The mother

by Pearl S. Buck

Not even on the day of harvest feasting would he look at her, although she washed herself freshly and combed her hair and smoothed it down with oil and put on a clean coat and trousers and her one pair of stockings and the shoes she had made for the old woman’s burial day. So garbed and her cheeks red with sick hope and shyness and her eyes bright with all her desperate secret fears, she hurried here and there busying herself before his eyes about the feast, and she spoke to this one and to that, forcing herself to be loud and merry. The women stared astonished at her flaming cheeks and glittering eyes and at her loud voice and laughter, she who used to be so quiet where men were.

But for all this the man did not look at her. He drank of the new wine made of rice and as he tasted it he cried loudly to the farmers, “I will have a jug or two of that for myself, if you can spare it, farmers, and set the clay seal on well and sound to keep it sweet.” But he never looked at her, or if she came before him his eyes passed over her as they might over any common country wife whose name he did not know.

Then the woman could not bear it. Yes, although she knew she should be glad he did not want her any more, she could not bear it. She went home in the middle of that day of feasting and she searched from out their secret place those trinkets he had given her once and she was trembling while she searched. She hung the rings in her ears, taking out the little wires she had worn there all these years to keep the holes open, and she pushed the rings over her hard strong fingers, and once more she made a chance to see him, standing on the edge of the feast where women stood to serve the men who ate. There the gossip sat among them, gay for the day in her new shoes, and her feet thrust out to show them off, and she cried out, “Well, goodwife, there you are and you did buy your trinkets after all and wear them too, although your man is still away!”

She cried so loudly that all the women turned to look and laugh and the men even turned to see and smile a little, too, at the women’s merriment. Then the agent, hearing the laughter and the witty sayings that arose against the woman, looked up carelessly and haughtily from his bowl, his jaws moving as he looked, for his mouth was full of food, and he said carelessly and loud enough for her to hear, “What woman is it?” And his eyes fell on her scarlet face and he looked away as if he had never known her and fell to his bowl again. And the woman, feeling the scarlet draining from her face too fast, crept out and ran away and they laughed to see her run for shame at all their merriment.

From that day on the mother kept out of the way of others and she stayed alone with her children, and hid the growing of the wild thing within her. Yet she pondered day and night what she could do. Outwardly she worked as she ever had, storing the grain and setting all in order for the winter, and when the festival of mid-autumn came and the hamlet feasted and each house had its own joy and the little street was merry with the pleasure and rejoicing and the houses full of grain and food, the mother, though she had no joy, yet made a few small moon cakes for her own children, too. When the moon rose on the night of the feast, they ate the cakes upon the threshing-floor and under the willow trees and saw the full moon shining down as bright as any sun almost.

But they ate gravely and it seemed the children felt their own lack and the mother’s lack of joy, and at last the eldest said, solemnly, “Sometimes I think my father must be dead because he never comes.”

The mother started then and said quickly, “Evil son you be to speak of such a thing as your own father’s death!”

But a thought had come to her.

And the lad said again, “Sometimes I think I will start forth seeking for him. I might go when the wheat is sown this year, if you will give me a little silver, and I can tie my winter clothes upon my back, if it be I am delayed in finding him.”

Then the mother grew afraid and she cried to turn his mind away, “Eat another little cake, my son, and wait another year or so. What would I do if you went away and did not come back either? Wait until the younger son is large enough to fill your place.”