Pearl Buck: Time Is Noon

“But the Lord is mindful, is mindful of His own. He will not—” she crooned tenderly, slowly, her eyes misted, her voice thick and soft in her throat. She sat down, strengthened, and began to plan a new story — the best. It was so easy to plan stories in church, in the quiet while the sermon was going on. She drifted happily away.

So the sermon began. Because of this sermon the children had gone quietly every Saturday of their lives, though the day was a holiday. In the bare study they knew their father sat and searched the Scriptures for them all. They could not go in there for any cause. They tiptoed through the house with their small friends following them, their goal the cookie jar in the kitchen. With their hands full of cookies they burst out of the silent house, and ran down to the end of the street, released and joyful and screaming with glee. About them were trees and meadows and under their feet the grass green, thickly green, and the day was a holiday.

Their voices sang and shouted and they played with desperate pleasure and at times fell into quarreling. But even the quarreling was sweet and intense. They gave no thought to their father in his study, searching the Book to find food for their souls, even as they gave no thought to their mother cooking and baking for them in her kitchen and making and mending for them. All this was of course; it all made the foundation of their life safe, and for them it was forever.

Of God they knew nothing except what they were told. They believed, or thought they did, what their father told them. They trusted him about God. When he said God was a kind father who did not let even a sparrow in the garden suffer, they believed him. Besides it seemed true because all the sparrows they saw were plump and busy. When he told them the very hairs of their head were numbered they believed him, for they were used to love. They would not have thought it strange if their mother numbered their hairs, because she so loved them, and it was not strange in God. They were important and complacent and sure of God, believing He loved them and cared for them.

There was also Jesus Christ who died for their sins, and the Holy Ghost. But the Holy Ghost was a shadow and without substance or shape, and they left it at that. But Jesus was real, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” He was touching and real, though more real before his resurrection than afterwards. Afterwards he became arrogant and proud. He said, “Touch me not.” But before, when he was a man, he said “Come unto me,” and “suffer the little children.” Then they understood him. They would have rushed to him, laughing and shouting if they had been near him, because he was real to them, though dead.

But when he hung on the cross for their sins they were uncomfortable and guilty about themselves although they did not know why. They only knew they were sinful and everybody was sinful. They were “conceived and born in sin.” Long ago Joan had used to wonder what “conceived in sin” was. She asked her mother one day, “Was I conceived in sin, too?” Her mother’s eyes opened in surprise and her dark cheeks flushed and she said quickly, “When you are older I will explain everything. Would you like to take Francis and go and play with Netta Weeks? You can take a couple of cookies so she can give one to little Jackie.”

Still she never did quite explain. But after a while Joan knew it could not be a thing for which she alone was to blame. If everybody was so conceived it was a common sin and so she forgot it because there was so much else to think of in the crowding seasons. There was so much to enjoy and she wanted never to think of unpleasant things. She chose to be happy and to laugh.

But Rose could not forget. Once Rose asked her miserably, her lips suddenly dry, “Joan, do you — do you understand about being conceived in sin?”

Joan was shocked by the question. She knew by then how life began inside a woman’s body, out of a man’s body, but it was secret knowledge. She had learned it secretly at school, guiltily against her will. She had listened, surprised, and had shouted angrily, “I don’t believe it.” But she was compelled to believe it. “I know,” said Netta Weeks. “How do you know?” Joan demanded loudly. But Netta only smiled foolishly. Joan felt sickness rush over her. She went away but she could not forget. It was a long time before she could forget when she looked at her father and mother. But she made herself forget at last, so that she could escape from it.

But she could not bear to speak of it even to Rose. Indeed between them, spoken, it would be the more shameful. Her healthy flesh crawled at the thought, outraged. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said shortly. She ran out into the garden and picked a great handful of her mother’s red roses.

So Rose asked no more. She grew inwardly toward herself. She read her Bible every night even in winter, however cold her bedroom was. She never hurried at her prayers. If she felt tempted to hurry and to get into her warm bed she punished herself and prayed more slowly. Rose was ready always to go to church, to dream, to take the bread and wine, the tears filling her eyes easily as she thought of him who died for her sins. She felt herself full of sin. She saved every separate sin and remembered it when the bread was crumbling upon her tongue and when the wine burned her lips delicately, because it was so sweet to feel herself washed clean by Jesus’s blood. It was almost sweet to sin that she might be washed clean. But that again was sin, to want to sin, and so she prayed in ecstasy, to be forgiven again and again.

This intense and secret life Rose kept within herself and because she lived inwardly, outwardly she seemed always mild and gentle and obedient and her blue eyes were saintly in their mildness. The villagers said often, “She is an angelic child — so good. ” And hearing it she felt pleasure, a strange pleasure, tingling in all her body. She planned fresh goodness, a set number of kind deeds every day. She took flowers to old Mrs. Mark who lay in her little stone house, at the edge of the village, bedridden with creeping paralysis. She took flowers until Mrs. Mark said plainly, “I haven’t any more vases, child. Anyways, roses bring on my hay fever. There — I know you mean well enough, but I’ll take the will for the deed.”

“Yes, Mrs. Mark,” said Rose, shrinking away from the harsh fretting old woman. But still she could not give up her goodness. By the time she reached home she remembered that she must not mind being persecuted for her goodness. So she still went to see Mrs. Mark and took her apples and a jar of jelly she had coaxed from her mother, and she welcomed her bitterness. Once when the old woman railed against her useless legs she said gently, “God has a meaning in it, dear Mrs. Mark. He sends us suffering to fit us for heaven.” She had heard Mrs. Parsons say that when little Emma Winters died.

Then the old woman rose up against her. She braced herself against her cottony pillows and shouted at her, “Get out — don’t you dare talk such stuff and nonsense to me! I’d like to know what sense there is in God’s keeping me on my back like this — I could have been a useful woman with my legs. Don’t talk to me! You don’t know anything — you palaver like your father. Go on out and play where you belong.”

Rose gathered up her books gently and went away. At first she was angry and hurt and then she remembered Jesus and exultant righteousness filled her. She had been like Jesus. She had answered nothing. When her enemies persecuted her she was like him, a lamb, innocent, led to the slaughter. But she gave up going to see Mrs. Mark and prayed for her instead, at night, safely in her own room.

Now in the church she sat quietly before her father, her face upturned to his, her spirit subject to his. She loved the hours when he rose to preach, dominating her, telling her what to believe. He was not her father now. He was her priest, her savior. She loved him passionately. He stood for Jesus to her, Jesus who died for her. Now she would be washed, from head to foot, made clean and new. She cried out in her heart, “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” She sat waiting to be cleansed, cleansed and filled anew with love — love — love. Her eyes shone, her lips parted, her breath came soft and quick. She forgot everything except her savior, her beloved savior.