A Cup of Dust

by Susie Finkbeiner

  Down the steps I rushed, to the kitchen, and grabbed the door knob. Daddy pushed me aside and opened the door himself.

  “Ray, son, simmer down.” He put a hand on Ray’s shoulder and pulled him inside. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  Ray gulped in air, his mouth gaping and his hands working at rubbing tears off his face.

  “Son, what’s this all about?”

  “It’s Baby Rosie.” Ray’s voice fizzled into a barely there whisper. “She’s gone.”

  “No.” Daddy sighed the word.

  “She got to coughing, and she couldn’t stop,” Ray went on. “She couldn’t catch another breath.”

  “Your father isn’t to home, is he?”

  Ray covered his eyes and shook his head to say no. He barked out his sobs. Daddy grabbed hold of him and pulled him close, circling around him with strong arms. He held him until Ray’s crying quieted. Loosening his hold, he put his hands on Ray’s shoulders.

  “Son, listen here. Look at me. Listen. You go on home. Your mama’s needing you to be strong. Hear?” Daddy lowered his face to Ray’s. “She can’t see you like this. Get together before you go home. Then—do you hear me, son? Then you got to put your arms around her and let her cry for a bit. Like I done with you.”

  Ray nodded, shaking loose a couple tears. His jaw jutted out, and his lips pulled thin.

  “You about ready?” Daddy asked.

  “I don’t want to go alone,” Ray said.

  “I’ll go with you then.” Daddy stood up. “Just let me get dressed.”

  Ray’s whole body shook, but his face stayed strong. He looked more like a man than I ever saw a boy look.

  “When your father gets home, you come over here, and I’ll let you sit in my root cellar and cry it out,” Daddy said, turning to go to his bedroom.

  Mama stepped toward him. I hadn’t realized she was there. She hadn’t even taken the time to swing a robe over her shoulders. The dark of the room and the moonlight made her nightgown seem wispy as fairy wings.

  “Tom …” She touched Daddy’s back when he passed her.

  “We need a board. Something to put the baby on.” Daddy turned his head toward the table.

  Mama nodded and the two of them pulled on either end. Daddy lifted one of the wooden leaves out. They pushed, clunking the table back together.

  “I’ll get Hank Eliot,” Mama whispered.

  It was then I realized that when Ray said Baby Rosie was gone he meant she’d died. Nobody ever sent for Hank Eliot unless they needed an undertaker. I let myself slide down the wall to the floor.

  Without another word between them, Mama put the day’s leftover coffee on the stove top while Daddy went about getting dressed. He buttoned his shirt and strapped on his holster. Mama poured the coffee into a thermos and handed it to him as he made for the door, the table leaf tucked under his arm.

  “You lock up behind me,” he whispered. “I’ll be back later on.”

  Mama locked the door like he’d said. Her fingers lifted one side of the lacy curtain so she could watch him and Ray out the window. After just a few breaths, she backed herself into a chair, the same one Mrs. Jones had sat in with Baby Rosie on her lap. Mama’s shoulders curled forward, and her body shook with crying. After a moment of silent sobs, Mama moaned and coughed out her sadness.

  I had never seen Mama cry before that moment, and it shocked me, stealing my breath. I’d never realized before that mamas could weep.

  Whenever I cried, Mama would rub little circles on my back with the meat of her hand and whisper “hush” into my ear. She shushed my whimpering many-a-time with that warm, gentle voice of hers.

  That night, I wanted to do that same thing for her.

  I pushed myself up off the floor and shuffled my feet toward her, fine grains of dust pushing into the soles of my bare feet.

  When I touched Mama’s back, she turned and, without even looking at me, wrapped her arms all the way around me, pulling me onto her lap. She cried into my hair and held me tighter than I ever remembered her doing before.

  Meemaw knew what had happened without Mama or me having to tell her. She came in, her body slouched over and her steps stiff, and fried us up a couple eggs from the few laying chickens we still had. She started the percolator to gurgle new coffee.

