“I can tell you what you can do,” the voice came again from beside the stove — halting, thick with embarrassment. “I can tell you what my own mother told me. She said to me the day I married Abram—‘a man can always spit outside the pot’—that’s what she told me.”
Joan went on steadily … Now run the iron along that tiny tuck, now along the fine edge of lace. She folded the little dress and for a moment lifted her eyes to the window and gazed into the maple trees. They were summer green, the fresh young leaves now fully grown. A little wind moved among them and stirred the clear green shadows and the branches showed for a moment, dark and smooth. She knew the branch shape of every tree. On winter mornings she had lifted her gaze to them, bare against a gray sky, or standing noble under snow, statues in the storm. She did not answer. She could not answer with this sickness in her. Let her think of lovely things, of the ferns in the rocks of the wall, of the lilies growing under the trees. But what she saw against the inner curtain of her brain was a man’s face, Roger Bair’s face, thin and finely drawn upon her brain. And she knew she could never go back to Bart now. She picked up the pile of dresses and climbed the back stairs to the attic and put them away in the round-topped trunk, the smell of their newly ironed freshness warm in her nostrils. She went over to the crib and looked down at the child. He was lying awake and he looked back at her. “Paul,” she whispered. “Paul.” All her lonely being rushed out and laid hold upon this child. “Speak to me,” she whispered, “your mother—”
He was nearly eight months old. She fell upon her knees and wrapped her arms about him and lifted his head in her hand. She forced a smile to her lips and nodded her head to him to draw his wandering eyes back to her face. They came wavering back to her at last, the great beautiful blue eyes. For a moment they met her eyes fully, for a moment before they slipped again. For that moment she looked down into their depths, caught and plumbed them and stared down into them. They were empty. He could not answer her because he did not know her. She held him rigidly a moment, terrified, and then laid him gently down. Something was wrong with Paul. It was as though when she laid him down he was gone away forever. She went to the window and stood there. She had a fantasy that somewhere a little boy had tiptoed away and closed the door and left her alone again.
It began to come to her in the early dawn that perhaps the real Paul had never been born at all. She sat holding him, holding his body to which she had given birth. She had sat holding him all night. She could not bear to lay him in his crib. She must have his warm body in her arms at least. It’s like holding him dead, she thought. It’s holding my dead child. Paul is dead.
In the early morning she heard Bart’s footsteps on the stairs. He stumbled upon the threshold and caught himself. “Say, where did you put those blue shirts I had last summer? I’ve got to make hay today and I’ll roast at best.” He saw her face bent over the child. “Kid sick?” he asked. He came over and took the child’s hand in his great hand. The small plump white hand lay there in his lined, grimy palm.
“Bart,” she said, “there’s something wrong with this child.” She forced every word slowly.
But Bart grinned. “He looks all right — not fevered — hand’s cool as a cucumber.”
“He doesn’t know me — he doesn’t sit up alone.”
“He’s too little,” Bart said.
“No, he’s not. Rose says David sat up long before this.”
“Kids aren’t the same. You fuss too much, Jo. Sam was sort of slow, I remember, but he turned out all right. Give him time. Here, kid—” He put his thick finger under Paul’s chin and tickled him. A slow vague smile came to the small lips. “Sure, you’re all right, aren’t you? Say, Jo, I wish you’d come and get me those shirts. Pop’s yelling to start on the hay.”
“All right, Bart.”
But then it was good to stir, to have to move and do something, to know the night was ended. She laid the child down upon the bed. After the shadows of night it was good to feel the stairs beneath her feet, to open drawers, to feel solid stuff in her hands, solid, coarse, everyday stuff.
She found the shirts and gave them to Bart. She went downstairs and busied herself about the kitchen. The sun was tipping the horizon and light spilled from it like shining water. In the barnyard across the road Sam was harnessing the horses, forcing them backward into the traces. Their great heads towered over him, snorting, protesting. The cows were coming in a solemn procession out of the gate and turning down the road to the pastures, lush with the full-grown grass. Behind them was Bart’s father, his shoulders bent beneath the weight of a full milk bucket in each hand. She fetched a cup and went to meet him to dip up the new milk. The old man watched her, grudging, silent, and went on his way into the cellar.
She stood drinking the milk in the sunshine. Within her was the waiting darkness of the night, to which she must return. But just for this moment it was morning. The trees, the hills, the sky were real. She stood among them in the morning. The night was behind her and before her, but here was morning. She looked upward to the sky, quickly, searching. It was a habit now to search the sky. But it was empty, high, above her, serene and blue.
“When did Bart begin to talk?” she asked his mother, when Paul was well past a year old. For these many months she had spent her every moment watching Paul, measuring him, testing all his powers. Did he hear her when she called him? Yes, he turned his head slowly when she called. Did he see? Yes, his eyes followed the red flannel dog if she moved it slowly enough. Would he put out his hand to take it? Yes, he took it, but he let it fall. He did not remember that he had it.
Bart’s mother stirred the sauce made from the sweet apples. She used sweet apples for sauce so that sugar could be spared. “There’s enough sugar in food natural,” she said. “Folks shouldn’t want to keep eating sugar. It’s a flesh pander.”
Sam and Bart both bought cheap candy, secretly, like little boys, and ate it as men drink liquor, starved for sweetness. Bart’s pockets were sticky with the stuff when Joan washed his garments.
“Bart?” said his mother vaguely. “Oh, I don’t know — he was kind of late. He didn’t really talk before he was five, I guess. I remember some pestering neighbor woman came in one day when he was three and said it was funny he didn’t talk yet. But I always said he’d talk when he got ready to, and he did.” She stirred and tasted the stuff. “Em had a girl who never did talk, though. She had a fall, they always said. She never was just right. They got her put away finally. Em couldn’t do with her around when she was grown up — she’d act queer before folks.”
On a spring morning she waited for Fanny under the oak tree around the bend and when they came, she took Frankie’s hand and said, “Look at me, Frankie.” He looked up at her instantly, fully, his eyes directed into hers, knowing, intelligent.
“When did he talk, Fanny?”
“Who — him? That child? He talked as soon as he walked, I reckon — he wasn’t a year old before he was talking.”
“He’s very quiet,” she said.
“He talks when he wants to,” Fanny said indifferently. “And can he sing! Sing, Frankie!”
He dropped her hand then, and clasping his hand behind him, he opened his mouth so wide she could see his rosy red tongue and small white teeth, and he began to sing. His voice came out clear and full and unchildlike. “I’m singing with a sword in my hand, O Lord,” he sang fervently, swaying from side to side. She listened in silence until he finished. In the tree above them a bird began to twitter madly.