The mother

by Pearl S. Buck

The babe began to fret suddenly and without knowing what she did she opened her bosom to him. The two children came in, the girl whimpering and rubbing her eyes, and the old woman came in leaning on her staff and saying over and over, “I do wonder where is my son. Daughter, did my son say where he was? A very strange thing where my son is gone—”

Then the mother rose and said, “He will be back tomorrow, doubtless, old mother. Lie you down now and sleep. He will be back tomorrow.”

The old mother listened and echoed, comforted, “Oh, aye, back tomorrow doubtless,” and went to her pallet, feeling through the dim room.

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.”