Mother Lode

by Carol Anita Sheldon

  Jorie coughed. “Is it, is it . . . natural?

  “Oh, yes. Yes, that comes with adolescence.”

  Jorie wished the doctor would say more about this, and tell him what to do about it, but he just smiled in his understanding way.

  “I don’t know.” Jorie stammered. “I don’t know how to say this.”

  “Just spit it out.”

  Jorie took a deep breath. “Is it wrong to, to rub it?” he turned his flushed face to the pattern in the carpet.

  The doctor took a moment to respond. “People have different views on that subject. Certainly from a medical point of view, there’s nothing wrong with it. Despite all the myths abounding, you won’t grow hair on your palms, go blind or any other such nonsense.”

  “But is it wrong?”

  “I don’t think so. But everyone would not agree with me.”

  Their attention was caught by the chatter of jays outside the window. They looked out to see the male chasing the female from the cherry tree to the elm to the pine.

  “All part of nature’s plan,” the doctor smiled.

  Jorie took another deep breath. If it were all right with the doctor, then it would be all right with him. The matter was finally settled.

  After five long days, the fever broke, and Doctor Johnson said the crisis was over. The visits tapered off, causing Jorie to be almost sad he was getting well. Except for Ma, the doctor was the closest thing he had to a friend.

  That night Catherine thanked God that he’d been spared. She had not attended St. Joseph’s for several weeks. On Sunday she went, but a different priest was officiating. After mass she inquired of the sister.

  “Father Dumas isn’t with us any longer. He was transferred to Minnesota.”

  Minnesota! Catherine could hardly believe it.

  Without her old friend, she was again a stranger in a foreign land. She stopped going to church. Anyway, hadn’t praying to God directly saved her son?

  Jorie had not spoken to her much during this time, except to give brief answers, ask for things. Now he was feeling better and watched her as she changed his bed sheets. A feeling of tenderness came over him as pictures of all she’d done for him this week flashed through his mind. How she loved him. Why had it all been spoiled!

  She bade him climb back into bed, and he asked her to apply the liniment. As he was still deeply congested, she applied it generously to his chest. “Would you rub it on my legs too? They’re aching.”

  She pulled down the covers, extracted one leg trying to keep the rest of him covered.

  “It wouldn’t do to let you get cold.”

  She noticed the brown hairs growing on his legs, glistening with the oil. He was beginning to lose his boyishness and take on the look of a man. She lingered over the first leg longer than she realized, lost in her reverie. Abruptly she pushed it under the covers and withdrew the other. As she did, she noticed a bulge at his groin.

  “That enough, Ma. The other one isn’t aching.”

  But she had it out, and commenced to rub it anyway. Holding his foot, her long strokes went upward from his ankle to his knee. Then pushing her hand up the back of his thigh she heard him moan softly. His eyes were closed. She covered him then, left the room.

  A sense of jubilance filled her. How silly of her to think the reverent obedience of the son who adored her had vanished? What further proof of her power could she ask than what she had just witnessed in his room? If he’d avoided her these past weeks it was because she herself had failed him by abdicating her throne. There must be no crack in the crown.

  Chapter 18

  “I’ll clear the table, Ma,” he said rising. “Then I have to study.” His chair scraped against the rough wooden boards of the kitchen floor.

  “Not so fast,” she said softly, wrapping the left-over bread in the paper he’d helped Helena to wax. “You’ll lend a hand with the washing up, and then we’ll see.”

  “We’ll see.” These words, had come to strike apprehension in his young soul. Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead as he stacked and clattered the dishes. For once he wished his pa was here.

  She chided softly, “You’re going to break my grandmother’s plates, Laddie. I brought them all the way from Scotland, when I was but a girl.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, forcing himself to slow down. After all, why was he in a hurry? “I’ll wash.”

  The large pot of water on the wood stove was already boiling when they brought the dishes to the kitchen. There must be sap in the stovewood, as it crackled and spat loudly —echoing the explosions in his chest. He wanted to tell it to hush, not to shout to all the world his fear, his confusion.

  With whatever suds her homemade lye soap began, they were soon defeated by the slippery venison fat sliding off the plates. Jorie watched with fascination as each bubble popped, the greasy circles forming around his hands.

  “Lad, what are you doing? You forget yourself.”

  With a quickening of his heart, he came back to the present. She was waiting for more dishes to wipe. Slowly, but not so slow as to cause further comment, he continued washing the dishes, as her hands caressed each cup and plate slowly and lovingly. When the dishes were done, and he feared he was finished, he spotted the pots and pans on the stove.

  “I’ll pour fresh water for the pots,” he told her.

  “Let’s just let them soak overnight,” she cooed. “No hurry about them.”

