Morning Glory (27 page)

You now need the advice of your parents more than ever before,
the essay advised,
for the young man will be attracted by you and you will be attracted by him. This is natural. If you make a mistake it may wreck your whole life. Take your mother into your confidence. There are some rules that are safe to follow in this matter. Never have anything to do with a young man who is “sowing his wild oats,” or who has sown them.

Will absently rubbed his lip and peeked at Eleanor, but she was busy with the nutcracker.

Never marry a man to reform him. Leave those who need reforming severely alone. There are men who do not drink and yet who are more dangerous to you than drunkards. A man who sows his wild oats or is morally lax may be afflicted with diseases that can be given to an innocent and pure wife and thus entail upon her life-long suffering. Marriage is a lottery. You may draw a prize, or your life may be made miserable. Tell your parents if you are attracted toward a young man so that they may find out if he is a man of good character and pure in heart and life. It is so much better to remain single than to make an unfortunate marriage.

He wondered how many ignorant virgins had read this stuff and ended up more confused than ever about the facts of life.

His speculative gaze wandered to Elly. She dropped a pecan into the bowl and his eyes followed. Her stomach had grown so full it barely left room for the bowl on her knees. Her breasts seemed to have doubled in size in the last three months. Had she been a virgin when she married Glendon Dinsmore? Had Glendon “sowed wild oats” like Will Parker had? Had Elly consulted her parents and had they checked out Dinsmore’s character and found him pure in heart and life—unlike her second husband?

She picked another pecan clean and raised the last morsel to her mouth. Will’s eyes again followed and he absently stroked his lips. One thing about Elly—she sure hadn’t married to reform him. If he had reformed it was because of her acceptance, rather than the lack of it.

He turned a page to a section in which Miss Beasley had
left a marker. “How to Conceive and Bear Healthy Children.” All right, he thought, secretly amused, tell me how.

The one main reason for the establishment of marriage was for the bearing and rearing of children. Nature has provided for man and woman the organs for this purpose and they are wonderfully constructed.

End of enlightenment. Will swallowed another chortle and his finger continued hiding the grin. He couldn’t help picturing Miss Beasley reading this, wondering what her reaction had been.

From his delight over the construction of human organs the author had skipped directly to a passel of ludicrous advice on conception:
If the parents are drunk at the time the child is conceived they cannot expect healthy offspring, either physically or mentally. If the parents dislike each other they will transmit something of that disposition to their offspring. If either one or both of the parents are much worried at the time of conception the child will be the sufferer.

Without warning Will burst out laughing.

Eleanor looked up. “What’s so funny?”

“Listen to this...” He straightened in his chair, laid the book flat on the table and read the last passage aloud.

Eleanor gazed at him unblinkingly, her hands poised around a pecan in the jaws of the nutcracker. “I thought you were reading about electricity.”

He sobered instantly. “Oh, I am. I mean, I... I was.”

She reached across the table and, with the nose of the nutcracker, tipped the book up.

“New Era Domestic Science?”

“Well, I... it...” He felt his cheeks warming and randomly flipped the pages. They fell open to a diagram of a homemade telephone. “I was thinking about making one of these.” He turned the book and showed her.

She glanced at the diagram, then skeptically at him before the pecan shell cracked and fell into her palm. “And just who did you think we’d call on it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You never can tell.”

He hid his discomposure by delving into the book again.

After you become pregnant you owe it to yourself, your
husband and especially your unborn young one to see that it comes into the world endowed with everything that a true, good, and devoted mother can possibly give it, both physically and mentally. To this end, keep yourself well and happy. Eat only such foods as are easily digested and that will keep your bowels regular. Read only such books as will tend to make you happier and better. Choose the company of those whom you feel will lift you up. Gossips will not do this so do not listen to croakers who are so ready to converse with you at this time.

Such capricious advice went on and on, but Will’s amusement died when he found what he’d been looking for: “Preparations for Labor.” It began with a list of recommended articles to have on hand:

5 basins

1 two-quart fountain syringe

15 yards unsterilized gauze

6 sanitary bed pads; or,

2 pounds cotton batting for making same

1 piece rubber sheeting, size 1 by 2 yards

4 ounces permanganate of potash

8 ounces oxalic acid

4 ounces boric acid

1 tube green soap

1 tube Vaseline

100 Bernay’s bichloride tablets

8 ounces alcohol

2 drams ergotol

1 nail brush

2 pounds absorbent cotton

My God, they’d need all that? Will began to panic.

