The mother

by Pearl S. Buck

From that day on the mother knew the two were masters in the house. The eldest son was not less kind than usual and he did his work well and took the money into his own hand. It was true he did not spend it, nor did his wife, for the two were a saving pair, but they were man and wife and this their house and land, and to them the mother was but the old woman in the house. It was true that if she spoke of field or seed and of all the labor that she knew so well because it had been hers, they let her speak, but yet when she had finished it was as though she had not spoken, and they made their plans and carried all on as they liked. It seemed to her she was nothing any more, her wisdom less than nothing in the house that had been hers.

Very bitter was it for anyone to bear and when the new room was made and the pair moved into it, the mother muttered to the blind girl who slept beside her, “I never saw such finicking as this, as though the honest smell of beasts was poison! I do swear they made that room so they could be away from us and talk their plans we cannot hear. They never tell me anything. It is not the beasts—it is that your brother loves her shamefully. Yes, they care nothing for you or for your little brother, nor even for me, I know.” And when the girl did not answer she said, “Do you not think so, too, my maid? Am I not right?”

Then the maid hesitated and she said after a while out of the darkness, “Mother, it is true I have something to say I would say and yet I would not, lest it grieve you.”

Then the mother cried out, “Say on, child. I am used to grief, I think.”

And then the maid asked in a small sad voice, “Mother, what will you do with me, blind as I am?”

Now all this time the mother had not thought otherwise than that this maid would live on here with her a while at least and she said in surprise, “What do you mean, my maid?”

And the maid said, “I do not mean my brother’s wife is not kind—she is not cruel, mother. But I think she does not dream you will not wed me soon. I heard her ask my little brother but the other day where I was betrothed, and when he said I was not she said surprised, ‘A great maid to be without a mother-in-law still.’”

“But you are blind, child,” said the mother, “and it is not so easy to wed a blind maid.”

“I know it,” said the maid gently. And after a while she spoke again, and this time as though her mouth were very dry and as though her breath came hot. “But you know there are many things I can do, mother, and there may be some very poor man, a widower, perhaps, or some such poor man who would be glad of the little I could do if he need pay nothing for me, and then would I be in my own house and there would be someone if you were gone whom I could care for. Mother, I do not think my sister wants me.”

But the mother answered violently, “Child, I will not have you go to mend some man’s house like that! We are poor, I know, but you can be fed. Widowers are often the hardest and lustiest husbands, child. So go to sleep and think no more of this. Hearty I am yet and likely to live a long full time yet, and your brother was never cruel to you, even as a child.”