  The sun hadn’t even started to rise, but we were up.

  Mama waited until the coffee was ready and slung back a cup of it before getting dressed. She told Meemaw she was going for Hank.

  I waited until Mama’d left and I had forced down half an egg before I asked Meemaw if she’d tell me something.

  “What’d you like to know?” she asked, busying herself with scrubbing the fry pan.

  “Daddy said he needed a board for Baby Rosie,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He took a leaf of the table.”

  She turned and tilted her head at the table. “Oh. So he did.”

  “Why did he need to take it?”

  “To lay her out on.”

  I didn’t ask her to explain what that meant, and she didn’t go on. I figured it was something that would’ve only made me even more sad than I already was.

  I ate the rest of my egg, even though I didn’t feel hungry. I didn’t feel much of anything except for the loss of Rosie. Loss so large I forgot about everything else in the world.

  They couldn’t bury Baby Rosie in Red River. The cemetery was in a grave of its own under mounds of dust. So the Jones family piled into Daddy’s truck, Ray and his father in the back with the tiny coffin, and Mrs. Jones and Mama up front with Daddy. They drove east, a few counties over where they could give her a proper burial.

  I couldn’t go, and I understood why not. Still, it made my heart hurt to stay home on that day.

  I expected the ache in me was about half of what it was in Ray.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mama had invited Millard and Mrs. Jones over to listen to the president’s fireside chat. She set out a few straight-backed chairs in the living room, making a semicircle around the radio, and perked a fresh pot of coffee, the smell of it filling the house with richness.

  Once they’d arrived, we took seats, and Daddy switched on the radio. Millard passed out candy to Beanie and me, and we were already sucking on the sweets, letting them melt on our tongues. Ray hadn’t come. Mrs. Jones said he didn’t feel all too well.

  I asked if he had a cough, and she shook her head. Just a stomachache, she told me.

  The president’s voice warbled, singing over the pop and crackle of the radio. I pretended that it was the noise of his fireplace. Half of his words sounded like a foreign language to me, but it seemed that all the grown-ups understood him just fine. Their heads nodded, and sometimes one of them would make a hm-mm sound in the back of their throat.

  “Why’s he talking like that?” I asked Mama.

  She shushed me.

  “He’s from New York,” she whispered in my ear. “That’s how they talk there.”

  I guessed folks from New York didn’t use the letter r as much as Oklahomans did. I tried a few of his words under my breath.

  “Owe-nahs” and “tray-dahs.”

  I only got to try a few before Mama whispered my name and shook her head.

  All I had left to do was listen, and I just didn’t follow too well. He used so many big words I didn’t understand. A lot of his ideas were beyond my knowledge. But he had Daddy and Millard’s interest.

  As for me, it didn’t make monkey sense.

  He did say something I understood well enough. “My friends,” the president said. He said it so many times I decided to believe him, that we really were his friends and that he was ours.

  Friends came to visit, and I imagined how it would be when he would come. He would drive into Red River in a long car. The sun would glint off the automobile, but not in a way that would hurt anybody’s eyes. The president would have a big map spread out on the seat next to him with a circle drawn aro
und all the places he’d stop on his trip. Red River would be ringed in bright blue. All the town would come out of their houses and dugouts and line the streets, waving at him as he drove past.

  A regular old parade like folks around Cimarron County had never seen before.

  He would make sure to go slow so that he wouldn’t kick up too big a cloud of dust behind him.

  Once he reached our house, he’d cut the engine and get out of his car. He stood at least a head taller than all the other men from Red River.

  “Sorry Mrs. Roosevelt couldn’t come along this time,” he would tell us, shaking hands with Daddy and winking at Beanie. He would tell us how she was busy sewing dresses for orphans and canning jelly for widows. “Next time I’ll bring her along for the ride.”

  He would come in for a cup of coffee and a thick slice of Mama’s johnnycake. He’d let her drizzle molasses all over top of it, even if he was from New York. He’d hum as he ate it because it tasted so good. He’d make sure to ask for her recipe so Mrs. Roosevelt could make it for him at home.

