Maude

by Donna Mabry

  The next Sunday, James Connor walked me home from church as usual, but he didn’t have much to say. He’d graduated the year before and was always busy, working with his father when the store was open, playing baseball every weekend, and waiting for the scout to come back to town like he promised. I made a few tries to talk, but he decided he didn’t want to, so I held my tongue and fell into step beside him, just enjoying his company. When we got to Helen’s house, we found his parents sitting with Helen and Tommy on the front porch. I couldn’t help but be surprised. They’d never visited us before. As James and I walked up the pathway, the men stood.

  “Let’s go to the kitchen,” Tommy said. The four of them trooped in the house with James and me following behind. The women sat at the table, and Tommy waved James to the last chair. Mr. Connor stood behind his wife, and Tommy took up a place behind Helen.

  The grown-ups all looked at each other. Tommy cleared his throat and began a speech, one I could tell he’d been practicing. “Maude, you’re a young woman now, and it’s time for you to make your own way in the world. We know you’re fond of James, and he’s fond of you. He’s got a good job and can take care of you. Brother and Sister Connor are pleased with you and we all agree that it’s time the two of you got married.”

  James looked at me with a big smile on his face. He’d known this was coming all along, and I reckoned that was why he’d been so quiet on the walk home. It riled me that he’d kept it to himself, and I took a few deep breaths while they all stared at me, waiting to hear what I’d say.

  Finally I was able to whisper, “What about my schooling? I won’t graduate for another three years.”

  Tommy shook his head. “You’re almost out of the ninth grade. That’s enough schooling for any girl.”

  It about broke my heart. I looked up at him. “But Helen got to graduate. You waited for her.”

  “That was your parent’s doing. It was different. They had their own ways. This is the best thing all around.”

  I knew what he meant. He wanted me out of the house. I gave a short nod. “When do you want us to do it? Can I finish this term?”

  “Of course you can. Then we can have a proper wedding for you, and the church will give you a party.”

  James reached over and took my hand and smiled at me. “I’ll make a good husband for you Maude, I promise.”

  I managed a small smile for him. I would have to trust him.

  It was another six weeks before the term was over. Helen took me to the general store to let me pick out the fabric for my wedding dress and I chose a light blue with no pattern to it. As we were having it cut from the bolt, Helen picked up a bolt of white lisle and laid it on the counter.

  “Cut six yards of this one, too,” she said. Then she stood on her tip-toes to whisper in my ear, “You ought to have some pretty underwear and a nice new nightgown.”

  I cut the dress and stitched it carefully, doing my best to sew it just the way Mom would have. When it was finished, I embroidered little white flower chains around the hem of the skirt and the sleeves. I was so proud of it. It was the prettiest thing I’d ever owned. I crocheted fine lace around the edges of my new nightgown and underwear. I thought I would be dressed as fine as any rich lady for my wedding.

  James spent the six weeks fixing up the little one-room cabin on the back of his parent’s place. Their house was quite grand for our town, with the front door opening to a wide staircase that led to four bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs was a parlor on the left and a dining room on the right. The washroom and the kitchen were at the back, and there was a wonderful covered porch, eight feet wide, that wrapped all the way around the house.

  Our cabin was about twenty feet square and had a fireplace and four windows, one on each side of the door, and on each side wall. It even had its own outhouse in the back. He painted both buildings inside and out, put a new wood floor in the cabin and the outhouse, and even got glass for the windows. Mom Connor didn’t understand why we didn’t just live with them in the big house, but James insisted that we had to have our own place, and I’m glad he did. It was better for both of us. I didn’t know then, but I was later to learn that it didn’t work to have two women under one roof.

  His parents gave him a table and two chairs and a settee from their house. It was agreed that Tommy would bring my bedstead and a bureau to the cabin on the day of the wedding. The bureau would be Helen and Tommy’s wedding present to us.

  I finished my ninth-grade schooling on a Friday, and the wedding was set for five o’clock the next afternoon. That gave the men of the church time to get in their day’s work before the service. It was that morning as I was dressing that Helen said to me, “Whatever he wants to do to you, you have to let him do it.”

  Every member of our little church was there for the ceremony. Brother Clark had me recite the passage from Ruth he’d given me to memorize,

  “Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge, and thy people shall be my people and thy God, my God.”

  I promised to love and obey James, and he promised to love and cherish me. I hoped that James and I would have the same kind of marriage that I thought my parents had, the same kind that Brother and Sister Clark seemed to have. I’d noticed them many times, holding hands as they stood together, the love on Sister Clark’s face when she watched her husband talk. It was the way it had been for my Mom and Daddy.

  The women cried at the service. At the little party at the Connor house, the men slapped James on the back, poked him in the ribs, and gave him knowing looks. It made me uneasy. I wasn’t sure what-all being married involved. The only talk I’d ever heard about what happened between married men and women had come from my few girlfriends, and they didn’t know much more about it than I did.

  Every family brought a gift of some sort for us. There were linens, oil lamps, and bowls. None of them could afford much, but we were thrilled. I’d never been treated so warmly in my life.