  “It’s all right,” he said with a surge of will. “I don’t mind.” As he propped the back door open with a piece of firewood, the frigid air swooped in like a bird for the kill. He took the dishpan outside, flung the greasy water over the stoop, turning it instantly to ice. Returning, he pushed the sleeves of his woolen shirt and his winter underwear up to his elbows, attacked the pots as though in a duel to the death, determined to undo their dirty, begrimed faces. Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard her say, “That’s enough, Jorie. They’re only pots.” But something made him keep scrubbing, polishing, pouring every ounce of his sap into this task.

  It was her hand on his shoulder that finally brought him back. The hair on the back of his neck went up, his hands fell limply down in the warm water.

  Slowly he opened the door again. This time he drizzled the worn dishwater, watching the last drops glisten in the moonlight as they fell to the snow, the steam rising in the crisp cold of the northern night. In the distance he could hear the clip-clop of a single horse. Probably Mr. Kukkonen coming home late again. He wished he could run to him, help him carry in the bundles of laundry.

  “I better bring in more firewood,” he stalled.

  “Come in, Jorie.” She had done with coaxing.

  Slowly he returned, closed the door, placed the dishpan on its nail by the stove.

  “Follow me.” His mother picked up the kerosene lamp on the kitchen table and led him to the back parlor, closing the curtained French doors behind them. The parlor that was saved for special occasions. The parlor the family rarely saw. They hadn’t been in this room since last Christmas. Despite its fancy rug and stuffed furniture, it was always cold, except for special occasions. Tonight there was no fire, no Christmas tree with brightly lit candles. His heart leaped with apprehension, as the room swallowed him.

  He watched the shadows dance crazily across the forbidding room as she carried the single lamp to the table.

  “Rub my feet,” she commanded softly, wrapping herself in a heavy shawl, and placing her small, voluptuous body on the horsehair sofa. “I’ve been on them all day, and Lord knows they ache so. I’m sure you’re the perfect one to take that pain away,” she crooned.

  Jorie slid obediently to the floor and grasped his mother’s slender ankle, untying her black high top, loosening the laces slowly. Finally, he slipped the shoe off her tiny foot and began rubbing it gently, the way she’d taught him to.

  “Grasp it firmly, Jorie, it won’t break!” The tinkle of her laughter echoed through the sparsely furnished room. />
  She smiled indulgently at him and he tried to take back the hot red blotchy rash he knew was giving him away. He imagined his embarrassment always heightened the pleasure she took in him.

  Clumsily he rubbed her feet.

  “Not so fast, my Precious. Try using a longer stroke, like this.” She demonstrated on his arm, while he tried to keep it from shaking.

  He continued a few minutes longer, then started to put her shoes back on.

  “No, leave them off, Jorie. Too late for shoes. Run get my slippers, there’s a good lad.”

  He did so, wishing desperately there were some escape, some way not to return.

  “What’s taking so long?”

  He came slowly down, crouched again before her, ready to wiggle the slippers on to her feet.

  “Didn’t you notice something, Jorie?” she stopped him.

  He hated it when she asked questions like that — making him feel stupid and knowing he was about to be told something he didn’t want to know.

  “Feel my stocking — the one on my foot. There, a little higher on my ankle. All that time you were feeling your mother’s foot, didn’t you notice anything?

  He could feel the rash popping out again — the prickle and the heat, running down his neck like the hot wine he’d been given at Christmas time.

  “What was I supposed to notice?” he mumbled, staring at the floor.

  She pulled something out of her pocket and dropped it in his lap.

  “What’s that?” he muttered.

  “Well, pick it up Laddie. What does it feel like?”

  Obediently, because he was unable to be otherwise with her, he picked up the object.

  “Well?” she coaxed.

  “It’s a stocking.” He had to say it twice because the first time his words carried no sound.

  “Now feel its texture, and then feel the one on Mummy’s foot, Dear.”

  He felt a sort of murkiness come over his brain and knew he was making a fool of himself. His mother waited patiently, seeming to enjoy each tortured moment.

  Finally, he came back enough to make contact with the thing in his hand.

  “This one’s rougher. Rougher material.”

  “Yes. So that means the one on my foot is—?”

  “Softer,” he felt the idiot, wondering why her dulcet tones confused him so. He watched as their steamy breath met in the space between them and became one.

  “And? Feel it, dear. Learn to discriminate between the feel of things. Just as you do between tastes.”

  He shuddered, remembering. Find the words to describe. . . He hoped she wouldn’t say that now. He had no words to describe what he was feeling, only a chattering of his teeth, and a familiar sensation in his groin. He wanted to run from her, or to be so young he could lose himself in the comfort of her bosom with innocence. But at thirteen he could do neither.

  “Touch it, Jorie.”

  He hesitated.

