Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

What her own life alone was to be, Joan did not yet know. She rose, light and idle in her heart, and walked into the garden. The sun poured down into it like wine into a cup. The smell of the earth rose up through the grass, hot and close. It came up even between the flowers. She went to the lemon lily and bent over it and drew its fragrance into herself. She drew deep breaths until her body was filled, a vessel full of fragrance. But under its delicacy was the strong musky odor of the hot earth.

She straightened herself and walked about, unhurried and at her ease, looking at every leaf and flower. There was nothing she had to do and the garden was lovely. Between the opening buds of a white rosebush a spider had spun a web, catching delicately here the point of a leaf, there the edge of a calyx, drawing a cluster of white roses together surely and lightly into a silver net. In the center of the whiteness and the silver the spider sat small and black and still.

Beyond the garden stretched the street, leading away from the house and the garden, away from the village, into country and beyond. She gazed east and west. To the east the church was closed and silent. It had nothing to do with today. Yesterday people had gone into it and lent it life, but today they passed it by, putting their lives elsewhere. A woman passed now. It was Martin Bradley’s mother, and she did not even turn her head to see where she had been yesterday. But she stopped when she saw Joan alone, for here was someone to whom she could talk and she could not resist that. She smiled at Joan cozily and sleekly. She was small and plump and satisfied with herself and her son, and her neat gray cotton dress fitted her as closely as feathers are fitted to a plump bird.

“Isn’t it a nice day?” she said. “I’m on my way to the butcher’s to get the sweetbreads early. Martin loves a good crumbled sweetbread for his dinner, done with a bit of bacon. I do myself. We’re both fond of sweetbreads.”

She nodded and smiled and went on importantly, stepping solidly on her small fat outward pointing feet. She was on her daily mission. Each morning she went early to the butcher to get the tidbit she planned that day for her son. If she got it she was triumphant for the day. If she failed, if someone was before her, the day was embittered. She carried small intense hatreds against her neighbors if they were before her.

“Sorry, Miz Bradley,” Mr. Billings would roar, cheerful and bloody among his carcasses, “Miz Winter’s just been and got my kidneys today. How about a bit of liver? My liver’s extra fresh this morning.”

But Mrs. Bradley would not be consoled by liver. “Martin doesn’t like liver so well,” she replied coldly and chose a chop. If she met Mrs. Winters on the way home she would be cool. She would be cool until she was successful again. If for several days she failed she grew bitter. Then she would revenge herself on Mr. Billings and Martin must bring her something from the city. She boasted among the villagers, “I declare, it’s getting so I can’t get anything I want at Mr. Billings’. He don’t run near so good a place as he did. Martin brings home the meat from the city as often as not.”

“Joan — Joan!” her mother’s voice called suddenly from an upstairs window.

“Coming!” she sang back. She lingered lazily. It would be fun to see what happened today to Mrs. Bradley. But her mother would not wait. “Joan!” she called again.

So she put aside Mrs. Bradley and ran to her mother.

In the big upstairs bedroom her mother moved swiftly and competently. She had made each movement exactly the same each day of each year for many years, and now her hands knew the quickest direction, her feet the sparest step. She squared the corner of the bed tightly, the large double bed where she had slept with the children’s father since the night they had come home from their honeymoon. It was all as familiar to her as her own hands and feet. She finished as Joan came in and sat down in the rocking chair. Joan was used to her there. In this chair of worn brown wood, with its strip of brown cotton quilting lining in it, her mother had always sat to darn and patch, and on the sagging carpet-covered hassock at its foot each child had sat in turn to recite the psalms and hymns and catechism they must learn by heart. It was always noisy downstairs in the family sitting room and the parlor was not to be thought of. But here was quiet. As a little girl Joan had looked out of the low window over the roofs of the village to the rolling hills where the sheep grazed, and had chanted, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” and here she had stammered over “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” How did one enjoy God? She asked her mother, and listened and never understood. Her mother never could make it clear. Here in this room, too, her mother had talked to them when they were in fault and here set upon them her rare punishments. Once, Joan remembered suddenly at this moment, she had thrown herself down upon the bed with a wail of sorrow because she had told a lie — she could not remember about what. She remembered only that she could not go to the Sunday school picnic because she had lied. Their mother could not endure lies. She might waver and delay judgment in anything else, but her voice came down as hard and bright as a sword after a lie.

“Don’t tell me a lie!” she would cry. There was no patience in her then.

Now here she sat in the rocking chair and looked at her daughter straightly and shyly, with an unaccustomed pleading. “Joan,” she said, “I’ve been waiting until you were home a few days to tell you something. I haven’t wanted to spoil your graduation and coming home. But today I’ve got to tell you because I just don’t feel equal to the missionary meeting this afternoon. Miss Kinney’s going to speak on Africa and I want you to go instead of me.”

“Mother!” she cried, astonished, sinking on the firm square bed. Why, her mother had never been ill! She was a little thinner, perhaps — She searched her mother’s face. “Why haven’t you told us?”

“I’ve wanted to keep up,” her mother said wearily. “I’ve always felt I ought to keep up before the children. Trouble comes soon enough. Children oughtn’t to share their parents’ troubles.”

She stared at her mother. “I didn’t know you had any troubles,” she said in a low voice.

“I didn’t mean you should,” her mother replied. “I wouldn’t now, only I’m in pain — and yesterday morning when I went into your room, Joan, it came over me that you aren’t a child anymore. You’re a woman grown, so tall as you are, and I can’t keep trouble from you any longer.”

Joan could not answer. This was not her mother, this woman sitting slackly in an old warped chair, the smile gone from her face as though she had never smiled. She felt afraid of her.

“I’ll do anything I can, of course,” she said uncertainly. Had she been in the garden in the sunshine ten minutes ago?

“I have something wrong with me,” her mother said vaguely. “I haven’t been right since Francis was born.” She paused, embarrassed, and went on with difficulty. “He was such a big baby and I was torn somehow.” She did not look at Joan, but turned her head and stared out of the window. About her hung shyness. She could not quite forget that this tall young woman had also been born of her. A slight repulsion wavered between them. Joan, filled with anxiety, felt a thread of disgust in the anxiety and instantly would not feel it. If this were only a strange woman she would have poured out quick sympathy. It was easy to be kind to strangers. But this woman was also her mother. She felt entangled in something she did not understand, entangled in a bodily repulsive way with her father, with her mother, even with Rose and with Francis. They were all bodily entangled together. She hated it and rose restlessly from the bed. She wanted to be happy all the time.