights to see and think about if ever she had time to think at all. But the truth was that this woman was such a one as could live well content with the man and children and think of nothing else at all. To her — to know the fullness of the man’s frequent passion, to conceive by him and know life growing within her own body, to feel this new flesh take shape and grow, to give birth and feel a child’s lips drink at her breast — these were enough. To rise at dawn and feed her house and tend the beasts, to sow the land and reap its fruit, to draw water at the well for drink, to spend days upon the hills reaping the wild grass and know the sun and wind upon her, these were enough. She relished all her life: giving birth, the labor on the land, eating and drinking and sleeping, sweeping and setting in rude order her house and hearing the women in the hamlet praise her for her skill in work and sewing; even quarreling with the man was good and set some edge upon their passion for each other. So therefore she rose to every day with zest.

On this day when the man had eaten and sighed and taken up his hoe and gone somewhat halting as he always did to the field, she rinsed the bowls and sat the old woman out in the warmth of the sun and bade the children play near but not go too near the pond. Then she took her own hoe and set forth, stopping once or twice to look back. The thin voice of the old woman carried faintly on the breeze and the mother smiled and went on. To watch the door was the sole thing the old woman could do and she did it proudly. Old and half blind as she was, yet she could see if anyone came near who should not and she could raise a cry. A troublesome old woman she was, and a very troublesome old care often, and worse than any child and more, because she grew wilful and could not be cuffed as a child could. Yet when the cousin’s wife said one day, “A very good thing it will be for you, goodwife, when that old thing is dead, so old and blind and full of aches and pains and pettish with her food doubtless,” the mother had replied in the mild way she had when she was secretly tender, “Yes, but a very good use still, too, to watch the door, and I hope she will live until the girl is bigger.”

Yes, the mother never had it in her heart to be hard on an old woman like that. Women she had heard who boasted of how they waged war in a house against their mothers-in-law and how they would not bear the evil tempers of the elder women. But to this young mother the old woman seemed but another child of hers, childish and wanting this and that as children do, so that sometimes it seemed a weary thing to run hither and thither upon the hills in spring seeking some herb the old soul longed for, yet when one summer came and there was a fierce flux in the hamlet so that two strong men died and some women and many little children, and the old woman lay dying, or so it seemed, and so seemed that they bought the best coffin they could and set there ready, the young mother was truly glad when the old woman clung to her life and came back to it for a while longer. Yes, even though the hardy old creature had worn out two burial robes, the mother was glad to have her live. It was a joke in the whole hamlet to see how the old life hung on. The red coat the young mother had made to bury her in she wore under a blue coat, as it was the custom to do in these parts, until it was worn and gone and the old woman fretted and was ill at ease until the mother had made it new again, and now she wore this second one merrily and if any called out, “Are you still there then, old one?” she would pipe back gaily, “Aye, here I be and my good grave clothes on me! A-wearing them out, I be, and I cannot say how many more I can wear out!”

And the old soul chuckled to think how good a joke it was that she lived on and on and could not die.

Now, looking back, the mother smiled and caught the old woman’s voice, “Rest your heart, good daughter — here am I to watch the door!”

Yes, she would miss this old soul when dead. Yet what use missing? Life came and went at the appointed hour, and against such appointment there was no avail.