Maude

  “I’ll be going with you Sunday.”

  When the rooster crowed that Sunday morning, I jumped right up out of the bed. I went downstairs and cooked George’s favorite, and only, breakfast and scrambled some eggs for myself and Bud. Then I went back upstairs and shook George’s arm. “Get up. Breakfast is ready.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at me with a curious expression, but got out of the bed without a word. He woke Bud and brought him downstairs, carrying him on one hip. I smiled at him when he sat down. It was the first time he’d seen a smile on my face since that sad funeral.

  “I’m going to church this morning, George,” I said.

  He smiled back at me. “That’s good, Maude.”

  “I want you to go hitch up the wagon. I’ll take Clara and Maggie with me. It isn’t right for her to have to do that by herself.”

  George didn’t argue. I put a tone in my voice that told him to do what I said. It must have reminded him of his mother, and for some reason, I think he found that comforting.

  My fellow church members greeted me so warmly that I was ashamed of myself for staying away solong. The comfort of the church, and the hymns, prayers and the fellowship of others who understood my loss, was exactly what I needed.

  Chapter 25

  The pain never really goes away. It gets better, and you finally get to a place where you aren’t thinking about it every minute of every day. My life settled down again to a pleasant monotony. George ran for re-election, unopposed, and as he always did, he won. Everybody liked George.

  Without the old woman to do the bulk of the housework, I had no time for sewing other than mending. I rose early, the way I had before, and gave up afternoon naps. Embarrassed by the dust and cobwebs in the corners that had accumulated while I grieved, I cleaned the house from top to bottom. I pestered George until he tended to the outhouse and was even able to force him to dig a new place for it and move it.

  I enjoyed my new authority in the house. George didn’t always do what I wanted right away, but if I asked in the right tone, he would eventually listen. I re-planted gardens out back, mine and George’s mother’s. It took every minute of sunshine to cook, clean, and take care of the house, the yard, and my son.

  Bud was into everything, and I was afraid to take my eyes off him. Left out in the yard, he was likely to pull up half the garden. Left in the kitchen, he would often mix the contents of the sugar and flour and other canisters into a pile in the floor.

  He was forever falling down stairs. I saved his life one day by grabbing his shirt just as he was going out of an upstairs window. One afternoon, I was busy baking and didn’t hear his footsteps when he awoke. The room that he’d shared with his grandmother was his now. When I went upstairs to get him, he’d gotten into a dirty diaper and spread it all over the room. After that, I had him take his nap on a pallet in the corner of the kitchen.

  Late in the summer of 1919, I realized I was in a family way again. There was no morning sickness this time. I could even watch George eat his breakfast. I was strong and well, and didn’t have to change my life at all, except I was hungry all the time. I made huge pots of chicken and fluffy dumplings, the way my mother taught me when I was a girl, and ate three times as much as I used to eat. I baked pies and cakes twice a week and ate some every day. Missing a sweet tooth, George ate just enough to keep from hurting my feelings, but Bud adored the pastry and ate almost as much as I did.

  By the time I was ready to have my baby in the spring of 1920, I’d put on an awful lot of weight and had only two dresses I could wear. I washed one and wore the other. I waited and waited, but the time I thought the baby would come passed, and still I got bigger. It was all I could do to get up out of a chair, and I went to the outhouse to pass water forty times a day.

  I knew the baby was all right. It kicked hard every day, so I didn’t worry. I talked to the doctor about it at church one Sunday, and he told me the same thing my hometown doctor told Helen, “It’s like an apple on a tree, Maude. It’ll fall when it’s ready.”

  I was cooking supper one afternoon when my water broke right in the kitchen. There wasn’t any pain, so I just cleaned up the mess, changed my clothes, and went back to my housework. When George came home, and we sat to eat, I told him between bites, “The baby is coming tonight.”

  “How bad are the pains?”

  “I don’t have any pains yet, but my water broke a while ago, so it’ll be tonight.”

  “Do you want me to get the doctor?”

