A Cup of Dust

by Susie Finkbeiner

  “No, stay. Please.”

  “I gotta get home.” She reached for the door.

  “To the cat house?”

  She whipped around toward me again, her cheeks red and her hands clenched. I was afraid she would hit me. She didn’t look into my face, but at my shoulder. Releasing her hands, she slouched.

  “I don’t know where you heard a thing like that,” she said. “But it ain’t such a nice thing to say.”

  “Why not?’

  “It just ain’t.” She stammered. “It’s just that … it’s not nice.”

  “I’m sorry.” Tears about flooded out of my eyes. “I didn’t mean to say anything unkind. I don’t know what’s wrong with living at a cat house.”

  She blew out air and reached into her purse, grabbing a cigarette and lighting it. “Listen here, Pearl,” she said, not angry exactly. “I wanna tell you something important, all right?”

  I nodded.

  “I know Eddie’s talked to you. I just don’t know what all he’s told you.” She pulled on her cigarette again. “But you need to know, it’s all been for you.”

  “He’s bad.”

  “No. Not all the way.” The cigarette shook in her hand, breaking loose a flutter of ashes to the clean floor. “I’ve done a lot of wrong, you know. More wrong than good. And I hate all I done. But I’m trying to make some things right.”

  “Do you hate the cat house?”

  “Closest place to hell I can think of.” She reached both hands toward me, but before she touched me she pulled back. “I been foolish and wicked. And I done terrible things. But you’re okay.”

  She turned and pulled open the door just enough to slip through.

  Daddy didn’t come back and the evening was turning darker. Night made the courthouse sounds worse, so I decided to go home.

  I left a note for Daddy on his desk.

  Walking along the dirt-covered sidewalks from the courthouse to my front porch, I knew I needed to tell Mama that I’d talked to Winnie. That Woman. Bracing myself for Mama to be sore at me, I took one step at a time up the porch and opened the front door.

  “Mama?” I called, breathing in the smell of potatoes. My grumbling stomach called out, too.

  “Darlin’,” Meemaw answered. “I’m in the kitchen. Come on in here.”

  Meemaw stood at the stove, pushing a pile of food around in a black skillet. She cracked a few eggs, mixing them in. I raised up on my toes to see if she had any sausage in there, too. No such luck.

  “Where’s Mama?”

  Meemaw looked over her shoulder at me. Moist and red, her eyes were swollen from crying.

  Something bad had happened.

  “What’s wrong?” Dread squeezed the air out of me.

  She flicked the burner off under the food and turned all the way toward me. Her mouth worked around words she didn’t say. I wished she would just tell me what had happened, but something held her back from it.

  “You hungry?” she asked, reaching for a plate in the cupboard. “Go get your sister, hear?”

  I did as she asked, and the three of us ate our eggs and potatoes in quiet. We stacked our plates in the sink, and Meemaw walked Beanie and me up to our room.

  “I’ll just leave the dishes for tomorrow,” she said. “I’m so tired.”

  She tucked us in our bed without making us change our clothes or clean our teeth and turned down the lights. Beanie rustled around for a while before drifting into a snoring sleep.

  I tried my hardest to stay awake, determined not to fall asleep until Mama and Daddy got home.

  I couldn’t stay in bed a moment longer. Beanie groaned and rolled in her sleep, pushing me near the edge of the bed. When she moved back to her side, she took the covers with her.

  Climbing over her, I got out of bed. The chilly floor sent a shiver from my bare feet all the way to my shoulders. As quiet as I could, I took my sweater from its hanger and pushed my hands through the sleeves.

  The downstairs of our house was quiet except for the ticking of our clock. I sat, rocking in Meemaw’s chair until I saw Mama and Daddy walk up the front porch. Daddy held the door for Mama.

  “I sure could use a drink,” Daddy said.

  “Quiet, Tom,” Mama whispered. “They’re all asleep.”

  “Not everybody.” Daddy nodded at me.

  He didn’t wear his usual smile.

