Weeds (Kelley)/Chapter 21
In September the thing she had begun to dread happened. She found herself with child. To her bodily misery and disgust were added a misery and disgust more deeply seated, more hateful and appalling. How could she bear to bring this child into the world? How could she keep her mouth shut and allow Jerry to accept it as his? The whole thing was too horrible and monstrous to think about. And yet she must think about it. She must find some way to keep it from happening.
She was informed now about many things of which she had been ignorant when her first child was born. She had listened to the whispered confidences of other women and from their dark hints had learned that unwilling mothers had sometimes succeeded in doing what she now felt that she must do. Hitherto a powerful physical revulsion had prevented her from trying to interfere with nature in its course. Pain had always terrorized and maddened her; and from the idea of self-inflicted pain she shrank like a child. From the thought of such an instrument as a knitting needle her flesh writhed away as if the needle were heated white for torture.
Now, however, in the extremity of her need, she forced herself to think calmly of a knitting needle. She found one half buried in a crack of the cupboard drawer, hidden away under a frowsy accumulation of tangled scraps of twine, half empty spools, rusted fishhooks, odd washers, screws and nails, and crumpled grocery bills. Having pried it out with a hairpin, she laid it away in a safe place to be ready against the time when she could summon courage to try to use it.
There was another method, for her much less repugnant, which she decided to try first. She waited and watched for an opportunity.
One day Elmer, who had come over to give Jerry a hand with the tobacco cutting, left Pete, the chestnut mule, tied in the shed. Pete was no mere plow mule. He had fire and spirit. The men had taken their lunches with them to the field and would not be back before night. After she had washed up the breakfast dishes and swept the kitchen, she put clean things on the children and took them over to Aunt Selina's.
"I gotta go to mill," she explained, "an' git a sack o' corn graound up. I didn't know we was so near out o' meal till I come to mix up the cakes this mornin'."
When she got home again she saddled and bridled Pete and, stepping with some diffidence into the saddle, turned the mule's head toward the road.
It was years since she had ridden horseback; and for the first few moments she felt awkward and perilously poised. Then the familiar undulation of the animal's flanks under her and the old feel of the lines in her hands restored her confidence; and all at once, as if a good fairy had breathed new life into her, she felt her spirits rise and began to realize the September morning, clear, blue, and sparkling, the caress of wind and sun, the exhilaration of change and motion.
Out on the pike she urged Pete into a gallop and passed Aunt Eppie's house riding like the Wild Huntsman, her old red cotton sweater flying out behind.
Cissy, hearing the beat of the mule's hoofs, ran excitedly to the kitchen window.
"Well, if there hain't Judy Pippinger a-gallopin' past like mad on her dad's mule, her hair a-blowin' out jes like she used to ride when she was a little gal. What's fetched her away from home, I wonder?"
All along the road she drew similar comments from the neighbors who were fortunate enough to live on the pike. The conclusion generally arrived at was that only urgent need of the doctor could satisfactorily explain her appearance. Otherwise it was an unheard of and hence unseemly thing for a married woman the mother of three children to be seen out alone on horseback and going at breakneck speed. But then, after all the things that had been whispered about her, anything might be expected of Judy Pippinger.
Unmindful of the prying looks cast after her from stuffy kitchens, Judith galloped on, feeling as light as a puff of thistledown blown through the September morning.
When the first wild exhilaration of the ride had spent itself and she became aware that Pete was sweating and breathing hard, she pulled the mule down to an easy trot and turned him from the pike onto a grass grown wagon track that wound in and out at the foot of gently sloping hills.
It was such a peaceful, meandering, sleepy, sun-steeped wagon track that before she knew it she had let the lines drop along the mule's neck, and she and Pete were lazing along in the sunshine like two natural born loafers as though there never had been and never would be a furrow to plow or a floor to scrub. Since the day when she had fled from Jerry's tub of hog guts, she had never been away from the house in the morning. Yet now the hundreds of dreary mornings spent in the stuffy clutter of the kitchen fell away into unreality like a dream and she was a girl again, free to come and go as she liked, happy and careless.
