I Will Send Rain

by Rae Meadows

  She is so young, Annie thought. But she had been, too, and she had managed. Mothers managed.

  “There is good about it, too, Birdie,” Annie said. “A child is always a blessing.”

  * * *

  ANNIE KNEW ENOUGH to be a midwife. Most country women did. She laid out towels and tore sheets into squares, boiled a knife and a clothespin for the cord, warmed water for the cleanup, spread old newspapers on the floor near the edge of the bed. She sudsed her arms in lye soap to her elbows. Samuel stood by as his wife, transformed by agency, bustled about.

  “Get a big bowl,” she told him.

  “For the baby?”

  She shot him a withering look. “The placenta, Samuel.”

  Samuel had birthed animals his whole life, but had not been allowed at his wife’s births, shooed away by the attending midwife, and he found himself stuck in cement, unable to react or move as he wanted. In those leaden days after Fred’s death, when Annie had told him about Birdie, he had felt the revelation from a distance and marveled how, at another time, the news would have stirred thoughts of his daughter’s sin. Now he could do little more than mourn the loss of her freedom, his daughter who had always been perched on the edge, ready to take off. But there was buoyancy, too, giddiness even, in welcoming the arrival of the newest Bell.

  “Soap up,” Annie said. “I’ll need your help.”

  Downstairs at the sink, Samuel pressed his palms together and prayed for help, until Annie called for him and he snapped to it, lathering the harsh soap up to his armpits.

  He raced back up to their bedroom.

  “Baby’s coming,” Annie said. She smiled then, a quick small smile that opened her face, and Samuel saw goodness there.

  “Grab her leg,” Annie said.

  Birdie clung to the iron headboard, and Samuel placed his hand on his daughter’s wobbling leg.

  “Hard. Grab her thigh and push it back. Come on now.”

  He did as he was told, holding his weight against Birdie’s leg as a little dark head crowned.

  Birdie grunted and yelled and Annie told her to push and Samuel, bewildered, waited for his next instruction.

  “Hold both legs. Hold them steady,” Annie said. She crouched under him and ran her finger around the baby’s head to ease it out and Birdie let out a sound that was both scream and primal moan.

  “Birdie. Barbara Ann Bell, you listen to me,” Annie said. “You are doing just fine. Now push.”

  * * *

  IN THAT MOMENT of fire and pain and fear, when the baby’s head inched its way out and Birdie felt herself rip open, she knew. I will go, she said to herself, I will go. It was decided. Go, go, go, she said to herself as the baby slid out into her mother’s hands. I will go.

  * * *

  IT WAS A new configuration of family. Give us this day our daily bread, Samuel thought. The baby girl turned from bluish to pink as Annie rubbed her with a towel. She cut and clamped the cord, as the baby let out her first cries. She wrapped her with an expert one, two, three swaddle of a blanket and placed her on Birdie’s chest.

  “You hold it, Mama,” Birdie said, handing her back. She scooted down into the mess of birth on the bed, turned over, and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 17

  Birdie closes the door quietly behind her and walks away, one step and then another and another. It’s dark but the birds are already busy. Her old dress, which she hasn’t been able to wear since the fall, doesn’t fit right—her body still soft and bulging—but she is back to herself, or what passes for herself now. The sun is close. She can almost feel the coming of the light. She does not look back at the house. The risk is too great. She is leaving everything. It’s been a week since the baby; as she walks, her belly feels empty, loose, and she keeps touching it to remind herself of where her body ends.

  A skirt, a shirt, a sweater. Extra socks and underthings. A smooth stone Fred gave her that he thought looked like butterscotch. A napkin full of biscuits. A jar of water. Twenty-two dollars from her father’s dresser. She knows he would have given it to her if she had asked, not that it makes her feel better about taking it.

  She walks. The crack of light on the horizon announces the morning. The inevitability of the sun comforts her. Do not think about what you are leaving, she tells herself, or you will get nowhere. There will be time for that later. There will always be more time for that.

  Birdie walks west, and then she will walk south, in the direction of Amarillo, where she will pick up Route 66. She will walk and walk. She hopes to hitch with a family, since plenty of people are moving that way. She knows to stay clear of men alone, though she also knows, in the reaches of her mind, that there will be sacrifices along the way, compromises she will make to get where she wants to go. She thinks back to the day of the first dust, when she didn’t yet know a damn thing. What if she had not gotten pregnant? What if Cy had taken her with him? The what-ifs can go on forever if you let them, she heard her mother say once, and Birdie knows she was right about that. “What if” will get you nowhere, and she has many miles to go.

  There is light now, the ground still damp with dew. Birdie turns around and can just make out the sign for Black Mesa to the north. The dinosaur people are still up there. They found footprints, and now they have found bones. She thinks about bones, porous and strong, smoothed by sand and bleached by the sun, buried, waiting to be found. Maybe it’s like that for her, she thinks. She will bury her childhood in all this Oklahoma dust and it will wait for her to come back someday to dig it up. Even now, when all she wants to do is leave, she knows that she might spend the rest of her life looking back, wondering about those bones. It will take a lifetime to organize her memories of Oklahoma into a coherent shape, a story she can tell herself without falling apart.

  The early sun warms her back, and in front of her, the High Plains sky extends to eternity. It is quiet enough that she can hear the sound of her shoes against the pavement, a soft, insistent tap, tap, tap. The breeze is gentle and intermittent. She breathes in the sharp and earthy smell of sand sage and lemon sumac mixed with rich clay loam. It is beautiful out, the kind of day that coaxes roots from seeds, and Birdie cannot say whether she is happy or sad. She will miss the land, the sky, and the space between. This place will always be her place, despite its capacity for cruelty, despite what has been lost. The yearning will go on and on.

