It seemed that winter as if the spring would never come, as if there
would never be an end to the arid routine of corn meal mush and coffee
for breakfast, corn meal cakes and coffee for dinner, and coffee and
corn meal cakes for supper. March dragged its weary length into what
seemed more like a year than a month. February had been full of mild,
springlike days, days of strengthening sun and greening grass that had
cheered the hungry tenant farmers into hopes of an early spring. But
March closed down grim and inexorable. Bitter winds blew all day under
a cold, gray sky, a dead, frozen sky, all one blank, even tone of pale
gray, dreary and disheartening. They dried up the tender grass that had
been springing in sheltered places. They whirled the fine dust of dried
clay about the barns and houses. They pierced like knife blades through
worn-out underwear and sleazy cotton dresses and threadbare jackets and
made the doing of barnyard chores a shrinking misery.
There were not many chores. Judith had only her cow to milk and care
for and her hens to feed. Often, however, she had wood to chop; for
Jerry was busy now with the spring plowing and was not so attentive to
the woodpile as he had been during their first year together. When she
had finished these chores, she fled back into the house as a woodchuck
scuttled to the protection of his hole. The bitter, dust-laden wind
seemed to suck the moisture from her skin and from her very bones. She
felt as bleak, dry, desolate, and soulless as the landscape. Looking
out of the little window at the bare garden patch where she had planted
a few onion sets and some seed of lettuce and radishes, and which as
yet showed no hint of green, she felt dismal, hungry, and hopeless.
During these last weeks of the winter, she grew daily paler and more
listless. It was time for the baby to be born, and she was heavy with
a great lethargy, as if the life within her, in its determination
to persist, were slowly and steadily draining her, leaving her body
nothing but a shell, a limp, nerveless, irritable, collapsing shell.
She understood now why snakes and woodchucks crawled into their holes
in winter. She wished she had a hole to crawl into, a hole where there
were no meals to cook, no fire to keep going, no fretful child to
pacify--a nice, dark, quiet hole where nobody ever came and where she
could curl up and be at peace.
Little Billy was a strong, stirring, loud-voiced, and self-willed
child. Often when his clamorous demands became too much for her nerves,
she would slap him savagely and force him to blubber into silence,
gasping and choking and catching spasmodically at the heaving surges
of breath that rose in him like tidal waves. He learned to be afraid
of her in these moods and would sidle away and hide under the bed or
behind the stove till the storm had passed, peering out at her with
scared, watchful eyes, as a puppy watches the foot that has just kicked
him. In such moments she hated them both, the born and the unborn,
two little greedy vampires working on her incessantly, the one from
without, the other from within, never giving her a moment's peace, bent
upon drinking her last drop of blood, tearing out her last shrieking
nerve.
Sometimes she would give way to one of these fits of irritation when
Jerry was in the house; and he would rush to intervene and save the
child.
"Why do you act so mean to the young un, Judy?" he would demand, his
voice harsh with anger.
"Mebbe you'd act mean too if you was shet up with him all day long,
like you was in a jail."
Her mouth set into hard lines, and her level brows contracted darkly.
When she said such things he always looked at her in a puzzled, hurt,
and somewhat impatient way.
She no longer looked forward to Jerry's homecoming at night. When he
came in from the day's plowing, tired but still ruddy and vigorous in
spite of his diet of corn meal, she felt more dragged out and irritable
than ever. Out of her own weakness and nervelessness she grew to hate
his ability to relax, his aura of excess vitality, that strong, male
vitality of which she was becoming the victim. After a day at the plow
he could still whistle and sing, fling the baby to the ceiling or ride
him on his back about the kitchen. His thoughtless, boyish good humor
made her feel hard, bitter, and morose.
While he took his ease in the evenings, she went about the kitchen
silently, fried the corn cakes, and made the coffee, washed the grime
from the baby's hands and face, and fed his milk and corn cake. After
they had eaten, she would wash the dishes and undress the baby and put
him to bed. Then she would come back and sit by the little lamp darning
socks or mending rompers or putting great, coarse patches on the knees
of overalls.
Sometimes Jerry, looking at her under the light of the lamp and noting
the tense, drawn look on her pale features, would fume within himself
with impotent rage. He blamed it all on the lack of proper food. Things
were in a hell of a mess, he told himself, when a man could work from
sun-up to sundown and not be able to give his wife even the food she
needed. He felt himself burning with a fierce anger against the order
of things which prevented him from giving her anything she could ask
for. He wanted to be the source of all good things for her and for her
children; and here he was scarcely able to keep the breath in her body.
It never for a moment occurred to him that she could ever want anything
which he could not supply if he were only given a decent chance. Yes,
he was placed in a nice hell of a hole, he told himself. But of course
this was one year in a hundred. His corklike optimism reasserted
itself. Everything would be all right as soon as the new crop came on.
