Time Is Noon

by Pearl S. Buck

  She had been ready for agonies, though Dr. Crabbe had said, “You’re made for this job, Joan—measurements perfect! Don’t often see a woman like that these days—spindly lot, living off pineapple and spinach and looking like yellow wax beans!”

  Yes, the child had come like a gift. In the afternoon of Christmas Eve she was in the attic, looking out of the gable window at a deep orange sunset sky. She had had the premonition of pain, and recognized it instantly. She laid herself upon the bed and waited and almost at once the rhythm of pain began. She went downstairs and called Bart.

  “Go for Dr. Crabbe,” she said. To Bart’s mother she said quietly, “My time’s come. I’m going to be in the attic in my own bed.”

  “You’re not going to give birth in the attic!” Bart’s mother cried. “Folks will talk! My son’s wife lying in the attic like hired help!”

  “Who will know?” she answered quietly from the stairs. She wanted her baby born there among the tree-tops, high above the earth. She had been preparing for him there. His little clothes were there in the tray of the round-topped trunk, and the few things Dr. Crabbe had told her to have ready.

  “The doctor will tell,” Bart’s mother cried up the stairs after her. “It will be a shame to us! And if I have to fetch and carry for you, it will be extra steps. There’s enough work as it is.”

  “Bart will sleep better,” Joan answered, and heard no answer.

  In the attic she made ready. She made everything ready to the measure of the rhythm of pain now quickening its swifter and swifter paces. When its beat brought the sweat upon her forehead and her upper lip, and the palms of her hands were wet, she laid herself upon her bed and stared straight into the rafters, gathering herself for each crisis of the pain. Soon Dr. Crabbe would be here. He had said, “Five hours, perhaps, since it is the first time.” Three hours were gone. He would be here at any moment. She could almost catch the rumble and racket of Bart’s old car. God send he would drive carefully! He was so absurdly proud of driving that he scorned to be careful. Like a child he boasted, “Look at me pass that fellow!”

  Don’t think about Bart! This was something she was doing alone. She was having her own child, her first child, the first of many children. Children were to fill her life, all her little children. Now her life was really beginning. She had waited so long for her life to begin. The pain gathered in her, deep, immense, pulling every fiber of her body into a focus of bright pain. Why did people say pain was dark and dull? If one let pain come free—like this—like this—letting it possess the body, letting it gather and mount and soar, it was bright, a shape of edged beauty, acute and clear, rising, tingling, flying upward into purest feeling—a winged body, mounting, soaring into the sky. Above her was the sky, black, deep, soft, a blackness for pain to shine against, to pierce—to pierce and rend and tear.

  Something broke in her, her very being gushed forth. She might have been terrified at this melting and flowing. But she was not afraid. By body’s sense she knew this was right. Then, almost immediately, the child was born. She gave one great involuntary cry, a cry mingled with the child’s first cry. There were footsteps and Dr. Crabbe’s voice roared up the steep stairs. She saw his curly grayish head rising at the door. “My God, Joan!” he rumbled, hurrying, stumbling. She was smiling, panting, saying over and over, “Dr. Crabbe—Dr. Crabbe—”

  He was bustling, hurrying, cursing. But she had everything ready. He was there instantly at work, grumbling at her, grinning. “Had to be forehanded, didn’t you? Damn these capable women anyway! It’ll be a pretty kind of world for the profession if women go having their babies by themselves—and it’s about all that’s left for me to do nowadays—nobody getting sick much and old Mrs. Kinney, still hanging on. It’s a biggish baby, Joan—a boy!”

  All Christmas day she lay upon her bed under the rafters in the deep quietness. Beside her lay the child. She would never be lonely again, never. Her body had divided and made this second self. She was contented as she had never known content. It was body content, content of instinct. Mind did not stir, heart slumbered. But the womb had fulfilled itself richly and she slept and the child slept. Twice she woke, once at Bart’s heavy tread, catching upon the stairs. “Dang these stairs—here’s your food, Jo.”

  “Thank you, Bart.” She was hungry and she ate while he sat waiting, tipping back on his chair. He had stared curiously at the baby once. “Most as big as a calf,” he had said, grinning. She did not answer. He had nothing to do with her child.

  “Looks like snow,” he remarked.

