Page 29 of The Giver of Stars
Or, at least, they had.
‘So when are you two young ’uns going to bless my old friend here with a grandchild or two then, huh?’
‘That’s what I keep asking them.’ Mr Van Cleve pointedhis knife at Bennett and then Alice. ‘A house isn’t a home without a babby running through it.’
Maybe when our bedroom isn’t so close to yours that I can hear you break wind, Alice responded silently, scooping mashed potato onto her plate.Maybe when I’m free to walk to the bathroom without covering myself to the ankles.Maybe when I don’t have to listen to this conversation at least twice a week.
Pastor McIntosh’s sister Pamela, visiting from Knoxville, observed, as someone invariably did, that her son had gotten his new wife with child on the very day of their wedding. ‘Nine months to the day the twins came. Can you believe that? Mind you, she has that house running like clockwork. You watch, she’ll wean those two and the day after she’ll be carrying again.’
‘Aren’t you one of those packhorse librarians, Alice?’ Pamela’s husband eyed the world suspiciously from under two bushy brows.
‘I am indeed.’
‘The girl’s gone from the house all day!’ Mr Van Cleve exclaimed. ‘Some evenings she gets back so tired she can barely keep her eyes open.’
‘Strapping lad like you, Bennett. Young Alice there should be too tired to get on a horse in the first place!’
‘She should be bow-legged like a cowboy, though!’
The two men roared with laughter. Alice forced a wan smile. She glanced at Bennett, who was steering black beans around his plate with intent focus. Then she looked at Annie, who was holding the sweet-potato dish and gazing at her with something that looked uncomfortably like satisfaction. Alice hardened her look until the other woman turned away.
‘You got monthlies stains on your breeches,’ Annie had observed, as she brought Alice a pile of folded laundry theprevious evening. ‘I couldn’t get it all out so there’s still a small mark.’ She had paused, and added, ‘Just like last month.’
Alice had bristled at the idea of the woman monitoring her ‘monthlies’. She had the sudden sensation of half the town discussing her apparent failure to fall pregnant. It couldn’t be Bennett’s fault, of course. Not their baseball champ. Not their golden boy.
‘You know, my cousin – the one over at Berea – she couldn’t fall pregnant for love nor money. I swear her husband was at her like adog. She went to one of the snake-handling churches – Pastor, I know you disapprove but hear me out. They put a Green Garter around her neck and she was with child the very next week. My cousin said the baby has eyes as gold as a copperhead’s. But then she always was the imaginative type.’
‘My aunt Lola was the same. Her pastor had the whole congregation praying for God to fill her womb. Took them a year, but they got five children now.’
‘Please don’t feel obliged to do the same,’ said Alice.
‘I think it’s all this riding the girl is doing. It’s no good for a woman to sit astride all day. Dr Freeman says it jiggles up a lady’s insides.’
‘Well, yes, I do believe I’ve read as much.’
Mr Van Cleve picked up his salt-shaker and waggled it between his fingers. ‘It’s like if you shake a jar of milk up too much, it turns sour. Curdles, if you like.’
‘My insides are not curdled, thank you,’ Alice said stiffly, then added, after a moment, ‘But I would be very interested to see the article.’
‘Article?’ said Pastor McIntosh.
‘That you mentioned. Where it says a woman shouldn’t ride a horse. For fear of “jiggling”. It’s not a medical term I’m familiar with.’
The two men looked at each other.
Alice dragged her knife across a piece of chicken, not looking up from her plate. ‘Knowledge is so important, don’t you think? We all say at the library, without facts we really do have nothing. If I’m putting my health at risk by riding a horse, then I think it would be only responsible for me to read the article you’re talking about. Perhaps you could bring it with you next Sunday, Pastor.’ She looked up and smiled brightly across the table.
‘Well,’ said Pastor McIntosh, ‘I’m not sure I could lay my hands on it just like that.’
‘The pastor has a lot of papers,’ said Mr Van Cleve.
‘The funny thing is,’ Alice continued, waving a fork for emphasis, ‘in England, nearly all well-brought-up ladies ride. They go out hunting, jumping ditches, fences, all sorts. It’s almost compulsory. And yet they pop out babies with extraordinary efficiency. Even the Royal Family. Pop, pop, pop! Like shelling peas! Do you know how many children Queen Victoria had? And she wasalwayson a horse. They couldn’t pull her off.’
The table had grown quiet.
‘Well …’ said Pastor McIntosh ‘… that is … most interesting.’
‘It can’t be good for you, though, dear,’ said the pastor’s sister, kindly. ‘I mean, strenuous physical activity is not good for young women at the best of times.’
