The road gave a narrow white glimpse of the Big House at the end of the long avenue. Whenever she wanted to be by herself a while, in some quiet place so she could think, she went and sat on one of the old stone benches in the weed-grown flower garden; nobody would disturb her.
The great silent house looked grand and solemn, with its high gray roof and tall red chimneys. She had a timid feeling when she walked near it or sat alone in the garden, lest a ghost of somebody who once lived there, a servant or one of the fine white ladies, should call out to her and ask her what she wanted.
The plantation owners had lived there many a year, ruling the land and the tides in the rice-fields as firmly as they ruled the black people whom they bought and sold as freely as they did the mules which slept in the great open stables and ate out of long wooden troughs. Black people used to make up a part of the plantation’s wealth the same as the carriage and saddle horses with their well-rubbed, shining hides.
They were valued according to their strength and sense. The weak and stupid were sold. Only the best were kept. A good thing. Mary could see it now. The white people were gone. The forest had taken back many of their fields, the river had swallowed their rice-fields, but the black people were used to hardship and they lived on here and throve. Her mother had been born here and her grandmother and all the other women before them right on back to the first ones who were brought long ago up the river from the town where a slave market gave them and other black people to the rice and cotton-fields. She had got her health and strength and vigor from them.
The same old cabins housed them. The same old fields had taken their days. Sunshine and work, darkness and rest, that was all they had, and there would be nothing else in the world today if a body did not stop to pleasure a little now and then. Yet, work is good, and sunshine is good, even when its scorching heat burns backs and the soles of bare feet. It freshens weakness and brings back strength, and the field which takes time and labor gives back pay enough to make life pleasant.
A crooked old rose-tree had covered its knotted black limbs with red blossoms which were sweet with honey. Bees hummed eagerly over them, then settled on them, searching them, walking through them with bold brown legs, shattering them and scattering them on the ground. Bees don’t mind if they hurt rose-blossoms, for when those blossoms fell they’d go somewhere else to find honey.
Mary sighed. She loved the sunshine. Its warmth and brightness lulled her, soothed her, but the bees—they buzzed so. They might sting her. She’d go.
XXII
The last time Mary was turned out of the church, she swore she would never darken the door of Heaven’s Gate again, but now as the old building came in sight and a cloud of dust rose right in front of it, and a great booming and buzzing and puffing made the day quiver, curiosity filled her. An automobile was moving away from the church, swerving and rolling into the big road taking along with it a cloud of smoke. The birthing lesson was over; the teacher was going away. The midwives—Mary counted twelve of them—stood out in the churchyard watching. They all stood motionless until scarcely a sound was left, then they turned about and went back inside the church.
The cool morning wind fluttered their wide white aprons and their long full skirts, and tugged at the broad-brimmed hats they all wore perched uncertainly on top of their bandanna-covered heads. They moved slowly as if they were in a trance. No wonder. That new birthing law was enough to addle their brains.
Through the open church door, Mary could see them all chattering at once, bobbing their heads until their hats threatened to topple off into their laps. Only Maum Hannah sat still and silent with her old head bowed. She shook it slowly now and then as the others discussed something earnestly. They were arguing with her, that was plain, but she was holding out firm.
Mary was no midwife and she had no intention of ever being one, but the church is a public place and if the door is left wide open anybody has a right to walk in and sit down to rest. And if there is a new and easy way to birth children, surely nobody had a better right than she to find out how it was done, whether she practised it or not.
Twelve women were already in the church, she made thirteen. It was a risk to go in. Mary stepped silently inside the door, then halted a minute to let her heart slow down a little, for a delicious suspense which was almost like fear had it thumping hard in her breast. Her wind was short, her breathing hurried, and her blood running fast and hot. The midwives were so engrossed in their talk that nobody saw her as she walked slowly up the aisle, between the long rows of empty brown benches, to where they all sat huddled in a group near the pulpit. Doll was there too, and when her sharp eyes glanced around and saw Mary she cried out, “Fo Gawd’s sake, looka who’s come!” The talk hushed.
