If It Rains

by Jennifer L. Wright

  “Until your neighbors plowed up their field, too. And then their neighbors. And theirs.”

  I shifted where I sat, tightness spreading from my chest to my stomach. The tractors. I’d loved to watch the tractors on the way to school. More land, more wheat, more money. Faster, bigger, better. Miles and miles of crops, as far as the eye could see. It was beautiful.

  Until the rains stopped.

  Somehow I hadn’t even noticed the change. But there weren’t no grass in Cimarron County anymore. And now there weren’t no wheat, either.

  The lump in my throat gagged me, making my words stiff. “Take it back.”

  Mr. Hickory snorted and lay on the ground, covering his face with his hat. “Ain’t nothing to take back.”

  I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the stab of discomfort. I hobbled to where he lay and stood over him, breathing heavily.

  He didn’t stir.

  Balancing painfully on my twisted foot, I kicked him in the ribs.

  He shot up, his hat tumbling to the ground. “Ouch! Whatcha do that for?”

  “Take. It. Back.”

  He held up his hands as I lifted my foot again. “Okay, okay! Fine! Your pa didn’t cause no drought.” He snatched up his hat and scooted away from my reach. “You happy?”

  For the moment, yes. But as I retreated to my side of the fire, back curled away from Mr. Hickory’s snores, the small victory couldn’t smother the tears. Or the truth in words I wished I’d never heard.

  I’d killed my mother. And I’d killed Oklahoma, too.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MELISSA

  “Should I continue?”

  Annie Gale looked up from her mop. “’Scuse me?”

  “I was just asking if I should continue,” I repeated, closing the book’s cover.

  It was Friday again, the end of Annie’s second week in my home. Her face was still sour, her mouth still pinched as if the stench of my house lingered long after she’d left. And she still refused to say anything more to me than absolutely necessary. But at least she’d given up the pretense of not listening to my reading of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. She often paused her cleaning and stared, tongue rolling over her lips as if tasting the words. Today, however, we’d reached the part of the story where Dorothy and her friends leave the City of Emeralds for the Land of the South, and Annie had grunted.

  After weeks of silence, the grunt might as well have been a shout. It demanded acknowledgment. “You made a little noise,” I said. “I wondered if that meant stop.”

  Perched on a chair at the kitchen table, Mary Beth giggled. Several crumbs fell from her mouth, and she wasted no time rescuing them before giggling again.

  Annie waved her hand. “You ain’t gotta stop. She likes it.”

  “And you don’t?” I cast a sly glance at Mary Beth. She shoved another cookie in her mouth and smiled.

  “I didn’t say that. I just think Dorothy’s a fool.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, yeah. That wizard done promised to get her home, but he didn’t. And all she says is ‘He did his best, so I forgive him’? That’s foolishness if I ever seen it. And I have.” She slapped the mop on the floor as if to make a point.

  “Maybe she was just kind.”

  “Same thing.”

  “So you want me to stop?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  Mary Beth let out another crumby giggle.

  I bit down on my lip and reopened the book. “Very well. Now where were we? Ah, yes. ‘In the morning they traveled on until they came to a thick wood. There was no way—’”

  “And another thing!” Annie slopped her mop back into the bucket. Dirty water splashed over the sides. “What’s all this nonsense about ‘he was a good man, even if he was a bad Wizard’?”

  I closed the book again and sighed. “It means just what it says.” I was not prepared to have a literary debate. It was a good story. No, a great story. That had always been enough for Kathryn. And it was enough for me.

  “He was not a good man. He was a liar and a cheat and a swindle.”

  “Who did good things. He built the Emerald City and fulfilled his promises to the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Lion. He may have lied about what he was, but who he was is as plain as day. He was a good man.”

  Annie grunted. “You’re either a good person or you ain’t. No middle ground.”

  “Well, that’s a very black-and-white view of things to take.”

  “This world is black-and-white. For us regular folks.”

