Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

“I know,” breathed Joan. She towered over her, instantly understanding. “It’s terrible — it’s terrible for me too, letting Rose go.”

She hung over Mrs. Winters, yearning with comprehension. It would be like seeing them die on their wedding day, Rose and Rob. Her immense imagination leaped to the day, saw them upon the train, the train smaller and smaller in the distance until they were gone. In Mrs. Winters’ house there would be no child left, and in this house Rose would be no more. It was terrible as death, her mother gone in death and now Rose gone into life stranger than death. It was easier to understand death. Her eyes swam in tears. People ought to stay close, close together — families ought to cling together always until death came. They could not help death but they could help choosing in life to part. “Mrs. Winters,” she whispered, “Mrs. Winters, Mother wouldn’t have wanted Rose to go. I’m sure she wouldn’t.”

“Of course she wouldn’t,” Mrs. Winters whispered back, her fat cheeks shaking with the sobs in her throat. “Your dear mother — Joan, I’m not a hypocrite. I–I really did mean what I said in the missionary meetings, even though Chinese always did give me the creeps. I used to see them sometimes on the streets in New York when I went with Mr. Winters to get stock. But to put a nickel in the plate or even a dime once in a while — it isn’t the same thing as your only child wanting to go.”

“No — no,” said Joan. She knelt down and wrapped her long arms about Mrs. Winters’ large encased body, and Mrs. Winters leaned for a moment upon her shoulder and wept aloud.

“I haven’t done this — not since my little girl died before Rob could talk,” she gasped.

“There, there,” said Joan, patting her back gently. How could Rob be afraid of his mother? Under her hand she felt a hard full ridge of flesh above a corset. But it didn’t matter. She saw suddenly that this woman, this managing, bristling woman, was nothing but a child after all. Strange how nobody grew up — Her mother had died, really nothing but a little child, and she had never understood her mother wholly until she had seen she was a child. And now she would always really know Mrs. Winters. She would know her better than she did her own father, better than she did Rose, who never gave of themselves. Mrs. Winters sighed and sat up abruptly, and wiped her eyes.

“I don’t know when …” she said feebly.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Joan quickly. “I understand perfectly.”

“I know you do — I feel you do, though you’re only a girl and I’m sure — But I’ll always oppose it. Joan — so long as I draw breath. I’ve been a good woman and served the Lord and I oughtn’t to be asked to do this besides.”

Joan stood up, delicately conscious that Mrs. Winters was ashamed of her weeping.

“Yes, Mrs. Winters,” she said docilely. Mrs. Winters stood up also, and took out her side combs and combed up her pompadour and thrust the combs in again strongly on either side of the knob of hair on her crown. “But nobody listens to me,” she said. She scarcely looked now as though she had wept at all. “There — I’ve got to go — I left a cake in the oven. I don’t know what came over me. I shall write a good hot letter to Rob. And you speak to Rose, Joan. Tell her what your mother’d have told her. It’s that Kinney girl that’s started Rose, Joan, I’ll bet — a queer unnatural baby she was from the start. She had to be took, and I shouldn’t wonder if it made her a little queer. Well! I’m sure …” She moved toward the door and looked into the hall. It was empty.

Joan felt suddenly shy. “Good-bye,” she said gently. “I shan’t tell a soul how you’ve been feeling.”

Relief crept into Mrs. Winter’s small opaque gray eyes. She reached up her lips and kissed Joan under the ear. “You’re a good girl,” she said abruptly and went away. Joan, watching her, saw her march down the street, competent, determined. She saw her meet Francis, sauntering home from high school, swinging his books idly against the fence, and stop him a moment.

“What did she say?” Joan asked him as he came in, scorn upon his face.

“Said it wasn’t any way to treat my books,” he replied. “Old hen! Seems to think I’m a kid.”

But Joan went back upstairs smiling. Well, there it was — people! For she could understand that to speak so to Francis made Mrs. Winters whole again.

But no more than Joan could push away with her two hands her mother’s death could she push away this life Rose had chosen. Spring ended. The useful dark dresses were packed into the square trunk her mother had bought for her in college and which Rose had in turn. She had seen her mother kneeling before it — the last time to fold carefully the flowery dress. Now Joan knelt, feeling herself almost in her mother’s body, folding the useful clothes. She knelt, silent, taking the garments Rose piled ready on a newspaper on the floor. Where would these garments be unpacked again? She could not see — she could only feel that Rose was going very far, forever far away. She finished and stood looking down.

Rose called from her room. “Will there be room in the tray for a few more books?”

“There is a lot of room left,” Joan cried back. Yes, too much room — there was pitifully little in the trunk. Days before she had gone to the attic and taken out the few dollars she had saved to buy a wedding present for Rose. But it was so hard to give Rose a gift. She wanted nothing. “I want to buy you something pretty with it, darling,” Joan had pleaded. But Rose had been her soft, obdurate self. “It wouldn’t be suitable, Joan. Thank you ever so much, but it wouldn’t be really suitable.” So it had ended by her slipping the money into Rose’s hand. “Then here, darling — sometime you might want something — even something pretty.”

But now though all the little store was given, she could not close the somber trunk. She must put something in — something for her mother, if not for Rose. Her mother would not let a trunk go like that, full of nothing but useful things. Every year at college when she opened her trunk she found bits of surprise her mother had tucked in a corner, a lace-frilled sachet, a pair of silk stockings — but Rose had said no silk stockings, so they had bought lisle.

The door opened silently and her father stood there, a small solid, leather-bound volume in his hand. “Is there room for this?” he asked. He came to the trunk and stood hesitating above it. “I bought it small not to take up much room.” Joan took the book from him and put it into the tray. “It’s to start their life upon,” he said gravely. “‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.’”

But she did not answer. She left him and ran into her own room and began searching in her bottom drawer wildly, her throat tight. There she kept her few precious pretty things, the things she did not often wear, the few things she had too pretty to wear yet. There was a satin nightgown of palest peach. Mary Robey had given it to her at Commencement. “Wear it on your wedding night, Jo,” she had said, teasing her. Joan had put it away with the frilly sachet, half planning. Now she seized it and ran back to the trunk. From Rose’s room she heard her father’s voice talking to Rose. “In time of trouble …” he was saying. She lifted the dark useful traveling dress and thrust the peach-colored shining garment underneath. She ran back to her room and at her desk found a bit of paper and scrawled upon it, Wear this your wedding night, darling, darling Rose. She ran back and pinned the note upon the lace bosom of the folded gown.

It’s the prettiest thing I have, she thought, and covered it quickly with the dark dress, and suddenly she missed it intolerably.