In bed he would put his arm over her protectingly.
"Things'll be a heap better, Judy, soon's garden truck begins to grow."
And she would sigh lightly, glad of the comfort of the bed and his
warm, muscular arm, and fall into a deep, exhausted sleep.
It was on one of these bleak, windswept March days that the second baby
was born, a surprisingly fat and healthy little boy, whom they named
Andrew after Jerry's father. His health and vigor, however, had been
obtained at the expense of his mother. For days after his birth she lay
half unconscious, scarcely moving a finger, hardly lifting an eyelash.
"The girl must have nourishment," said Dr. MacTaggert. "Milk."
So Jerry scurried around and found where he could get a half gallon of
milk a day without immediate payment; and at once she began to revive.
He slaughtered one of the precious hens; Luella, who had come to take
charge, made chicken broth which Judith sipped while the rest of the
family gorged ravenously on the meat. The neighbors came bringing out
of their great scarcity little delicacies for which in many cases their
own mouths were watering: a pot of peach jam or a little jar of apple
butter or a few new laid eggs. Aunt Selina brought a block of honey in
the comb; and Jabez came carrying the first young onions and the first
tender leaves of lettuce which he had grown under a window sash in a
sheltered spot against his kitchen wall. To Judith, now rapidly growing
stronger, these bits of green tasted better than anything else. Such
succulence and flavor in the young onions! She had known every spring
what it was to be hungry for green things; but young onions had never
tasted so delicious before.
After the first half conscious days of exhaustion, she began to enjoy
her convalescence. The strained tension of the long winter months
was gone and already almost forgotten, and it was good to stretch
luxuriously in bed and give way to the weakness which ignores all cares
and responsibilities. Aunt Mary had taken little Billy over to stay
with her. Luella was full of quiet competence. The new baby slept most
of the time, and the house was still and orderly. Sunk in the utter
relaxation that follows upon childbirth, she felt at first that there
could be nothing more delicious than to lie motionless on her back and
look lazily through the window at the slope of hillside, listen to
the song of the returning birds, the cheerful cackle of the hens, the
barking of the dog, and the subdued sounds made by Luella as she moved
about quietly and adequately in the kitchen.
Soon, however, she grew restless with returning vitality and was glad
to sit propped up with pillows and mend little Billy's clothes or sew
on a dress for the new baby.
Sometimes she would ask Luella to bring her a pencil and a piece of
paper; and using a pine shingle for a drawing board, she would amuse
herself by sketching faces, some human, some animal, some half and
half, as she had used to do when she was a little girl at school.
Luella, looking over her shoulder, was scandalized.
"_Why_ do you draw sech ugly things, Judy? It's a shame, when you kin
draw so good, you don't draw sumpin purty an' nice. I wisht you'd draw
me a nice pitcher in colors fer to hang on my wall."
"All right. There's some in the cupboard drawer, that Jerry bought for
Billy to mark with."
Luella brought more paper and a handful of colored crayons; and Judith,
not much interested, but rather curious to see how it would turn out,
drew a picture in colors: A little house, a bit of rail fence, an apple
tree in blossom, a hill rising steeply behind. Then she took another
sheet and drew a large bunch of pink roses. Luella was delighted with
the pictures, especially the roses.
"My, haow kin you draw 'em so good, Judy! Naow that's what I call nice
work. I'm a-goin' to put frames on 'em an' hang 'em in my room."
Luella carried away the pictures in triumph, and Judith went on drawing
her heads.
In a few weeks there was an abundance of garden "sass." The season
was as bountiful as the year before it had been stingy. It rained and
the sun shone hotly and the seeds in Scott County's fertile clay soil
stirred, reached up their heads to their God, like millions of little
sunworshipers and covered the earth with green.
Weeds grew too, tender and succulent from abundant moisture and rapid
growth. They were easy to get rid of if they were attacked in time. One
stroke of the hoe killed hundreds of them. Lying on the moist, steaming
earth in the fierce heat of the sun, they shriveled and dried up in a
few hours. But if they were allowed to live, they grew with incredible
rapidity into great, tough giants and overtopped the vegetables in no
time.
Judith spent all the time that she could spare from the babies and the
house working in her garden, chopping out the weeds while they were
still young and tender, hilling up the potatoes, hoeing the rows of
lusty beets and beans and turnips, training the pole beans to climb on
their poles and tying up the tomato vines to stakes. She liked this
work. She liked the feel of the hot sun on her back and shoulders, the
smell of the damp, warm earth. Some magic healing qualities in sun
and earth seemed to give her back health, vigor, and poise. When she
had hoed in the garden for an hour or two, she felt tired from her
exertions, for her strength had only partly returned after the birth of
the baby. Yet, in spite of the ache in her muscles, she was refreshed
and in a way invigorated, more able to cope with the washtub and the
churn, with the baby when he cried and refused to be pacified and with
little Billy when he danced up and down and choked and grew purple in
the face with rage.
