The mother

by Pearl S. Buck

Then the mother said nothing but she hung her head miserably and could not lift her eyes, and the cousin saw a stirring in her belly and she cried out in a terror, “It is a child, I swear, yet how can it be except it be conceived by spirit, since your man is gone these many years? But I have heard it said it does happen sometimes to women and in olden times it happened often, if they were of a saintly sort, that gods came down and visited them. Yet you be no great saint, cousin, a very good woman, it is true, and held in good respect, but still angry and sudden sometimes and of a lusty temper. But have you felt a god about?”

Then the mother would like to have told another lie and she longed to say she did feel a god one day when she stood in the wayside shrine to shelter in a storm, but when she opened her lips to shape the lie she could not. Partly she was afraid to lie so blackly about the old decent god there whose face she covered, and partly she was so weary now she could lie no more. So she lifted her head and looked miserably at the cousin’s wife and the red flowed into her pale cheeks and spotted them; she would have given half her life now if she could have told a full deceiving lie. But she could not and there it was. And the good woman who looked at her saw how it was and she asked no question nor how it came about, but she said only, “Cover yourself, sister, lest you be cold.”

And the two walked on a while and at last the mother said in a very passion of bitterness, “It does not matter who begot it and none shall ever know and if you will help me through this, cousin and my sister, I will care for you as long as my life is in me.”

And the cousin’s wife said in a low voice, “I have not lived so many years as I have and never seen a woman rid herself of a thing she did not want.”

And for the first time the mother saw a hope before her and she whispered, “But how—but how—” and the cousin’s wife said, “There are simples to be bought if one has the money, strong stuff that kills woman and child sometimes, and always it is harder than a birth, but if you take enough, it will do.”

And the mother said, “Then let it kill me, if it will only kill this thing, and so save my sons and these others the knowledge.”

Then the cousin’s wife looked steadfastly at the mother and she stopped where she was and looked at her, and she said, “Yes, cousin, but will it come about again like this, now that your man is dead?”

Then did the mother swear and she cried in agony, “No, and I will throw myself into the pond and cool myself forever if it comes on me hot again as it did in the summer.”

That night she dug out from the ground a good half of her store of silver and when the chance came she gave it to the cousin’s wife to buy the simples.

On a night when all was bought and the stuff brewed, the cousin’s wife came in the darkness and she whispered to the waiting woman, “Where will you drink it? For it cannot be done in any house, being so bloody a business as it is.”