Free The Mother: A Novel by Pearl S. Buck Page B

home the first thing the mother did was to seize the babe and ease her breasts of their load of milk and the child drank hungrily, having had but rice gruel in the day. The old woman these cold early nights crept into bed to warm herself as soon as the sun was set and the little girl came feeling her way out into the last light of day, wincing a little even in that pale light, and she sat smiling on the threshold, rejoicing in her brother’s coming, for she missed him now he had to work.
    So did the autumn pass, and here was the ground to be ploughed for wheat and the wheat sown and the mother taught the lad how to scatter it so that a passing wind would help him and how to watch the wind, too, and not let the grain fall too thickly here and too scanty there. Then the winter came when the wheat was sprouted but a little, and the fields shrank and hardened in the oncoming cold. Now the mother drew the winter garments out from under her bed where she kept them and she sunned them and made them ready to wear. But the rough work of the summer and the autumn had so torn her hands that even the coarse cotton cloth caught at the cracks upon them and her fingers were stiff and hard, although shapely still in the bone.
    Yet she worked on, sitting now in the doorway to be in the southern sun and out of the sharp wind and first she tended to the old woman’s garments, since she felt the chill so much. And she bade the old woman stay in bed a day or two and take off the red shroud she wore, and in between the stuff and its lining she put back the cotton wadding she had taken out when summer came, and the old woman lay snug and chattered happily and cried, “Shall I outlast this shroud, do you think, daughter-in-law? In summer time I feel I shall, but when the winter comes I am not sure, because my food does not heat me as once it did.”
    And the mother answered absently, “Oh, you will last, I dare swear, old mother, and I never saw such an old crone for lasting on when others have gone the common way.”
    Then the old woman cackled full of pleasure and she cackled, laughing and coughing, “Aye, a very lasting sort I be, I know!” and lay content and waited for her shroud to be made warm for her again.
    And the mother mended the children’s clothing, but the girl’s garments she must give to the babe, and the boy’s to the girl, so had they all three grown in the year. Then came the question of what the lad would wear to keep him warm. There was the man’s padded coat and there the trousers that he had worn those three winters gone and he had torn them and she had mended them at wrist and neck, and in the front was a long tear where the buffalo’s horn had caught one day when he was angry at the beast and had jerked the rope passed through its nostrils, so that it tossed its head in agony.
    But she could not bear to cut them small to the lad’s shape. She turned the garments over pondering and aching and at last she muttered, “What if he should come—I will not do it yet.”
    But there the boy was not clad for winter and he waited shivering in the chill of morning and evening, and at last she set her lips and made the garments small for him and she comforted herself and said in her heart, “If he comes we can sell some of the rice and buy new ones. If he should come at the new year he will take pleasure in the new garments.”
    So the winter wore on and it seemed to the woman that the man must surely come at the new year, a time when all men go to their homes if they still live and are not beggars. So when any asked her she began to say, “He will come home for the new year festival,” and the old mother said a score of times a day, “When my son comes at new year …” and the children hoped too for the day. Now and again the gossip would smile and say in her malice, and she was making herself a fine new pair of shoes against the day of festival, “It is strange no letter comes from that man of yours, and I know