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Title: Mothers still
Author: Helen R. Hull
Release date: November 10, 2026 [eBook #79964]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Masses Publishing Co., 1914
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79964
Credits: Jens Sadowski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. This book was produced from images made available by the Modernist Journal Project, Brown and Tulsa Universities.
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Mothers Still
Helen R. Hull
The Masses, vol. 6, Oct. 1914, pp. 14-15.
The child sat up, clutching her nightgown together over her thin neck.
She thrust one foot out of bed, shivering as it touched the floor. Then
she waited. Some low noise reached her; she plunged out and crept along
the hall to the head of the stairs. The room below was dark. The noise
came again. She seized the railing and stepped down one step, two steps,
three. There she could see around the railing to the foot of the stairs,
where in the dim bar of light from the corner street lamp crouched a
woman, her face close to the glass.
The child clung to the rail, trying to stop the chattering of her teeth.
She couldn’t clench them, and they were so noisy that she put one hand
across her mouth, and reluctantly started down toward the figure. The
noise came again; a hoarse grating “Oh-h.”
The child’s lips moved against her tight hand. “I won’t cry tonight. I
won’t cry tonight.” A step creaked and she paused. The woman made the
sound again.
Two more steps, fearful, slow. The child took her hand from the rail and
dragged it across to the shoulder of the woman.
“Mother, come up—to bed——”
The woman started violently, turning her face, a distorted blur in the
faint light.
“Go back to bed! What are you down here for?”
“Won’t you come, too, mother?” The child tried to take the restless
hands of the woman.
“Go away! Leave me alone! Go away!” The woman’s voice broke high. She
rose to her feet, pushing the child away. “Leave me alone!”
She turned into the dark room, and with irregular feet walked across,
back, across, on into the library, stumbling against a chair.
The child crouched on the stair, huddling her body against the railing.
“I won’t cry,” she said. Then she listened. On and on went the feet,
stopping, beginning. Words, too, but she couldn’t make them out. Poor
mother! Where was her father? Was it very late? Why couldn’t men come
home at exactly a time? Or if they didn’t, why couldn’t you just go to
bed, anyway? She wouldn’t cry, even if the low, muttering voice did come
out of the dark. She was cold. The spindles pressed into her thin body.
The clock on the landing above her ticked interminably against the
silence. She—she was sleepy. She wouldn’t cry! She sat up with a start;
she would get her kitten. Then she wouldn’t wish to cry. She climbed the
stairs with caution. At the head she deliberated. She would go down the
rear stairs; the kitten might be in the cellar-way. She went along the
hall carefully to the very end. There she closed a door that stood ajar.
She always closed that. Hulda slept on the third floor, and always
pretended not to know, the next morning. The child couldn’t bear to
think that perhaps she did know. She put away resolutely the thought of
Hulda’s strong, warm arms; they had held her one night when the house
was full of nurses and doctors for her mother. Then the child started
down the steep kitchen stairs.
A dim light burned in the kitchen. The child scurried across to the
cellar door. Her hand on the knob, she waited. Another noise? This came
from the cellar-way. A strange, low sound; a purr, but not a quiet purr.
It was alive, glad. The child glowed all over her cold little body at
the sound. It was so glad that it went straight into her heart. Was it
her kitten, trying to comfort her? She pulled open the door, and dropped
to her knees by the market basket on the step.
The sound ceased abruptly. At the child’s soft “Kitten? My kitten? Are
you there?” it began again. The child put her hand into the basket and
then with a faint scream drew back. What had she touched? Something that
squirmed! The low ecstatic purr went on. The child gathered her courage,
and pulled the basket into the light. Then, she saw. She stared and
stared, holding her face quite close, while the vibrations of the
irregular purr tingled from her ears through her heart down to her toes.
Squirming, blind, confused, they were—kittens! And the child’s own
kitten was washing them, loving them.
“Why, kitten!” The child tried to laugh. “What—what have you done?”