  After he’d had his bite to eat and his cup of coffee, I would take his hand and march him right over to the Jones’s dugout. He’d let our hands swing between us as we walked.

  Once we made it to the sharecroppers’ cabins, I’d point at the Jones’s place and say, “You see that wall caving in there? And if we go inside, you’ll see the centipedes.”

  He would shake his head. “Oh my. Oh my.”

  Last, I would hold his hand tighter so that we’d both have courage when we looked at Baby Rosie’s empty cradle. We’d stand together, gazing down at it and making no noise at all because we would want to respect her memory. I would pretend not to see the tear that hung on his eyelashes.

  President Roosevelt would see with his own eyes what the dust had done to us. He couldn’t help but let his heart get broken.

  “I want to help,” he would say, setting his jaw.

  He would walk right up to Mrs. Jones and shake her hand.

  “He-yah’s a little something to help you, my friends,” he’d say, reaching into his own pocket for a wad of folding money. “I’ll have Mrs. Roosevelt send ov-ah some fresh socks she’s been knitting. My good friends, everything is going to get bett-ah for you.”

  Mrs. Jones would wipe her eyes, taking the money into her hands. She would thank me for bringing the president over so he could help them. Mr. Jones would be there, too. Maybe he’d even get a job out of the whole thing. He’d make enough money to build a new home above ground.

  Then the president would walk me home, lifting me high on his shoulders. Even though I was far too big for that kind of thing, I’d let him carry me. A man that kind had to have been mighty strong.

  The click of the radio turning off broke through my daydream.

  “Well,” Daddy said, standing.

  He and Millard walked Mrs. Jones home, and Meemaw put away the mending she’d been working during the talk.

  “Mary, let me get them dishes washed up.” Meemaw sighed when she got up, her face wrinkling with the effort. “Pearl, I’ll ask you to do the drying.”

  In the kitchen, Meemaw let the water rise up over her blue-veined, thin-skinned hands and well up past her wrists. She sighed and smiled. “That feels mighty good on my old fingers.”

  After a minute or two of soaking, she started washing up the dishes and handed them to me to wipe with the towel. It only took us a minute or two to get them all washed up and put away.

  “Now,” Meemaw said, her dishrag dripping. “Go on and give your mama a kiss. Tell her good night.”

  Mama hadn’t moved from her seat since Daddy had turned off the radio. Her eyes were rimmed red with purple crescents under them.

  “Good night, Mama,” I said.

  “Is it time for bed already?” she asked.

  Nodding, I stepped toward her and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

  “That was nice, darlin’.” She smiled, but not the kind that would have showed her teeth.

  “Are you okay, Mama?”

  “I will be,” she answered. “I’ve just been thinking about Rosie a lot.”

  Mama’s fingers fumbled with a bit of hair that had gotten loose from my braid. She pushed it behind my ear.

  “I’m sorry about Baby Rosie,” I whispered.

  “Me too, darlin’.”

  Beanie and I lay next to each other in our bed. The springs under our mattress creaked as she flipped and flopped, trying to get comfortable.

  “Quit it,” I said.

  She didn’t.

  Before I even gave it a second thought, I jabbed her with my elbow. “Lay still,” I grumped.

  That time, she did what I said. Except she cried out, too.

  Hurting her made me feel all kinds of mean and terrible.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Her hollering cry turned into a whimper, which turned into her staring at me with her out-of-focus eyes.

  Beanie was born good as dead. That was what Mama had told me. Something or another was wrapped around her neck, cutting off the air she needed. She was blue and not breathing. Somehow they got her untangled, and she got enough air in her lungs to come to life.

  Baby Rosie was born just fine. Mama had told me that, too. She was pink and screaming her entrance into the world. Then her air ran out.

  Jesus didn’t call her forth or take her hand and ask her to wake up.

  Boy, did I ever wish He would have woken her up.

