Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

“It doesn’t seem as if anything could be wrong with such a lovely child.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it?” said Joan gratefully. It was true that among the sick children Paul looked sound and beautiful. She could not help being proud of him, a little. At least, sleeping, he was beautiful. The other woman’s child began to cry fretfully.

“She gets so tired, the poor little thing,” the woman said, trying to shift the weight of the huge head. “The doctor is late. They’re always late. I wish I had back all the hours I’ve wasted waiting for doctors.”

“Can’t they do anything?” Joan asked. Under the bulging enormous forehead the little girl’s face looked out, weazened, tiny, mouselike, twisted in old, old suffering.

“I don’t give up hope,” the mother said fervently. She bent and kissed the great forehead. “I keep hoping. You’ve got to hope.”

They all had the same hope, Joan thought, looking at the women’s faces. They looked eagerly at each other’s children, relieved when their eyes fell on one worse than their own. They looked quickly away from Paul because he seemed so sound, and they stared at crippled, deformed children hopefully.

When the doctor came in, their faces turned to him together, their eyes following him, searching his face eagerly. He came in, a robust, middle-aged figure with a small square beard and very clear agate-gray eyes. He was talking loudly and positively to a younger man who was with him.

“I tell you, Proctor, the diagnosis is perfectly obvious in ninety percent of these cases. The congenital undeveloped mind is consistently different from the birth-injured case that is possibly mentally normal. I never confuse the two — Just look at these here—”

His eyes ran, cold, darting, analyzing, along the walls. He was directly in front of her. She could smell a strong clean perfume upon him. She could see the hairy underside of his chin, the sharp triangle of his nose, the cold agate-gray eyes gazing downward. They did not see her. They saw only Paul. He had waked and was lying quietly in her arms.

“I am his mother,” she said steadily.

“You needn’t wait, my good woman, unless you want to. I don’t have anything more to say anyway. Take him home. When he gets too much for you, you’d better find a good institution.”

He passed on, talking and talking. She had turned in agony to the young doctor. But he had not met her eyes. He was listening closely and with respect to the cold, intelligent, knowing voice. She rose, pressing Paul’s little cap to his head.

Let her go home now, to the attic. She could fend off the pain until then. She would not examine the words until then. When she got home, under the close dark roof, she would take them out of her memory and comprehend them and let the waiting pain flow over her and cover her at last. Around her the patient women sat, not heeding. The door of the doctor’s office opened and their faces turned to it. A nurse came out, white and brisk, “First case, please!” No one saw her as she slipped away.

Bart met her at the station in his car. She climbed in and sat in silence beside him. He clattered along the rocky country road. She knew he was showing off to her. He wanted her to say how well he drove the car. The speedometer crept up and she could feel him wanting her praise, and when it did not come, perversely driving too fast that he might force her to say something. He had no imagination and so he never sensed danger. He could climb the barn roof and laugh when she looked away, shuddering. But if they were all killed, it would be well. She said nothing and at last he slowed down, sullenly.

“What did the doctor say about the kid?”

She seized the blade of pain in both hands. “He says Paul will never be right.”

She looked out over the fields. The corn was tasseling, and the summer was at its full. The forest green was deep and dark.

If Bart were a grown man, if he was really what his body seemed, she could turn and give Paul to him and rest her head upon his shoulder. There would be a bottom to this pain then. It would not go deeper and deeper fathomless, endless, a black tunnel through which she must walk alone all her life, without light to guide her to the end.

“Shucks, you can’t believe everything them city doctors say, Jo. He’s healthy as can be.”

“His body’s all right.”

“He’ll turn out good,” Bart repeated heartily. “You see if he don’t.”

She did not answer. The road was deep with dust. The sunset was flaming out of orange dust.

Bart cleared his throat. “Need rain,” he remarked. “Good growing weather for the corn, though.”

“Yes,” she said.

The house was just around the turn. They were there.

Now they were at the kitchen door. Bart’s mother was at the stove, frying potatoes.

“Supper’s ready,” she said, without turning her head.

“I’ll be down soon — don’t wait,” she answered. She carried Paul upstairs and washed him and fed him and laid him in his crib. He was tired and fell into effortless sleep. She fetched the small oil lamp from the box she used as a table and stood looking at him. These must be her moments of dreaming now, these moments at night when he was fast asleep. She could dream that he was like any other child. He had had a day of play, shouting, calling, chattering, crying, carrying out his busy little-boy plans, and now at the end of the day he was tired out. As his body grew she could pretend he was going to school, that he played baseball and rode a horse. When a young man’s body lay asleep, she could dream he was going to college. Her imagination flew in agony down the years. This was the waiting pain. Now it was come — now it could no longer be put away. It was here. It would go with her night and day as long as she lived, walk with her wherever she went, wait in her awake or if she slept. It seemed now she would never sleep again.

She opened a drawer to put away Paul’s cap. There lay the song she had begun to write on the day before he was born. The opening lines were there, the gay and triumphant beginning. But she had not known the ending. Today she knew. She took the paper and tore it into bits and went to the window and let them fly out into the deepening dark. Then she blew out the light and groped her way down the stairs.

At the table the food was dry in her mouth. She kept taking gulps of water to force it down. She must eat, of course. She must live now, as long as Paul lived. And his body had a long life to live.

“What did the doctor say?”

She looked up at Bart’s mother out of solitary deeps of pain. The question came from a long way.

“He said Paul will never be like other children.”

Over and over her life long she must be ready to say that. Wherever she went, people would say, “What is the matter with your baby?” After a while they would say, “What is the matter with your little boy?” They would say, “What is the matter with that young man?” Steadily, over and over, she must be ready to repeat, “He will never be like other children are — never as other young men are.” She must not flinch.

“Pass the bread,” Bart said. “I don’t take any stock in it.”

Sam passed the bread.

“It doesn’t pay to listen to doctors,” he said cheerfully. “I had a doctor tell me once I had a bone felon. But it was no more’n a boil.”

“I wish I hadn’t told you about Aunt Em’s girl,” said Bart’s mother fretfully. “Now you’ll get notions. They’re not one bit the same. Em’s girl was sickly from the time she got her fall. Paul’s different in every way. He’s just like Bart. Bart was an awful healthy baby. I said he’d talk when he got good and ready and he did. And Paul will, too.”