  “What are you doing up?” Mama asked, keeping her voice low. “You should be in bed. It’s real late, darlin’.”

  “I was worried,” I answered.

  “About what?” Mama unbuttoned her sweater.

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s nothing to be worried about.” The way Mama’s voice shook, I knew she wasn’t telling the truth.

  “We have to tell her some time,” Daddy said, facing Mama. Then he shrugged and shook his head. “We have to.”

  It felt as if my heart stopped beating.

  Mama sat on the davenport, and Daddy came to me, kneeling on the floor. It wasn’t until his face was close that I noticed the bags under his eyes and the droop of his mouth. He licked his lips, and his chin quivered. He cried. I’d never seen Daddy cry.

  “Honey, something happened,” he said, touching my knee. “Something real bad.”

  “What was it?” My mind passed through all the faces of people something bad could happen to. I knew it was no one in our house. At least that was a relief.

  “Darlin’, I’m fixing to tell you something that’s hard. You might have questions, but I don’t know if I got any answers.” He blinked a few times. “I don’t have answers for any of the questions I’ve got myself.”

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  “Well, it’s hard to say exactly.” He sniffled, and his nose sounded full. “But when Mrs. Jones and Ray went back home this afternoon, they found Mr. Jones.”

  He paused and swallowed a good couple times. He didn’t blink, but I didn’t figure his eyes would dry out for all the tears.

  “He’d hung himself,” he said. “He’s dead.”

  “Did Ray see it?” I asked. I remembered the story Ray’d told me months before about the man who got hung. I wondered if Mr. Jones had gotten the idea to do that from the newsreel. “Did he see his father?”

  Daddy nodded.

  “Is he okay?”

  “Mr. Jones is dead, darlin’.”

  “I mean Ray.”

  Daddy shook his head. “Nobody should have to see what he seen today.”

  “Did you see him?”

  Daddy nodded.

  “Was it really bad?”

  “Yes.” Daddy’s voice cracked, but he didn’t lose himself. Instead, he cleared his throat.

  “You shouldn’t have had to see it, either.”

  His whole forehead wrinkled. “We’re gonna do everything we can to get Ray and Mrs. Jones out of that dugout. I don’t know how we’ll do it, but there’s got to be a way.”

  “Luella won’t leave, Tom,” Mama said. “That dugout’s all she has.”

  “That man spoiled everything for her, didn’t he?” Daddy locked his jaw and closed his eyes.

  Mr. Jones had taken so much from that family. I wondered if he thought taking himself from them was the best thing he could have done.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Beanie didn’t understand a whole lot of things. One of the things that plain didn’t make sense to her was death. She couldn’t figure out how a body could have breath and a heartbeat one moment and the next be still and without life.

  I wasn’t sure I had a good handle on it, either, for that matter.

  Mama tried to explain Mr. Jones’s death anyway. The fact that he’d killed himself confused Beanie even more. We sat at the table, Mama trying to get it through my sister’s head.

  “He’s not coming back?” Beanie asked. “Like Baby Rosie?”

  “That’s right,” Mama answered.

  “Did he get full of dust?”

  “No. Remember, I tol
d you he died a different way.” Mama reached across the table and patted Beanie’s hand. “He did it to himself.”

  “Baby Rosie’s in heaven.” Beanie pushed her eyebrows together the way she always did when she tried real hard to figure out something. “So Mr. Jones is in heaven, too.”

  Mama let out a big sigh and pinched the very top of her nose.

  “They’re together in heaven.” Beanie nodded and smiled.

  “Rosie sure is,” I said.

  “Mr. Jones can take care of her now.”

  “He never took care of her when he was alive,” I snapped, surprised by how good it felt to be angry at that man.

  “Pearl Louise,” Mama gasped.

  “It’s true,” I said. “If he’s in heaven, I hope he’s not allowed anywhere near her.”

  Mama didn’t say anything against that because she knew how mean Mr. Jones was.

  “You think he’s in heaven?” Beanie asked, looking at me.