  She gave me a look so pointed, my chest grew tight and I had to draw in my shoulders just to take a breath. I’d been lying to Henry, and I’d been lying well. Swindling my allowance to pay her, stretching the meals to conceal the difference. I was putting her and Mary Beth in danger with every step inside my home. I’d been playing Wizard. Doing wrong all in the name of doing right. It never occurred to me that someone like Annie Gale might see only one side of the moral fence.

  I stared at the book in my hand, the cover blurring, before turning my attention to Mary Beth. “Well, how about you?” I asked, my voice overly cheery. “Do you want me to keep reading?”

  The girl smiled and nodded shyly. She hadn’t spoken more than five words to me in the entire time I’d known her, but she was still more polite than her mother.

  “Very well then. I’ll continue. The story is for the child, after all.”

  Annie wrinkled her nose and returned her attention to her bucket. “Sure. Fine. Makes no difference to me.”

  I flipped through the yellowed pages. “Now where were we? Oh yes. ‘In the morning they traveled on until they came to a thick wood. There was no way of going around it, for it seemed to extend . . .’”

  My heart swelled as the familiar words filled the air. These moments with Annie in my home, reading to Mary Beth, feeling her excitement and wonder as Dorothy and her friends continued their magical journey, were the happiest of my week. The only time I didn’t feel alone within the walls of this big old house. Sure, my time at the Ladies Auxiliary was tolerable, sewing and mending and sorting. The women were kind, nurturing, faithful, and—above all—didn’t ask questions about anything deeper than casserole recipes or sermon notes. They were genuine in their desire to do good work—important work—and being a part of it did make me feel good.

  But still my soul struggled to find God. For me, the work was forced, the prayers empty. I was there only because I was expected to be. The need too great, the effort too little, and God’s absence too resounding. Try as I did, my heart wasn’t in it. Probably because my heart, for all its searching, was the most lost of all.

  It was only in these moments, as I recounted the story I’d shared with my sister so many times, that I found anything resembling peace. That I ever felt, even for a fleeting moment, that things were right in my life.

  Curious, because having the Gales in my house at all was, in fact, so very, very wrong.

  “‘So they looked for the place where it would be easiest to get into—’”

  Crash!

  Startled, I dropped the book, screeching as it landed in a pool of water at my feet. I snatched it up, frantically wiping away the suds as the pages began to wilt under my touch. How quickly the black ink smeared, as if the words were just waiting for a chance to escape. I recoiled, afraid of further damage.

  “I’m so sorry,” Annie stuttered. The bucket lay on its side below the sink, dirty water forming rivers in the space between the tiles. “My hand slipped. Doc says I got the arthritis, and my fingers just ain’t what they used to be. Sometimes it—”

  “Mrs. Gale, it’s fine. It’s fine.” I put the book on the table, its pages flat. It will dry, I told myself. Please, God, let it dry. “I’ll fetch us some towels.”

  When I returned, Annie was already on her hands and knees, wiping the water with rags from her bag. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mayfield. I really am.”

  Humility was a new look for Annie Gale. I wasn’t
quite sure how to take it. I dropped to my knees and ran a towel over the floor.

  “You don’t have to do that. Please—”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Mrs. Mayfield.”

  I ignored her and continued to scrub. After several moments, she fell into line beside me. The water retreated into the towels quickly, their bright-white color soon becoming a muted brown. Much quicker than with Annie’s rags. Of course. These were good towels. All the way from Oklahoma City. Only the best for the Mayfields.

  We worked in silence, save for the scratch of fabric against tile. My eyes watered and my nose burned at the stench of lye. I shook my head to clear it. Lye had never bothered me before. It was a comforting smell, actually. Like home. But now it was overpowering. Suffocating. Nauseating.

  Sweat broke out on my forehead. I barely made it to the sink before I retched. Over and over and over again. I vomited until nothing was left in my stomach but bile, and then I vomited that too. My knees grew weak from the force, and I sank to the ground, swallowing another wave of sickness.

  Suddenly a cold washcloth pushed against my forehead. Annie hovered over me, eyebrows knit.

