A Cup of Dust

by Susie Finkbeiner

  “Ready?” she whispered.

  Mama pushed open Meemaw’s bedroom door. Sun touched the floor in beams that shot between the parted curtains. The mirror on the wall had been covered with a black shawl Meemaw had worn every Sunday I could remember.

  I looked from it to Mama, an ache forming behind my eyebrows.

  “It’s something we do,” Mama whispered. “It doesn’t mean anything, really.”

  Before that morning, I would have asked Meemaw about a thing like that. She would have told me the truth. I knew she would have.

  Taking a deep breath in through my nose, I turned and saw Meemaw in her bed. Her whole body, even her head, was covered by a sheet. The outline of her curves and angles rose and dipped under the fabric. Her nose and the arms crossed over her stomach and her feet formed sharp ridges.

  When I stepped closer to the bed, I clasped my hands behind my back in case I would be tempted to touch her.

  I didn’t want to feel her.

  Mama sniffed, and I believed she was crying. She didn’t sob, though, so I didn’t go to her.

  “Would you like me to pull the sheet back a little?” Mama asked. “You could look at her face if you want to.”

  I just nodded and kept my eyes on the bed.

  Mama pinched the top of the sheet between her fingers and thumbs and raised it just enough so it wouldn’t drag on the unmoving face. Then she folded it down below Meemaw’s chin and used the palm of her hand to smooth the wiry white hairs that had stood up with static on Meemaw’s head.

  “She looks peaceful, doesn’t she?” Mama whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Your daddy said he reckoned she passed in her sleep. We don’t think she suffered at all.”

  I drew in a long breath. Meemaw had been all alone when she died, and that bothered me something awful.

  “That’s the best for her,” Mama said. “Don’t you think?”

  Tears made it hard for my eyes to stay open. But I forced them not to close all the way. I wanted to see Meemaw just a few more minutes.

  She’d been alone during the night. I didn’t want to leave her. I didn’t want her to leave me.

  I studied her face through my vision-blurring tears. If I hadn’t known better, I would have just thought Meemaw was sleeping real hard, except that her skin was a color I didn’t have a name for. It was like nothing I’d seen before.

  “She’s gone on to her reward,” Mama said.

  I knew she meant that Meemaw had gone to heaven, and I was glad for that. I decided that I should stop saying curse words and thinking bad thoughts so that one day I could be in heaven with her.

  Then I remembered what Meemaw’d told me, about how I couldn’t do a blessed thing to earn heaven. She liked to call it God’s free gift. “That’s from the Bible,” she’d said. I prayed from my heart to be able to someday understand God the way Meemaw did. I wondered if I’d ever figure it out now that she was gone.

  “Do you want to touch her?” Mama pushed some hair behind her ear.

  I didn’t want to and told her so.

  “That’s all right, Pearlie.” She made to pull the sheet back over Meemaw’s face.

  “Wait,” I whispered, holding one hand in front of myself. If memory was a well, I wanted to fill it up all the way. And I wanted to make sure I remembered Meemaw’s gap-toothed smiles and kind words, her warm laughs and Bible stories.

  Looking at her in that bed, what I remembered best of all was the way she loved me.

  I decided that I would never stop missing her.

  Not ever.

  We never did bury Meemaw’s body. Daddy told me that Hank Eliot took her to a place where she was made into ashes, and I told Daddy I didn’t want to hear how they had done that. He said it never hurt her.

  I told him I still didn’t want to hear about it.

  Pastor held a service for her, and most the folks in town came to it. I did my best to listen to every word he said about the life of a righteous woman. But him talking about how great a soul Meemaw was made me miss her something terrible.

  I wondered how long my heart would feel broken in two.

  The nightmares had gotten worse since Meemaw died. All of them were of her. She came to my room in a cloud of dust and ashes to warn me about Eddie and Winnie.

  In that dream, which came back most every night, she told me that I’d be with her soon enough.

  Each night I woke up shivering and sick to my stomach from the fear, not able to move an inch.

  I never did tell Daddy or Mama about those nightmares. It only would have worried them and made them ask too many questions that I didn’t have an answer for.