She clasped her hands, swaying slightly. She had no knowledge of this
thing before her, for she was young and strangely without curiosity.
What she had learned of the real ways of the world pleased her so little
that she seldom came out of her fancies to learn more. But as she
watched her kitten, as she listened to the triumphant purring, she knew
suddenly that the world held more than she had understood.
“Beautiful! kitten,” she said. “Beautiful!”
She didn’t know why it seemed beautiful. The new kittens were squirmy
and bedraggled. But the mother loved them! How she washed them and sang!
“You’re a mother-cat, kitten.” The child’s voice thrilled in her throat.
Her palms firm on the dusty step, she leaned over the basket and kissed
her kitten between its ears. Then she pushed the basket into place,
rose, and closed the door. She stood for a moment listening to the purr
that came faintly to her. Then tense with this wonder that flowered in
her heart, she went through the pantry, on into the dining room. As the
door swung behind her, the front door closed cautiously. She could see
her father standing by the window.
Then she heard the thin taunting voice from the library.
“Did he tear himself away from his pretty friends?”
“Oh, come, Mary!” The child, struggling with the nausea that the night
voices always caused her, heard him go into the library. She drew her
hands against her ears, but she heard, far off, her father’s voice.
“Don’t be a fool and make a scene tonight. I had to stay on business.
Come on.”
Then her mother’s shrill, “Don’t touch me! Sot!”
“Calm yourself, Mary. You mustn’t excite yourself. It’s bad, in your
condition.”
“My condition! Calm!”
The child couldn’t bear the high gasping laugh. Under her palms the
beating of blood in her ears vibrated strangely like her kitten’s
purring. She hurried back to her room and crept into bed; she crawled
down between the covers, pulling them tight against her ears, drawing
her knees up to her chin, tense, cold, desperate. She could hear voices
beating against the ceiling of the room beneath her—roars or mutters or
shrieks.... After rocking for a wretched eternity on those waves of
sound, she slept.
When the child came home after school the next day, the house was quiet,
with the clean stillness of afternoon. Hulda was out. The door of the
mother’s room was closed. The child pressed tentative fingers against
the knob, and then with a sigh came away. Probably her mother was
sleeping. The kittens weren’t in the cellar-way. She had a spasmodic
fear that they had all died; a few minutes of frantic search found the
basket in a corner of the furnace room. Making a cushion of a piece of
dusty sacking, she sat down to watch the kittens. They were all curled
up, asleep; they were fluffier, although their tails were queer yet.
The child puzzled. It had been “Mother’s Day” at school. Some mothers
who didn’t need to rest that day, were at school. The children had said
verses. “A mother is the—no, _a_—mother still, the holiest thing alive.”
The child had liked that one, because of her kitten. She had tried to
tell about her kitten, but a boy had laughed, and the teacher said,
“Another time.” So she repeated it now to the cat. “A mother is a mother
still.” She wasn’t at all sure about the meaning, but it said something
to the feeling the basket had given her. Her head drooped. The furnace
room was warm. She would lie down with the kittens. One arm around the
basket, one under her head, she curled up on the floor and slept.
The mother cat, jumping out of the basket and making off up the stairs,
did not waken her. Later, with a shudder, she opened her eyes. It was
dark, with voices. Was it still night?—or another night? She sat up
wearily, holding her breath that she might listen. She was in the
cellar. The voices were above her. Her mother’s, and another, not her
father’s. Hulda? Were they quarreling, too? She walked to the stairs.
Even there she couldn’t distinguish words. Her mother was angry. Poor
Hulda! Up the stairs went the child. She pushed the door open. Hulda sat
at the kitchen table, crying, her round, pink face swollen and homely.
The mother stood with her back to the door.
“Where is the man?” She sounded very angry.
The child clasped her hands with a hopeless little sigh. Hulda was
picking at the edge of the white oilcloth on the table with large, red
fingers, while tears slipped over her cheeks.