The opening instructions read,
The nurse should prepare enough bed and perineal pads, sterilizing them a week before, along with towels, diapers, ½ pound absorbent cotton and some cotton pledgets.

Nurse? Who had a nurse? And enough? What was enough? And what did perineal mean? And what were pledgets? He
couldn’t even understand this, much less afford it! Pale now, he turned the page only to have his disillusionment doubled. Phrases jumped out and grabbed him by the nerve-endings.

Cramp-like pains in the lower abdomen... rupturing membranes... watery discharge... a marked desire to go to stool... bulging of the pelvic floor... tearing of the perineal flesh... temple bones engaged in the vulva... proper manipulation to expel the afterbirth... stout clean thread... sever immediately... exception being when child is nearly dead or does not breathe properly...

He slammed the book shut and leaped to his feet, pale as seafoam.

“Will?”

He stared out a window, knees locked, cracking his knuckles, feeling his pulse thud hard in his gut.

“I can’t do it.”

“Do what?”

Fear lodged in his throat like a hunk of dry bread. He gulped, but it stayed. “I wasn’t reading about electricity. I was reading about delivering babies.”

“Oh... that.”

“Yes, that.” He swung to face her. “Elly, we’ve never talked about it since the night we agreed to get married. But I know you expect me to help you, and I just plain don’t know if I can.”

She rested her hands in the bowl and looked up at him expressionlessly. “Then I’ll do it alone, Will. I’m pretty sure I can.”

“Alone!” he barked, lurching for the book, agitatedly flapping pages until he found the right one. “Listen to this—’The cord is usually tied before being cut, the exception being when the child is nearly dead and does not breathe properly. In such a case it is best to leave the cord untied so that it may bleed a little and aid in establishing respiration.’” He dropped the book and scowled at her. “Suppose the baby died. How do you think I’d feel? And how am I supposed to know what’s proper breathing and what isn’t? And there’s more—all this stuff we’re supposed to have on hand. Why, hell, some of it I don’t even know what it is! And it talks
about you tearing, and maybe hemorrhaging. Elly,
please
let me get a doctor when the time comes. I got the car filled with gas so I can run into town quick and get him.”

Calmly she set the bowl aside, rose and closed the book. “
I
know what we’ll need, Will.” Unflinchingly she met his worried brown eyes. “And I’ll have it all ready. You shouldn’t be reading that stuff, ‘cause it just scares you, is all.”

“But it says—”

“I know what it says. But having a baby is a natural act. Why, the Indian women squatted in the woods and did it all alone, then walked back into the fields and started hoeing corn as soon as it was over.”

“You’re no Indian,” he argued intensely.

“But I’m strong. And healthy. And if it comes down to it, happy, too. Seems to me that’s as important as anything else, isn’t it? Happy people got something to fight for.”

Her calm reasoning punctured his anger with surprising suddenness. When it had disappeared, one fact had impressed him: she’d said she was happy. They stood near, so near he could have touched her by merely lifting a hand, could have curled his fingers around her neck, rested his palms on her cheeks and asked, Are you, Elly? Are you really? For he wanted to hear it again, the evidence that for the first time in his life, he seemed to be doing something right.

But she dropped her chin and turned to retrieve the bowl of nuts and carry them to the cupboard. “Not everyone can stand the sight of blood, and I’ll grant you there’s blood when a baby comes.”

“It’s not that. I told you, it’s the risks.”

She turned to face him and said realistically, “We got no money for a doctor, Will.”

“We could get up enough. I could take another load of scrap metal in. And there’s the cream money, and the eggs, and now the honey. Even pecans. Purdy’ll buy the pecans. I know he will.”

She began shaking her head before he finished. “You just rest easy. Let me do the worrying about the baby. It’ll turn out fine.”

But how could he not worry?

