“You gotta go live with your real family now,” Daddy said. “We can’t keep you with us anymore.”
He reached down and pulled up one of the doors, and red light glowed out.
“Go on,” he told me.
I fell in. Down and down and down I went, feeling like I’d never reach the bottom, hoping with all my heart I wouldn’t. Spinning, I felt dizzy and was sure I’d get sick.
Before I hit the blood-muddied dirt floor, my body jerked, pushing me out of the dream.
White. That was what I saw when I first woke. White sheet under me, white sheet on top. A white curtain hung from ceiling to floor. White woman wearing white all over and even with white hair like a cloud on her head.
“Would you look who’s up,” she said.
Her words sounded crisp, clipped, and white.
A cough raged through my chest. It felt red. What came out of my mouth splattered brown, spoiling the white sheet.
“It’s all right, darlin,” Daddy said, his smell not of cigarettes and coffee like I was used to. Instead it was flat, his scent dusty. “Just be strong, hear?”
His heavy arm rested across my chest, holding me to the bed.
A different kind of pain burned through me, coming from my side. Tears streamed down my face and into my ears. Gurgling noises came from somewhere deep in me.
“Help me,” I whispered. “Daddy, please.”
“Can’t you do more for the pain?” Daddy asked, turning his head to look at somebody. “She’s feeling this.”
“We gave her ether,” a voice next to me said. “She should’t have any pain.”
“But she does.” Daddy growled a cuss. Then he held me firmer and looked right into my eyes. “I’m sorry, Pearlie. I am. They gotta do it.”
A woman leaned her face over mine and pressed a cloth over my nose and mouth, smothering me. I would’ve fought her off if my arms were free. But Daddy was holding me down, letting them kill me.
“There now,” she said. “That should be better.”
She lifted the cloth and it seemed a whole other world clicked into place in my mind. It came with a taste like nothing else I’d ever had in my mouth, like paint. Smacking my lips I tried working up a spit, but I was dry as a bone.
Numb eased through every part of me, causing me to float above myself just an inch or two. It was as if a cloud of cotton had been packed all around me.
“I think we got it,” a voice said. It sounded an awful lot like singing.
I’d said the sinner’s prayer when I was nine years old. That was how I knew I’d go to heaven should I die.
Meemaw’d sat beside me on the edge of my bed and helped me find the words to say, asking Jesus to take up a home in my heart.
Seemed I would’ve felt different for saying those words. That I’d have felt holy and set apart. What I expected was magic, like the breaking of a curse.
But all I felt that day was regular, same-old, unchanged.
I’d asked Meemaw if it took. I asked if I might’ve done it wrong.
She smiled and covered my hand with hers. Blue veins made lines like a map under her see-through skin.
“There ain’t a wrong way to give yourself to Jesus, darlin’,” she said. “Besides, it ain’t the prayer that saves you.”
“What is it then?” I asked.
“It’s Him,” she told me. “He’s the One does the leadin’ home.”
If I was going to die, I knew I’d go to heaven. I wanted Jesus to hold my hand. I’d follow Him to those pearly gates and maybe we’d both smile to think about my name being Pearl.
“Come on in,” He’d say.
I’d do as He said, still holding onto His hand. Holding on as long as He’d let me.
I thought sure I was going to die.
I wasn’t scared.
He’d show me the way home.
Cool water touched my lips, easing me awake. A sip slid down my throat, soothing the raw ache. I thought maybe I’d died already. That water felt better than anything ever had.
But when I opened my eyes I saw Mama’s face real close to mine. She cradled my head. Tired smile and dark-ringed eyes, she still was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known.
“Am I still alive?” I asked her, my voice small as a mite.
She nodded and gave me another sip of water.
“Just a little more,” she said. “Can’t have too much all at once.”
Lowering my head back onto the pillow, she leaned over and kissed my forehead. I tried stretching and felt a tug from my side. I touched my ribs, finding a tube coming out of my skin.
“Don’t pull on it,” Mama said. “It’s gotta stay another day or two.”
She took my hand, brought it to her lips and gave it a kiss.
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“That tube’s getting all the gunk out.” She put my hand down and pulled the blanket up over me. “Get some sleep now, darlin’.”
Mama smiled again. How I wished there was even a little happiness behind it.
When I woke, my eyes snapped open, the light above my bed glaring on my face. My body ached. Not a sick ache, though, but one from staying in bed too long. I pulled my legs up making mountains with my knees under the blanket.
If I’d had the strength I would’ve got up and run laps around my bed until they let me loose outside. As it was, moving my legs even so much as an inch was tiring enough.
The woman with the cloud hair stepped to the side of my bed and tilted her head at me. She did have a sweet smile, one that I thought was a dose of medicine all its own.
“How’s about we get you setting up a spell?” she said, wrapping her hand around the back of my neck. “And how’s about something to eat?”
I felt of my side where the tube had been. All that was there was a bandage under my cotton nightie.
“Doc Clem took that mean old tube out last night. Sure did the trick though, that tube did.” Lifting me with one hand, she fussed with the pillows behind me with the other. “You’re a brave girl. You know that?”