  But for the unknown she harbors hope as fragile as a tiller shoot. Seventeen will surely be better than sixteen, she thinks. Mama and Pop have a baby now. She will be their girl. And that is all Birdie will allow.

  There’s a car somewhere, getting closer. She can hear the rattle and puff of a worn-out engine. She has walked west and now it’s time to turn south. She is tired and would welcome a ride. For a moment, she fears it will be her father come to fetch her, but then the sound of the car isn’t quite his and she breathes deep and lets it go. She isn’t scared. She feels powerfully alone.

  She arranges her face in a smile, and turns and waves.

  * * *

  ANNIE AWAKENS TO the baby’s cries. She listens, hoping Birdie might be able to soothe the child, but the baby cries on in frantic bleats. The dawn is violet. Annie goes to her daughter’s room. She can see immediately that Birdie’s bed is made up and empty. She goes first to the cradle and lifts the flailing baby, resting her cheek against that tiny softness until she quiets.

  Birdie has left a short note on her pillow, her loopy scrawl filling the paper from edge to edge.

  Dear Mama and Pop,

  I am going. I’m not going after Cy or anything like that. But I’m going west just the same. I know all the reasons why I shouldn’t. It’s just what I have to do. I will be okay so don’t worry about me.

  Love,

  Birdie

  Annie flips the paper looking for more, then reads it again. Gone west. Gone. Her breath—held for how long—eases out and she feels herself smaller, older. She does not think, Go after her—she knows already there will be no hope if
Birdie doesn’t want to be found—but neither does she think, Let her go. Her daughter alone in the world. She heaves air back into her lungs.

  The new sun cuts sharply through the window. The baby gurgles and yawns. Annie can’t remember how Birdie looked as an infant and she feels a panic rise about forgetting. How do you remember everything? What will be lost? She catalogues the details: the uneven spray of freckles across her nose, the slight pigeon-toed stance, the way she works a walnut from its shell, so intent, so serious about getting all the meat out. Her face on the Ferris wheel in Oklahoma City, open and expectant as they swooped up and up.

  The baby dozes; her lips purse and then settle into sleep. Annie pulls a quilt from the cradle and wraps her, the same way she swaddled all of her children. She sits still and breathes quiet shallow breaths.

  Annie knows she should run to wake Samuel, but she wants to be alone a little longer. She already misses Birdie with a fierce ache. She will not let herself think of all the possibilities, the dangers, or they will overcome her. She closes her eyes and imagines Birdie on a train, the fields slipping by until she is free.

  * * *

  THE BABY SQUIRMS away from the eyedropper of sugar water and milk, screws up her little wrinkled face in confusion and dismay and cries until Annie holds her to her breast and she latches on, soothed until she falls asleep.

  * * *

  ANNIE MOVES THE rocking chair outside into the shade of one of the locust trees and rocks Rose. She and Samuel named her the day Birdie left. In recent days, Samuel has taken to walking Rose around and talking to her about how the leaf sheaths are emerging from the tillers of the wheat and how the robins have returned and laid their blue eggs and how when Birdie and Fred were small they used to hide up in the haymow in games of hide-and-seek. Annie fashions a sling out of flour sacks and wears Rose while she weeds and waters her garden or hangs out the wash or shells the peas. They are like first-time parents again. They never put the baby down, always checking, touching, cooing.

  Wrapped in the baby quilt she made for Birdie, Rose has pink cheeks and her mouth is puckered and Annie holds her soft fragile head and feels an ease in her chest as something finally gives. That infant face has laid claim on her. The dust will come again, she knows. But on this day, the land spread out before her, she allows herself to return to what she once loved about it—the mad colors of the wildflowers, the sporadic green of the dormant wheat coming to life in the fields. She does not feel whole, no, but she has a baby in her arms, and that feels as close to right as she has ever hoped to feel again. Beneath the damage she can still find moments of wonder, hints of joy. Would she even say she is optimistic? It isn’t the shiny optimism that lifts Samuel, but it’s a hard-won kind, born from the depths. A choice. It is enough.

  She cannot accept yet that Birdie is truly gone, her first girl, her strong impulsive one, her survivor, her daughter who, in the end, knew how to want more. Part of her thinks, Go, Birdie, go. Go on and find something else, go on and take what you can get. But the other part of her watches the road at the edge of the farm, will watch it always, hoping she will see her walking home.

  Also by Rae Meadows

  Mercy Train

  No One Tells Everything

  Calling Out

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  RAE MEADOWS is the author of Calling Out, which received the 2006 Utah Book Award for fiction; No One Tells Everything, a Poets & Writers Notable Novel; and most recently the widely praised novel Mercy Train. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Also by Rae Meadows

  About the Author

  Copyright

  I WILL SEND RAIN. Copyright © 2016 by Rae Meadows. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.henryholt.com

  Cover design by David Shoemaker; cover photograph by Dorothea Lange, courtesy Library of Congress

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Meadows, Rae, author.

  Title: I will send rain: a novel / Rae Meadows.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015046689 | ISBN 9781627794268 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781627794275 (electronic book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Rural families—Oklahoma—Fiction. | Dust Bowl Era, 1931–1939—Fiction. | Farm life—Oklahoma—Fiction. | Droughts—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.E15 I2 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046689

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  First Edition: August 2016

  Designed by Kelly S. Too

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.