The Mother: A Novel Read Free Page A

answered cheerfully, hearing nothing of the anger in his voice, and she rose and felt her way to her own corner where behind a blue cotton curtain her pallet was. But the man was already asleep.
    When she heard the sound of his breathing the mother rose, and the children followed, clinging to her coat. She rinsed the bowls with a little cold water from the jar that stood there by the kitchen door, and set them in a cranny of the earthen wall. Then she went behind the house, and in the dim light of the moon she lowered a wooden bucket into a shallow well and dipped it full and took it to the jar and filled it. Once more she went out and this time to untie the water buffalo that stood tethered to one of the willow trees which grew raggedly about the threshing-floor, and she fed it straw and a few black pease with the straw. When the beast had eaten she led it into the house and tied it to the post of the bed where the man slept. The fowls were already roosting beneath the bed, and they cackled drowsily at her coming and fell silent again.
    Once more she went out and called and a pig grunted out of the gathering darkness. She had fed it at noon and she did not feed it now, but pushing and prodding it gently she forced it into the house. Only the yellow dog she left for it must lie across the threshold.
    All the time the two children had followed her as best they could, although she moved as she would without stopping for them. Now they clung to her trousered legs, whimpering and crying. She stooped and lifted the younger one into her arms, and leading the older by the hand, she took them into the house and barred the door fast. Then she went to the bed and laid the children at the man’s feet. Softly she removed their outer garments and then her own, and creeping between the man and his children, she stretched herself out and drew the quilt over them all. There she lay stretched and still, her strong body full of healthy weariness. Lying like this in the darkness she was filled with tenderness. However impatient she might be in the day, however filled with little sudden angers, at night she was all tenderness—passionate tenderness to the man when he turned to her in need, tender to the children as they lay helpless in sleep, tender to the old woman if she coughed in the night and rising to fetch a little water for her, tender even to the beasts if they stirred and frightened each other with their own stirring, and she called out to them, “Be still,—sleep—day is a long way off yet—” and hearing her rough kind voice even they were quieted and slept again.
    Now in the darkness the boy nuzzled against her, fumbling at her breast. She let him suckle, lying in warm drowsiness. Her breast was dry, but it was soft and gave remembered comfort to the child. Soon it would be full again. Beyond the boy the girl lay, screwing her eyes tightly shut, rubbing at their incessant itching as she fell asleep. Even after she slept she tore at her eyes, not knowing what she did.
    But soon they all slept. Heavily and deeply they all slept, and if the dog barked in the night they all slept on except the mother, for to them these were the sounds of the night. Only the mother woke to listen and take heed and if she needed not to rise, she slept again, too.

II
    I S THERE ONE DAY different from another under heaven for a mother? In the morning the mother woke and rose before dawn, and while the others still slept she opened the door and let out the fowls and the pig and led the water buffalo into the dooryard, and she swept up what filth they had dropped in the night and put it upon the pile at a corner of the dooryard. While the others still lay she went into the kitchen and lit the fire and made water hot for the man and for the old woman to drink when they woke, and some she poured into a wooden basin to cool a little, so that she might wash the girl’s eyes.
    Every morning the girl’s eyes were sealed fast shut and she could not see at