She didn’t wait for my answer. “Now, I’m gonna have you set up against these pillows. When you’re wore out, you can lie down again. All right?”
I nodded, letting her ease me against the soft pillows.
For the first time, I got a good look at all that was around me. Sheets hanging from clothes lines formed makeshift walls around my bed. Beyond the hanging walls I heard someone cough and somebody else moan. Shoes clicked and clomped and clacked across the hard floor. Voices murmured.
“You know where you’re at?” the nurse asked.
“No, ma’am,” I whispered, the words scrubbing against the inside of my throat.
“You ever been to Boise City before?”
I told her I had, a couple times.
“Welcome back, then.” She put her arms up like she was fixing to give me a tour. “This here’s George Washington High School. You’re in the gymnasium. We got so many folks coming through with the dust pneumonia we up and run outta space at the hospital. That’s why we’re here. We got everything a normal hospital would. Even got the Red Cross helping out. You imagine that?”
I shook my head.
“Like I said, we got lots here with the dust pneumonia. Just like you’ve got.” She went about straightening the sheets at the foot of the bed. “Not all the patients are doing so good as you, though.”
“Where’s my mama?” I asked.
“Well, she’s getting her a little rest,” the nurse answered. Her kind face dropped to sadness. “It’s been a hard few weeks for her.”
“And my daddy?”
“Getting a bite to eat.” She wrote a note on a clipboard. “He’s hardly taken a meal all this time. He’s been so worried about you.”
“Is he all right?”
“I think he will be over time,” she said. “It’s a hard thing on a parent, losing one child. And with the other one sick like you are, that just adds more fear to the grief.”
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Beanie. On Mama’s bed. Her hair fanned out. Blue faced. Not breathing. Gone. I remembered it all just then and the grief flooded, sure to drown me.
How could I have forgotten a thing like that?
I curled on one side, burying my face into the pillow and soaking it with my crying. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t supposed to get worked up or that I started a coughing fit that hacked through me like a dust storm was caught up inside my chest.
The nurse in white tried all she could to calm me, to ease my pain.
All I wanted right then was my mama.
Nighttime in my space of the makeshift hospital was dark and lonely. All the white that glowed too bright during the day turned to gray with shadows creeping behind the hanging sheets. Every noise echoed off the cold gymnasium walls, sounding more frightening than just a cough or whisper.
I stirred, trying to get comfortable. It turned out to be a tall order. No matter how I rolled, my body ached. Earlier that day they’d let me get up and walk on loose-as-noodles legs. It only took a handful of steps before I was out of breath and falling down tired.
Doc Clem had said it would take awhile for me to build up my strength again. I didn’t think I could wait a minute more to be back to myself.
It took me some doing but I did get myself sitting up on that bed with my legs folded under me.
In a chair pulled close by, Daddy sat with his head tipped back and his mouth open. A light snore rattled in his throat. He had at least two days of stubble on his chin and I wondered if he wasn’t fixing to grow himself a full beard.
A newspaper lay across his lap. Tilting my head I read the words printed big on the top of the page. It read, “DUST BOWL VICTIMS PRAY FOR OKLAHOMA RAIN.”
If they’d asked me, that wasn’t news. We’d been praying for rain the last five years or so. But they hadn’t asked me. Nobody ever did.
Daddy started and righted his head. Blinking heavily, he looked at me and smiled. It was the first one in days that seemed real.
“You get up all by yourself?” he asked.
I told him I had.
“That’s good, darlin’. Real good.” He rubbed at his eyes with the meat of his hands. “You sleep all right?”
I nodded.
“When can I go home?” I asked. I was plenty sick of being cooped up in that hospital and I sure was ready to see something, anything, other than those cotton walls.
Daddy folded the newspaper and tossed it to the foot of the bed.
“Daddy?”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Can I go home soon?”
“Well.” He rubbed at his prickly face with one of his hands. “That’s something I gotta tell you.”
Worry crept up from my insides, settling in the spot between my eyebrows.
“Now, Doc says you’re well enough that you could go home tomorrow sometime,” he said. “But he’s worried about you staying in Oklahoma.”
“Why?”
“He says we’ve gotta get you somewhere without all this dust. Says he’s worried you’ll just get full up of it again if you stay here.”
“I won’t go outside,” I said, hearing the begging in my own voice. “I promise. And I’ll wear a mask every day. All the time if you want me to.”
“Darlin’, that won’t be enough.” He turned his eyes down, not looking at me. “You can’t stay. It could kill you, Pearl.”
All I could picture was him putting me on a train to travel off to the unknown all by myself. I’d rather drown in dirt than leave him. I wished he knew that.
“I managed to get a call through to my cousin. His name’s Gus. You remember me talking about him, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“He lives all the way up in Michigan. You know where that is?” Daddy leaned forward. “Now, Gus said he’d be happy to have us come up there. Said he’d help me get a job up there if I want. And he told me there’s plenty of houses for rent, with yards even. We could find a place there.”
“We’d all go?” I asked.
“Course.” He put my hand between both of his. “I wouldn’t think of sending you off by yourself. That wouldn’t do.”
