She came, as winter drew near, to spend more and more time in the attic, high among the treetops. She sat there often while the swift evening fell, gazing out of the gabled window, hearing the city branches crack as they swayed about her. Was the plane flying, she wondered, through these frosty clouds? … Francis had his job, he wrote her.
Roger Bair had been very kind. He was going to be taught to fly some day. He was learning everything about the plane. If he got there early in the morning, Roger Bair taught him things. He always was there early and he always was there when Roger Bair came in … She sat in the stillness of the attic. Francis was safe now. She could take her mind from Francis. Down in the earth, in this house, buried among these hills, she could remember the sky and that clean springing soaring shaft of flight into the sky.
When the attic grew dark, as it did early these days, she curled for warmth into the quilts where Francis had slept. She had left his bed as it was, and now it was a place for her. For she could not sleep with Bart now. She was restless with him, and it was no slight restlessness of the body. This was a restlessness which fell upon her like a sickness that first night of her return. She was afraid of this increasing restlessness. In the night she drew far from him, lest she touch him, even inadvertently. At first she lay far from him, grateful for the width of the old bed, so that in his sleep he might not fling his heavy arm unknowingly upon her. Then one night she crept in the darkness to the attic bed, and there alone fell instantly into deep sleep. He found her there, astonished, angry. She woke the second time to see him in the doorway in the woolen underwear he wore at night as well as in the day.
“What’d you come up here for?” he cried resentfully, staring at her over the lighted candle he held. “What’s the matter with you anyway these days?”
“I’m restless,” she answered. “The baby’s so near.” Her conscience stirred. She would have been restless without the baby. This was another restlessness. Then her courage welled up strongly. She would make a life. She was not afraid of Bart. She went on calmly, her heart thudding, “I shall sleep here as often as I like, Bart. I’m going to do whatever is best for the baby now. I’ve got to think of him.”
He stared at her over the candle. The upward light threw into relief his thick stubborn jaw, his wide coarse dry lips, the broad base of his nose. The forehead and the small grayish eyes receded into shadow.
“I have my rights,” he muttered. “You got to give me my rights.”
“I’m staying here,” she said. She must speak very plainly to him. He understood nothing else but the straightest, plainest speech. “I’m staying here as long as it’s best for the baby.” She turned over and closed her eyes. Her heart was beating very hard and she must still it. This sickness, this fearful repulsion, must not go into the making of her baby. She must think of other things, lovely things. She would think of the sky and of the driving silver stars. She lay waiting until she heard him stumble down the stairs and until she heard the door slam. Then she leaped from her bed and searched the sky. But there were no stars. Outside was the deep darkness.
She went on the day she had promised toward the bend of the road where she was to meet Fanny. It was a sullen day, the snow drifting from smooth, frigid gray clouds. She had brought some money. For the present she would bring a little money each week, but soon she must think of some way to earn more. She held it in her hand, the precious stuff. It could not be more precious to Fanny than it was to her. She would tell Fanny she had only a very little and her own child coming. But Fanny was not there. She waited a while, gazing over the bleak hills, not daring to leave too soon. She walked up and down until she was cold, so cold that the child within her felt still and cold, and she grew afraid for him. Troubled, she resolved she would come again the next week, on the same day. She searched the whitening landscape, the bitter wind tearing at her coat, at her hair. But there was no living creature in sight. The road wound emptily into the distance. She turned and went back to the house.
Before the week was gone, on Christmas Eve, her child was born. She had made this year no mockery of preparation for Christmas. Her mother was three years dead. She remembered and put away the memory. Another year there would be a reason for Christmas, a little child for whom to make gifts and cut a tree and trim it. And then in the twilight, the birth began.
But she had the child so easily that it was like a gift. She had been ready for any pain. She remembered scraps of whispers here and there through her years of girlhood — her mother, hurrying in sometimes in the early morning, pale but cheerful, to be at the breakfast table, “Yes, dear, I am a little tired. I was at the Watsons’ most of the night. They have a dear little baby girl.” Later, neighbors running in, she could hear, when she was dusting in the hall, her mother’s lowered voice. “Dr. Crabbe sent for me. No, things didn’t go just right, but she pulled through. It’s a miracle the child was saved. What? Yes, she suffered agonies! If only the child is all right — you know what I mean. You never can tell—”
Once Hannah said primly, “I’ve never married, but there are rewards. I’ve been spared some agonies, anyway.”
She had been ready for agonies, though Dr. Crabbe had said, “You’re made for this job, Joan — measurements perfect! Don’t often see a woman like that these days — spindly lot, living off pineapple and spinach and looking like yellow wax beans!”
Yes, the child had come like a gift. In the afternoon of Christmas Eve she was in the attic, looking out of the gable window at a deep orange sunset sky. She had had the premonition of pain, and recognized it instantly. She laid herself upon the bed and waited and almost at once the rhythm of pain began. She went downstairs and called Bart.
“Go for Dr. Crabbe,” she said. To Bart’s mother she said quietly, “My time’s come. I’m going to be in the attic in my own bed.”
“You’re not going to give birth in the attic!” Bart’s mother cried. “Folks will talk! My son’s wife lying in the attic like hired help!”
“Who will know?” she answered quietly from the stairs. She wanted her baby born there among the tree-tops, high above the earth. She had been preparing for him there. His little clothes were there in the tray of the round-topped trunk, and the few things Dr. Crabbe had told her to have ready.
“The doctor will tell,” Bart’s mother cried up the stairs after her. “It will be a shame to us! And if I have to fetch and carry for you, it will be extra steps. There’s enough work as it is.”
“Bart will sleep better,” Joan answered, and heard no answer.
In the attic she made ready. She made everything ready to the measure of the rhythm of pain now quickening its swifter and swifter paces. When its beat brought the sweat upon her forehead and her upper lip, and the palms of her hands were wet, she laid herself upon her bed and stared straight into the rafters, gathering herself for each crisis of the pain. Soon Dr. Crabbe would be here. He had said, “Five hours, perhaps, since it is the first time.” Three hours were gone. He would be here at any moment. She could almost catch the rumble and racket of Bart’s old car. God send he would drive carefully! He was so absurdly proud of driving that he scorned to be careful. Like a child he boasted, “Look at me pass that fellow!”
Don’t think about Bart! This was something she was doing alone. She was having her own child, her first child, the first of many children. Children were to fill her life, all her little children. Now her life was really beginning. She had waited so long for her life to begin. The pain gathered in her, deep, immense, pulling every fiber of her body into a focus of bright pain. Why did people say pain was dark and dull? If one let pain come free — like this — like this — letting it possess the body, letting it gather and mount and soar, it was bright, a shape of edged beauty, acute and clear, rising, tingling, flying upward into purest feeling — a winged body, mounting, soaring into the sky. Above her was the sky, black, deep, soft, a blackness for pain to shine against, to pierce — to pierce and rend and tear.