Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

“You don’t eat, Mr. Barnes!” his mother cried, despair on her round face. What could be done with anybody who did not eat? In this great farmhouse everybody ate.

The missionary had smiled thinly and a little sadly at her. “I have eaten poorly for so long that now my stomach will not feast. It has the habit of poverty and prefers it.”

Then he also would so teach his own body. His mother saw his plate taken away and was frightened. “Paul, you’re sick! I never knew you not to eat!” He smiled sickly, the palms of his hands wet with the strength of his hunger. But he had not eaten. In a fire of blushing and shyness he had withstood his brothers’ teasing. “Well, if Paul’s not eating, he’s sick enough to die.” Even his father had smiled dryly. “I always say it keeps Paul poor just carrying all his food.” But they had not known how hungry he was all the time.

Even now, after all these years, he never sat down at the table and smelled the food without that voracious faintness in his belly. But no one knew this. He would have been ashamed even for Mary, his wife, to know. So he had early made it his rule to deny himself before he went before God for his people. At night he would eat hungrily and sleep soon, spent, his soul emptied. But now he sat silent and brooding, his eyes shining and strange and his mind not in his body, his ears deaf unless his name were called.

The children were used to this also. They accepted him among them, let him be as it seemed he must be, and turned toward their mother. She was their sun and they turned toward her and told her everything, or nearly everything except the secret core of themselves which without knowing it they kept from her and from everybody.

And she gave to them joyously in turn. Each had what he needed of her. As she had given them her milk when they were born, now she gave them the food of her brain and her thoughts and everything she knew. Sometimes it was not enough, but she did not know it and they did not tell her, if indeed they knew it. She gave them so much that it seemed enough.

Sitting among them on this Sabbath morning she was at her best and richest. She knew her house was warm and comfortable about her children. She was feeding them the best she had, feeding their bodies with milk and bread and meat and fruit, feeding richness into their blood and their flesh, making the mother’s eternal mystic transubstantiation. Soon their souls too would be fed. She did not wholly understand how, but in the house of God they sat and received for their souls bread and wine, and their father’s hands gave it to them. They were safe. Body and soul they were safe. She smiled peacefully and gave them bits of her love.

“Joan, is your egg as you like it? You used to like it coddled that way, but if you want it different — people do change! … Rose, I’ve put a fresh cover on your bed. I didn’t like that one. I decided you might as well have the pink one. It suits your room so well. … Frank, darling, here is more bacon — crisp, just as you like it.”

In all this she did not forget the man. But she spoke to him most often through the children.

“Pass his cup, dear,” she said to her son. “He’s let it get cold. I’ll change it—”

She lifted her voice slightly higher and said clearly, “Here’s some hot coffee, Paul. Now drink it before it chills again.”

He looked at her vaguely and took the cup and drank a little of it and then rose.

“I’m going to the vestry,” he said quietly, and seemed, with his gentle and silent step, to drift from the room.

They knew that in the hour before they were all gathered in the pews he would be praying. He would pray so long and intensely that he would come out to them transfigured, the skin of his face shining and his body holy. They did not understand it. Francis begrudged his father the exaltation. Thinking of it now he said aloud, “I can’t see what he prays about so long. Gee, I’d run out of anything to say long before church time!”

But this even his mother could not endure.

“He is not saying anything,” she said quietly. “He is waiting before the Lord.”

He knew by her voice that now she would not let him have his way, not even him, not in this one thing, this thing between man and God. He dropped his head, pouting his red lips, and piled the golden marmalade recklessly upon his bread and swallowed it in great mouthfuls. Rose was playing with a small heap of dry crumbs, dreaming, absorbed into herself.

But Joan caught the words from her mother and sat gazing across the table into the garden, smiling. Waiting before the Lord! Waiting — waiting — before the Lord! The words marched through the air, shining, sonorous and caught to themselves other words. She was waiting, waiting and radiant — Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory? … Lift up — lift up your head — and wait!

She followed her mother into the church proudly, her head high on her straight neck. Years ago her mother had said to her, “You’re tall, so be as tall as you can.” After that, however she hated sometimes to have her head above all others, she remembered, and made herself as tall as she could.

Behind them came Rose alone, small and composed. Francis would come when he chose, or if he were rebellious enough he would not come, if the day were too fair and enticing by the river. But his mother’s wish was still compelling upon him. All her wishes were heavy upon him because of her love for him, and he did not feel her love too heavy since as yet he had no other.

But he resisted her a little now. When she said to him today, her eyes guarded, her voice determined to be pleasant, “Are you ready for church, son?” he looked up at her from the hammock on the porch where he had thrown himself. “I’ll be along,” he said, staring into the rose vines. “Don’t wait,” he said when she waited.

She looked at him, locking her tongue behind her set teeth, keeping her smile on her lips. A year before she would have said to him sharply and naturally, sure that because she loved him she knew best for him, “Go at once and get your hat and coat and come with me.” But now the instinct in her, always alive and fluttering toward her children and especially to this son, warned her that he was very near the moment when he would refuse her utterly. Some morning he would say, “I hate church. I won’t come with you again.” She was afraid of the moment and week by week she pushed it off, and he knew it, and was arrogant with her, lordly because of his youth.

So she had left him alone to come when he would, and she led her two daughters into the church. Joan sat beside her mother and Rose beside Joan. To them this was an air as familiar as home. This place, too, was a sort of home. Years full of Sabbaths Joan had sat in this same front pew beside her mother and Francis’s place was on the other side. Between these two strong lively children the mother sat, dividing them, quieting them, compelling them to their father, that he might compel them to God. Rose was obedient and she did naturally, or seemed to do, those things which she should do.

Yet today they were not complete as they had been for so long. Joan could feel her mother’s unease until Francis came into his place. Her mother prayed quickly, her hand over her eyes, and then sat back waiting for Francis, wanting him to come. Before the congregation she wanted her children assembled, still around her, still faithful. Many parents came alone. The church was full of old people alone, whose children were gone from the small village, or if they were not gone, they were grown and sat willfully at home or went out for amusement. But she was here with her children about her. Joan knew and could smile at her mother’s pride and humor her in it when after the service she would lead her children down the aisle through the people.