The Mother: A Novel

by Pearl S. Buck

  Nearly every spring she had given birth, nearly every spring since she was wed, but this spring was her body barren. Once it had seemed a usual common thing to bear a child, and a thing to be done again and again, but now it seemed a joy she had not seen was joy until now, and her loneliness came over her like a pain and her breasts ached when she thought of the thing, and it was this, that she would never bear a child again in such a spring unless her man came home. Suddenly her longing streamed out of her like a cry, “Oh—come home—come home!”

  Yes, she seemed to hear her own voice cry the words, and she stopped, frightened lest she had called them out before the young girl. Yet she had not cried aloud, and when she stopped there was but the voice of the wind and the loud bright music of a blackbird in a pomegranate tree.

  And when she went into the dark room and saw the round plain face of her cousin’s wife drawn out of its roundness and dark with sweat and the usual laughter gone from it and the gravity of pain set there instead, the mother’s own body felt full and heavy as though it were she who bore the child and not this other one. And when the child came and she caught him and wrapped him in a bit of cloth and when she was free to go back to the field, she could not go. No, she went back to her own house listlessly, and when the old woman cried, “What—is it time for food? But I do not feel my hunger yet!” and when the girl came running out of the house shading her eyes with her hand, and crying, “Is it time already to light the fire, mother?” the mother answered listlessly, “No, it is too early, but I am strangely weary today and I will rest a while,” and she went and laid herself upon the bed.

  But she could not rest, and soon she rose and took up the little boy and held him fiercely and she laid her bosom open and would have had him suckle. But the child was astonished at her fierceness, being unused to it, and he was not hungry yet and he was full of play, and so he struggled and straightened himself and pushed her breast away and would not have it. Then the mother felt a strange sullen anger rise in her and she cuffed him and set him hard upon the ground and he screamed and she muttered, “Ever you will suck when I will not, and now when I will then you are not hungry!”

  And she was pleased in the strangest way, half bitterly, because he lay and wept. But the old woman cried out to hear his roaring and the little girl ran to pick him up. Then the mother felt her softness come back in her and she would not let the girl have him, but she lifted him suddenly herself and smoothed the dust from him, and wiped his tearful face with her palm, and she blamed herself secretly with a sort of shame that she had made the child suffer for her own pain.

  But the child never loved her breast so well again from that hour, and so even that small comfort she had had was taken from her.

  VIII

  NOW FROM HER YOUTH up this woman had been ever a creature of deep still heats. She was not as some women are, quick to look at this young man and that and appraising any man who passed. No, she was a woman of a very deep heart, shy to the depths of it, and until she was properly wed even when she was alone her thoughts had not turned to men for their own sake, and if strange longings rose from within her deeply she never looked at them to see what they were or why they came, but she went on steadfastly to some task she had to do, and bore her longing patiently and in a waiting silence. Only when she was wed and had known a man for all he was did some clearness come to her, some distillation of that deep dumb longing, so that even while she scolded her man sometimes and was angry with him, she knew she could not live without him. That thick, impatient longing in her could even heap itself like thunderous clouds into a causeless anger against the man she loved until it resolved itself and they clung each to each, and she was satisfied in the old and simple way and so was made tranquil again. Yet the man was never enough. In himself he was never enough. She must conceive by him and feel a child take life and shape within her. Then was the act complete and while the child moved and grew she went in a daze of happiness, being fulfilled. Yes, even when she bawled her little angers at her children when they were under her feet and when they cried and whimpered for this and that and were willful as children must be, yet she never saw the signs of new birth upon herself without a sweet content of body, as though she were fed and rested and had slept so that her body wanted nothing more.

  So had she ever loved a babe. Even so it had been in the old days when she was a girl in her father’s house and in a village but a little larger than this hamlet set in hills. Her father’s house was full of little children and she was the eldest and like a mother to them; yet even when she was weary with the day’s toil and the children running under her feet were a trial to her so that she shouted at them to be out of her way, yet never even when she shouted was she really out of love with them. There was always something in their smallness that weakened her heart, and many a time she would pick up a little child, whether of their own house or of some neighbor’s, and hold him against her and smell of him hard and fondle him as long as he would bear it, because it was some passionate pleasure to her to feel a little child, although she did not know why.

  So everything young and leaning on her drew her heart out. In the spring she loved the young chicks and ducklings coming from the shell, and when a mother hen forsook her nest for some cause and left the eggs half hatched she it was who took the eggs and made a bag and slipped them against her warm flesh and walked lightly and carefully until the young chicks hatched. She it was who was most faithful to feed the small silkworms, and took pleasure in their growing and she watched them from the time when they were scarcely more than bits of living thread until they grew great and fat, and when they burst their cocoons and came forth moths and mated, moth to moth, she felt that seeking and that satisfaction in her own body.

  Once when the children of her father’s house were grown out of babyhood and she was nearly ready to be wed herself there was a certain thing that happened to her, and it roused her as no man had ever done yet. There was one little boy who was too young to walk, a neighbor’s child, a round fat boy whose elder sister carried him about that whole summer long, naked and caught in a strip of cloth upon her back. And sometimes the mother, young then and waiting to be wed, would untie this strip and take the child from the little girl’s back, and the little girl would dart off to her play, glad to be released from her burden for a while.