The grass grown wagon track, bordered by golden rod and sprays of little purple asters, dozed so sweetly and calmly in the sun that it seemed removed by the width of the world from human filth and fret. Soon, however, it wound around a curve where there was a gap between the hills and she could look out over acres of alfalfa, fields of corn and tobacco and the shanties and pigsties of those who tilled them. In the middle distance she saw three men cutting tobacco, going along the rows with the precision of machines. How small they looked to her eyes.
In another field she saw men cutting corn and stacking it in shocks. In the spaces where they had cut the scattered pumpkins appeared bright and golden. The whole made a pretty picture to look at. But she knew that now in the noonday heat the men's arms and backs were aching and the sweat pouring from their faces as they worked.
Over a bluegrass pasture cattle and sheep browsed. They were at ease and at peace among themselves. Three young colts raced up and down in an alfalfa field, brimming with health and the joy of life.
In the dooryard of a shanty not far away a frowsy woman was chopping wood. In another dooryard another woman was frantically chasing a pig that had broken out of its pen. Her long slatternly skirt tried to trip her as she ran. She heard the wail of a baby and the harsh scream of an older child, followed by the still harsher-toned reprimand of the harassed mother. A skinny-armed girl, little more than a child, with a long flaxen pigtail down her back, was rubbing out clothes at a washtub by the door.
Seated easily on the mule's back and commanding with her eyes the wide stretch of country, she indulged for a moment in the dark fancy that she was God looking out upon these poor children that he had made in his own image and condemned to a life of toilsome grubbing in the dirt that ended only with the grave. Then a flood of the old nausea swept over her and with it a terror and she faced the abysmal truth that she was not God, but only one of these pitiful, groveling creatures, doomed to the same existence and the same end.
She turned the mule's head and rode toward home slowly and dejectedly. From time to time, mindful of the purpose for which she had come, she tried to urge him into a gallop, to make him take a fence or a ditch. But Pete was tired and his rider's hand had grown listless. She felt herself overcome by a great weariness of all things.
By the time she reached home in the late afternoon, the whole neighborhood knew that she had been out and just how long she had been out. And having satisfied themselves that there was no sickness in the family, the women drew their own conclusions.
When she had given up hope that the ride was going to have any effect, she forced herself to try to use the knitting needle. But she was shrinking and clumsy, and at the first stab of pain she flung the instrument violently to the other end of the room. Afterward she dropped it through a wide crack in the kitchen floor so that she would not be able to find it again.
She searched out pennyroyal and tansy and other noxious herbs in the places where she knew they grew, and took to brewing nasty smelling decoctions over the stove and sipping gingerly at the brackish liquor she poured off from them. But all that these evil brews did was to increase her sickness and lassitude. Drearily she shambled about the kitchen through the dragging days and felt too sick and weary for despair.
One night in late October she woke from her first sleep with a mind preternaturally wide awake. Free for the moment from the nausea and dragging weariness of the day, she was left bare to the attacks of the things that prey upon the mind. It was raining in a fine, slow, steady downpour, and she lay listening to the patter of the drops on the roof, looking blankly at the dimly outlined oblong that was the window. At such times the numberless trivialities that clutter the day are sunk into insignificance, leaving the path to the grave straight and plain.
What real difference did it make after all whether the baby was born and lived to be a hundred or died in the womb?
Nevertheless, the moment after she had asked herself this question, she got out of bed and moving cautiously so as not to waken Jerry gathered together her clothes in the darkness and slipped with them into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. She dressed hastily and without putting on shoes or stockings, jacket or sunbonnet, stepped out into the rainy night.
She shivered and hesitated as the first cold drops fell on her shoulders through her thin cotton dress. But the next moment she plunged out boldly straight across the swimming mud and filth of the cowlot. The moon, far in its third quarter, gave only a feeble glimmer of light from behind the clouds, but it was enough to guide her to the horsepond, which was deep and full from recent heavy rains. There was no slackening of her steps as she came near the tawny pool, but rather an increase of speed; and when she reached the edge she flung herself instantly into the water and disappeared as inconsequentially as if she had been a stone or a clod of dung.
She came up swimming. She had forgotten that she knew how to swim. She had not been in the water since she was twelve years old. Yet now she swam, vigorously and toward the bank. Even above humiliation and despair there rose in her a sense of power and triumph as she realized that she was master of the water.