  “I don’t know where he’s at,” I answered. “All I care about is that he can’t hurt anybody anymore.”

  Beanie sat for a long time, her eyebrows pushed together. All at once, she got up and stormed up the stairs and to our room, slamming the door behind her.

  “Leave her be,” Mama said.

  She didn’t have to tell me twice.

  Beanie never came downstairs for dinner, so we ate without her, as much as it bothered Meemaw to do it.

  “She’s going to get hungry,” Meemaw argued.

  “Mother, she’s near grown,” Daddy said. “She’s got to learn. Life’s hard, but we can’t go into a temper tantrum every time something goes wrong.”

  “She just don’t understand, is all.” Meemaw crisscrossed her fork and knife across her empty plate. “You should know better than to tell her things she can’t understand.”

  “Mother,” Daddy said, his voice smooth and calm. “Beanie is going to be all right.”

  “I wish I knew that was the truth.”

  “Would it make you feel better if I went up and checked on her?” Daddy sipped the last of his coffee.

  “It would, and I thank you.” Meemaw dusted a crumb off her chest.

  “Excuse me,” Mama whispered, getting up from the table, her shoulders tense as she moved. She carried her plate to the counter.

  “It don’t make no sense to me, Mary,” Meemaw said.

  “What don’t?”

  “Why you would tell Beanie a thing like that. You knew it would just get her all in a bunch.”

  “She had to know.” Mama poured water into a pot and put it on the stove to boil. “We can’t keep these girls from knowing what goes on in this world. I don’t keep secrets from my children.”

  Meemaw huffed out air and shook her head. “Since when? Seems to me you’ve got a whopper of a secret under your hat.”

  “Mother,” Daddy said, glancing at me. “Don’t. That’s not the way.”

  Mama turned, her cheeks red. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Well, Beanie ain’t never gonna understand things.” Meemaw folded her hands in her lap. “I’d have thought you’d know that by now.”

  Mama grabbed her plate and threw it to the floor, smashing it. Meemaw yelped and lifted her hands to her chest, and Daddy stood. My heart beat so hard, it shook my whole body. Mama lifted her hands to her head and gathered bunches of her hair in her fingers.

  “You think I don’t know that?” she yelled. “She is my daughter. I know her. I know she isn’t right. I do. And I wish to high heaven I could fix that for her, but I can’t.”

  Daddy stepped toward Mama with his hands out as if he was cornering a steer.

  “No.” Mama shook her head, eyes huge. “Don’t you—”

  “Mary, I need you to calm down.” Daddy took another step.

  “I just want you to leave me alone.” She turned her head this way and that, as if she was searching the kitchen for something. “All I want is to get out of this county. Out of this godforsaken state. Everything’s dying here. It’s all falling apart. And I think I’m coming to pieces along with it.”

  She touched the counter, running her hand across it, pushing off a layer of dust.

  “It doesn’t matter what I do. This house is always dirty. It’s filthy. All I do is scrub and sweep, and it doesn’t make one lick of a difference.” Mama’s voice weakened. “Tom, if you want me to stay married to you, you best find a way to move this family. We can’t live here no more.”

  “Mary—”

  “Thomas, I’m not just talking.” She gritted her teeth. “If I have to stay here another day I very well may end up like Si Jones.”

  “Don’t you dare say something like that.” Daddy smoothed his voice like he was calming a child. “You know you wouldn’t. We need you too much.”

  “You hear me? The girls and I can’t live like this anymore. We can’t take it.” She pointed right at him, jabbing her finger into his chest. “I’ll take the girls, and I will leave you behind.”

  “I ain’t never thought I’d let a woman talk to me like that.” Daddy shook his head and pushed his lips together.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Mama trembled. “You gonna beat me?”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “Well, you didn’t stop Si from beating Luella.” She crossed her arms. “Maybe you think it’s not a half-bad idea.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.” Daddy stepped away from her. “You best calm yourself.”

  Daddy turned from her and made his way to the steps. “Mary, I love you dearly. You know that.”