  When I dreamed of dying, I saw Meemaw and her ash-dusted skin and unmoving face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When I woke up on the first day of 1935, I expected I would feel different somehow. Instead, I felt the same old tug of hunger in my gut and tear of sadness in my chest.

  The hunger was easy to get rid of. All I needed was a couple spoonfuls of oatmeal. The sadness didn’t go away so easy.

  Meemaw’s room was empty. Dust still buried Red River. Eddie kept coming around to smirk at me. And Beanie was folding up into herself more and more each day.

  That New Year’s morning seemed more like stale leftovers than the fresh start I’d hoped for.

  Millard’s voice carried all the way from downstairs up to my bedroom. The laughter that had always come along with him was gone, and I missed it something terrible. In the days after Meemaw died, his voice had gotten lower and sounded weaker.

  I couldn’t hardly look at him with his watery eyes and red nose. It broke my heart. He missed her as much as the rest of us did.

  Daddy tried to get him talking about how things were before the dust had come. I liked listening to his stories. They kept me from thinking on the sadness so much.

  I got out of bed on that New Year’s Day and pulled on one of my sack dresses. I hardly got a comb through my hair before running down the steps.

  “Well,” Millard said from his seat at the table. “Look who we have here.”

  He tried at a smile, but I could tell it took a lot of effort.

  “Good morning,” I said, giving him a grin, hoping it looked easier than his.

  “I still don’t have any of those candies you like,” he said, patting the pocket of his flannel shirt. “I’m real sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Smalley said he can’t put in an order for them no more. Maybe after a little bit.” Millard shrugged and put his pipe between his lips. “I sure am sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  Millard lit the pipe, puffing clouds of blue smoke. I breathed in the rich aroma. His hands shook. All of him shook, as a matter of fact. I knew he was old, but he’d never seemed so fragile to me before.

  Daddy put a steaming cup of coffee in front of Millard and sat across the table with one of his own.

  “Morning, darlin’,” Daddy said, sipping from his cup. “You sleep well?”

  “I did.” It was a lie, but I didn’t want him to worry about me.

  “Beanie still asleep?”

  I told him she was.

  “That’s fine.”

  “Go ahead and set the bowls on the table,” Mama called to me from the kitchen. “Oatmeal’s just about done.”

  I put the bowls out like Mama asked and the spoons, too. She smiled at me and whispered her thanks.

  “You know, I’m an old man,” Millard said, spreading his napkin on one knee. “Real old.”

  “Nonsense.” Mama pushed a serving spoon into the pot of oats. “Abraham was old.”

  I wanted to ask Millard how old he was but knew that Mama would have scolded me. So instead, I asked how old Abraham was. Mama couldn’t remember exactly. Meemaw would have known. It sent a pang through my whole body, missing her. I tried to swallow it back down so nobody else would know I was hurting.

  “Old as I am, I still remember the first time I see
n Red River.” Millard took a few last puffs of his pipe before setting it down so he could eat. “Back then, there was still water that flowed through the middle of town. We’d swim in it all summer long. Just splashing around in that cool water.”

  “Did you fish, too?” I asked.

  “That we did.” Millard looked at me while he sipped of his coffee. “I never caught much of anything other than a boot and tin can. I’ve never been all that patient for waiting around until a fish bit.”

  “Did you ever see buffalo?”

  “Some. My pa’d hunt them.” He took another drink of coffee and sighed. “Beautiful creatures, them buffalo. A sight to behold. Spitting shame we went and shot them all.”

  I imagined green fields of tall grasses held down by the weight of a hundred brown beasts.

  “Your dad over there ever tell you how the town got its name?” Millard asked, breaking my vision of buffalo. “Why they called it Red River?”

  “No, sir,” I answered, hoping he was fixing to tell me the story.

  “When the old settlers moved out this way to get their piece of the land, they didn’t expect that the Injuns were still here. Them red men weren’t so welcoming as you might think.”

  “I don’t suppose I would have been, either,” Mama said.

  “They put up a good fight,” Millard went on. “A couple good fights, matter-of-fact. But they weren’t no match for the white man’s rifles. The bodies of the Injuns piled up, and the river run red with the blood. Some dandy come from back East seen it. He got sick as a dog. Said he had never seen a red river before. Name just stuck, I suppose.”