  After the service and the party, James and I went home to the cabin. Tommy had already brought my things, my bed and bureau and a pretty cedar chest he made for me as another wedding present. He’d carved the bottom of it into curved legs and put a leather handle on the front. It replaced the old one that I used at Helen’s house. Helen packed it with the homemaking things that I’d collected over the last two years. My friends and I began our hope chests when we turned twelve, the way girls do. We talked about what we wanted and the colors and things.

  As much as I loved Helen and her baby, Faith, I always dreamed of having my own home and my own family. Whatever money I was given by Helen over the years was spent mostly on fabric for linens and things to go into my chest. It was the closest thing to a dowry I had, and I was glad I’d made the effort and hadn’t spent my few dollars on ribbons for my hair or candy the way some of my friends did. There wasn’t as much in the chest as I would have liked, but I didn’t often get cash, and I hadn’t expected to marry so early.

  James and I puttered around the cabin for a while, re-arranging the few pieces of furniture and placing our other things in logical locations. It was a warm evening, and there was no need for a fire in the fireplace. When the sun began going down, James lit one of the oil lamps.

  I tried to keep looking busy, but finally there was nothing else for us to do. It had been a long day. James blushed and said, “I guess it’s time to go to bed.”

  My heart began beating faster. I was afraid, and I was curious, too. “I guess so,” I agreed. I took my nightgown out of the bureau and laid it on the bed. I looked around for somewhere to change. I loved my little cabin, but there was no place for me to go to and undress and put on my pretty new night gown. James realized I was embarrassed.

  “Uh, I have to go out back,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “All right,” I smiled. Even though James had left the cabin, I slipped the nightgown over my head and down around me before I unbuttoned my dress and let it fall. I hung it up, took of
f the rest of my underclothes, and peeled off my stockings and put them in my shoes. I folded back the covers and got in the bed, sliding over to the side near the wall.

  After a few minutes, James came in. He carried the lamp to the bedside table and blew it out. In the moonlight that came through the windows I could see him getting out of his clothes. He slid in bed next to me. I thought about what Helen told me.

  James nuzzled my neck. In all the time I’d known him, the only touch between us had been holding hands and the quick kiss at the church when we were pronounced husband and wife.

  I liked the feel of his kiss on my neck. I tilted my head so he would know that it gave me pleasure. Then he put his hand on my breast and I thought about what Helen said, my body got all stiff. James drew back his hand. “I love you, Maude. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  I lay there next to him in the darkness. I had every reason to believe him. “I know you won’t,” I whispered, and he didn’t.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning, I woke to the sound of wood being chopped. There was a fire in the fireplace and a pot of water boiling on the hook. James came in with his arms full of firewood and dropped it into the little box next to the hearth.

  “Good morning.” He sat on the side of the bed and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. “Now that we’re married, I can kiss you every day, even on Sunday.”

  I felt my face turn red. I smiled at him. He reached out and cupped my chin. “How you doing? Are you all right?”

  I understood what he meant and blushed even more deeply. “I’m fine.”

  He nodded, picked up a small package wrapped in white paper from the table, and handed it to me. “Ma gave me some corn meal for us to cook for breakfast. We been invited to eat dinner at the house after church.”

  He stood, reached in his pocket, pulled out a handful of change, and put it in my hand. “Here’s some money. You can get what groceries we need in the morning. I don’t know what all else we have to have. Ma said we can share her washtub and stuff like that for a while till we get our own.”

  I held out my hand and looked at the money in silence. When I had fetched groceries and things for Helen, I’d just had the shopkeeper write it down in his book. It dawned on me that I was really the woman of the house now. It brought me a feeling of power.

  James misunderstood my silence and crinkled up his face. “Is that enough?”

  I jumped a little. I’d been thinking so hard that his voice surprised me, out of a trance almost. I looked up at him with wide eyes. “I’m sure it’s fine. I don’t really know how much I need. I hope I can do it right.”

  “I guess we’ve both got a lot to learn, Maude. Ma and Dad will help us with what we don’t know. We’ll be all right.” He pulled me against him, and I leaned into his shoulder. He was only eighteen, but he felt so strong to me. My heart swelled with love for him. He was my husband, and he had already given me a home of my own. “I know we will.”

  Once I was dressed, I ladled some of the water into a smaller pan and boiled the corn meal. We ate it without milk or sugar. I’d get us some Monday, at the store. When we finished breakfast, we dressed and walked to church with James’s parents.

  I couldn’t help but feel that everyone was staring at me. It was as if they expected me to make an announcement of some sort. Some of the women looked at me so sadly it made me wonder what they were thinking. James took another round of back-slapping and rib-poking from some of the men. He just smiled quietly, letting them enjoy the brotherhood of married men.

  I said good morning to my girlfriends, but they looked different to me that morning. I felt that I’d gone to a place they hadn’t, and that I would never be able to feel that same childlike kinship with them again.

  James reached for me in the dark almost every night. I didn’t understand what he was feeling or why he wanted to do that to me, but it didn’t take him very long, and he was gentle, and I liked having him hold me. After we were married four months, he’d still never seen me without my underwear, but I wasn’t shy about undressing in front of him. He always sort of turned his eyes to avoid embarrassing me, but he didn’t leave the cabin any more.

