Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

Now she took stock of all that made her life to see what she wanted for her son. This house was to be his home, this land, these hills must for years be his home and his world. She pondered it all, everything, examined each separate part, to see what she wanted for him. Here he and she would live together, taking what they wanted, making what they had not. She would take the great shadowing sheltering trees, she would take the undulating hills, the valleys full of woods, the curious aged rocks, the stream at the edge of the cornfield, the marsh where lady’s slipper and wild iris grew, all her small private possessions. She would take the barn with its great hayloft, the cattle lowing and giving their milk.

She would go to the barn herself and even now take the milk for him whole. When Bart’s father said, “We sell the cream,” she would say, “My baby shall have cream. It is more important for him to have cream than for it to be sold to city people.” She would take the eggs they guarded as jealously as jewels. He must have eggs every day. She began even now for him, now when her body was his source of growing. So she had had to tell them about him. She kept, it as long as she could to herself, so that in the silence she and the child could live together. But for his sake it was told.

“Bart,” she had said one night in the bedroom when he stepped out of his blue jeans. She stooped to pick them up and hang them on the nail behind the door. “I’m going to have a baby.”

“Are we?” he cried. She paused, astonished at his “we.” It had not come into her mind that the child was anyone’s except her own. His square unshaved face broke into a great grin. “I been wondering when that was going to happen.”

She had gone on distinctly. “I want you to get me a quart of milk every day with all the cream in. And I want two eggs for my breakfast. The baby ought to have them.”

He scratched his head and looked at her. “Don’t know about that — Pop’s kind of low since the fruit trees got frosted.”

“It’s got to be, Bart,” she replied.

“Sure,” he said amiably. “If you say so, I’ll put it up to Pop.”

“I never coddled myself,” Bart’s mother said next day in the kitchen. “I raised the boys on skim milk all right. Folks don’t need cream. It sells good and we’re short.”

Joan did not answer. She could use stubborn silence now, too. She went on steadily kneading bread. She had learned how to make good bread, great snowy loaves, brown crusted. Some day her little boy would run into this very kitchen, “Mother, I’m hungry.” She would answer, “Yes, my son.” She would go and cut him a full slice of the bread she had made and butter it thickly before their very eyes, and give it to him. “There’s plenty more if you want it, my son,” she would say clearly before them all. She would take ruthlessly for him.

So now she went openly into the cellar and poured out cream and put it back into her skim milk, cream that was bottled, ready to be sold. She went to the nests in the chicken house and took what eggs she wanted. They watched her, their silence loud with astonishment and anger, so that Bart was afraid before his father and tried to placate him with extra work. Let him, she thought triumphantly, let him do that for my child.

Only Sam said aloud, with envy and hostility, “Say, it’s luck for you, ain’t it!” His mother hushed him, outraged. “Sam, be quiet!” But it was outrage because it was not decent to know that Joan was to have a baby. It was another thing about which to be silent. Joan spoke quickly, tranquilly. “Why luck? I want my child to have a strong body, Sam.”

But to such frankness he had no answer. He grew red and retreated into their common silence and said no more. They were shocked at her indecency. But she was not afraid of their silence anymore. She had learned how to live in it now. She took what she wanted and was not afraid.

And then one day there was a letter for her. She had no letters these days except from Rose, for Francis did not write. He had lost himself in the world and she did not know where he was. She could only wait for him to come back. She tore at this letter quickly, for the stamp was not foreign. But it was not from Francis. The paper was stamped with the words, MINISTER’S INSURANCE DEPARTMENT. She read it quickly. There was a check pinned to the corner. Her father, the letter said, had for years carried a small insurance. Since they had not known of his death until recently there had been a delay in sending her the money. More than two years ago he had written saying his wife had died and he wished his elder daughter to have his insurance in case of his death. The check was for five hundred dollars.

She sat down on the old stump by the mailbox. If she had had this letter before her child began to live in her — but she had not.

She was held now to this house. She must keep this house to be a home for her child, a family into which he could be born. Money could not buy her freedom. She had taken their blood into her and mingled it with her own blood. She could never be free. She sat, gazing over the morning fields. On the hill across the valley she saw Bart plowing, small against the earth. She heard his voice crying at the horses, faint and very thin in the distance. Money could not free her. She had taken him into herself. But she would not tell him of this money. At least that would be hers. She would put it into the bank in some town where they did not go and keep it in her own name. She would know it was there if she needed it, a secret power.

But she was jealous of Bart. As the days passed, as the child moved in her and grew, she wanted it to be all her own. Bart’s part in its creation was so little, so unconscious, so accidental.

And Bart could not be a father when he was only a boy. He was longing for a car now, exactly as a boy longs. She listened to him. “Jo, I just got to get me a car. I got seventy dollars in cash now and my share of the pigs and pullets. I got a good notion to go on and get me a car.” He was excited by the thought, pleading for her agreement. “Don’t you think we ought to have a car? It’s so slow these days not to have one. Every fellow my age drives his own car, and it looks foolish to go to church or town in that old surrey, hitched to the plow horses. If Pop wasn’t so old-fashioned — he’s got money in the bank — I know he has.”

She smiled in secret triumph. This great boy the father of her son! She smiled tolerantly. “Why, yes, Bart. Why not?”

“I could get me a used car,” he said in excitement. “I could paint it up all new. Say, do you like red or blue? Maybe a nice green. I’m partial to green.”

He went off, planning. She said to herself, “Let him have his car. It will mean more to him than the child. I can have the child to myself.”

The next Saturday, when he came home in an old car, she went out and admired it. The owner said loudly, “He’s the quickest fellow to learn to drive I’ve ever seen. I told him a few things and he’s got the hang already.” Bart said, “Move over and let me see.” He shoved himself into the driver’s seat and studied the gears. “Let’s see—” The car moved slowly. His face grew solemnly ecstatic.

She smiled, content. Her child was her own. It was more easy now to be pleasant, to be kind. She was very kind to them all, these days.

But she wanted someone to whom to talk. If her mother had been alive she would have run to her. “Mother, I am going to have my child!” She could see her mother’s dark eyes go joyous in that brightness, as though an inner light had been turned on, like windows shining in the night. “Oh, my darling !” She could feel the quick warm arms about her. And she yearned for Rose and Francis. It had been so long — how had they grown so separate? She wanted to see him again. As if an answer to her longing, a letter came from Rose. Rose’s child was born, a little delicate boy, so delicate they had not dared to hope to keep him alive, but he lived. He had been born on a warm April day in a Chinese city, a fair little boy who looked like Rob. Rose had no milk for him. Her round breasts were useless, for the nipples were too small. They would not rise and the boy could not grasp them in his lips, or he was too feeble to try. So they had hired a Chinese wet nurse, a peasant woman whose baby was a girl. She was willing for money to take the girl’s milk for Rose’s little boy. “We feel only our prayers have kept him alive,” Rose wrote. Joan, reading the letter closely, longed for the frail child. She looked at her own swelling breasts proudly. If the children had been together, I believe I could have fed them both, she thought in triumph. I shall have so much — far more than enough.