Maude

by Donna Foley Mabry

I wonder now if she found it her personal therapy to murmur her burdens in the darkness to a very interested listener.

Being pretty, even just once a week, would make me happy.

The baby cried the whole time and the sound of her screaming made me happy because she was telling me she was alive and she was strong and she was going to be just fine.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t envy anyone in the world.

The Lord will take care of us. We can face what we got to face.

“Well, I guess there’s say-so Christians, and there’s real Christians.”

Every person I’d met in the town of Kennett, Missouri, had greeted me with Christ’s attitude, except, of course, George’s mother. I couldn’t help but wonder if Wakondah wouldn’t rebuke the old lady for being so rude.

I didn’t yet feel that the house I was living in was mine, but I did have a church home there in Kennett.

He slept soundly every night and was asleep every time I saw him at work. How in the world could anyone sleep that much? When I left home that morning, the dogs and cats were all lying around the back yard taking their morning naps. It would be about an hour before they woke for lunch and settled down to take their afternoon naps. He must be part dog or cat.

“He’s not my Wakondah. He’s my mother’s Wakondah.

The only animals he never touched were George’s horse and the cats. Pawnee was too important to his father. Bud knew that aggravating the horse was a line he dared not cross, and he left the cats alone because cats have claws.

I think the laughing did more to feed my soul where I was hungry than the food did.

Those two used dresses I took looked more expensive than any new ones I’d ever made for myself. They had a lot of fancy seams and nice buttons. Bessie said a lot of rich people gave their things to the Goodwill when they got tired of them. It was hard for me to imagine that. All my life, I only had new clothes when I’d outgrown the old ones or they were too worn and frayed to be respectable.

I bought a small radio for the kitchen. While I cooked and cleaned during the day I listened to Stella Dallas and My Gal Sunday. It felt like walking into another world, into someone else’s life more complicated than my own, and I found that comforting.

If George preferred it, it must be easier work.

I’d seen Betty Sue’s outbursts of temper ever since she was a baby. This Maris person was lucky she got out of it with only a handful of hair missing.

I can honestly say we did our best.

It felt good, to tell someone about my life.

“I want you to stop that, Betty Sue. It isn’t Christian, and it isn’t good for the children to see. You won’t change him. The only harm you’ll do is to them.”

I missed music that made a joyful noise. The congregation at the Baptist church sang slow and quiet, as if they were afraid they would wake someone up.

I think now God gives each one of us a measure of happiness for our lives, and some are allowed more than others. It’s like the ration stamps that were handed out during the war, so much butter, so much sugar, and then no more.

I hate to tell you that it’s possible for a mother to hate her own child, but sometimes, even if just for a second, it is.