  “You’re going to be a writer, aren’t you?”

  He put his fingers on her ankle, could feel her pulse beating there, took his hand away.

  “Silk it is,” she intoned.

  He touched it again — first as though it were a hot coal about to sear him, then slowly, mesmerized by his mother’s voice, and the smell of her lilac cologne. He lost all sense of time and forgot how cold he was. A sweet surrender began to overtake him as he felt her soft hands on his curls, welcomed her warm breath on his cheek.

  And once again, he knew he’d lost to her. Though all she asked of him was to go to sleep contemplating the sense of touch, and how different textures could evoke different sensations.

  That winter had more snowfall than the young folks had ever seen. All over town, people were erecting high wooden sidewalks three feet above the ground between their homes and the road. When it snowed, it could be swept off with a broom.

  The streets were rolled, and snowshoes came out of cellars and sheds sooner than usual, to the annoyance of adults and delight of children. With the wind sweeping across the lake, it wasn’t unusual for snow banks to get as high as thirty feet. Some families were so snowed in, their only escape was through an upstairs window.

  From his bedroom, where he was working on a Christmas present for Ma, Jorie watched the blizzard continue to swirl around the fruit trees in the circle drive; soon they were so white, that as close as they were, he could no longer make them out.

  He wondered if they’d have a Christmas tree this year. With the snow so deep, and Christmas only five days away, Jorie didn’t see how they could manage a tree. Well, that was all right with him. He always felt sorry for the poor tree anyway. All dressed up with cookies, candies and candles — but dead. Chopped up a few days later for firewood. He’d read about humans being sacrificed in other cultures, and now imagined a person being killed, then propped up and decorated for some peculiar ritual, later to be cremated, like the discarded Christmas trees. How uncivilized it all was.

  He’d bought his father a new pipe, and he had finished one present for his mother. Every boy in his industrial arts class had made a two and a half foot long wooden fork for turning the clothes in the boiling water on laundry day. His mother’s old one was cracked, so it was a good time to replace it.

  Now he was working on a diary for her. He knew she wrote regularly, and she’d mentioned that the last was almost full. Larger than the others, with wooden covers, it had yet to be fixed with a strap and clasp. He’d bought fifty pages to put in it, but others could be added. In a couple more hours he’d have it finished.

  His mother and Helena had been busy all week making Christmas cookies and candy. Even his father seemed to appreciate the extra efforts and the special foods prepared for the occasion; for this Jorie was grateful.

  He gave the covers a coat of varnish. In the morning he’d give them another coat, and attach the strap. Then it would be finished. To rid the room of varnish fumes, he opened the window a couple of inches and brushed away the snow that had piled up on the outer sill. He sucked in the cold evening air and slipped into bed.

  During the night the wind came up and the snow blew in the window. Jorie awoke to the sensation of a fine mist blowing onto his face. The storm was over, and with an almost full moon shining in the clear sky, he could see the fine layer of snow covering the floor between the window and his bed.

  Sounds came to him from another room, as though someone was being hurt. He lay absolutely still and listened. Another groan and muffled cry.

  His mother!

  Grabbing the white blanket around his shoulders, he crept silently down the hall to her room. He opened the door softly, but was stopped short by what he saw.

  In horror he watched his father grunt and thrash about on top of his mother. She was moaning, gasping.

  He wanted to yell out to his father to stop! He must do something to protect her. But he stood frozen in his tracks.

  Then he saw his father sink his hands in her long un-pinned hair and pull her head back, causing her to arch her back and cry out.

  Suddenly, he sprang to action in a stabbing fit of passion. With no thought for his own safety, he lunged for his father, grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him off his mother.

  Momentarily startled beyond comprehension, Thomas quickly recognized the ghostly apparition standing over him. He came to a full seething rage, rose from the bed and smacked his son hard across the face with the back of his hand, sending him flying against the wall.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he boomed.

  Still reeling from the pain and shock, Jorie could only blink back.

  “This is not your room! You are never to come in here! Do you understand?” his father thundered.

  Catherine concurred with Thomas. “How could you blunder into your parents’ bedroom like a three year old? For God’s sake, Jorie, you are thirteen! What in the world were you thinking of?”

  Dizzily, Jorie staggered back to his bed, where he lay miserably in a curled up
heap under all his covers. Although his cheek was radiating shooting pains in all directions, it was his mother’s words that hurt the most. Her words and his own self-loathing. He had seen animals fornicate, but there in his mother’s sanctuary, he had not imagined his parents capable of such beastly behavior.

  How could he have been so far off the mark?

  He heard someone coming down the hall, and hoped it was his mother, come to soften her words. But the steps were too heavy. Now he knew it was his father, and freezing in terror, he waited to receive more punishment for his terrible invasion of parental privacy.