Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

When she grew quieter she lay in the darkness, thinking. She must just begin again. There were things she ought to do which she had not done. It was very easy for the heathen mothers who promised God a coat or shoes. She rose up and lit the light and found her mother’s Bible, poring over one of the pages heavily underscored. There was one verse blackly underscored: “He that cometh to God must first believe that He is—”

She had not been believing enough. “I believe, I believe!” she whispered fiercely.

“I believe!” she cried in her heart every day, every hour, as she swept and washed and mended. “I believe!” she repeated, holding Paul. She gave up the singing now. Instead she murmured over him like a fierce litany, “I believe — I believe in God!”

She began to be meticulous with herself, to read the Bible and to pray a certain time each day as her father had done. In her youth, she remembered with terror, she had laughed at people who were like this. It used to be a joke in the village because Mrs. Parsons always prayed before she began writing on her novel every day. “I want God’s blessing on all I write,” she used to say. “If I have God’s blessing on all I write, some day a publisher will take my book.” They had laughed at her in the careless fullness of their youth. Prayer was for church or to be murmured before sleep. It was like brushing your hair a hundred times, or like keeping your bureau drawers neat — all nice people did such things. Prayer was a nice habit. But nothing ever came of it beyond the feeling of niceness it gave. But perhaps they were wrong. Perhaps there was something there, a power upon which she had not laid hold.

Pray, Rose, she wrote, distracted, pray for Paul.

“God,” she cried to hills and sky, walking through the forests, green again with spring — incredible spring, coming year after year, just the same! — “God, help my little baby Paul!”

In this cunning to persuade God she whispered like a child to her dead mother. “If you are near God now, speak to Him of Paul!” She thought, if there is any way, she will find it and do it … But Paul still did not know her. He ate and slept and grew heavier and she tended him as she always had. For all her crying there was no sign that she was heard.

“Bart,” she said, “I have an idea I want to go to our old church. I want you to stay in the house with Paul once on Sunday.” Perhaps in the familiar church she might recapture the childhood sense she remembered of God’s being near and loving. They used to take it for granted that God loved them.

“You needn’t do anything,” she added to Bart. “Just be in the house — don’t touch him unless he cries.” She was jealous of Paul’s immaculate body. She did not want Bart’s great grimed hands touching him.

He spoke so heartily she looked up in surprise. He seldom spoke to her these days, and to him she did not speak unless she must. Between them there was that eternal wordless question-and-answer waiting. Whenever he opened his mouth, she drew up her resources ready for refusal. If she should speak to him, he might be led on to ask that question. Silence was safe. At first he had touched her hand often, and made awkward opportunity to brush against her as she passed. She learned to stay far from him, to come and go steadily, cold, never touching. “You’d think I was dirty or something!” he roared at her once. She looked away and did not answer. It was true — his flesh was like filth to her.

Then at last he made no more effort. He came and went from the fields, eating enormously, sleeping immediately after he had eaten at night. She ceased to feel the pressure in him. He was content to be silent toward her as he was to the others. They all lived in the round of silence. Sam was going with a girl now, a fanner’s daughter five or six miles away. Each evening after milking he cleaned himself and ate his supper in solemn uneasiness. He gave up his coarse joking and gazing at her secretly. He was going to be married. He was settled, or soon would be. Bart’s mother fretted a little. “They say Annie Beard is a real good cook, but she’s so free with butter and sugar. I ate a piece of her cake at the church supper once, and it was so rich it was sickening. I don’t care for anything but sponge, myself — more is flesh pander.” She sighed. It was not decent to say more. Her sons were men, and she supposed they must behave like men. Since Bart was not complaining anymore, she guessed he and Joan must have fixed it up. After all, his room was right at the foot of the attic stairs, and she’d told Joan—

“You go right ahead,” Bart said boisterously Sunday morning in the attic. “Paul’s all right with his dad, aren’t you, Paul?” He grimaced at the cradle.

She put on the white chip hat she had had before she was married. She had not worn it for so long that everybody would have forgotten it. Her white linen dress was old, too, but it was simple enough to wear without notice. She was thinner than she used to be and it hung a little on her hips. She had not for so long seen herself dressed like this. Her face was thinner, the lines of her bones clearly shaped, and her mouth was not so full as it once was. Her lips were restrained and set. But she had her clear skin and her mouth was still red.

She turned away from Bart. She knew she was still pretty enough so she did not want him to notice her. “I’ll walk from the Corners,” she said. “I can go in the surrey with them that far. Then it is only a little way.”

But Bart did not see her at all. He had thrown himself across her bed and was staring into the rafters.

She was a little late in church. They were all singing when she slipped into a back seat and sat down. She bent her head a moment and suddenly began to tremble. She was very tired. She had not realized how tired she was until she came to this familiar place. The singing went quietly on. The old folks sang gently:

“We may not climb the heavenly steeps

To bring the Lord Christ down”

The organ picked the notes out delicately, muted. The sunshine fell in bars as it used to fall through the closed windows, and lay upon the dying still air. All through her body little nerves began to relax and tremble. She wanted to cry again. She wanted to cry for herself, piteously and aloud: “I’ve had a hard time. I’ve really had a very lonely hard time.”

The singing softened in an “Amen,” and the people sat down. All their backs were to her, but she could recognize them. That was Miss Kinney’s summer hat, the tan leghorn with the circle of red cherries. There sat Mr. and Mrs. Billings. He had grown fatter than ever, and Mrs. Billings was already nodding, bless her heart. But the boys were gone. In the organ loft she saw Martin Bradley’s back, angular, as neat and spare as ever. His hair was almost white. He was moving his fingers over the silent notes as he always did during Scripture reading. Old Mr. Parker was dead. She had read that in the paper one day. He had died just before he was to retire on his savings, as he had feared he would. He had saved and saved for an annuity, going pinched all his days that he might be independent in age, and someone else was using it, someone who never cared for him, for he never married. “I have never made enough to warrant my inviting a lady to share my poor fortunes,” he used to say. Once he had said it at a church supper — that was when Mrs. Mark still had her legs. “I have asked the Lord concerning a wife, but there was no answer. I fear I asked amiss.” Mrs. Mark, cutting smartly into a huge white-iced cake, had shouted loudly, “That’s it, Brother Parker — you never asked a miss!”

Everybody had roared, and Mr. Parker smiled painfully and went out of hearing. Mrs. Mark was known to be a little indelicate for a lady.