  I tried to stand, clutching the countertop as I swayed. “I’m fine,” I mumbled. “I must have . . . ate something.”

  Annie’s lips disappeared beneath her tight frown. “Ate something?”

  “Yes, I—”

  The sound of a truck door interrupted me. My nausea vanished, replaced by something much worse. Henry. He wasn’t supposed to be home for another two hours.

  “You have to hide.”

  “Hide?”

  I pushed against her, ignoring my stomach and guiding her toward the pantry. “Please, Mrs. Gale. Take Mary Beth. There’s a closet right over here. Henry never uses it.”

  “Now why in the world—?”

  “Please, Mrs. Gale. Please.” I stared at her tired eyes, pleading, praying my own would speak all the things my mouth didn’t have time to say.

  She stared back. For a moment, I thought she’d yell. Or even flat-out refuse to move. But after several agonizing seconds, she scooped up Mary Beth and retreated to the closet, closing the door softly behind her.

  I pushed Annie’s supplies to the corner, hoping they’d pass as my own, and gathered the book in the folds of my apron, cringing at the sickening squish of the pages. If he didn’t leave quickly, they’d dry together and be ruined. Although there was no possible way he could have known, it felt like he’d done it on purpose.

  Henry was in the kitchen within seconds. All the air rushed out behind him, fleeing. He surveyed the mess with a curled lip. “What happened here?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, dropping to my knees. “I was mopping, and the bucket slipped. I was trying to get it cleaned up before you got home.”

  He stepped over my head, avoiding the spill. “Where’s lunch?”

  I stopped scrubbing and looked up at him. He was serious. “I . . . I was going to start that as soon as I finished cleaning.”

  “Start it?”

  “You’re home early,” I said pointedly.

  “Oh.” He paused as if considering. “Well, make me a sandwich or something. I’m starving, and I’m in a hurry.” He collapsed at the table and grabbed the crumpled newspaper he’d left unfinished this morning.

  I stood up, closing my eyes as another wave of sickness swept over me.

  Henry didn’t notice. “Use some of that chicken from last night.”

  The kitchen was quiet as I prepared his sandwich. Every rustle of the newspaper, every squeak of Henry’s chair was a scream. Any minute now, he was going to find an excuse to go into that closet. Or worse, Annie was going to come out. Give me away. Because we were the bad guys. What better way to stick it to me than to ruin everything. She’d gotten paid. Now was the time to cut and run. And if I got what I had coming in the process, all the better.

  Pain erupted across my finger. I’d sliced it with the knife without noticing. I wrapped a rag around it before blood dripped onto the bread. One of Annie’s rags. Panic seemed to make the wound bleed more. I set the plate in front of Henry with a crash.

  He glanced at me from behind his paper.

  I smiled. “Sorry. I, um, I cut my finger. Made me lose my grip.”

  “You alright?”

  “I’m fine, sweetie.” I gestured to his sandwich. “Dig in.”

  Behind us, the floor creaked. Henry turned around in his chair.

  “Wind’s picking up,” I said quickly.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. I can always tell because the house starts to pop.” I picked at my fingernails behind my back. “Hopefully we don’t get another duster. That one last week was terrible. I was cleaning out the foyer for days.”

  Henry grunted. He hated it when I talked this much. But I needed to keep his attention. And break this awful silence.

  I sat down across from him. “So, um, why are you home so early? Everything okay?”

  “Dad.” The word dripped with frustration and a tenderness Henry quickly tried to cover. “He needs me to come take care of the books. Ain’t got the strength to do it today. Says I need to know how to just in case . . .” His voice trailed off.

  My heart softened despite my fear. I knew what it was like to lose a parent. Even a heart as cold as Henry’s could not be immune to that kind of pain. “Is there anything I can do?”

  He smacked his palm on the table, startling me. “Don’t be stupid, Melissa. Of course not. You ain’t no doctor. You can’t even take care of the doggone house.”

  I recoiled, wounded.

