Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

On that first Sunday morning when she came home from college, it had not seemed necessary to think about God, because then she had taken everything for granted. God would take care of her. She had been told so often that God was good. Here in this home night and morning she sat while Bart’s father read “the Word of God.” She had not needed to listen, since God was good.

But now there was no use in pretending that Paul grew any better. He was no better. She played with him every day, singing over and over to him with desperate grim patience the gay childish songs her mother had sung to them all. “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s-man.” Francis used to pat his baby hands together in solemn ecstasy. “Paul, Paul, see? Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake—” She held his hands and patted them together day after day. Each day she waited to see his hands move a little upward of their own volition. “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake—” Day after day she let his hands fall and got up quietly to busy herself at some other task. It took a long time to teach little children — a long, long time. Her mother used to cry, “It does seem to me I have to keep telling you children the same thing over and over.” Every day she told Paul the same thing over and over.

Then one day when he was nearly five years old, she put his hands down. She went to the trunk and found a little box of toys she had made ready for his Christmas. Each year she had planned in happiness. “Next year, I’ll have a tiny tree. He will be big enough surely to notice the candles and to laugh at toys.”

She would not wait this time for Christmas. She lit the lamp and set it where he could see it. She opened the box and brought out a rattle she had bought, with bells on the handle, and she jangled it near him. She took his hand and curved the fingers about the handle and moved it gently. But when she took her hand away, the rattle dropped. She snatched up the lamp, sobbing, and held it above him. He did not recognize the light. His wandering eyes saw and slipped away.

“It is no use pretending anymore,” she said aloud, fiercely. She set down the lamp and put all the toys back into the box and set the box into the trunk and closed it. There never would be Christmas in this house. She knew it now. She began her old sobbing again. “Oh, God,” she said sobbing, “oh, help me, God!”

Her father used to teach them, saying, “Ask and you shall receive, for so we are taught.”

She searched in the trunk for her mother’s Bible. She and Rose had put it there. It had been years since she had read the Bible for herself. On Sunday afternoons when she was a little girl they each had to read a chapter. And once for a while when she was a young girl she had read it of her own will, to delight in the swinging powerful words. There was the Song of Solomon. And then abruptly she had put it aside and read instead the poems of the Brownings, and Tennyson’s “Princess,” and any love stories she could find.

Once she had really prayed for her mother’s life and her mother died. But then her mother was no longer young and there comes a time to die. Paul was only a child, and death was not for him — not for years upon years. She fell upon her knees by her bed, clenching her hands together, her eyes closed, her whole being pouring and concentrated. She felt a power sweeping up from her feet, through her limbs, her body, soaring upward to the cold starry sky, a shining shape of intense desire. “Oh, God, make Paul well!”

… She would give God time. She lived in a waiting intensity through days and nights. The work was to be done, in this house. There was so much work to be done, a routine of sweeping and polishing and cleaning. She worked at it doggedly. On Tuesdays she opened the dark unused parlor and wiped all the furniture and the pictures, all the curly carved surfaces. She knew every surface now without loving any. There was no meaning to any shape. She had never seen anyone sit on the chairs. The window shades were not lifted except on Tuesdays. On Wednesdays she cleaned the pantry. There were three heavy complete dinner sets on the shelves. “You shall have them when I’m gone,” Bart’s mother said often.

“Why don’t you use them?” she answered heartily. “I’d rather you used them now.”

“Use Mother’s good wedding set every day?” Bart’s mother cried in horror. “She never did, nor I. Besides, there’s the trouble of washing them every day. I’d never get over it if some were broken.” They ate from ten-cent-store dishes. She wiped the empty old-fashioned dishes savagely. If they were ever hers, she’d use them every day, every meal, and she’d slash them about in the dishpan.

“I always say,” Bart’s mother’s voice came dolefully from the kitchen, hearing the dishes clatter, “if you break up your few good things, you don’t know where you’re going to look to for more.”

She did not answer. She moved the dishes, wiping their edges. Nothing but things and things. This house was full of silent lifeless things, things to be taken care of. She’d like to walk straight out of it, walk away down the road, anywhere, never to return.

“I must be patient,” she cried, terrified. “How can I expect God to do anything for me when I am so unruly?”

It was very hard to be patient so long. She waited, day after day, prayer seething in her constantly, fretful, desperate, importunate prayer. She nagged at God with her prayers, unbelieving. “There’s nothing in it. Paul doesn’t change a bit.” Nagging desperately again, “There’s no other hope — Oh God, help me—”

She brimmed with a dreadful energy. She polished the front stairs she never used. Living in this house she had come to feel it sacrilege to use them. Bart’s mother’s disapproval made rebellion worthless. “But it means more to clean,” she said, hurt, to Joan’s cry: “Why should we climb up those steep back stairs?” The intensity of hope deferred was making her ill-tempered. She was often angry with Bart’s mother, furious at her large soft stupidity, her unwavering obstinacy … “Oh, God, when — when — is Paul going to get better!”

“Yes,” she answered violently to Bart’s mother, “I did wipe each banister — Yes, I did move the little marble-top walnut table and I did wipe behind the mirror.”

“Well, I’m sure,” said Bart’s mother, bewildered, “I was only asking — if you hadn’t, I was going to — if you had — I’ll begin picking over these windfalls to stew up.”

All the time she was watching Paul, testing Paul, trying to arouse Paul. One day she took him into the parlor and opened the old crack-voiced piano and holding him on her lap, she took his lumpish hands and holding them touched the keys softly. It had rained all day, a dark long day. In the attic she had walked with him, played with him, until the close down-sloping roof shut her in and made her breathless. Against the window the rain had beaten in gusts so that to look out was to see the trees’ indefinite cloudy green swimming in down-rushing water. She was as restless as a child, and taking Paul in her arms she had gone recklessly down the front stairs—“After all, I clean them!”—and to the piano. “Pat-a-cake pat-a-cake,” she was chanting, drumming his fist softly upon the keys.

The door opened suddenly and she turned, Paul’s head bobbing helplessly upon her breast, to Bart’s mother. Her large vague face was violently distorted.

“Now, Joan, that’s one thing I don’t allow anyway. I’ve stood enough. I never did let one of my children touch the piano, and you can’t start Paul doing it.”

She walked heavily across the floor, wiping her hands on her apron, and closed the piano with a bang. Joan rose. Now she knew she hated this woman. She hated them all. No use pretending anymore — no use trying to pretend. She stared into the small yellowish-brown eyes, lost in her hatred. She was holding Paul so tightly he began to cry. She turned and ran from the room … And all the time she knew she was herself hindering God. For how could God help her when she was so wicked and full of hate? In the attic she began to sob. “That old worthless piano — he’s her own son’s child — I don’t want to hate her—” She put Paul in his crib and threw herself upon the bed, sobbing. She cried so much these days. Any little thing would start her to crying.