  He took the stairs two at a time. I followed him.

  “Daddy?” I said.

  He didn’t respond, not even to let me know he’d heard me.

  “I don’t want to leave.” I touched his back. “I wouldn’t ever go anywhere without you.”

  “I know.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Neither would your mama.”

  He turned the knob of my bedroom door and pushed, but it didn’t budge. He pushed harder.

  “Beanie Jean, you come on and open this door,” he said, his voice raised.

  She didn’t answer him.

  “I’m gonna have to break this door down if you don’t open it.”

  Still, she didn’t answer.

  Daddy put his shoulder into the door, grunting as he shoved it. A skidding of furniture across the floor and the door opened. Beanie had shoved the bed in front of the door. How she’d had the strength, I didn’t know.

  Daddy and I stepped into the room.

  The curtains moved in the wind that blew through the window.

  “Beanie?” Daddy called, looking in the closet and under the bed. “Violet Jean?”

  Her shoes were set on her pillow, the laces tangled and frayed.

  She was gone.

  Mama paced the living room, her shoes tap-tap-tapping as she walked. For all the carrying on with Meemaw before, Mama was quiet and pale as she could be. Her breaths came in short gasps.

  “She’s going to be cold,” she said, holding Beanie’s one sweater in a lump against her chest.

  Water made a tinkling song as Meemaw filled the tea kettle and put it on to boil. We didn’t have any tea, I knew that much. Mama had put it off for months, saying she didn’t need it. Still, Meemaw boiled water and Mama drank it just like it was, sipping it dutifully before she went back to pacing.

  The clock struck eleven times. Outside, the sky was black as tar, and the air was just as thick. Mama had finally sat down on the davenport.

  After the clock chimed twelve, Mama got up and went out to the porch. I followed her, so tired, but too scared to sleep. My sister had never taken off into the night before.

  Standing next to Mama, I wrapped my arm around her waist, but she didn’t act like she even knew I was there. She just stood still, glaring into the black.

  “I should go help them look,” she said. “I wish Tom would’ve let me help.”

  Daddy had gotten Mil
lard and a few other men to form a search party after an hour of looking on his own for Beanie. He’d taken his truck so he could cover more land. Most of the other men had lanterns with them. Every once in a while, I’d see a bright dot of flame or headlight off in the distance. Like fireflies.

  Meemaw was inside the house, praying. Her quivery voice called out to God, loud as it could get. She begged God so much I was embarrassed for her. I didn’t think I had the stomach to listen to her much longer. Her praying made me even more afraid for my sister.

  Leaning back against the porch, I said a little prayer of my own. Mine was inside my head or my heart, I couldn’t decide which. If God heard it, I couldn’t tell. Not right away, at least. All I could do right then was hope He was listening. I wondered if that was what faith felt like.

  My prayer was just two words that I thought over and over. “Help Beanie.” That was all I could think of. I’d closed my eyes, hoping it would work even better.

  Then Mama spoke.

  “It’s him,” she said. Then she said it again, louder, and just about jumped off the porch. She ran down the path to the street.

  Daddy’s truck rumbled along the road toward our house. The headlights were so bright against the dark I couldn’t see much else. As it got closer, I could see a man driving and two men riding in the back.

  I could tell that the men in the back were Millard and Daddy. They leaned over something.

  “Pearl, the door,” Mama shouted. “Hold the door.”

  I pulled it wide and held it, afraid I wasn’t doing enough to help.

  The truck pulled as close to the porch steps as it could before stopping. Daddy and Millard jumped off the back and helped Beanie out. Daddy steadied my sister as she stumbled up the steps. She held tight to his arm and kept her face blank. She didn’t look at me as she passed by.

  Mama followed close behind.

  I still held the door even after they were all inside, waiting for Millard and the other man to come in, too.

  “We’ll wait out here, Pearl,” Millard said. “Go on in.”

  I went inside like he said and closed the door.

  “Have her sit there,” Mama said, pointing at the davenport. “Mother, my basket of bandages. Please.”