Her long arms rising alternately above the muddy smoothness brought her in a few strokes close to the bank. When she was within a few feet of it she remembered suddenly that she had not come to the horsepond to take a swim. She relaxed her body and tried hard to sink. The next moment her feet touched the slimy ooze of the bottom and she saw that the water was not above her shoulders. Standing there breast high in the muddy water with the ooze welling up between her toes, she caught herself thinking that she was glad she had not put on her shoes, which were nearly new. Suddenly she began to laugh, wildly, hysterically into the rainy night.
As she waded to the bank, still laughing insanely, she cut her foot on some sharp object that lay at the bottom of the pond, a piece of old stovepipe perhaps or a broken bottle. She gave a sharp scream of pain, then laughed again.
But when she had climbed up the slippery incline of mud and crouched on the wet ground in the rain there was no hysteria left. Slow tears of misery and despair welled into her eyes.
She thought of trying once more. But what would be the use, she told herself dejectedly. She would only wade out again.
She began to shake with cold. Shiver after shiver passed through her and her teeth chattered. All at once she felt as if she had never been so cold in all her life. Still she crouched shuddering on the soggy ground and hugged herself in a vain attempt to get warm.
At last she got up and plodded slowly back to the house that she had thought never to see again. There she squeezed the water out of her hair and rubbed herself dry, piled her clothes in a dripping heap on the porch and turned the washtub over them and crept miserably into bed. Jerry stirred in his sleep, turned over and wound one arm around her, as his habit was. From the comfort of his warm body and circling arm peace came to her and she fell asleep.
The next morning the Slatten boys butchered a hog. Aunt Maggie Slatten, coming over in the late afternoon to borrow the Blackford sausage grinder, found Judith writhing and screaming on the bed. The two boys were standing solemnly by the bedside looking at their mother with scared eyes. The baby, not aware that anything was wrong, crept about the floor. She had been dabbling deliciously in the slop pail and her face and hands were smeared with its contents. The unwashed dinner dishes were still on the table, the floor was scattered with many things; and some washing that had been brought in from the line was piled in a heap in the rocking chair.
Aunt Maggie's experienced eye took in the situation at a glance. She sent Billy back to her place with the sausage grinder. Then she set about doing the things she knew to be necessary. She made up a fire and heated water. She put hot flatirons to Judith's feet and hot stovelids to her back. She rummaged around among the drawers and cupboards for sheets and old cloths, and did not neglect her opportunity to peer curiously and critically into all the household arrangements. When Jerry came home she sent him out to chop up more wood so that the fire could keep going all night. And when at last the struggle was over and Judith lay white and semi-conscious, she fixed her up as clean as she could, swept and straightened the house, plunged quantities of blood-soaked clothes into a tub of water on the porch and helped Jerry to get together something for them to eat. Jerry wanted to sit up; but she waved him aside, bent upon doing her whole duty. When the others were in bed she made herself comfortable in the old rocking chair and dozed till morning.
Not a word did she utter to the sick woman of inquiry or reproach. But the next day, talking privately with Aunt Sally Whitmarsh by the kitchen stove, with the door into the bedroom closed, her tongue was loosened and she billowed with self-righteousness and the joy of scandal.
"You'd never bring yerse'f to believe it, Sally, the state I found things in," she said in low but impressive tones. "O' course I fell right to an' done everything I could. Judy Pippinger hain't never acted none too neighborly to me; but jes the same I aim to do allus like I'd be done by, an' Jerry says he'll haul the boys' terbaccer fer what I done fer Judy. It pays to treat yer neighbor right, Sally.
"I sez to her, sez I, 'A sow when she's a-fixin' to farrow finds herse'f a bed. Anybody'd think you'd make out to be clean as a hawg, anyway.'
"She looks up at me with them big black eyes o' hern.
"'Haow did I know this was a-comin' on me?' she whines fretful like. 'It come on all of a suddent when I was a-fixin' to gether up the dishes.'
"'Mebbe it did,' I sez, 'an' mebbe it didn't. But I got a notion you bin kinder lookin' fer it right along.' An' I looks right at her, cool, an' meaningful. She never said a word to that, but turned her face araound to the wall."