  “Does it?” she said. She looked at the window. Yes, the sky was softly, deeply, evenly gray. He took her bowl and spoon and clattered heavily down the stairs. The clatter was scarcely gone before she slept again. She woke once to find Dr. Crabbe gazing down at her. “Sleep, girl,” he had murmured. “That’s right. Sleep deeply. Everything’s fine—nothing for me to do. I’ll be getting back before the snow gets any heavier. It’s six inches already.”

  Snow—it was snowing, then. She was glad. Fanny wouldn’t come through the snow. She was safe. She and the baby were safe under this roof. The snow was covering them, warming them, giving them its shelter. She slipped deeper into her covers and felt the body of the child, warm, robust, sleeping. The child was here. She returned into her sleep.

  Surely this child was the best child that was ever born. He lay for hours in the rough little cradle she had found under the eaves. She had taken an old pillow and cleaned it and made it into a mattress and cut up two of her mother’s linen sheets into small sheets, and she made a tiny pillow and edged it with the fine crocheted lace upon her mother’s wedding petticoat. The petticoat was in the round-topped trunk and there she found it, yellowed and scarcely worn, and very fine. Her mother had been an only child and her wedding clothes had been fine, and she had had good linen, though her father had been poor—a professor of Latin in a little Southern university. She scarcely ever talked about her father and mother, because they had died close together the last year before Joan was born. There was no home to go to anymore—no home to take her baby and show her off. She used to say, “I did so want to show you to my mother, Joan. You were the loveliest baby, and she loved babies. It was so hard not to have her see you.”

  Yes, it was hard. Looking at her own baby, Joan cried out in her heart, “I wish I could show him to her. I wish she could see him, somehow. Maybe she does see him.”

  But even if she saw him from some far heaven of the dead it was not enough. She wanted to cry out to her mother, “Look at his little hands and feet! See how quietly he lies. I believe he will have curly hair. Isn’t his hair the goldenest gold?”

  She wanted to hear her mother’s voice, eager, excited, agreeing, praising, “The loveliest baby, darling! I always knew you would have lovely babies.”

  But there was only silence, and she sitting alone by the crib holding his plump, passive little hand. He was so good. He would lie letting her hold his hand or cuddle him to her. It did not matter how firmly she strained him to her, he never cried. He ate and slept and never cried when she put him down. He lay in his crib, staring at the rafters, breathing gently, slowly. He was so quiet, so silent. Even Bart’s mother said grudgingly, “He’s pretty good. But I declare I don’t see the use of washing out his diapers every time they’re a mite wet. The soap jar’s nearly empty again. It’s a chore to make soap, too.”

  She grew strong quickly and went downstairs. Everything was exactly the same and yet it was all different now that her baby was born. This was her home. She was rooted here now.

  “Seems to me it’s about time you was moving into your right bed again,” said Bart to her one night. She was putting away his blue shirts she had just ironed. He was in bed, ready to sleep.

  She was suddenly breathless. “The baby would disturb you, Bart.”

  “He doesn’t make any noise,” said Bart grumpily from the bed. He was watching her, the thickened look creeping about his lips and nostrils. She hastene
d a little and then remembered. She was not afraid. She did not answer. She put away Bart’s heavy shoes and hung up his work garments. “Shall I open the window, just a little?” she said quietly.

  “No,” he grunted from the bed. “It’s as cold as sin outside.”

  “Then good night,” she said. She blew out the lamp quietly and escaped him in the darkness.

  She climbed the attic stairs and made ready for bed. In the cradle the baby lay sleeping. She threw open the window wide and felt the clean icy air rush in upon them. I’ll keep him where I can open the windows, she thought. He’s going to live up here with me.

  She lay there in the keen darkness, awake, the cold air coming and going, an energy in her blood against sleep.

  She was perfectly strong again. The baby was three weeks old. Dr. Crabbe said he wouldn’t come anymore—she didn’t need him.

  “You never needed me anyway, darn you,” he said affectionately, accusing her. “You’ve got health enough in you to heal any sickness.” Yes, she was strong—strong enough for anything, strong against anybody.

  Echoing at the edges of her thought was Fanny’s voice. Fanny might come any day. The heavy snows were melting. She must get word to Fanny. That little dark child belonged to her, too. She must do something, she must think what to do. But now she would know, she was so strong. Things came to her when she was strong like this.