  I dreamed of Baby Rosie. She lay on a leaf from our kitchen table, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes closed. The whole town of Red River stood outside the Jones’s dugout, crying and carrying on.

  Jesus came along and walked right up to the dugout, ducking His head to go inside. He knelt next to Rosie and picked up her hand.

  He called her “My friend.”

  I did believe He meant it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mama stood out in the back yard, beating her curtains, knocking the dust out of them. She wore a mask over her mouth and nose, so I couldn’t see much of her face, but I was sure she wore a snarl under the cotton. The way she attacked those curtains with her rug beater, I was glad not to be on the receiving end of her wrath.

  Shoulders slumped and chest heaving, she tucked the rug beater under one arm and smoothed her hair.

  Mama fought the dust every day and lost each time. Even so, she wouldn’t give up. Problem was, her never-ending battle meant we had to fight alongside her.

  “Pearl,” she called to me when she caught me watching her. “Did you girls get all the clothes that need washed out of your room?”

  Without waiting for my answer, she turned back to the curtains, pulling them from the line.

  “Go on and get everything. Mrs. Jones is coming soon.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Beyond Mama, on the road from the sharecroppers’ cabins, Mrs. Jones shuffled in the dirt toward our house. I tried to hide the disappointment that Ray wasn’t coming alongside her.

  “And tell Beanie to bring her laundry, too,” Mama hollered.

  When I got to our room, Beanie had her few dresses crumpled up on our bed. She still had on her nightgown, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. That nightie of hers was stained with sweat around the neck and under the arms, and I could tell just by looking at her that it smelled.

  “You need to change so Mrs. Jones can wash your nightie,” I said, collecting a pile of clothes from the floor. “And get your dirty stuff together.”

  “It’s all dirty.” She sniffled. “I don’t remember when nothing was clean.”

  “That’s why Mrs. Jones is coming.”

  “She can’t get it clean. It don’t matter how hard she scrubs it, she can’t get the dust out.”

  “Girls,” Mama called from the bottom of the steps. “Come on.”

  I grabbed Beanie’s pile and shoved it into her arms before taking up my own. We carried them down the steps, me in front. Beanie had to stop
a couple times to pick up a sock she dropped or a dress that had almost gotten tangled in her legs. She slipped, her foot kicking the back of my calf.

  She would have pushed me all the way down the steps if I hadn’t rushed down the last few stairs.

  Mrs. Jones stood just inside the back door. Way down in my stomach felt sore when I looked at her. Even though she kept her face pointed at the floor, I could see that something was wrong with her eye.

  “Well, Luella, what in heaven’s name happened to you?” Mama’s voice went up in tone, like she was singing. “Come in here. Let me see what I can do for that.”

  “It’s fine,” Mrs. Jones said, waving her off. “It’s nothing.”

  Beanie about knocked me over, but I didn’t take my eyes off Mrs. Jones. Her cheek was red and purple, and her eye was swelled shut.

  Meemaw caught a gasp in her hands, and she shook her head. “Oh, darlin’, you can’t let him do you this way.”

  “Mother,” Mama warned. “Luella, you go on and sit down there at the table. You hungry?”

  “I ain’t never hungry no more.” Mrs. Jones sat at the table. “Mary, I’m fine. I am.”

  Mama soaked a washcloth in clean water, wringing out the extra drops. “Well, that eye doesn’t look fine. It looks sore.”

  “That ain’t why I come here.”

  “I know why you came, and we’ve got it all ready for you.” Mama looked over her shoulder at us. “Right girls? You go on and put the clothes in the basket over there.”

  When Mrs. Jones took notice of us, she covered the side of her face with one of her hands.

  “What happened, Mrs. Jones?” I asked, dumping my load into the basket.

  “Pearl Louise, mind your manners.” Mama shot me her hush-up look. “I’m sorry, Luella. She knows better than that.”

  “It’s all right.” Mrs. Jones lowered her hand, letting it rest in her lap. She opened her hurt eye as much as she could, wincing at the pain. Under the thick lid was her eye, red and just a sliver of gray.