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps you don’t know which man!”
Hulda’s hands dropped to her lap. How tight her waist strained over her
full bosom! The buttons would surely fly off! She did not raise her eyes
as she spoke.
“I sent him away.”
“Sent him! Huh! You’d better send again. You can make him marry you
now.”
“I won’t. Poor folks ain’t got no right to marry.”
“The sooner you send, the better.”
“I won’t.” Hulda’s cheeks quivered. “Tie him to me and babies—a new one
every year—and him maybe making something of hisself alone. I sent ’im
away.”
“You—do you expect me to believe you let him go after he’d got you into
trouble!”
“It wasn’t trouble then. I didn’t know. I couldn’t help it. But I—I made
him go. I won’t send for ’im.”
Hulda’s choked voice hurt the child. It felt too clogged up with tears.
Her mother stepped nearer Hulda; her lowered voice rasped like
sandpaper.
“Pfau! A man’s duty is to his children and their mother, no matter what
he wants. You’re a shameless slut. Coming and thrusting yourself on
respectable people, and now when I shouldn’t be troubled! Pack up and
get out of my house!”
“Mother! Oh, mother!” The child could not keep back the cry. She
stiffened as her mother wheeled, hysterical hands beating at throat and
breast.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nothing, mother! Don’t—don’t talk so. You’ll be sick again. Hulda——”
She smiled at Hulda pitifully.
“Don’t speak to her. She’s a bad woman. She’s going away, at once!”
“Where to?” Hulda’s tears had stopped. Her eyes were specks of bloodshot
blue between swollen lids, but her lips were firm. “I ain’t got no place
to go. I could stay and work a while yet till your baby come. Then I
could go off and—die with mine. I—loved him. I ain’t bad. You——Bein’
married don’t make you good!”
“Insulted in my own house by a strumpet! Before my child!”
“She’s heard worse,” said Hulda grimly.
The mother dropped into a chair, her eyelids fluttering, her hands
beating wildly. The child, kneeling, pulled the hands into her lap.
“There, mother, there!” Her heart in her throat made words difficult.
The door to the pantry swung slowly open. The child, tightening her
fingers about her mother’s hands, waited, not breathing. Just as her
mother moaned again, she saw. It was her father, home early,
investigating affairs.
“What’s the matter?” He came in uncertainly, looking at Hulda and the
child. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Hulda. Mother’s sending her away.”
“Oh, come, come.” He stepped to the sink, and turned on the water with a
loud splash. “Hulda ought to be careful not to excite your mother. It’ll
be all right.”
The child shook her head. Sometimes her father’s presence broke a
difficult tangle. Today something too terrible for any lightness had
thrown its net over them. Hulda, with frightened eyes, watched the
father as he held the glass of water to the mother’s lips. Wrenching one
hand free, the mother knocked the glass away. Drops of water burned on
the child’s hand.
“Send that—that thing away!” The words were hot and dry, from parched
lips.
“What have you done, Hulda? You should remember your mistress’
condition. She has to be careful.”
Hulda turned away.
“Maybe _I_ have to be, too,” she muttered.
“Eh?” The father lost his conciliatory smile. “Eh? What do you mean?”
Hulda faced him.
“I’m goin’,” she said, “but maybe—maybe I have to be a mother, same’s
her.”
The child dropped her mother’s hand, and looked at Hulda’s blotched
face, lifted in a sort of strange dignity.
“A mother?” she said, in a whisper.
Her father touched her shoulder.
“Run on away. Go and play. Go and play with your kitten.”
She looked up at him despairingly.
“My kitten? She’s a mother, too. Oh!” she stammered, “tell me—a
mother——. Tell me—_why_ ‘a mother is a mother still the holiest thing
alive’?”
Transcriber’s Notes
Transcribed from The Masses, vol. 6, Oct. 1914, pp. 14-15.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public
domain.
The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved.
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