The mother

by Pearl S. Buck

Beside her the old woman clacked on and the cousin’s wife laughed at her, but when she saw the mother bend like this she ran and shut the door, and stood to wait. But suddenly there came a beating on the door and it was the boy. He saw the door closed in the day and his mother inside and he was afraid and he set up a cry and would have the door opened. At first the mother said, “Let him be there so that I may have peace at this task,” and the cousin’s wife went to the door and bawled through the crack, “Stay there for a while for your mother is at her task!” And the old woman echoed, “Stay there, my little one, and I will give you a penny to buy peanuts if you will play well and you shall see what your mother will have for you in a little while!”

But the boy was afraid to see the door shut in the daytime and would have his way, and the girl began to whimper too as she did when her brother cried and she came feeling her way and beat too upon the door with her puny fists, and at last the mother grew angry in her pain and the more angry because it bore her down so hard, and she rose and rushed out and cuffed the boy heartily and shouted at him, “Yes, and you do wear my life away and you never heed a thing that is said, and here is another to come just like you, I do swear!”

But the instant she had beat him her heart grew soft and the anger in her was satisfied and went out of her and she said more gently, “But there, come in if you must, and it is nothing to see, either.” And she said to the cousin’s wife, “Leave the door a little open, for they feel shut out from me, and they are not used to it.”

Then she sat down again and held her head in her hands and gave herself silently to her pains. As for the boy, he came in and seeing nothing, but feeling his father’s cousin’s wife look at him hard as if he had done some ill thing, he went out again. But the little girl came in and sat down on the earthen floor beside her mother and held her hands against her eyes to ease them.

Thus they waited, the one woman in silence and in pain, and the other two talking of this and that in the hamlet and of the man in the farthest house and how today he was off gambling and his land lying there waiting for him, and how this morning the man and his wife had had a mighty quarrel for that he had taken the last bit of money in the house, and she, poor soul, had been no match for him, and when he was gone she had sat upon the doorstep and wailed out her woes for all to hear, and the cousin’s wife said, “It is not as if he ever won a bit to bring home to her either. He can only lose and lose again, and this is what makes her so sorrowful.” And the old woman sighed and spat upon the floor and said, “Aye, a very sorrowful thing it is when a man is made for losing and made so he never gains, but there be some men so, and well I know it, but not in my house, thank the gods, for my son is very good at winning in a game.”

But before she had finished speaking the mother cried out and turned herself away a little from the girl and she loosened her girdle and leaned forward upon the stool. Then did the cousin’s wife run forward and she caught nimbly in her two hands that little child for whom they waited, and it was a son.

As for the mother, she went and laid herself upon the bed and rested after her labor, and rest was sweet and she slept heavily and long. While she slept the cousin’s wife washed and wrapped the child and laid him down beside the sleeping mother and she did not wake even when his little squeaking cry rang out. The cousin’s wife went home then to her work once more and she bade the old woman send the boy to call her when the mother woke.

When the lad came crying, “Did you know I have a brother now?” she came quickly with a bowl of soup, laughing at the boy and teasing him and saying, “I brought the boy myself and do I not know?”

But the boy stared thoughtful at this and at last he said, “Is it not ours then to keep?” and the women laughed, but the old woman laughed loudest of all, because she thought the boy so clever. The mother drank the soup then gratefully, and she murmured to her cousin’s wife, “It is your good heart, my sister.”

But the cousin’s wife said, “Do you not the same for me in my hour?”