It was a hard spring and summer for Jerry. He had put in five acres of
tobacco; and this year there was no help to be had from Judith. Even if
she could have left the children, she was much too weak for field work.
So Jerry had to tackle it alone. Five acres of tobacco and ten acres
of corn--a good full summer's work for three men, four if they worked
union hours. But Jerry did not work union hours. He was determined
that this year he was going to provide for his wife and family. The
alarm clock was set every morning except Sunday for half past three. By
half past four, he and the horses were jingling out of the barnyard.
At eleven he came home for dinner; and noon saw him starting away
again. That was the hardest wrench of all, to get up after eating and
drag his swollen feet and aching muscles out into the hot noonday sun,
before him the long broiling afternoon of endless plodding after the
plow. It was not so bad after he had been working for an hour or so;
he got his second wind and went along tolerably enough. Five o'clock
came--quitting time for those who work for others; but it was only a
little past the middle of Jerry's afternoon. Six o'clock, and the sun
was still quite high in the sky. It was only when the sun dropped below
the horizon that he clicked cheerfully to the horses and turned their
heads toward home.
It was hard, too, on the horses. They grew gaunt and stringy-necked,
their coats bleached by the sun into a dead, lusterless drab. Better,
however, that they were thin; for then there was small danger of their
dropping dead of the heat, as a fat horse might do. Jerry was a little
sorry that he had not bought mules. They stood the strain of heat and
hard work better than horses.
In the evening, after he had eaten supper, he rolled into bed in the
same shirt that he had worn all day, or if it was very hot in no shirt
at all. He was dirty, sweaty, unshaven. Tired in every muscle he fell
asleep instantly. Judith had nothing to fear from his excess vitality.
She, too, slept the sleep of exhaustion.
The weeds grew with such lustiness and vigor that Jerry had to
cultivate his corn and tobacco again and again to keep the plants from
being smothered. As soon as one generation was laid low another came
to take its place. The earth teemed with the seed of this useless but
vigorous and persistent life. By early July, however, Jerry saw the
reward of his toil. By then the tobacco had spread its broad leaves
and shaded the ground, and the corn had shot up thick and tall and
dark green. When it had reached this stage, his crop needed no more
cultivation. The weeds might continue to germinate all they liked; they
could not grow if they did not see the sun. He took an occasional day
off now and an extra hour or so at noon to loaf and play with Billy.
If a neighbor happened by, he was willing to stop and chat with him.
His vigor and good spirits began to return.
"Bejasus, I've got a good crop this year, Judy," he said, his face
beaming with honest, simple satisfaction. "The corn's made. Nothin'
can't hurt it. It's same as if it was in the crib. Of course a dozen
things cud happen to that there terbaccer yet; but not likely.
Everybody says terbaccer's a-goin' high this year. If I kin steer her
safe to market, she'll bring us a neat little penny."
On Sundays they usually hooked up and went visiting. Often they went to
Lizzie May's for the sake of Billy, who liked to have other children
to play with. Jerry and Dan, too, were good friends and enjoyed an all
day chat. Lizzie May had two children now: Granville, a year or so
older than Billy, a stodgy, round-faced chunk of a child, and Viola,
a little girl with yellow curls, her mother in miniature. Motherhood
had improved Lizzie May. She had taken on flesh and seemed to have
discovered some source of strength and vitality inaccessible to Judith.
She beamed with maternal pride and satisfaction on her children. She
kept their clothes and her own dresses and aprons washed and starched
and fastidiously ironed; and she was always busy scrubbing, dusting,
polishing, never tiring apparently of the endless cleaning of things
just to have them get dirty again, a species of well doing of which
Judith constantly experienced weariness. Her stove was always polished,
her kettle shining, her floor scrubbed, her children clean and decent
and neatly patched.
In addition to all this, Lizzie May had a "front room," an apartment
rarely found in the houses of tenant farmers. It had a bright rag
carpet on the floor made of rags all sewn by Lizzie May's own hands.
Braided rag rugs were laid over the carpet in places where the wear
might come if the room were ever used. There were lace curtains at the
window, a bed with a white spread and pillow shams embroidered in red,
a little what-not in a corner loaded with knick-knacks, two crayon
enlargements on the wall, and a framed motto over the door. In this
room the blinds were always drawn and sunlight entered only through
chinks. It smelled of new rag carpet and freshly starched pillow shams
and a slight mustiness, sweetish, and not altogether unpleasant. It had
an air of cool, clean, quiet sanctity. After the children it was Lizzie
May's greatest pride.
