The Mother: A Novel (7 page)

Then the mother led the two children into the dooryard and washed them as her wont was on a summer’s night before they slept, and she poured a gourdful of water over each of them, rubbing their smooth brown flesh clean with her palm as she poured. But she did not hear what they said, nor did she heed the girl’s moaning of her eyes. Only when they went to the bed and the boy cried, astonished that his father was not come, “And where does my father sleep, then?”—only then did the mother answer out of her daze, “Doubtless in the town, for he will come home tomorrow or in a day or so,” and she added in sudden anger, “Doubtless when that bit of money is gone he will be home again,” and she added again and most bitterly, “And that new blue robe will be filthy and ready for me to wash already, doubtless!”

And she was somehow glad she could be angry at him, and she held her anger, clinging to it, because it made him seem more near, and she clung to it while she led in the beast and barred the door against the night and she muttered, “I dare swear I shall be just asleep when he comes pounding at the door, even tonight!”

But in the dark night, in the still, hot night, in the silence of the closed room, her anger went out of her and she was afraid. If he did not come back what would she do, a lone woman and young? … The bed was enormous, empty. She need take no care tonight, she might spread her arms and legs out as she would. He was gone. Suddenly there fell upon her the hottest longing for that man of hers. These six years she had lain against him. Angry she might be with him in the day, but at night she was near to him again and she forgot his idle ways and his childishness. She remembered now how good and fair he was to look upon, not coarse in the mouth and foul of breath as most men are, but a very fair young man to see, and his teeth as white as rice. So she lay longing for him, and all her anger was gone out of her and only longing left.

When the morning came she rose weary with her sleeplessness, and again she could be hard. When she rose and he did not come and she had turned the beasts out and fed the children and the old woman, she hardened herself and over and over she muttered half aloud, “He will come when his money is gone—very well I know he will come then!”

When the boy stared at the emptiness of the bed and when he asked astonished, “Where is my father still?” she replied sharply and in a sudden loud voice, “I say he is away a day or two, and if any asks you on the street you are to say he is away a day or so.”

Nevertheless on that day when the children were off to play here and there she did not go to the fields. No, she set her stool so that she could see through the short single street of the hamlet if any came that way, and while she made answer somehow to the old mother’s prattling she thought to herself that the blue robe was so clear a blue she could see it a long way off and she set herself to spinning, and with every twist she gave to the spindle she looked secretly down the road. And she counted over in her mind the money he had taken and how many days it might last, and it seemed to her it could not last more than six or seven days, except he had those nimble lucky fingers of his to game with and so he might make more and stay a little longer, too, before he must come back. Times there were as the morning wore on when she thought she could not bear the old mother’s prattling voice any more, but she bore it still for the hope of seeing the man come home perhaps.

When the children wandered home at noon hungry and the boy spied the cabbage bowl set aside for his father and asked for some, she would not let him have it. She cuffed him soundly when he asked again and she answered loudly, “No, it is for your father. If he comes home tonight he will be hungry and want it all for himself.”

The long still summer’s afternoon wore on, and he did not come, and the sun set in its old way, heavy and full of golden light, and the valley was filled with the light for a little while, and the night came and it was deep and dark and now she refused no more. She set the bowl before the children and she said, “Eat what you will, for it will spoil if it is left until another day, and who knows—” and she dipped up some of the sweet and sour sauce and gave it to the old woman saying, “Eat it, and I will make fresh if he comes tomorrow.”

“Will he come tomorrow then?” the old woman asked, and the mother answered somberly, “Aye, tomorrow perhaps.”

That night she laid herself down most sorrowful and afraid upon her bed and this night she said openly to her own heart that none knew if he would ever come back again.