  It came to be so then that every day the young girl, the mother, grew to look for this little moon-faced boy and out of all the other children of the village he was the greatest joy to her, her favorite, and she held him and smelled of his fat palms and took pleasure in his round cheeks and in his little rosy mouth, and she carried him about with her, setting him astride her sturdy hip, and when her own mother cried, “What—had you not enough of children in this house so that when I am through my bearing you must go and seek another’s child?” she answered laughing, “I am never weary of babes, I think!”

  Soon without her knowing it this child came to rouse in her a longing she had never known before. Sons she wanted as all women did, and she had always taken it as her right that she would have sons one day. But this robust and calm-eyed child roused more than wish of sons in her, and what had first been play with the child became something more, some deep and secret passion for what she did not know.

  She made excuse then when the child was in her arms to get away with him alone and all the others were busy here or there in field or kitchen, and the child’s sister was glad to be away, and the young girl sat and held the fair sound child strained against herself. She murmured to him and nursed him in her arms and felt this little, fat, round body helpless against her. Sometimes, since he was still nearly toothless, she chewed up rice or a cake for him and thrust the food into his little lips from hers, and when he sucked it solemnly, surprised at what he felt in his mouth suddenly, she laughed, but she did not know why she laughed, for she was not merry, seeing there was such a fierce, deep, painful longing in her which she did not know how to ease.

  One day
soon before her marriage day she had the child thus alone and it grew late toward noon and the little girl did not come as early as usual to take the child to his mother to be fed, and the child fretted and tossed himself and would not be still. Then the young girl, seeing his hunger, and driven by some dim fierce passion she did not understand but only felt in her blood urging her on, went into her room and shut the door fast and with trembling hands she undid her coat and put the child to her own young slender breast and he laid hold on it lustily and sucked hard at it. Then she, standing there staring into his baby face, felt such a tumult in her blood as she had never dreamed of and the tears came into her eyes and sounds rose to her lips, broken sounds that were not words, and she held him strained against her and did not know what it was she felt within herself, full and yearning and passionate, greater than the child she held, greater than herself.

  Then the moment broke. Her little breast was empty and the child wailed in disappointment and she fastened her coat again and was ashamed somehow of what she had done and she went quickly out and the little girl his sister came running in and seized him and ran with him to his own mother.

  But to the young girl the moment was an awakening and more almost than marriage. Ever after even the man she wed was most to her because he was a part of motherhood, and not for his own sake only did she love him.

  So had it been with her in her raw youth. Now with her body ripe and knowing all and herself in all her prime of womanhood she was left, woman alone, and every day the children grew up taller and every day they grew further from their babyhood they seemed less her own.

  The elder boy shot up tall and thin and silent, and he said little but strained himself at heavy tasks. When the mother would have taken up the rude wooden plough to carry it back to the house at the end of the day, he seized it and held it like a yoke across his own thin shoulders and staggered with it over the clodded earth, and she was so weary oftentimes she let him do it. He it was now who pulled the pails of water from the well and fed the buffalo, and he struggled his whole share and more in the field, as though he were his own father.

  Yet in all this he strained away from the woman, his mother, in some secret way, sharing with her in the labor most dutifully, and yet often wilful too, and it seemed to her he was parted from her flesh in some way she could not understand, not liking to be near her and standing off as though there were some smell about her that he could not bear. Oftentimes they quarreled over a slight cause, such as if she bade him hold his hoe better and he would not but would hold it in his own way, even though it was harder to wield when he held it so. Over such a small thing they quarreled and over many other like small things. Yet each knew dimly that this was not the true cause of quarrel either, but some deeper thing which neither could perceive.

  The girl, too, was never any cause of joy to her, with her poor eyes half blind. Still the child did her patient best and she complained no more now as she once did, and now that the younger boy could walk and run and loved best to be in the street brawling and playing with others like him, the girl would come sometimes to the field where the mother and the lad worked. But even there she was more care than help, especially if it were in some field of small weak seedlings, for she was so blind that when she would have pulled the weeds she did not see them well and many a time she pulled a seedling, thinking it a weed, so that the boy called out in anger, “Go home, you girl, for I do swear you are no use to us here. Go and sit beside the old grandmother!”

  And when she rose at this, half smiling but deeply hurt too, he cried at her again shrilly, “Now see where you tread, you clumsy thing, for you are walking on the seedlings now!”

  So she made haste to get out of the field then, too proud to stay, and the mother was torn between these two, her son and the poor half blind girl, and she felt the hearts of both, the lad’s heart weary with labor too bitter for his age, and the girl’s too patient with her pain, and she said sighing, as the girl went away, “It is true, poor thing, you are very little use, nor even can you sew with those eyes as they are. But go you home and sweep the floor and set the food ready and light the fire. Such things you do well enough. Watch the little one and see he does not fall in the pond, for he is the boldest, wilfulest of you all, and pour a little tea sometimes for the old one. There your duty is and you are help to me there. And when I have a little time I will go and seek a balm of some kind for your eyes.”

