“I always say,” Bart’s mother’s voice came dolefully from the kitchen, hearing the dishes clatter, “if you break up your few good things, you don’t know where you’re going to look to for more.”
She did not answer. She moved the dishes, wiping their edges. Nothing but things and things. This house was full of silent lifeless things, things to be taken care of. She’d like to walk straight out of it, walk away down the road, anywhere, never to return.
“I must be patient,” she cried, terrified. “How can I expect God to do anything for me when I am so unruly?”
It was very hard to be patient so long. She waited, day after day, prayer seething in her constantly, fretful, desperate, importunate prayer. She nagged at God with her prayers, unbelieving. “There’s nothing in it. Paul doesn’t change a bit.” Nagging desperately again, “There’s no other hope — Oh God, help me—”
She brimmed with a dreadful energy. She polished the front stairs she never used. Living in this house she had come to feel it sacrilege to use them. Bart’s mother’s disapproval made rebellion worthless. “But it means more to clean,” she said, hurt, to Joan’s cry: “Why should we climb up those steep back stairs?” The intensity of hope deferred was making her ill-tempered. She was often angry with Bart’s mother, furious at her large soft stupidity, her unwavering obstinacy … “Oh, God, when — when — is Paul going to get better!”
“Yes,” she answered violently to Bart’s mother, “I did wipe each banister — Yes, I did move the little marble-top walnut table and I did wipe behind the mirror.”
“Well, I’m sure,” said Bart’s mother, bewildered, “I was only asking — if you hadn’t, I was going to — if you had — I’ll begin picking over these windfalls to stew up.”
All the time she was watching Paul, testing Paul, trying to arouse Paul. One day she took him into the parlor and opened the old crack-voiced piano and holding him on her lap, she took his lumpish hands and holding them touched the keys softly. It had rained all day, a dark long day. In the attic she had walked with him, played with him, until the close down-sloping roof shut her in and made her breathless. Against the window the rain had beaten in gusts so that to look out was to see the trees’ indefinite cloudy green swimming in down-rushing water. She was as restless as a child, and taking Paul in her arms she had gone recklessly down the front stairs—“After all, I clean them!”—and to the piano. “Pat-a-cake pat-a-cake,” she was chanting, drumming his fist softly upon the keys.
The door opened suddenly and she turned, Paul’s head bobbing helplessly upon her breast, to Bart’s mother. Her large vague face was violently distorted.
“Now, Joan, that’s one thing I don’t allow anyway. I’ve stood enough. I never did let one of my children touch the piano, and you can’t start Paul doing it.”
She walked heavily across the floor, wiping her hands on her apron, and closed the piano with a bang. Joan rose. Now she knew she hated this woman. She hated them all. No use pretending anymore — no use trying to pretend. She stared into the small yellowish-brown eyes, lost in her hatred. She was holding Paul so tightly he began to cry. She turned and ran from the room … And all the time she knew she was herself hindering God. For how could God help her when she was so wicked and full of hate? In the attic she began to sob. “That old worthless piano — he’s her own son’s child — I don’t want to hate her—” She put Paul in his crib and threw herself upon the bed, sobbing. She cried so much these days. Any little thing would start her to crying.
When she grew quieter she lay in the darkness, thinking. She must just begin again. There were things she ought to do which she had not done. It was very easy for the heathen mothers who promised God a coat or shoes. She rose up and lit the light and found her mother’s Bible, poring over one of the pages heavily underscored. There was one verse blackly underscored: “He that cometh to God must first believe that He is—”
She had not been believing enough. “I believe, I believe!” she whispered fiercely.
“I believe!” she cried in her heart every day, every hour, as she swept and washed and mended. “I believe!” she repeated, holding Paul. She gave up the singing now. Instead she murmured over him like a fierce litany, “I believe — I believe in God!”
She began to be meticulous with herself, to read the Bible and to pray a certain time each day as her father had done. In her youth, she remembered with terror, she had laughed at people who were like this. It used to be a joke in the village because Mrs. Parsons always prayed before she began writing on her novel every day. “I want God’s blessing on all I write,” she used to say. “If I have God’s blessing on all I write, some day a publisher will take my book.” They had laughed at her in the careless fullness of their youth. Prayer was for church or to be murmured before sleep. It was like brushing your hair a hundred times, or like keeping your bureau drawers neat — all nice people did such things. Prayer was a nice habit. But nothing ever came of it beyond the feeling of niceness it gave. But perhaps they were wrong. Perhaps there was something there, a power upon which she had not laid hold.
Pray, Rose, she wrote, distracted, pray for Paul.
“God,” she cried to hills and sky, walking through the forests, green again with spring — incredible spring, coming year after year, just the same! — “God, help my little baby Paul!”
In this cunning to persuade God she whispered like a child to her dead mother. “If you are near God now, speak to Him of Paul!” She thought, if there is any way, she will find it and do it … But Paul still did not know her. He ate and slept and grew heavier and she tended him as she always had. For all her crying there was no sign that she was heard.
“Bart,” she said, “I have an idea I want to go to our old church. I want you to stay in the house with Paul once on Sunday.” Perhaps in the familiar church she might recapture the childhood sense she remembered of God’s being near and loving. They used to take it for granted that God loved them.
“You needn’t do anything,” she added to Bart. “Just be in the house — don’t touch him unless he cries.” She was jealous of Paul’s immaculate body. She did not want Bart’s great grimed hands touching him.
He spoke so heartily she looked up in surprise. He seldom spoke to her these days, and to him she did not speak unless she must. Between them there was that eternal wordless question-and-answer waiting. Whenever he opened his mouth, she drew up her resources ready for refusal. If she should speak to him, he might be led on to ask that question. Silence was safe. At first he had touched her hand often, and made awkward opportunity to brush against her as she passed. She learned to stay far from him, to come and go steadily, cold, never touching. “You’d think I was dirty or something!” he roared at her once. She looked away and did not answer. It was true — his flesh was like filth to her.
Then at last he made no more effort. He came and went from the fields, eating enormously, sleeping immediately after he had eaten at night. She ceased to feel the pressure in him. He was content to be silent toward her as he was to the others. They all lived in the round of silence. Sam was going with a girl now, a fanner’s daughter five or six miles away. Each evening after milking he cleaned himself and ate his supper in solemn uneasiness. He gave up his coarse joking and gazing at her secretly. He was going to be married. He was settled, or soon would be. Bart’s mother fretted a little. “They say Annie Beard is a real good cook, but she’s so free with butter and sugar. I ate a piece of her cake at the church supper once, and it was so rich it was sickening. I don’t care for anything but sponge, myself — more is flesh pander.” She sighed. It was not decent to say more. Her sons were men, and she supposed they must behave like men. Since Bart was not complaining anymore, she guessed he and Joan must have fixed it up. After all, his room was right at the foot of the attic stairs, and she’d told Joan—