  And next day she thought of how to get word to Fanny. She met Sam on the small back stairs and waited for him. The stair was too narrow for passing. As she waited for his clumping step, waited for his rough grinning face to pass her, she thought of it. There was a look on his face, a look she hated and would not see. He could not see any woman without that look. But she could use even that. “Sam,” she whispered, “will you do something for me?”

  “Sure,” he said. He clamped his hand heavily upon her shoulder and patted it. She did not flinch. “Do you see Fanny sometimes?”

  He dropped his hand and his grin widened. “Now you’re trying to find out something.”

  “No, no,” she said quickly. “I only want you to tell her something for me—tell her that I’m ready to do what I said.”

  “What did you say?”

  She fenced him off. “Now you are trying to find out something.”

  “Yes,” he parried. His hand was heavy on her shoulder again. “I got you.”

  “No more than I have you,” she said smoothly. “I would tell your father, you know.”

  His hand was dead on her shoulder. The grin was stricken from his face. “You wouldn’t!” he whispered.

  “No, of course not!” She laughed, sick within herself. “Of course I won’t say a word. You will tell her, won’t you, Sam?”

  “Sure, I’ll tell her,” he said. “I’ll tell her—I’ll tell her tonight maybe—”

  She went upstairs and took the baby from the cradle and rocked him against her, sick, sick. She must remember that little dark angelic face. What she did was for him—for them all.

  She looked at the baby. He was so fair, his eyes blue like her father’s. I’ll call him Paul, after Father, she thought. She had not known what to call him. Once she had asked Bart suddenly, “Do you like the name Roger, Bart?”

  “What for?” he had asked stupidly.

  “For the baby.”

  “I don’t know,” he had answered, pondering. “We had a sorrel horse named Roger. Pop sold him because he wouldn’t go in a team. He’d rear and pitch if he was put with another horse.”

  No, she thought, looking at the child’s broad pale forehead and wide blue eyes, Roger didn’t suit him. Roger meant someone else. Paul—she named him Paul.

  “Shall we call the baby Paul?” she said brightly at the supper table.

  They looked up at her out of the silence. Whenever she spoke they looked at her astonished, unable to comprehend at once what she said, since she did not speak of the things of which they were thinking—the field just sown, a horse to be shod, the pig’s litter. Then Sam spoke. “Paul—it’s all right, isn’t it? Pop will like it.”

  “It’s short and handy,” said Bart.

  “They can’t nickname it when he goes to school,” said Bart’s mother.

  The old man waited, his jaws full of dry bread. He swallowed hard and gulped the skim milk. “It’s a good Gospel name,” he said.

  “Then it will be Paul,” said Joan. She smiled. It would have been Paul anyway.

  She had often dreamed in the silence of this house of children’s voices, of the chatter and singing, of the shouting and laughter. The house would be full of lovely sound when a child was born. Even a child’s lusty crying would be good to hear.

  But Paul was so still. He never cried. Not unless he were hurt and in physical pain would he cry. She waited for the sounds of bubbling laughter, of cries and little angers. Frank, she remembered, searching her memory, had been always bubbling and cooing and roaring with laughter or crying. But Paul was still. She coaxed him with singing and prattle and smiles. But he stared back at her quietly, his face grave, his blue eyes wandering from her face. She held him in her arms and shook him in play and he bore it patiently. The most he ever gave her was one day when she touched his cheek with her finger and moved it about his chubby jaw, his lips. Then for an instant he smiled, as though she had touched some nerve or muscle. But when she cried out in delight, it was over. When she took her finger away, the smile was gone. It was like a ripple when a finger is trailed in water. She could not be sure it was a smile.

  She wrote to Rose. “Does David laugh and smile? Does he make sounds?” Rose replied, surprised, “You forget David is nearly a year old. He is trying to talk. He is very delicate and he has been ill so much, too.” She sent a small photograph of a grave little boy, held by a cheerful dark-faced Chinese woman. She studied the small shape. It was a delicate face, a thin body held very straight. The eyes looked out, intense, tragic, and the mouth was pursed into some rebellion. Her heart rushed to him. If I had him I’d build him up, she thought. He needs good food—he ought to get out of that climate. She went and picked Paul up from his crib. He was beautiful. She took pride in his size and health. His body was fat and solid, the dimpled hands chubby, his thighs broad and well-fleshed, his cheeks scarlet and his lips apple-red. But he was so lazy.

