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73 - I, Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane · I, Mary MacLane

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  Speaker 1: Chapter seventy three of I Mary mc lean by Mary
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  Speaker 1: mc lean. This LibriVox recording is in my public domain
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  Speaker 1: recording by Lynn Thompson, Chapter seventy three, The Edge of
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  Speaker 1: Mist and Silver to Morrow. Hidden somewhere in the invisible,
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  Speaker 1: unused air plateaus is a little child mine who has
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  Speaker 1: never been born. A tenant in me is that a woman,
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  Speaker 1: by every right and by old earthen law, should, if
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  Speaker 1: she will have her child, should be the warm winged mother.
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  Speaker 1: I am a devil and a fantasy, a jezebel, and
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  Speaker 1: a wanderer in fields of inverted FUNGI so I seem
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  Speaker 1: to me. I do not know my status, I but
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  Speaker 1: know my personal incidents as they happen. But I am
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  Speaker 1: also woman, a woman by inherence and by fact being woman,
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  Speaker 1: I am the potential mother mother of my child who
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  Speaker 1: has not been born. I feel myself a fitting mother.
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  Speaker 1: I am bodily, in good health, if not robust, yet durable,
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  Speaker 1: as a mother should be. I am always tired, as
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  Speaker 1: if from touches and weights of living, as a loving
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  Speaker 1: mother should be. I am warm of blood, latently savage tooth,
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  Speaker 1: like a jungle mother, deadlier than the male. As a
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  Speaker 1: brave mother should be. Though I have no child, I
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  Speaker 1: have an ancient write in my child, and I want
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  Speaker 1: my child. My child is but has not been born.
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  Speaker 1: Merely to want my child makes me a fitting mother.
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  Speaker 1: My child often is realer to me than books I read,
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  Speaker 1: and walks I take, and the friend who writes me
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  Speaker 1: frequent letters. Sometimes my child is a soft, pink baby,
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  Speaker 1: smelling of rain, water, milk and flowers, lying close to
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  Speaker 1: the curves of my breasts in the hollow of my arms,
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  Speaker 1: feeding soft insistent baby hunger, and feeding soft, strong, living
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  Speaker 1: hunger of my kissing mother lips. More often my child
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  Speaker 1: is a little, happy, voiced fellow, my small brave boy,
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  Speaker 1: three years old. He clings to my skirt with his
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  Speaker 1: sweet tiny hand as we hurry along a frosty pavement
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  Speaker 1: in an early December morning. We live in New York
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  Speaker 1: in a little common, quiet apartment and are gratefully poor,
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  Speaker 1: and I work in a factory for a little weekly
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  Speaker 1: wage for the living of my little fellow and me.
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  Speaker 1: Every day, in the early morning we go out to
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  Speaker 1: a corner bakery to buy a long, crisp loaf of
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  Speaker 1: French bread for breakfast, and in the December morning, my
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  Speaker 1: heart contracts with a sort of happiness and a sort
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  Speaker 1: of grief at the sound of little feet in stout shoes,
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  Speaker 1: yet frail shoes, pattering, pattering gaily along beside me on
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  Speaker 1: the frosty flagstones. We start out hand in hand. His
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  Speaker 1: small hand is wonderfully firm and virile. But presently I
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  Speaker 1: let go his hand as we hurry along, to feel
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  Speaker 1: it instantly clutched the folds of my work skirt. It
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  Speaker 1: pulls and drags at my waistbands and my heart together
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  Speaker 1: with twisted sweetness that makes me ache from head to foot. Mother, Wait,
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  Speaker 1: he says, in his happy voice, wait for me. But
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  Speaker 1: I hurry faster. Always, I hurry faster when my happy,
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  Speaker 1: brave little fellow cries. Wait, Mother, for the sweet feel
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  Speaker 1: of that dragging at my mother's skirt. More often. My
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  Speaker 1: child is the little girl six years old, of the
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  Speaker 1: shy eyes and the sunk his hair, and the firm
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  Speaker 1: child mouth full of high temper and strong will. All
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  Speaker 1: over her is need and demand of her mother to
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  Speaker 1: guard and adore and cherish her every moment of her life.