In the days that followed he watched her moving about the place with increasing slowness. Her burden began to ride lower, her ankles swelled, her breasts widened. And each day brought him closer to the day of delivery.

November tenth brought a temporary distraction from his worries. It was Eleanor’s birthday—Will hadn’t forgotten. He awakened to find her still asleep, facing him. He rolled onto his stomach and curled the pillow beneath his neck to indulge himself in a close study of her. Pale brows and gold-tipped lashes, parted lips and pleasing nose. One ear peeking through a coil of loose hair and one knee updrawn beneath the covers. He watched her breathe, watched her hand twitch once, twice. She came awake by degrees, unconsciously smacking her lips, rubbing her nose and finally opening sleepy eyes.

“Mornin’, lazybones,” he teased.

“Mmm...” She closed her eyes and nestled, half on her belly. “Mornin’.”

“Happy birthday.”

Her eyes opened but she lay unmoving, absorbing the words while a lazy smile dawned across her face.

“You remembered.”

“Absolutely. Twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five. A quarter of a century.”

“Makes you sound older than you look.”

“Oh, Will, the things you say.”

“I was watching you wake up. Looked pretty good to me.”

She covered her face with the sheet and he smiled against his pillow.

“You got time to bake a cake today?”

She lowered the sheet to her nose. “I guess, but why?”

“Then bake one. I’d do it, but I don’t know how.”

“Why?”

Instead of answering, he threw back the covers and sprang up. Standing beside the bed with his elbows lifted, he executed a mighty, twisting stretch. She watched with unconcealed interest—the flexing muscles, the taut skin, the moles, the long legs dusted with black hair. Legs planted wide, he shivered and bent acutely to the left, the right, then snapped
over to pick up his clothes and begin dressing. It was engrossing, watching a man donning his clothes. Men did it so much less fussily than women.

“You gonna answer me?” she insisted.

Facing away from her, he smiled. “For your birthday party.”

“My birthday party!” She sat up. “Hey, come back here!”

But he was gone, buttoning his shirt, grinning.

It was a toss-up who had to work harder to conceal his impatience that day—Will, who’d had the plan in his head for weeks, Eleanor, whose eyes shone all the while she baked her own cake but who refused to ask when this party was supposed to happen, or Donald Wade, who asked at least a dozen times that morning, “How long now, Will?”

Will had planned to wait until after supper, but the cake was ready at noon, and by late afternoon Donald Wade’s patience had been stretched to the limit. When Will went to the house for a cup of coffee, Donald Wade tapped his knee and whispered for the hundredth time, “Now, Will... pleeeease?”

Will relented. “All right,
kemo sabe.
You and Thomas go get the stuff.”

The stuff
turned out to be two objects crudely wrapped in wrinkled white butcher’s paper, drawn together with twine. The boys each carried one, brought them proudly and deposited them beside Eleanor’s coffee cup.

“Presents?” She crossed her hands on her chest. “For me?”

Donald Wade nodded hard enough to loosen the wax in his ears.

“Me ‘n’ Will and Thomas made ‘em.”

“You
made
them!”

“One of ‘em,” Will corrected, pulling Thomas onto his lap while Donald Wade pressed against his mother’s chair.

“This one.” Donald Wade pushed the weightier package into her hands. “Open it first.” His eyes fixed on her hands while she fumbled with the twine, pretending difficulty in getting it untied. “This dang ole thing is givin’ me fits!” she exclaimed. “Lord, Donald Wade, help me.” Donald Wade reached eagerly and helped her yank the bow and push the
paper down, revealing a ball of suet, meshed by twine and rolled in wheat.

“It’s for your birds!” he announced excitedly.

“For my birds. Oh, myyy...” Eyes shining, she held it aloft by a loop of twine. “Won’t they love it?”

“You can hang it up and everything!”

“I see that.”

“Will, he got the stuff and we put the fat through the grinder and I helped him turn the crank and me ‘n’ Thomas stuck the seeds on. See?”

“I see. Why, I s’pect it’s the prettiest suet ball I ever seen. Oh, thank you so much, darlin’...” She gave Donald Wade a tight hug, then leaned over to hold the baby’s chin and smack him soundly on the lips. “You too, Thomas. I didn’t know you were so clever.”