  “No, I think I’ll just have you go get Clara. It’s not like it was my first time.”

  For the first time since we married, George looked at me with something that looked like admiration. “If you say so,” he said, and finished his dinner. I was cleaning up the dishes when the first pain started. I stopped my work, held onto the edge of the table until it passed, then went on with what I was doing. I was familiar with the sensation and knew I had plenty of time. After the kitchen was clean, I went over to Clara’s house and knocked.

  When Clara opened the door, I told her, “My water broke this afternoon, and the baby’s coming tonight. I’ll have George come get you when it’s time.”

  “I’ll come right now,” Clara said.

  “No need for that. You go on about your chores. There’s no telling how long it will be before I need you.”

  I gathered the linens and pulled up enough buckets of water from the well to heat for the delivery. I checked the fire in the kitchen stove to see that it would bank well enough to keep the water hot but not boil it all away. The spring night was quite chilly, so I told George to build a fire in the parlor fireplace. He kept staring at me and asking if I were all right, but I just waved him away, saying, “I’m fine.” I had him take Bud to bed and tuck him in for the night.

  George and I went to bed at the usual time. He fell asleep right away. I lay awake in the dark. When the pain reached a point where I knew I needed help, I poked George awake and sent him for Clara. It was after midnight, but Clara came in fully dressed only a few minutes later. She pulled the chair up next to the bed. George went down to the kitchen to make coffee and wait.

  I was relieved to see her. “How did you get here so fast? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I left my dress on and lay down on the divan in the parlor. I didn’t want to waste any time when you called me.”

  Gritting my teeth to ride out a pain, I tried to laugh. “We have time, but not much. It ought to be any minute now. I can feel it.”

  I sat up and pushed, then relaxed, then in just a minute did it again. After a half-hour of pushing I didn’t feel any different. “Clara, take a look and see what’s happening down there.”

  Clara pulled back the covers, and I saw her forehead crease.

  “What is it, Clara?”

  “I can see a foot sticking out, Maude. It’s going to be breech.”

  “Tell George to go get the doctor, and tell him to hurry.”

  Clara ran downstairs, and in a few minutes, Clara and I heard Pawnee galloping out of the yard. The pains kept on with Clara watching, hoping for progress. None came. My stomach shifted, and the foot that had been sticking out disappeared back up inside. I felt as if my body were being ripped apart.

  It seemed like a long time, but finally, the doctor came. He rushed into the room. Clara told him what had happened so far. He did a fast examination, pressing my stomach here and there and told me, “I’m going to try to turn it around so it can come out the right way, Maude, but it’s an awfully big baby. We might have to take it Caesarian.” I’d heard of that, but never knew anyone who had a baby that way.

  The doctor pushed around on my stomach, pressing hard this way and then the other. After a few minutes, he shook his head, “This isn’t going to work.” He pulled the covers all the way off the bed and reached for his bag. Another pain grabbed me, and I couldn’t help but push again. “Look,” Clara cried. “A foot is sticking out.”

  The doctor grabbed
hold of it and pulled a little. Clara said, “Hold on, Maude, the rest of the leg came out and I can see a little bottom. One leg is out but the other is folded up inside.”

  The doctor worked to free the baby, and after a little while, he had it out of my body. It was a boy. He rubbed it and slapped its fanny, but it didn’t cry. He held it up in the air and slapped it some more. Still no cry. He held it up to his face and tried breathing into its mouth. Nothing. Clara and I were both crying.

  He held the baby out to Clara. “Put him somewhere out of the way, Clara. We can’t do anything for him. Maude’s torn up bad and bleeding, and she needs us to take care of her now.”

  Clara wrapped a cloth around the baby and laid it on the floor under the bed. The doctor massaged my abdomen and delivered the afterbirth. When he was satisfied the bleeding had stopped, he made the necessary stitches, packed his things and picked up his bag to leave. “I’m sorry, Maude. I wish I could have done better.”