  “Lazy, lazy!” She laughed at him and nuzzled her face into the fragrant creases of his neck. “Sit up, lazybones! It’s time you were sitting up!”

  But when she took her hand away from his back he fell against her, softly, effortlessly, and leaned upon her. “You don’t try,” she scolded him. Then, sick with her love for him, she held him against her. Children were not all the same, she thought, cuddling him. Not all children could be the same. And he was so dear to hold, a lovely baby to hold, leaning in her arms, willing to be held.

  “David is so independent,” Rose wrote. “He is so difficult to keep in bed when he is ill. He is a very difficult child to control.”

  She kissed Paul’s soft whitish hair under her chin. Against her bosom he lay, his full pink cheek pressed against her breast. He did not cry even to be fed. It was as though he did not know her bosom lay there beneath his cheek. His lips never went seeking. He was like a pretty, plump doll. She held him to her firmly.

  “Not all children can be the same,” she said.

  And after a while after the winter was passed and spring came again, he began to hold his head up a little and to reach sometimes for the toys she made him—a red dog she sewed, a green rabbit. Perhaps if his toys were bright he would see them better. He would reach for them and hold them and soon they would drop from his hands and he would not miss them. She ran to pick them up for him, to play with them for him, to coax his hands to hold them.

  One windy April day she took him outdoors, and above the gusty wind she heard a steady roar. She looked up quickly to see the plane driving through the huge white clouds, flashing across the blue between. “Look, look,” she cried to Paul. She held him up, and wi
th her hand under his chin she forced his gaze upward. And if by any chance Roger Bair was there, so high above her, would he look down and see a woman holding a child up to him? But Paul’s eyes could not catch the swiftly moving shape.

  “Look, Mother’s boy! See, darling!” she cried. But his eyes slipped away quickly. She followed them. At what was Paul looking? He seemed not to look seeingly at anything, his gaze as silent as his voice.

  But the silence was not as it was before his coming. It was not empty silence, not lonely silence in the house. He was there, growing, eating, sleeping. He was there to be carried in her arms. She carried him in the spring to the woods and made him a bed upon soft old leaves and he lay in the warming sun while she found bloodroot and violets and she carried him into the orchard and saw him seraphic beneath the blossoms, his cheeks pink too, his hair a fluffed gold, his eyes blue. She must have him everywhere. When he was awake, she propped him in pillows near her while she worked. When he slept, she ran to see if he still breathed.

  Nothing else was real. Bart was surly with her these days. “I’m still nursing him, Bart,” she said steadily. “I’m not willing—not until I’ve finished nursing him anyway.” Bart glanced at her often from underneath his thick red brows. He tried to catch hold of her awkwardly when she happened to pass him. But she made her body tense and cold against him and he let her go. Once his mother said to her, a faded pink in her cheeks and red staining the folds of her neck, “If you take care, you don’t need to keep Bart waiting till the baby’s done nursing.” Joan was ironing one of Paul’s little dresses and at the words she turned her head quickly back to her work. Bart had complained of her.

  “I can tell you what you can do,” the voice came again from beside the stove—halting, thick with embarrassment. “I can tell you what my own mother told me. She said to me the day I married Abram—‘a man can always spit outside the pot’—that’s what she told me.”

  Joan went on steadily … Now run the iron along that tiny tuck, now along the fine edge of lace. She folded the little dress and for a moment lifted her eyes to the window and gazed into the maple trees. They were summer green, the fresh young leaves now fully grown. A little wind moved among them and stirred the clear green shadows and the branches showed for a moment, dark and smooth. She knew the branch shape of every tree. On winter mornings she had lifted her gaze to them, bare against a gray sky, or standing noble under snow, statues in the storm. She did not answer. She could not answer with this sickness in her. Let her think of lovely things, of the ferns in the rocks of the wall, of the lilies growing under the trees. But what she saw against the inner curtain of her brain was a man’s face, Roger Bair’s face, thin and finely drawn upon her brain. And she knew she could never go back to Bart now. She picked up the pile of dresses and climbed the back stairs to the attic and put them away in the round-topped trunk, the smell of their newly ironed freshness warm in her nostrils. She went over to the crib and looked down at the child. He was lying awake and he looked back at her. “Paul,” she whispered. “Paul.” All her lonely being rushed out and laid hold upon this child. “Speak to me,” she whispered, “your mother—”