Nevertheless, there was the hope of the seven days when his money might be gone. One by one the seven days came, and in each one it seemed to her in the midst of her waiting as though the day was come for his return. She had never been a woman to gad about the little hamlet or chatter overmuch with the other women there. But now one after another of these twenty or so came by to see and ask, and they asked where her man was, and they cried, “We are all one house in this hamlet and all somehow related to him and kin,” and at last in her pride the mother made a tale of her own and she answered boldly, from a sudden thought in her head, “He has a friend in a far city, and the friend said there was a place there he could work and the wage is good so that we need not wear ourselves upon the land. If the work is not suited to him he will come home soon, but if it be such work as he thinks fit to him, he will not come home until his master gives him holiday.”

This she said as calmly as she ever spoke a truth, and the old woman was astounded and she cried, “And why did you not tell me so good a lucky thing, seeing I am his mother?”

And the mother made a further tale and she answered, “He told me not to speak, old mother, because he said your tongue was as loose in your mouth as any pebble and all the street would know more than he did, and if he did not like it he would not have them know it.”

“Did he so, then!” cackled the old mother, leaning forward on her staff to peer at her daughter’s face, her old empty jaws hanging, and she said half hurt, “It is true I ever was a good talker, daughter, but not so loose as any pebble!”

Again and again the mother told the tale and once told she added to it now and then to make it seem more perfect in its truth.

Now there was one woman who came often past her house, a widow woman who lived in an elder brother’s house, and she had not overmuch to do, being widowed and childless, and she sat all day making little silken flowers upon a shoe she made for herself, and she could ponder long on any little curious thing she heard. So she pondered on this strange thing of a man gone, and one day she thought of something and she ran down the street as fast as she could on her little feet and she cried shrewdly to the mother, “But there has no letter come a long time to this hamlet and I have not heard of any letter coming to that man of yours!”

She went secretly to the only man who knew how to read in the hamlet, and he wrote such few letters as any needed to have written and read such as came for any, and so added a little to his livelihood. This man the widow asked secretly, “Did any letter come for Li The First, who was son to Li The Third in the last generation?”

And when the man said no, the gossip cried out, “But there was a letter, or so his wife says, and but a few days ago.”

Then the man grew jealous lest they had taken the letter to some other village writer and he denied again and again, and he said, “Very well I know there was no letter, nor any answering letter, nor has anyone come to me to read or write or to buy a stamp to put on any letter and I am the only one who has such stamps. And there has not come so much as a letter carrier this way for twenty days or more.”

Then the widow smelled some strange thing and she told everywhere, whispering that the wife of Li The First lied and there had been no letter and doubtless the husband had run away and left his wife. Had there not been a great quarrel over the new robe, so that the whole hamlet heard them cursing each other, and the man had pushed her down and struck her even? Or so the children said.

But when the talk leaked through to the mother she answered stoutly that what she said was true and that she had made the new blue robe on purpose for the man to go to the far town, and that the quarrel was for another thing. As for the letter, there was no letter but the news had come by word of mouth from a traveling pedlar who had come in from the coast.

Thus did the mother lie steadfastly and well, and the old woman believed the tale heartily and cried out often of her son and how rich he would be, and the mother kept her face calm and smooth and she did not weep as women do when their men run away and shame them. At last the tale seemed true to all, and even the gossip was silenced somewhat and could only mutter darkly over her silken flowers, “We will see—as time comes, we will see if there is money sent or any letter written, or if he comes home ever and again.”

So the little stir in the hamlet died down and the minds of people turned to other things and they forgot the mother and her tale.

Then did the mother set herself steadfastly to her life. The seven days were long past and the man did not come and the rice ripened through the days and hung heavy and yellow and ready for the harvest and he did not come. The woman reaped it alone then except for two days when the cousin came and helped her when his own rice was cut and bound in sheaves. She was glad of his help and yet she feared him too, for he was a man of few words, honest and few, and his questions were simple and hard not to answer truthfully. But he worked silently and asked her nothing and he said nothing except the few necessary words he must until he went away, and then he said, “If he is not come when the time is here to divide the grain with the landlord, I will help you then, for the new agent is a wily, clever man, and of a sort ill for a woman to do with alone.”

She thanked him quietly, glad of his help, for she knew the agent but a little, since he was new in the last years to those parts, and a townsman who had a false heartiness in all he did and said.