  Seeing my face, Henry sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Everything’s just gone to pot. The price of wheat is garbage. The land is garbage. Bank’s breathing down my neck, trying to come in and take what’s mine all because a bunch of useless farmers ain’t been paying their rent. Like it’s my fault!” He pushed his sandwich away. “And I can’t even kick ’em out and rent to someone else because there ain’t no one left to rent to! Ain’t nobody got honor anymore? All these immigrants moving out here for a better life, and they quit the moment it gets hard. Bunch of worthless cowards—”

  He stopped. He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to. The damage was already done. My father was one of them. One of the ones who left.

  Henry reached for my hand.

  I pulled it away before I could stop myself.

  Henry’s face went tight. The vein in his forehead—the one usually covered by a lock of that soft, beautiful hair I’d always loved—twitched. “Watch yourself, Melissa.”

  I couldn’t meet his gaze. And I hated myself for it.

  He reached for my hand again. This time I let him take it. He squeezed my fingers just hard enough to cause me to flinch before letting go, coldness radiating through my body from the contact. Despite their throbbing, I didn’t dare move them to my lap.

  The chair squeaked loudly as he pushed it back. He kissed the top of my head, his hand lingering too long at the nape of my neck. “I’ll be home later. Get this cleaned up.”

  He disappeared out the back door, but it took several minutes before his presence actually left. I sat frozen at the table, afraid to move, afraid to cry, afraid to breathe. It wasn’t until Annie and Mary Beth tiptoed from their hiding place that blood returned to my body. I began to sob.

  Annie stood next to me stiffly. “I . . . I guess we should go.”

  I nodded through tears, embarrassed. Sad. Scared. Most of all, alone. “Yes, that’s probably best.”

  She finished cleaning the spill while I gathered her supplies. We made quick work of it, both of us wanting to be done but for very different reasons. By the time I followed her to the doorway, my tears were dry, but my shame was still fresh.

  She nodded at me once before taking Mary Beth’s hand and stepping onto the porch. The coon dogs howled at our appearance, but the heaviness that hung between Annie and me muted their condemnation.

  “He doesn’t kno
w,” she said without looking at me. “Your husband. He doesn’t know about me coming here.”

  I shook my head, biting away fresh tears.

  She took a deep breath, lifting her chin toward the sky as I waited. I wanted her to yell at me, tell me how stupid I was, how I had no right to put her in this position. I wanted the words of God to stream from her lips, reprimand me, punish me even, if only to give a sign He still cared about this place. About me.

  But she didn’t. Instead, she swallowed whatever words might have been itching her tongue, shifted her bag on her shoulder, and started down the steps. Away from this place, from my lies, from me.

  “Thank you,” I called quietly. “For staying quiet, I mean. Not giving me away.”

  To my surprise, she turned and rolled her shoulders. “I wasn’t doing it for you. I did it for the baby.”

  I instinctively put a hand over my stomach. It was too early. I hadn’t told anyone yet. Not even Henry. “How did you know?”

  “I’ve got five kids, Mrs. Mayfield. I know what morning sickness looks like.”

  I gave her a small smile. “Of course you do.”

  She placed her weather-beaten hat atop her head and gave me another nod. “Let’s go, Mary Beth. We’ve got lots to do before the others get home.”

  “Will you be back?”

  Annie Gale stopped, her foot hovering above the parched earth. “You want me to come back?”

  I did. Desperately.

  She shook her head. “Mrs. Mayfield, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. No good ever came from lying to your husband, and especially from lying to a Mayfield.”

  “I’ll triple your pay.”

  “Mrs. Mayfield—”

  “Mrs. Gale. Please.” My throat closed over my words as I fingered the cross at my neck. I knew I should let her go. It was dangerous. For her, for Mary Beth, for me. But as this baby grew inside me, so did a new, intense, and frantic kind of grief. Melissa Baile was dying—everything about who I once was seemed to be chaff, burned and destroyed by the fire of the Mayfields’ world. And this child, this precious child, though loved, would be the final spark to fully engulf me inside the Mayfield flames.