  Clara cleaned up the bed and cleaned up me, both of us still crying, but now not so hard. Clara leaned over me before she left and kissed my forehead. “We’ll bury him tomorrow, Maude. Please try to get some rest for now. You need your strength. I’ll tell George. He can sleep in another room for tonight.”

  I cried for a while and then drifted off to sleep. I don’t know how long I had been sleeping when a sound woke me. At first I thought it was one of the cats in the back yard, or that I’d imagined it. Then the night air was split by the scream of a hungry, cold baby. I sat bolt upright in the bed.

  I must be sleeping and having a nightmare, I thought, but the screaming continued. I got out of the bed and looked underneath. Squirming and kicking, my baby was demanding attention. I picked him up and wrapped a blanket around him, then got back into the bed. I held him to my breast and looked down at him as he had his first meal. A wave of powerful emotion swept over me. It was a familiar feeling, and I gave thanks to God for it, for the same rush of love that I’d felt the first time I held Lulu.

  When George came to see me in the morning, he was speechless. I was sitting up in bed, holding the baby in my arms and singing to it. He had straight, dark-brown hair like mine and my daddy’s, and he was the biggest newborn I’d ever seen. His fat cheeks hung down on his chest, and his arms and legs were round and pink.

  I smiled up at George. “His name is ‘Charles Eugene Foley,’ after my daddy,” I told him, “and we’re going to call him Gene.”

  George shook his head. “I’ve not been thinking of any names other than George, Junior, for a boy, but I never said anything to you about it, and I can tell that “Charles Eugene” is a done deal. I guess it’s right that you get to name this one.”

  “Go get Clara for me, George. I can’t wait for her to see him.”

  George fetched Clara, who was thrilled with the news that the baby we thought was lost was doing just fine.

  I wouldn’t let him out of my sight, so Clara laid him on a towel on the bed and cleaned him up. Clara brought the Bible to me, and I wrote the name under William’s.

  I was too weak to do much for a few days, so Clara took care of Bud during the day and made our meals, and George did what he could for me at night.

  Little Gene was always hungry. When he was a month old, we made our first trip to church, stopping by the feed store on the way home to weigh him on the scale there. At four weeks old, he weighed eighteen pounds.

  If Bud was George’s boy, Gene was mine. I seldom left a room without taking him with me. I made a sling out of a piece of cloth and carried him around the way the Indians did. Happily, Bud was fond of his little brother, and I saw no signs of jealousy. George gave all his attention to Bud and hardly any to Gene, and that seemed to prevent what sibling rivalry would have normally been expected.

  Bud was still the captain of mischief, even though I spanked him and told his father when he misbehaved. George didn’t spank, didn’t rebuke and, in fact, sometimes laughed at the trouble Bud would get into. That only served to encourage him. He looked for ways to make his father laugh, and he succeeded.

  He put my church hats on the cow, stuck string beans up his nose and pretended he was a walrus that he’d read about in school. He chased the rooster around the yard until it turned on him and spurred his back. He tried to ride the goats and only laughed when they threw him off. He tied paper bags on the dogs’ feet and laughed at them as they walked. The only animals he never touched were George’s horse and the cats. Pawnee was too important to his father. Bud knew that aggravating the horse was a line he dared not cross, and he left the cats alone because cats have claws.

  Chapter 26

  Woodrow Wilson was still president in 1920 when the amendment giving women the right to vote was passed. An election was coming up soon. Warren G. Harding, a Republican, was running against James Cox, the Democrat, who had Franklin D. Roosevelt as his vice-presidential candidate. I wasn’t sure what it was all about, so I decided to investigate. I began reading the newspaper regularly for the first time in my life.

  I asked George several times to bring the paper home with him, but he forgot more often than not. On the days I walked into town, I would buy one and put it in with my groceries. At home, when I finished my housework, I would sit in the light from my bedroom window and read it from front to back, then go sit with Clara and talk about what I’d learned.

  On Election Day, I dressed the children and myself in our church clothes. I came downstairs carrying Gene. George was standing at the stove, frying his bacon. Through the screen door, I could see Bud sitting on the porch with the mop laid down the brown dog’s back. He was singing and tying the strings around the dog’s head to make a wig. The dog wagged his tail and licked at the child’s face.

