Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

“Don’t you tell on me,” she cried gaily.

So every morning the rouge was put on and every night she would have it there, peach bloom upon her deathly pallor.

But Joan did betray her a little. She coaxed Francis, “Tell Mother how pretty she looks, Frank — tell her over and over.”

“Gee,” he muttered, and the father looked up astonished to say in mild rebuke, “Your mother hates flattery, Joan.”

“You tell her, Frank,” she insisted. “Tell her and see what she says.”

“Oh, sure, if it’ll do her any good,” he shouted back, leaping up the stairs. Ten minutes later he thrust his head into the kitchen, where she was cutting raw beef into cubes for beef tea. “Gosh, she did like it,” he said. “Looked like a kid when I told her — cheeks all pinked up.” He hesitated and she saw sudden tears in his eyes. He swallowed and snorted, “Wasn’t any lie I told, either,” and slammed the door.

And Dr. Crabbe, bursting open the front door in the mornings, shouted to her, “Joan, you got her ready for me?” Afterwards, to Joan alone, waiting in the hall, forcing his voice to low hoarseness he said, “Can’t be long now — just give her whatever she wants — don’t matter now except to keep her happy.”

“How long, Dr. Crabbe?”

“A month — two — maybe six — she’s got such a vitality — don’t tell her—” He was gone in a small cyclone of speed.

Joan, running upstairs with wine, with broth, with delicately seasoned milk soups, cried to herself fiercely. “She shall have all my strength. I’m strong! I’ll pour myself into her. I’ll make her live months, a year, maybe two years—”

She poured her huge vitality into her mother’s body. Tirelessly she washed her mother’s flesh and rubbed olive oil into the wasting muscles to nourish her. She centered her heart into her hands, willing her own strength into her strong hands, into her strong palms, pressing upon her mother’s flesh until she could almost believe a current passed, taking virtue out of her. She wheeled the bed to the window and uncovered her mother’s body to the sunlight and to the warmth of the noonday, standing watch in hand to force the last moment she dared of sun and wind. She wanted all the power from the sun and the warm wind to pour into her mother’s body. Food and sun and sweet air and her own steadily cheerful young strength she poured into her mother’s body, fighting that death in her. But that living death grew, too, upon all she did.

In the night there was no sun and it was hard to laugh in the night. Then everyone lay asleep and apart and the house was silent and she was alone with her mother in the darkness. Beyond the shadowy walls of the room was the universe, waiting in endless empty space. Soon, soon her mother would escape her and be lost in those empty spaces. She lay on her little cot by her mother’s bed, listening and watching for that escape. Out of the moment of her young exhausted sleep, she rose instantly if her mother moved. She heard her mother whisper, “Joan, am I to die?”

Passionately she cried in a loud strong voice, “I will not let you die!”

“Touch me — let me feel you—”

She seized her mother’s hand and held it, rubbing it, fondling it fiercely. From it, too, rose that faint stench. Her mother’s voice came small and far away out of the darkness. “I am always half asleep — Don’t let me slip away while I sleep—”

“No — no—” she said. “I have you hard—”

In the stillness she listened to her mother’s breathing. If it grew too faltering she must give a stimulant, but not unless she must, because there would be greater need at the end when the pain would be so great they must give it constantly. She had asked steady questions of Dr. Crabbe. She knew how each day must go. Curled against the bed in the darkness, kneeling upon the floor, holding her mother’s hand, her body strong and tense, she fought the universe.

Out of her sleep her mother woke again and again to clutch at life. She struggled against this insidious constant deathly sleeping. She forced her eyes open, frowning, thinking of something she wanted to do. “Tell Paul to come here,” she commanded in a strange loud voice. Her ears were dulled so that now she spoke loudly, to hear herself. “I have something on my mind to tell Paul.”

So Joan called her father and he came in timidly. He was very timid these days in the presence of this near-death. At many bedsides he had stood in triumph to speed a soul to God. But he could do nothing for this soul. This soul who knew him allowed him no special power, and without belief he had no power. He was troubled by this. Sometimes he said, “Mary, should we not speak of spiritual things? I am your pastor as well as your husband. I am responsible for you before God.” But now that she had separated herself from them all she had no respect for him. She did not even remember he was father to her children. She remembered him only as a man against whom she had a grievance deeper than her soul. She was fighting off the poisonous sleep to tell him what she had to say. “Be quiet!” she said in that strange harsh voice. “There is something — a hundred dollars—”

He stared at her, astonished. A hundred dollars! She was dreaming. “What hundred dollars?” he asked.

But sleep had come down on her. She straggled against it, moving her lips, forcing her heavy eyelids, but sleep came down upon her and her face settled into empty gravity.

Again and again it was so until Joan was broken by the struggle. “Let it be, Mother,” she begged. “Never mind — never mind—”

But her mother would not give up. “Tell Paul,” she said, and at last one day it was told. “A hundred dollars — in the attic — in the old trunk — Joan and Rose—”

“A hundred dollars — in the attic!” he echoed. “Where did you get it?” He forgot that she was ill. A hundred dollars! When he had needed money so sorely for his mission.

“I saved housekeeping money — dollar by dollar — Joan and Rose—” She was fighting the sleep. It was almost upon her again, stiffening her lips, pressing her eyelids down. Then he helped her. Then he woke her. He woke her with a lash, with a whip. He rose and shouted at her, “You stole it!”

Her eyes flew open. Her dimmed ears caught the shout and held it. She was awake because once more she was angry. He could still make her angry. “I stole it? Slaving for you and your church all these years? Never having anything for my own — never anything — anything — anything—?” She turned to Joan piteously, her face a child’s face, working with weeping. “Joan, he says — he says—”

Joan ran to her and gathered her up into her arms and soothed her. “Oh, darling, don’t mind, don’t mind, my darling—” She pressed her mother’s head to her shoulders, murmuring to her, soothing her. But the relentless sleep was there again, now mercifully there again, silencing everything. The tears were still wet upon the sleeping face. Above it Joan flashed upon her father a look. She hated him. But he did not catch the look. He was hastening away. She heard his footsteps hastening up the attic stairs.

… In the morning, unless it was Sunday, he was a little hungry after his hour in the study. When his soul was refreshed all his bodily impulses quickened and he felt light and at ease and he knew it was because he was right with God, and he was hungry. It was pleasant to come out into the cheerful dining room and begin a hot breakfast. Coffee on a chill morning was very nice. It was nice to come into the companionship of the others. Across this comfort, across the pleasure of the sweet creamy coffee he was stirring slowly and about to drink, Joan’s voice broke cruelly. He looked up, shocked at her hard voice. He was not accustomed to hardness from her. To Mary’s strange unreasoning angers, yes — he had taken her unevenness to God and God had said, “Bear thy cross.” So he had borne his cross, and he was rewarded, because as she grew older she had grown less stormy, less often angry with him, less demanding.