The corners of my eyes pricked with tears of relief.
“You’re my girl,” he said. “Nothing could ever pull me away from you, darlin’.”
Daddy helped me lie back down, making sure my head rested on the pillow in a comfortable way. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying.
“You all right?” he asked, using his knuckle to dry under my eye.
I nodded and then shook my head, unsure which answer was more true.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s bothering you?”
“What’s gonna happen to Ray?”
“I don’t know.” He sighed. “All I know is I gotta get you someplace safe. And quick.”
Much as I didn’t want to, I broke. I cried all the way until sleep came and pulled me under.
I floated, dreamless, along the top of sleep, still hearing the nighttime sounds of the dark, makeshift hospital.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mama would’ve had me swear on the Bible to sit still if she could’ve. But, seeing as she couldn’t find it in any of the boxes Daddy’d already packed, she made me swear on her hand, which she said was just as strong a promise as God making Abraham a great nation and Moses getting the Israelites to the Promised Land.
I solemnly swore that I’d keep my backside on the davenport and not move so much as an inch no matter what. And that I’d keep the mask over my nose and mouth at all times. So help me God.
We’d gotten home from the hospital in Boise City just the night before and Mama’d hardly let me roll over in bed without fussing over how it would wear me out. She worried something awful about me getting sick again.
“I can’t be watching you,” she said, standing at the table and wrapping her good water glasses in pieces of newsprint. “Doc Clem said you’ve gotta rest. I agree with him, so don’t you give me that look, missy. I don’t need you getting worn-out. And straighten up that mask, would ya?”
I stayed put like she’d said to, wishing I had something to do besides watch her and Daddy rush around, getting things put in crates and boxes.
It wouldn’t have hurt my feelings if Ray thought to come by to talk to me. I hadn’t seen him since the big storm, the day we lost Beanie. I feared he’d stay away and we’d leave and I would never get to talk to him again.
Good-byes were hard, I knew that much. But leaving would only sting worse if I didn’t get to see him one last time.
Millard had been there all day long, helping Daddy and trying to keep Mama smiling. She fretted over if her dishes would survive the trip or if we’d have some place to sleep along the way. She even worried that she didn’t have anything good to feed Millard for all his work getting us packed.
“All I’ve got is beans and bread now with the store closed like it is,” she said, wringing her hands. “And I can’t even heat them up. Tom packed all my pots and pans already.”
“Don’t you fuss over me,” Millard told her. “Beans and bread’s never killed me before. Don’t think it’s like to today.”
The hurt of missing him had already set in and we hadn’t even left yet.
Mama scooted me off to bed before it was even dark. I tried to argue, but Mama would have none of it.
“You’re not all the way healed up yet, not even close. It’s gonna take awhile,” she said, pulling my by the hand to the stairs. “If I had my way I wouldn’t have you going up and down these steps, even. They take too much out of you.”
“I’m all right, Mama,” I said. “I feel fine.”
She gave me a sideways look that told me she didn’t believe me for a minute. Mama always had a way of knowing when I was speaking lies.
“We’ve got a big day tomorrow.” She’d gotten me up in my bedroom and helped me out of my dress and into a fresh nightie. “I need you to get a good n
ight’s sleep.”
Mama’s big day was us driving away from home, leaving Red River and all of Oklahoma behind. I didn’t think I’d have minded if Jesus decided to come down and rapture us up to heaven before the sun rose on Mama’s big day.
She helped me get into bed and pulled the covers up tight under my chin. I wasn’t cold, but I was tired so I didn’t fight her.
“Now, how about you say your prayers,” she said, sitting on the edge of my bed.
I recited a prayer she and Meemaw’d taught me when I was smaller, skipping the if-I-die-before-I-wake part. I didn’t want to upset Mama.
Besides, it seemed a hard thing to have in a child’s prayer. Real hard.
Before I finished the prayer I peeked to see if she had her eyes closed. She did not. Instead, she was turned at the waist, looking into the closet. The door stood open showing Beanie’s dresses still hanging there, forgotten in all the packing. I imagined her box of treasured things was on the shelf, untouched. My sister hadn’t owned a single thing of value to anybody but herself. She liked keeping whatever she found in the old, left-behind shacks after folks moved away. Tarnished spoons and torn hankies and maybe even a broken pencil. She’d see them and they’d find a home in her pockets and under the bed or in the dresser.
Beanie had a way of seeing treasures in what most folks saw as flawed and worthless.
My amen got choked up in my throat.
Mama kept staring at those old dresses of my sister’s. She’d made every one of them, mended them whenever Beanie got them snagged or ripped. I wondered if they still smelled like my sister, those dresses, the way the pillow next to me did.
If loss had a color it was tan. Flat and dull and smelling like must.
“Go on to sleep, Pearl,” Mama said, her voice thin and far away. “I have faith everything’s gonna be all right.”
I closed my eyes, hoping sleep would come fast and hoping I wouldn’t carry that sadness over with me to my dreams. If I could’ve wished for something right then, I’d have left the sorry feeling in that closet and closed the door.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, darlin’,” Mama whispered.
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