  After George’s mother died, he took to making his own breakfast every morning, saying that I didn’t do it right. When he saw me with my hat on, George looked at me in surprise. “What’s the occasion? There a church meeting this morning?”

  No, I want you to hitch up the wagon. I’m going to ride into town with you so I can vote.”

  George stopped poking at the bacon with his fork and shook his head. “You can’t do that, Maude,” he said in a voice so low I could hardly understand him.

  “What do you mean, I can’t do that? The new law says I can.”

  “It isn’t fitting for women to try to vote. You won’t know what you’re doing.”

  I got so mad my face must have turned purple. I planted my feet and put one hand on my hip. “I suppose you think you DO know what you’re doing?”

  “Of course, I do. I’m voting for Cox.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s the best man, that’s why.”

  “Why is he the best man? What does he want to do that’s better than what Harding wants to do?”

  George’s mouth dropped open, and he stammered, “Why—uh…”

  When he didn’t answer me, I tilted my head. “What do you think about the League of Nations? Is it a good thing, or should we just get out of it and mind our own business? What do you think about Prohibition, or letting them teach the children in school that we came from monkeys?”

  George had no answers for me. He turned his bacon again and then said, “Who do you expect to vote for, Maude?”

  I met his eyes with a steady gaze. “That’s none of your business, George.”

  He stared down at the pan of bacon for a minute, then picked it up and put it on the sideboard. “I guess I’ve lost my appetite,” he said. He went out and headed to the barn. I poured myself a cup of his thick coffee. I’d got used to it over time and could drink it now without loading it with sugar or watering it down. I sat to wait for him to bring the wagon around. A few minutes later, he galloped by on Pawnee.

  I took Bud’s hand and pulled him behind me as I went to see if Clara had left yet for the store. It was one of the days Clara would normally have gone in to do the books and ordering.

  Clara was expecting me. She held the back door open
. “I kind of thought you might want a ride into town. Yesterday, I heard the men talking out in the front of the store when they didn’t see me in the office. A lot of men are forbidding their wives to vote or telling them who they have to vote for.”

  I nodded. “It’s a good thing it’s private. They can just vote for who they want and tell their husbands what they want to hear. I’m not surprised, though. At least George didn’t try to forbid me.”

  “What would you have done if he had?”

  I smiled at her. “I guess I’d of had to turn him in to the U.S. Marshall for breaking the law. After all, it’s his job to see that we get to vote just like anyone else.”

  Both of us just about fell down laughing. I went out to the barn with Clara and helped her hitch the horse to the buggy. Clara called to Maggie that she was ready to go, and I got Bud and Gene. The five of us rode into town. We dropped Maggie off at school. It was closed for the election, but the teen-agers had gathered there, and Maggie wanted to wait with her friends.

  We went on to the courthouse. George was there to keep order, standing behind a line of men who were jeering at each woman who walked up the steps. I glared at him, then jutted out my jaw in determination. Some of the men turned to George and called out. “Look out, George, next thing you know she’ll be wearing your pants and wanting to be a deputy.”

  George took the ribbing with a smile, but I could tell he wasn’t enjoying it much. He let on like it was all right. We marched past the men and into the courthouse, signed the book, and were given slips of paper and pointed to a curtain. Clara and I stood in the line behind three men and another woman. All the time, the men murmured back and forth and scowled at us.

  When it was my turn to vote, I handed Gene to Clara, stepped into the cubicle with Bud in tow and pulled the curtain closed behind myself. I made my marks on the paper, folded it over, took it back to the table, and dropped it in the box. Then I took Gene from Clara’s arms so Clara could take her turn. Bud could tell that something important was happening, and he stood quietly beside me, well behaved for one of the few times in his life. Clara finished a few minutes later, and we went back outside. The men standing around started up loud complaining about uppity women again. Clara took my elbow. “Let’s go home, Maude.”