Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

His mind was full of memories she did not know. She must wait for them to fade, she must make other memories for him. “You will find brave boys here, some of them,” she said quietly.

He ate on, pondering over his plate. “My father didn’t want me to fight. He said it was wrong. When I grow up I won’t be a preacher, so’s I can fight.”

“It’s only wrong not to fight fairly,” she said.

“Oh, sure — not to fight fair, that’s wrong.” he agreed heartily. He rose, having eaten mightily. He laughed, quickly, loudly. “Gee, you remember that first day I came I didn’t know how milk came out of a cow? I thought it ran out!” He laughed, boasting, “I know better now — you have to pull it out! But I didn’t know much about America then. A fellow ought to know about his own country, oughtn’t he?”

“Yes,” she agreed, smiling, adoring him. She wanted to seize his small lean eager body to her, but she would not. He could make it blade-tense against even her, if he were not willing. She must leave him alone. All she had to do was to set food upon the table for him to take, put books near — she must buy books — open the door to the fields and sky. He went stamping upstairs to bed. He was just learning to whistle and she heard the uncertain piping of his whistling in his own room. He was trying to whistle “Oh, say, can you see—” Soon he would shout and she could go to him; not until he called.

But sometimes when he called she saw the look of pondering upon his face, that look of remembering. Yet never once had he spoken of what he remembered. She saw him look like this, pausing before he bit into a piece of cake, or at night lingering before he went to bed. Once in the night when the wind howled he called her and she went to find him, lying tensely wakeful! “I just wanted to ask you something,” he said, his voice carefully casual. “In America, they don’t ever come in a big crowd to kill people, do they?”

She took David’s hand. It was cold and damp. “Would you like to come and sleep with me?” she said.

“Yes,” he whispered.

In her bed she held him quietly, feeling his body relax and grow warm.

“You’re safe here,” she said. About him, about them all, she would build securely the walls of her own house. There were no other walls that could be trusted.

Yet even as she held him in his sleep, she knew that in the morning she must let him go free again. In the morning she must pretend he had not been afraid and that the night had never been.

But the baby Mary she could hold in her arms until she was appeased. Mary had stopped her wailing. She was beginning to grow. She lay content in Joan’s arms, watching her out of dark merry comprehending eyes.

My face will be the first she knows, Joan thought, trembling with joy, gazing back into her eyes. She knew now the mystery of flesh, sweet to the touch and sentient with mind. This child’s flesh was informed with her mind. The mind ran through the veins and muscles and made them flow and spring. This child’s hands were quick and searching, instant to seek and explore, tenacious to cling. To hold her was to hold a springing eager life. She grew within days to be a merry willful gleeful creature, moving, reaching, wanting, laughing soon, stiffening instantly at refusal.

From these two Joan turned to Paul in silence. She had learned to live in David when it was his time, in Mary at her hour. Paul must have his hour, too. But she tended him in quiet. He could struggle to his feet now and walk in a fashion across a little space. But she could not be sure he knew her.

“Joan, Joan!” David’s flying voice rang through the house a score of times a day. Mary laughed aloud to see her come. But Paul smiled at anything, at nothing, his heavy body struggling dully to movement. When she held him now she held him in silence, feeding him carefully, tending him closely. He was hers forever, and yet he would never be wholly hers. Alien earthy ancestors had entered into his making and had withheld him. She had tried to mingle parts forever separate. His very flesh was not all her own. She did not kiss his hands, his feet, as once she had. They were taking on a look of Bart’s hands, Bart’s feet. She put the thought away steadfastly. She held him, crying in her heart, “You are my own child.” But he was not quite her own. She knew now that only love could make an own child.

… “I have no children,” Roger Bair wrote when she told him of her houseful. “My wife is not strong and we have had no children.”

She read the words and put the letter down quickly. He had not told her he was married. He should have told her. She was desolate for the moment, knowing he was not free. She had never thought him otherwise than free by his very being. She remembered him always free, soaring to the sky, as she had seen him the one morning. Everything seemed to be taken from her. She had to make her life out of bits. Then her mother’s sense in her cried out, “And did you ever tell him about yourself?” No, but he had seen her big with child. He had seen her so at first. She wrote him fully then, plainly, “I have left my husband. I want you to know.” She told him everything. When this was done she was at peace again. The pain was over. He was himself, he was alive in her time in the world. It was enough. It was still strength enough to live upon. And that day where the meadow behind the house ran down to a small stream, she found blind gentians. They were bright blue. She had never found them so late before.

In and out of the house Rob’s father came and went, restlessly, hungering for the children, but shy of them because they made him think of Rob and suffer. And he was not in David’s passionate life of school and play, nor in Mary’s life of daily growing. Mary turned away from his painful smile at her to laugh at Joan, because Joan laughed easily. She always made Joan laugh and knew she did.

“This granddaughter of yours is going to be a tease,” she said.

“Is she?” he answered. “Yes … Mattie isn’t so well,” he said at last, “else I’d bring the children to spend the day.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. But her eyes were watching Mary secretly. Mary was staring astonished at her own small hands, moving them this way and that. She tasted them suddenly, carefully and critically and Joan laughed. She must not miss a moment of Mary. Nothing really mattered except Mary, inquiring the universe of her two small hands.

Rob’s father hesitated. “She says you oughtn’t to take care of the children. It worries her.”

“But I am caring for them.” She forgot Mary and her hands. She looked at Rob’s father sharply. This was the moment she knew must come. She waited for the words shaping on his tongue.

“She — she thinks — you oughtn’t take care of them. She’s heard about your situation.”

“Did you tell her?”

“No — she heard it in the village — gossip. She came home from the missionary meeting and asked me. I told her I knew. She blamed me some for not telling her.”

She leaped to her feet. “I shall go to see her,” she cried. She wavered and sat down. “No, I won’t. You’re the one to decide, Mr. Winters. Look at me! Am I fit to have the children?”

She was begging him at first. If he denied her, then she would fight for them. The words stuck in her throat, a gorge. She shook back her hair. “Do what you like for yourself, but the children are mine,” she said loudly. “I can work to feed them — you mustn’t think of money. They’ll be happy here. Look at David!”

They looked. He was flying in from school, his black hair tumbling, his cheeks faintly red, beginning to round.

“I’m starving!” he shouted.

“There’s bread and apple butter ready in the kitchen,” she cried.