“I’m no dream,” said Joan, smiling. No, this morning was real. The sun was streaming in the windows. She felt strong and actual, able for whatever was ahead. “Now your breakfast. I shall bring you hot water and when you’ve washed you shall have a tray. I’ll not ask you what you want — I’ll just bring it.”
She straightened the bed and put the table to rights. Under the bed Mrs. Mark had had drawers put so that she could reach them, where she kept her things, the clothes she needed, her comb and brush.
“Not going to give me my choice, eh?” she grunted, her small sad eyes amiable.
“No,” said Joan cheerfully. “You’re always bossing other folks, you know.”
She busied herself, fetching the water, turning her back while Mrs. Mark struggled. She heard her panting and dragging at her legs, and she could not bear it. “Why don’t you let me help?” she said. “I took care of my mother so long.”
“I guess I can still take care of my own two legs,” said Mrs. Mark sharply.
“I’ll get your tray ready then.”
In the small kitchen she fed wood into the stove. She tried to realize that she was a woman who had left her husband the day before. Was this how such a woman felt? But she felt as one feels who has stepped out of stumbling through a darkly shadowed wood into a meadow in the morning light. The very sunshine was different. She had so often risen in the cold shadows of that house and gone downstairs into the cold silence. Bart was always there to overpower her spirit. She knew him for what he was, and daily she had determined to be as she would. Yet because he was never changed he could overpower her every mood. She could never be freely happy when he was near. If she was for a moment happy, he was there like the knowledge of Paul — a dark weight.
But Paul was still her baby. He did not ask anything of her, only to be fed and cared for. Her heart flew out of her in tenderness to Paul, who never asked anything of her, and she dropped the stove lid and ran to fetch him. She propped him with quilts in a corner of the kitchen and made laughter over him, talking to him. This morning she could not be sad. He was her little boy anyhow. The fire was crackling in the wood stove and the bottom of the kettle began to sizzle. The room was full of sunshine.
If I lived here I’d hang yellow curtains, she thought in the midst of everything. She loved this small, sparsely furnished house. Perhaps Mrs. Mark would let her stay. She could make a garden and buy a cow and then if she could make just a little money … Her mind, freed, was dancing about the house like a beam of light. She could do anything. She could find a way. She would write to Francis. No — she paused and stood still, the bread knife in her hand, pressing into the loaf — she thought of Roger Bair. Even after all these years why shouldn’t she write to Roger Bair and ask him how a woman with little children could make some money? She stopped again above the eggs she was frying, her spoon poised. She hadn’t said a word to Mrs. Mark about Rose — about Rose’s children. She was leaping ahead as she always did without thinking how she was going to do the thing she wanted, seeing it done. She was always seeing things done. She lifted the eggs and put them on a plate with the bacon and ran into the wasted garden and found a spray of small scarlet leaves from the top of a woodbine vine and laid it upon the white cloth of the tray and poured the coffee. It was all ready. “There!” she said, setting it before Mrs. Mark with delight.
Mrs. Mark looked up at her. She had made herself very neat in a clean high-necked nightgown. Her wrinkled face was like a triangle of cracked old ivory, her small black eyes peering deeply out. She looked at the tray and wet her withered bluish lips.
“My soul,” she exclaimed, “I don’t eat two eggs. You’d think I could walk ten miles! I’m not going to feed up legs like this that won’t even heave theirselves to the other side of the bed.”
But she began to eat.
“Good?” said Joan, watching her, smiling.
“The toast’s a mite brown,” said Mrs. Mark. She drank a little coffee. “You’re not going away?”
“No,” said Joan, “not if you will let me stay.”
“Coffee’s a mite strong,” said Mrs. Mark, gulping it. “It makes my eyes water — I’m not used to it.” Deep in her eyes were scanty tears.
“I’ll get some hot water to thin it,” said Joan gently.
It was not possible in this quiet free house to keep from telling Mrs. Mark everything.
She told her about Rose. “Rose is dead — my little sister.”
“Don’t tell me!” said Mrs. Mark. “That little thing! She pestered me so trying to be good to me, reading to me when I wanted to go to sleep — Oh, dear,” she sighed, “and why should she die, a little kind-meaning young thing, and me like this?”
“She died far away in a city near Tibet — a Chinese city. I’m to have her two children. It’s all I can do for her.”
“What for?” said Mrs. Mark. “You’re being put upon. That Winters woman’s got a great big house and Winters has the store, and you have nothing.”
“I want Rose’s children,” said Joan.
“How are you going to take care of them?”
“I’ll find some way.”
Mrs. Mark lay silent for a moment regarding her, her small black eyes winking lidlessly like a bird’s eyes. She grunted at last. “Well, you’re big enough to do what you want. I reckon nobody will gainsay a great thing like you — scared of you — I am myself. I didn’t want those two eggs. But I was scared not to eat them before you.”
She laughed a dry wheeze of laughter, and Joan let out her own great laugh and was startled by it. She had not laughed recklessly like that since before her mother died. Then she was shy, having laughed so loudly. They were talking about Rose and it was strange laughter. But there was some odd happiness is her, mixed with sorrow. Paul was standing by her knees, his head leaning against her. He raised his head a little and she remembered him.
“I believe he’s really trying to walk alone,” she said eagerly. They watched him, and laughter died between them. She said sadly, “But I don’t believe he even knows me — see — Paul, Paul — Paul?”
But Mrs. Mark continued to stare steadily at Paul, watching him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You know him, don’t you? The value of him you’ve got — giving birth, feeding, tending. I think of that a lot with my dead girl. I birthed her and tended her. It was a life, though she died. Paul’s life is a life, too, one kind of a life.”
“Bart’s mother wanted me to put him away somewhere,” Joan said. Little by little all the bitterness was seeping out of her into words now.
“You can’t ever put him away anywhere,” said Mrs. Mark. “That’s what folks don’t understand. Putting his body away wouldn’t help. You can’t put your child away from your heart. Besides, you don’t want to miss everything of him just because you haven’t all of him. He’s got his own ways. He’s Paul. Don’t measure him by other people. Just take him as he is. If he talks, those few words he’ll say will mean more to you than anybody’s.”
She listened, drinking in the short words. Nobody had ever talked with her about Paul. It was a comfort to talk about him at last. A mother wanted to talk about her child. She had always shrunk from talking before the few she knew. She heard women in a store talking: “Johnnie’s walking now — pulling himself up by anything.” “My Mary Ellen starts school in the fall—” “Polly’s first in her grade this month—” And by such words she was tortured. She held herself away from all mothers of children. Now through the morning she sat holding Paul, talking to Mrs. Mark about him, playing with his fingers, with his golden curls, weeping sometimes.
“Go on and cry,” said Mrs. Mark calmly. “I used to cry. You pass the need, after a while. You can’t keep it up.”