  So she comforted the girl, but the girl was little comfort to her, sitting silent hour after hour and wiping her wet aching lids, and smiling in her fixed and patient way. And looking at her sometimes and hearing her lad’s angers and seeing the younger one’s eagerness to be away at play, the mother wondered bitterly how it could be that when they were babes they were so fair and pleasant to her, and now no comfort.

  Yes, oftentimes in the evening this mother looked across the way to her cousin’s house and envied it most sorely. There was the good and honest husband, a plain and earth-soiled man, not clean and pretty as her man had been, but still well enough and going to his daily work and coming home to be fed and to sleep as men should, and there were his children he begot regularly and well, and there the mother sat, easy and merry and well content with her last babe upon her knees, a shallow merry soul and her mouth always open and her tongue clacking, but kindly and a good neighbor. Often she ran to share some bit of meat with the mother, or gave the children a handful of fruit, or a little paper flower she made for the girl to thrust into her hair. It was a good, full, contented house, and the mother envied it, and in her the longing grew, deep and sullen and unsatisfied.

  IX

  IF SHE COULD HAVE forgotten the man and so finished with him, if he were dead and she had seen him buried in the earth and still and gone forever, if she could have been a widow and known her life with the man ended, it would have been easier for her. If the hamlet had known her widowed and if she could have kept before her pure and strong that true widowhood, and if she could have heard people say, when she passed or where she knew it said, “A very good true widow is that wife of Li, now dead. There he lies dead and buried and she goes steadfast and true to him, such a one as in the old days would have had a marble arch put up or at least an arch of stone for her honor.” If she could have heard talk like this it would have been a strength to her and a thing to stay herself by, and to this shape that people made of her she might have set her heart and so lived better than she was because men thought her so.

  But widow she was not, and often must she answer those who called to ask her how her man did and ever must she lie and cheerfully and keep him in constant mind through her very lies. They would call, “There you are, goodwife, and have you had a letter of late or message by some mouth to say how your man is?”

  And she, passing by with a load for market across her shoulder or coming slowly home with empty baskets must answer often out of deathly weariness, “Yes, by word of mouth I hear he does right well, but he only writes me once a year.”

  But when she was come to her own house she was torn in two with all her lies. Sometimes she was filled with sadness and loneliness and she cried to her own heart, “How sorrowful and lone a woman am I whose only man is one I must make for myself out of words and lies!”

  At such times she would sit and stare down the road and she would think heavily, “That blue robe of his would show a long way off, if he had a mind to turn to home again, so clear and fine a blue it was!”

  And indeed if ever she saw a bit of blue anywhere in the distance her heart would leap, and if a man passed in the distance wearing a blue robe she could not but stop what she did and hold her breath to see how he came, shading her eyes against the sun if she were in the field, her hoe dropped from her hand, while she watched if he came this way or that or if he passed or if he went a long way off. And always it was not he who passed, for blue is a very common color and any man might wear a blue robe, if he be a poor and common man.

  But there were times when her
lies made her angry at him and she told herself the man was not worth it and if he had come home at one such time as this she would have burst her anger full upon him and cursed him soundly while she loved him because he made her suffer so. Times there were when this deep anger lasted over days, so that she was sullen and short with the children and with the grandmother and pushed the dog away roughly with her hoe, although she grieved her own heart the more when she was so.

  At one such time as this it came about that it was time for the rice to be measured after harvest. Once more she had struggled through the harvest and alone except for such help as the lad could give, and a day or two from the good cousin, and the day came for the division of the threshed grain. It seemed to the woman that day as though her longing and her anger had made her heart like raw flesh, so that everything she saw fell on it sorely as a blow, and things she did not see of common times she saw and felt this day.

  And while she longed, there upon her threshing-floor beside the heaped grain the agent stood, the landlord’s agent, and he was a tall man dressed in a silk robe of gray, and his face square and large and handsome in its bold way. He had his old manner she remembered, a manner of seeming courtesy, but his eyes were full and the lids heavy and half closed over them, and the woman knew from the way he stared at her from under those heavy drooping lids that he had heard her tale and how her husband was gone out to other parts and never had come back. Yes, there was something today in her full heart that caught this knowledge in him, and the truth was he was such a man as could not look at any woman left alone and not wonder secretly what she was and how her heart was made and how her body was shaped. There was a dog’s heart in him, for all his big, good frame and his square full face and his voice he made so hearty and frank. But in spite of his forced courtesy and his free words the tenants hated him, and they feared him because he had a high hard temper and this big body and two large, swift fists that he clenched and held hard against his thighs if any argued against what he said. Yes, and then he lifted the lids he drooped over his eyes, and his eyes were terrible, shining and black and cruel. Yet often they laughed at him, too, for if they gave him his fee without quarrel, he made a joke or two to salve the taking, and they could not but laugh at what he said, although with rue, for he had a way about him somehow.