"Well, Judy was allus a wild young un an' a wild gal," said Aunt Sally, glancing cautiously at the bedroom door, "but I didn't hardly think she'd ever come to sech a pass as this." Then, lowering her voice to a scandalized whisper: "The talk that went araound about her an' the preacher in the summer was a disgrace. He wa'n't helpin' her pick blackberries fer nothin'."
"Yaas, an' this here's what's come of it, if I hain't much mistaken," said Aunt Maggie, setting her thin lips together with grim satisfaction.
"An' 'tain't as if Judy'd ever had anything to complain about," continued Aunt Sally, smoothing the piece of patchwork over her knee. "She's got three nice chillun an' the best man that ever worked his hands to the bone fer a woman."
"You've spoke the truth there, Sally. There hain't a steadier man than Jerry Blackford this side o' Georgetown. He don't drink, he don't hunt an' he don't idle his time away. He's done everything a man kin do fer that woman. An' that's the thanks he gits fer it. Trouble with Judy, she dunno what she does want."
"I reckon not. If she had to put up with the things some wimmin has, she might have sumpin to complain about."
"Yaas, if he spent every cent on whiskey an' come home drunk an' blacked her eyes, like Teenie Pooler's man."
"Or run after every petticoat he saw, like Lambert Patton."
"Or went flighty, like Melvin Brewer, so's you couldn't know what he might be a-goin' to do with the butcher knife."
Aunt Maggie could have bitten off her tongue before the last speech was out of her mouth. It slipped out before she remembered to whom she was talking. She had not meant to encroach upon the sanctity of her listener's family skeleton.
Aunt Sally Whitmarsh's placid features did not alter in the least. But Aunt Maggie knew by a subtle change of atmosphere that her breach of the rules of conversation had not slipped by unnoticed.
"It's purty weather naow; but it'll likely rain agin to-night," said Aunt Sally, looking out of the window.
Later in the afternoon, Jabez Moorhouse pushed open the kitchen door. Nobody was there but the baby taking a nap in her crib. After a moment the door into the bedroom opened and Aunt Sally stood holding the knob in her hand.
"Howdy, Aunt Sally. I bin over to Gibbses' place grindin' up some tools, an' they told me Judy was took sick. Could I step in an' see her a minute?"
Aunt Sally hesitated and looked at him coldly. It was not the custom in Scott County for men who were no relation to be admitted to the bedsides of sick women.
"He'd better be off about his work, the idle loafer," she said to herself. But aloud she said, "She's a-feelin' pretty poorly," and held the door gingerly open for him to pass through.
He had come into the house from the midst of a blue October afternoon, still, sweet, and sunny, and with just enough freshness of chill in the air to make one take deep breaths and step lightly along and whistle the end of a tune. He passed into a room where the air was chokingly hot and heavy with the smell of sickness and of many breaths. The one small window was tightly closed; and the green paper blind, full of white creases and pinholes, was drawn three quarters down.
Aunt Abigail sat knitting on one side of the bed. On the other side Aunt Maggie Slatten dozed ponderously in the rocking chair. She wakened as Jabez came into the room and sat bolt upright looking at him with eyes full of hostility.
Aunt Sally, after dropping some more pieces of wood into the little sheet iron stove, came and resumed her seat on Aunt Abigail's side of the bed. She was nearest to the window and she had in her lap a bit of patchwork that she was piecing together.
In the middle of the big bed, Judith's face was very white in its frame of black hair. Her thin body hardly raised the patchwork quilt. Heavy and somber the tall walnut headboard rose behind her. In her wasted youth she looked more ready for the grave than any of the old duennas about her. As Jabez looked he had a vision of her as he had seen her how few years before in the walnut bed, fresh, gay, and rosy after the birth of her first child.
She opened her eyes as he came toward her and greeted him with a shadow of the old flashing smile.
The three old women glanced at each other with meaningful looks. After all they had done for her, she had not smiled once for them.
"Waal, Judy," was all he could say, as he stood awkwardly by the bed, his cap in his hands. The darkness oppressed him, the stinking heat of the room made his eyeballs ache. He felt the three pairs of vixenish old eyes fastened upon him with dark suspicion and cold hostility.
"Waal, Judy, I hope you'll git well right quick," he said after an awkward pause and turned and went out of the house. As he passed over the ridge and down on the other side, he neither whistled nor sang, and the weight of his great shoulders seemed to be dragging them to the earth.