Judith often wondered why it was that Lizzie May got on so much better
than herself. It was not hard to see why she was a better housekeeper.
She had always liked housework and taken an interest in it. Besides,
she did nothing else, never even venturing as far as the barnyard. Dan
did all the outside chores and when he needed help in the field he
called on one of his younger brothers.
But she was a better wife, too, for just what reason Judith did not
know, though she was beginning to have vague thoughts on the subject.
There appeared to be between her and Dan a settled, comfortable
intimacy based on as perfect an understanding as can exist between a
man and a woman. She bullied and nagged him a good deal about various
things: his habits of drinking and fox hunting, his muddy shoes, his
carelessness of her company table cloth. But she did not mean a great
deal by the scoldings and he took them complacently. He on his side,
though decidedly selfish in personal matters like most husbands, adored
his family and considered his wife the sum of all perfections. Judith
was quite sure that Jerry no longer regarded herself as perfect. What
was worse, she felt her feelings gradually numbing into a growing
indifference toward him. She saw quite clearly that Lizzie May and Dan
got on much better than she and Jerry.
As a mother, too, Lizzie May was better than she. She hardly ever
slapped her children or fell into a rage with them. They did not seem
to annoy her. Why was this, Judith asked herself uneasily. She thought
she loved her children quite as much as Lizzie May loved hers. Perhaps
she did; but then quite possibly she did not. What was the matter with
herself that she should be a failure? She began to brood and look into
herself.
There was not the least doubt that she was a failure. It did not need
comparison with Lizzie May to convince her of this. When she thought
about it, as she did increasingly long and often, she faced the fact
quite calmly and almost coldly, as she was in the habit of facing
facts. She had always disliked housework. Now she loathed it as the
galley slave loathes the oar. She let things slide as much as she
could. The floor remained unscrubbed and the stove unpolished. Fluff
collected in feathery rolls under the beds, and layer after layer of
greasy smut formed on the outsides of the pots and pans. In the dark
corners of the cupboard mice made nests of torn up bits of paper and
rag and left little mounds of corn hulls and little black oblongs to
show where they had feasted. When she opened the cupboard door, a stale
and pungent smell testified to their presence. Dust collected on the
shelves, cobwebs in the corners, and bedbugs in the beds.
Once in a while when the house got too distressingly dirty, she would
have a grand clean up. She would spend two or three febrile days going
into everything, cleaning the cupboards, sweeping down the walls,
taking the beds apart, and soaking them with kerosene, washing the
windows, polishing the stove. At such times her eyes sparkled and her
cheeks glowed with excitement. When it was all done she would sink
back, tired but happy, and register a determination to keep things
looked after in future so that such a thorough going over would never
again be necessary.
It seemed to her that she was an even greater failure with the
children. She cared more for them than for anything else in her life,
she felt quite sure of that. She was consumed with anxiety lest they
should fall sick. In summer she cooled and strained the milk with the
greatest care, fearful of dysentery; and in winter she was anxiously
mindful of draughts and chills, worried as to whether the babies were
warmly enough dressed and constantly on the watch for the first signs
of the much dreaded colds so common in all the leaky, draughty shanties
during the winter season.
Nevertheless, in spite of her anxiety about the health and comfort of
the children, she felt more and more that she begrudged them something.
She did not serve them wholeheartedly, devotedly, joyfully, like Lizzie
May. She wearied of the constant putting on and pulling off of little
garments. More and more she chafed against the never relaxing strain
of being always in bondage to them, always a victim of their infantile
caprices, always at their beck and call seven days a week through weeks
that were always the same.
They were so imperious, so rigorously demanding in the supreme
confidence of their complete power over her. They were so clinchingly
sure of their ascendancy. They gripped her with hooks stronger than the
finest steel. If only she could have been a willing victim, like Lizzie
May. But she could not. She strained away, and the hooks bit into her
shuddering flesh, unalterably firm, enduring, and invincible. She knew
that they would never let her go.
She found herself longing ardently for a single day, even a single hour
when she could be by herself, quite alone and free to do as she chose.
At first when this wish formed itself in her mind the nostalgia of
the fields and roads took possession of her. She imagined herself
taking a long, carefree ride on horseback or following a turkey hen
over the hills and hollows; and having found the hidden nest, coming
back leisurely, aimlessly, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine and the
touch of the wind on her face, feeling herself, as she had used to do,
a part of the out of doors, untroubled by thoughts and happy that she
was alive. Later on, in the winter, when the strain of her captivity
dragged more and more wearyingly on exhausted nerves, she forgot the
old nostalgia, forgot even to look out of the window, and longed for
only one thing: quiet and peace--peace and deep, long sleep.