The Cheese Maker
A week before Christmas, George cut a small pine from a stand behind the barn and set it up opposite the fireplace.
“It would be nice to string popcorn and cranberries,” said Helen and he’d given a slight nod, then disappeared for the rest of the afternoon, returning at dinner and handing her a newly carved wooden star for the top of the tree.
That night, she studied the calendar hung on the kitchen door. She had missed her monthly flow in November and now here it was certainly a week overdue again. She nibbled at her upper lip and considered the possibilities. She was eating well, hadn’t been sick to her stomach—except that one time when George had hauled the deer carcass into the yard and cut it up. She’d had to learn to cook a bit differently living high up, but she doubted altitude as a cause. She ran her hands down her apron, testing her belly: flat as it had ever been.
It was during one of those family dinners, her in-laws house festive and smelling of meat juices and hot biscuits, when someone remarked on the dozen or more grandchildren and asked Ned, “So, what’s it with you and Helen?” She didn’t remember his reply, if he had one, but she remembered how she felt. Barren, embarrassed, angry.
Through the kitchen window she saw the flicker of the lantern as George made his way to the cabin from the barn.
On Saturday, after chores, they drove into Amity for supplies. At Harvold’s Market they were joined near the potato bins by a mother carrying a baby and towing a toddler. George showed no interest in them. Helen wondered if she should tell him what she thought might be, and knew she couldn’t, at least not until she was positive.
By the end of February she was sure. There was a slight rise in her belly and her breasts were just that much bigger. But still she said nothing. Not until I feel life, she said to herself. It helped that George was distracted with a cow he’d bought from of a farmer the other side of Amity.
“Shoulda known better,” he grumbled. “She’s gonna birth too early.”
Helen looked up from the Singer, set up in a corner of the front room. “Is that a problem?”
“Of course it’s a problem,” he said, grabbing his coat and stomping out to the barn.
Later that night, when the dishes were done and she had settled in the rocker by the fire, he said, “I know you never lived on a farm. And I can’t expect you to know it right off. You’ve been doing good with the cheese though and I thought you should know I appreciate it.” He kept his head down and shrugged when she thanked him.
It snowed often that March, piling up against the cabin and making the daily barn chores a torment of chilled feet and chapped hands. The cows gave little milk. They had stopped making cheese weeks before and George used the extra time to fix whatever had broken during the previous months. Helen found herself staring at his broad and weathered hands that seemed to know what to do as if they had tiny brains and eyes of their own.
It was close to the third week in March when she was shaken awake one night and found George beside the bed fully dressed, snow clinging to his woolen pants.
“Get dressed. I need your help.”
She stumbled after him to the barn where the white cow was laboring.