  One night, I started to unbutton my dress and he sat on one of the chairs and watched me. I waited for him to look away, like he usually did, but he kept his eyes on me. “Go ahead, Maude. I want to see you.”

  I know I blushed. I could feel my face and everything else go red, but I let my dress fall to the floor and then stepped out of it. I picked it up and laid it across the back of the other chair. Then I unbuttoned my shimmy. I dropped it, stepped out of it, and stood there naked, my eyes still on the wooden planks.

  James stood and put his arms around me, then tilted my head back and kissed me. “Maude, you’re a good wife. You’ve never turned me down yet, but I know this hasn’t meant as much to you as it has to me. I talked to Brother Clark about it, and he said that the marriage bed is blessed and that we should both enjoy it. He talked to me straight out about the whole thing.”

  James stepped back and undressed himself. I had never seen his member in the light. I couldn’t help but stare at it, and that didn’t seem to bother him. His parts appeared to have a curious arrangement to me. He led me to the bed and took his time, practicing what the preacher had told him. That night, for the first time, I found out what it was he liked so much. I knew I’d always be grateful to Brother and Sister Clark.

  Except for still being sad sometimes about not getting to finish school, I was happy, so happy I can’t even tell how much. Our lives settled into a pleasant pattern. James would leave for the store each morning to work with his father. I would clean and do my chores, go to the store, and do some sewing or whatever else came to my attention. I helped Mom Connor in her garden the same way I’d helped my own mother. Our meals were simple, and I knew I was a good cook. We had corn meal mush or oatmeal for breakfast every day except Sunday, when we had oatmeal and eggs. James would come home at noon for dinner. I’d been given enough pots and pans to make different kinds of meals for him. We ate our main meal at noon, leaving the leftovers covered with a cloth on the table for a small supper at the end of the day. I dreamed of the day I could get a real stove that burned wood like the kind my mother had. There were only a few things I could make in a fireplace, mostly stews and soups. On Sundays, there was no cooking except for breakfast, but I would help Mom Connor make the meal on Saturday and when we came home from church, I helped put out the dinner we made the day before, and we ate with his mom and dad.

  I prided myself on how clean and orderly I kept our little cabin. James put up a coop in back so we could keep our own chickens, and I put a vegetable garden of my own next to it, things Mom Connor didn’t care to grow, like lettuce. I planted flowers around the front steps and down each side of the pathway leading to the cabin.

  I was fond of James’s parents and didn’t mind asking his mother for advice on the garden and other things around the cabin. We women developed a genuine bond. We sometimes cooked together, and it reminded me of the time I’d spent in my mother’s kitchen.

  In the afternoons I often visited Helen and played with the baby. Faith looked more like her mother and grandmother every day. Her hair had begun forming soft curls. I cherished my precious little niece. When it was time for her nap, I would rock her in the kitchen where I’d rocked her the night she was born. When she became drowsy, I would carry her to her room and stroke her head until she was asleep.

  Helen would buy little remnants from the fabric bolts at the store, and I still made the gowns that Faith wore. Helen was a pretty good seamstress, just like all the other women in the town, but she didn’t take the joy in sewing that I did.

  The days were growing shorter, and oil was too expensive to use often, so after dinner James and I would sit on the front porch of our cabin until dusk and talk about his work at the store, the people he’d seen during the day, and our dreams for our life. On Saturdays he played baseball. He still
had hopes of a professional career. It was 1906 and another league, the American, had been formed to compete with the National. Baseball was sweeping the country. They’d even begun forming teams all the way across the ocean, in Europe.

  One Monday in late September, I was spooning the cornmeal mush into the bowls for our breakfast, and my stomach felt as if it were rushing up into my throat. I barely made it out the front door before I heaved up a thick yellow liquid. It scalded my throat. I leaned over the porch rail for a long time, finally just spitting out the water that formed inside my mouth to rinse away the awful taste. After a few minutes, I felt better and went back inside. I scooped a dipper of water out of the bucket and sipped it until my throat stopped burning.

  The next morning, it happened again. By the end of the week I was throwing up three or four times a day, mostly in the morning. James told his mother, and Mrs. Connor came down to the cabin to see me. She stared in my eyes with a smile, “When did you bleed the last time, Maude?” she asked.

  I thought it over. “About eight or nine weeks ago.”

  “Well, you take it easy for a while, at least until you get past the third month. Don’t be fetching water or picking up anything heavy. Let James do all that for you. You don’t want anything to happen to the baby.”

  I stared at her. “Baby?”

  Mrs. Connor laughed. “Baby! Didn’t you know you were in a family way? I figure by early spring you’ll be a momma.”

  It all made sense. I remembered how Helen had been sick in the mornings the times she was that way. I grabbed Mom Connor and hugged her tight. I was so happy. I would have a baby of my own to love. I felt it was the greatest thing that could happen to me.

  When James came home, I could hardly wait to run out and meet him with the news. He grinned from ear-to-ear. He had suspected as much.

  “Do you think I should build onto the cabin so he can have his own room?”