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  Speaker 1: We are together in a country field with oak trees
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  Speaker 1: in it, and poplars and daisies and bluebells and other
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  Speaker 1: field flowers, and it is overgrown with long, coarse, fragrant
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  Speaker 1: wild grass. The noonday sun is bright hot, and I
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  Speaker 1: bring my child there to dry her hair, for I
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  Speaker 1: have newly washed it with a square of white soap
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  Speaker 1: and a porcelain blue bird bowl. The feel of her small, round,
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  Speaker 1: wilful head was marvelously fulfilling in my cupped hands. She
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  Speaker 1: wanders around in the hot brightness through the tall grass,
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  Speaker 1: gathering the hardy, scentless field flowers with her little brown fingers,
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  Speaker 1: and she shakes back her beautiful, thick, short, damp curls.
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  Speaker 1: I sit on a flat stone like a Sioux squaw
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  Speaker 1: and watch her. The grass brushes her bare legs. The
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  Speaker 1: magic sun, mixed with a faint cool breeze, plays upon
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  Speaker 1: her head. The tragic, delicate music of rustling poplar leaves
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  Speaker 1: comes down from tree tops and catches her in a
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  Speaker 1: fairy song net. She is always very new, very incredible,
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  Speaker 1: my child. She looks towards me with her shy, radiant eyes,
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  Speaker 1: and she says, mother, look, my hair is nearly dry.
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  Speaker 1: Her hair is thick and heavy. In my experienced, subdued
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  Speaker 1: mother wisdom I know it will not be dry for
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  Speaker 1: an hour. I feel the damp of her hair rumishly
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  Speaker 1: keen all over me, a menacingness for me to guard
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  Speaker 1: her from, a dear anxiety, an ancient mother note in
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  Speaker 1: the long human gamut of sounds, it is precious, wearing, racking,
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  Speaker 1: colorful romance to be her mother. Each mother day holds
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  Speaker 1: gold and blue foreboding. Each mother day holds thin, insistent
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  Speaker 1: gold and purple sorrows. Each mother day holds deep gold
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  Speaker 1: and gray care, incessant and absolute, an aching wealth of beauty,
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  Speaker 1: no more but no less than the damp of her
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  Speaker 1: hair in the noonday field. My child herself incessant and absolute, warm, pure,
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  Speaker 1: palpitant gold of my life, some way realer than books
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  Speaker 1: I read and walks. I take my child clamors to
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  Speaker 1: be born. My child will never be born to any
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  Speaker 1: other woman. While she hovers and flutters on the edge
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  Speaker 1: of mist and silver, a border edge, there are ten million, fertile, hot,
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  Speaker 1: milk teeming bodies of women, each ready to gather her
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  Speaker 1: in and wrap her in delicate, sweet flesh. Ten million
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  Speaker 1: other children hovering on the edge will drop off into
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  Speaker 1: the ten million matrix cups. Each woman mysteriously a fitting mother,
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  Speaker 1: so only she wants her baby, though she be besides
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  Speaker 1: a thief or a traitor, or a weekly, or a murderer,
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  Speaker 1: or a harlot, or a drunkard or a fool, Let
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  Speaker 1: them come the ten million. The chrysolid children are clamoring,
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  Speaker 1: clamoring always for their birth a wide melody unheard. But
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  Speaker 1: my child will never drop over the edge to any
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  Speaker 1: woman but me, she called, with veiled and dazzling flames
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  Speaker 1: of eagerness for her birthday. But she will await my
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  Speaker 1: made readiness through a long night, though it should last
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  Speaker 1: till the daybreak of another age. Dimly I weep for her,
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  Speaker 1: my needing me child. I weep that she must come
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  Speaker 1: to this richly cursed me. But I weep more that
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  Speaker 1: I have not got her in this sterile now, where
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  Speaker 1: is flawed passionate wealth of intangible life stuff, But no
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  Speaker 1: small wilful head of hair to wash, No little fellow's
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  Speaker 1: feet on December flagstones and sweet dragging at my skirt,
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  Speaker 1: no soft pink baby. Hunger. It is hunger I feel
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  Speaker 1: from her. I feel her always hungry where she is,
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  Speaker 1: and I can give her no nourishing, no warming food,
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  Speaker 1: in all my strange, unfertile, passing life. It is that
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  Speaker 1: less than my empty arms, that makes blurred unrests and
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  Speaker 1: writhings in my dreaming womb. End of Chapter seventy three,