So day had passed into month, and day after day the woman had risen before the dawn and she left the children and the old woman sleeping, and she set their food ready for them to eat when they woke, and taking the babe with her in one arm and in her other hand the short curved sickle she must use in reaping she set out to the fields. The babe was large now and he could sit alone and she set him down upon the earth and let him play as he would, and he filled his hands with earth and put it to his mouth and ate of it and spat it out hating it and yet he forgot and ate of it again until he was covered with the muddy spew. But whatever he did the mother could not heed him. She must work for two and work she did, and if the child cried he must cry until she was weary and could sit down to rest and then she could put her breast to his earthy mouth and let him drink and she was too weary to care for the stains he left upon her.

Handful by handful she reaped the stiff yellow grain, bending to every handful, and she heaped it into sheaves. When gleaners came to her field to glean what she might drop, as beggars and gleaners do at harvest time, she turned on them, her face dark with sweat and earth, and drawn with the bitterness of labor, and she screamed curses at them, and she cried, “Will you glean from a lone woman who has no man to help her? I am poorer than you, you beggars, and you cursed thieves!” And she cursed them so heartily and she so cursed the mothers that bore them and the sons they had themselves that at last they let her fields be, because they were afraid of such powerful cursing.

Then sheaf by sheaf she carried the rice to the threshing-floor and there she threshed it, yoking the buffalo to the rude stone roller they had, and she drove the beast all through the hot still days of autumn, and she drove herself, too. When the grain was threshed, she gathered the empty straw and heaped it and tossed the grain up and winnowed it in the winds that came sometimes.

Now she pressed the boy into labor too and if he lagged or longed to play she cuffed him out of her sheer weariness and the despair of her driven body. But she could not make the ricks. She could not heap the sheaves into the ricks, for this the man had always done, since it was a labor he hated less than some, and he did it always neatly and well and plastered the tops smooth with mud. So she asked the cousin to teach her this one year and she could do it thenceforth with the boy if the man stayed longer than a year, and the cousin came and showed her how and she bent her body to the task and stretched and threw the grass to him as he sat on top of the rick and spread it, and so the rice was harvested.

She was bone-thin now with her labor and with being too often weary, and every ounce of flesh was gone from her, and her skin was burnt a dark brown except the red of cheeks and lips. Only the milk stayed in her breasts rich and full. Some women there are whose food goes all to their own fat and none to child or food for child, but this woman was made for children, and her motherhood would rob her own body ruthlessly if there was any need for child.

Then came the day set for measuring out the landlord’s share of all the harvest. Now this landlord of the hamlet and the fields about it never came himself to fetch his share. He lived an idle rich man in some far city or other, since the land was his from his fathers, and he sent in his place his agent, and this year it was a new agent, for his old agent had left him the last year, being rich enough after twenty years to cease his labors. This new agent came now and he came to every farmer in that hamlet, and the mother waited at her own door, the grain heaped on the threshing-floor and waiting, and the agent came.

He was a townsman, head to foot, a tall, smooth man, his gown gray silk and leathern shoes on his feet, and he had a large smooth hand he put often to his shaven lip, and when he moved a scent of some sort came from him. The mother hung back when he came and when he called, “Where is the farmer?” the woman waited and let the old mother pipe forth, “My son he works in the city now, and there be only we upon the land.”

And the woman sent the lad for the cousin and she waited silently, coming forward to hand the man his tea but saying nothing but common greeting, yet feeling his eyes somehow hot upon her bare feet and on her face. And she stood by while the cousin measured off the grain for her, and measured the share the agent took for his own, and the woman was glad she needed to say nothing nor even come near to see the weight, so honest was her cousin. But she saw the grain divided and hard it was too, as it was hard for every farmer, to give to this smooth townsman his own share in what they had labored on. But they gave grimly, and so did she, knowing that if they did not they would suffer, and besides the landlord’s share they gave the agent a fat fowl or two or a measure of rice or some eggs or even silver for his private fee.