Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

She shrank away from the leaning head, from the weak hot hand. She did not want to be touched. No one must touch her. “Nothing — nothing at all,” she repeated cheerfully. “Good night.” She moved away quickly toward the house.

But she never went to her mother with any confession of herself. She was saved it. For she could not speak that same night, not with the dry sterile pain she bore in her defrauded body. It was so dry a pain that she felt fevered with it. Her mouth was dry, her palms were dry, when she thought, I will never see him again — I will not. If he comes back I must remember the moment this afternoon when I hated him. I must hold fast to that hate, because he’s never really loved me — never wanted to marry me. While I was loving him terribly, he was only — playing.

She scarcely saw the others in the lamplight. Beside the fire with them she was immensely alone. Far away she saw them, heard them. Her father was saying, “I had a very good meeting at the mission, Mary. I believe the Spirit is working among those people.”

Francis sat in the next room at the dining table whistling as he sharpened a pencil for his homework. She knew the tune, she had heard it often during the winter, and she had sung it at a campfire, delighting in knowing that while she sang her voice rose clear as a thrush’s note above every other, but she could not have spoken its name tonight. Her mother read aloud a letter from Rose, but she could not understand what it told, though her mother said contentedly as she folded the letter, “I am glad the cashmere fitted. The gold is almost the color of her eyes.”

Nothing was near to her. She sat hunched deeply in the old blue chair, staring into the fire, crying to herself, “How shall I ever be clean of his kisses?” And then to her terror she made another cry. “What shall I do if he never kisses me again?” She shivered and stared into the fire, her book open on her knees. Where were they? Why did they not come near, these who were her own? Why was the fire cold? Her mother caught her look and her instinct flew awake, like a bird frightened by the chance touch of a wind, threatening storm.

“Joan, you are ill!”

“No,” she answered quickly. “No, not ill. I’m tired. I’m going to bed. I’m all right.”

She fled from them. She could not speak tonight, not when there were two voices clamoring in her. How could she silence one — how not speak what she did not want to tell? She must wait until she was clear, until she was sure she was glad that Martin was never to touch her again. She lay in her bed and began to sob suddenly and quietly, her face in her pillow. The door opened and she stopped her sobs instantly. She held her breath. It was her mother, driven by unease.

“Sure you’re all right, child?”

She swallowed and turned her face up in the darkness. She made her voice, even and careless. “Sure — only sleepy.”

Her mother came over to the bed, and went to give her one of her seldom given kisses. But she did not move to meet it, and in the darkness the kiss fell upon her hair. Her mother laughed. “Where are you? There — good night, darling!” She patted the covers, waiting a little. But still Joan made her voice even and careless. “Good night, Mother.”

So her mother went away and the door closed. Perhaps tomorrow she could tell. But tonight her breast was hard and cold and shut. She must weep to ease herself, weep as long as she could, so that she might sleep at last.

She was awakened by a soft uncertain knock at the door. It was not a knock she knew. She heard it through her sleep and she seemed to come up for a long way toward it, through a long silence until she heard her own voice calling drowsily, “Yes — yes? Come in—” But she was not awake. She was not awake until the door opened and she saw her father standing there in the doorway, his gray cotton bathrobe clutched about him. He looked immensely tall and thin and out of the folds of the collar his neck rose bent and thin as a bird’s neck, and his head with the high white brow looked much too large for the thin neck.

“You’d better get up, Joan,” he said. “Your mother’s ill this morning.”

Then she was awake indeed. “I’ll be there right away,” she said. But even though alarm was beating in her breast she waited to leap out of bed until he had shut the door softly and carefully and until she heard his slippers pattering down the hall. He had always been shy of his body before his children. She had scarcely seen him even in his gray bathrobe except as a shadowy figure slipping in and out of the bathroom, a towel over his arm. If he met her at such times he did not speak to her. Because of him she stopped now to tie her own kimono securely about her waist and to find her slippers. But she stayed no longer. She hurried fearfully down the hall. Something was about to happen. In the early morning she felt life impending, large, looming, unknown. At her mother’s door she hesitated, dreading not so much to go in as to begin upon something that was about to change. “I’ve got to go on,” she said half-aloud, and opened the door, dreading.

Instantly her dread sharpened and focused upon her mother’s face. The room was empty except for her mother’s face, lying upon the pillow, turned to the door, waiting for it to open. The blankets were drawn tightly about her shoulders, tightly about her neck. Her body lay small and scarcely mounded under the covers. But the face was vivid. Withered, and strangely yellow in the hard morning light, it was vivid because of the great dark despairing eyes.

“I’ve got to give up, Joan,” she said. “It’s my legs. They won’t hold me. I got up to take my bath and they gave under me like old rotten sticks.”

She stared down at her mother’s face, horrified at the change. Surely it had not looked like this yesterday — this was the whiteness of the pillow and the counterpane, this was the bleakness of the gray hair drawn back from the forehead. She was afraid again. “What shall I do?”

“Go downstairs for me when you are dressed.” Now it was her mother deciding, and somehow she was immediately comforted. “See that everything is right for the breakfast. Let me see — It’s Monday. Tell Hannah not to buy much meat — not a big roast or anything. There’s enough left from yesterday — maybe have baked beans for dinner tomorrow and that hash tonight. Frank likes beans. See that your father gets his two cups of coffee — like as not he’ll forget to ask. And I’d started to write to Rose. You’ll find the letter in my desk. Just put a little note in saying I don’t feel so well but I’ll be up tomorrow and mail it so she’ll get it tomorrow. Now hurry, dear—”

“Yes, Mother,” she answered. She felt lighter. Listening to her mother’s commands, hearing her mother’s voice strong, the room was natural to her again. Her mother turned over and closed her eyes. Now she looked more herself and as she might look sleeping. Closing those great shadowy eyes made her face her own again.

“Don’t you want anything to eat?” Joan asked.

“No,” her mother answered drowsily. “I want only to rest. I’ll be up again tomorrow. I’ll just rest a little today. Such a help to have you—”

Her voice dropped off into a whisper and Joan went away. But at the door her mother’s voice caught her and held her back. It came strongly and clearly, so clearly that she turned instantly and saw her mother’s eyes open again. “If Hannah has boiled eggs for breakfast, and she will if you don’t tell her not to, you crack Frank’s for him. He minds hot things — his skin’s so tender.” The eyes stayed open until she answered. “Yes, I will, Mother.”

In her mother’s place at the table she felt strange to herself. Everything was strange because the mother was not there. It was she who bound them into one and when she was not in her own place they were each separate and desultory and critical of each other. “You have made my coffee too sweet,” her father said in mild surprised rebuke.