  “That’s terrible,” Mama said, sitting in her chair. She looked at Daddy. “Would you say grace?”

  Daddy said a short prayer, and Mama spooned the pasty oatmeal into our bowls.

  “My pa always said the Indians that survived the fighting put a curse on this land.” Millard rested his spoon on the side of his bowl. “They say they put a curse on all the folks that lived here and those who would later on. Seemed they had them a powerful hex.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if that’s true.” Mama touched the napkin to her lips. “I don’t put much faith in curses.”

  “Well, I remember when the paint still dripped off’n the buildings.” He winked at me. “When I seen the wet paint, I couldn’t hardly help but run my finger through it.”

  I smiled, imagining Millard as a naughty little boy.

  “I was born over to West Virginny. My pa had fought for the Confederacy.” He puckered his lips. “He was a hard man, my pa. I reckon the war done that to him. After the war, he didn’t have nothing left, so he brought my ma and me out here. Seems he got a handbill that advertised cabbage the size of a man and carrots longer than a house. Folks said this place was the next best thing since the Promised Land.”

  Millard shook with an airy laugh.

  “Even had pictures on them handbills of five men riding a watermelon like it was a horse.” He scratched the side of his nose. “Such foolishness.”

  “Was it true?” I asked.

  “Nah. It never was. I don’t know how they done it, but they made them pictures up,” Millard said. “When they got here, all my folks seen was a wild piece of land. Not a tree for a hundred miles, either.”

  “Was that before the Indians got killed?” I asked, leaning forward on my elbows.

  “After. A good many years after, I guess.” He steadied his coffee cup as Mama poured him more. “My ma, when she seen the dugout we was to live in, she sat down right there in the dirt and cried her eyes out. She boohooed like the world was coming to an end.”

  Daddy and Mama smiled and laughed softly along with Millard. I didn’t know why it was funny. I imagined a young lady sitting on the ground, spoiling her pretty dress with her tears and the red Oklahoma dirt.

  “’Course, we didn’t have money to turn around and go back. My pa wouldn’t have wanted to, neither. To him, going back East would’ve meant defeat. So we stayed on here.”

  “Was your father a farmer?” I asked, scraping the bottom of my bowl.

  “Sure was. He got on the wheat wagon straight away.” He sighed, and his eyes caught a stream of light from the window. “It was hard going for a spell. Real hard. But the land was good. The soil was rich. Government told all us farmers we oughta go ahead and plow up all the land. Every last bit of it. Said it would bring the rains.”

  “Did it work?” I asked, even though I knew that it did not.

  Millard shook his head. “Never did.”

  The four of us stayed quiet at the table, finishing our oatmeal.

  Millard lit his pipe again.

  “The land got its revenge all right. Don’t know if it was the Injun curse that did it or what. But the land’s sure punishing us now.” Millard breathed in a puff of smoke and held it before pushing it back out again. “Dirt ain’t good no more. It’s dead. Some days I feel ashamed to look at this bare naked land. We raped it and left it bare naked.”

  “Mill,” Daddy whispered.

  Millard’s eyes focused on us again, like he’d been awakened from sleep. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That ain’t a way to talk in front of ladies.”

  Sad as Millard looked, he didn’t cry a single tear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Day ran into day with hardly anything to make one different from another, apart from a duster rolling through every once in a while. The roof of the school building had caved in, and Miss Camp had had enough of Red River. Her mother sent money for her to take the train back home to Kentucky or South Carolina or one of those states back East.

  Nobody could find a reason to blame her for leaving.

  We didn’t have school anymore, which was fine by me. I had all the books I could read. Besides, most of the kids in town had left or were fixing to with their families. All of them on their way out West to find work. Sundays were the only days that felt different from the others. Sundays were the days of my green dress and extra food cooking on Mama’s stove.

  Sundays we had a houseful for dinner.

  Mama let Ray and Beanie and me sit on the living-room floor to eat so we wouldn’t be so close together at the table. None of us gave a word of complaint. We didn’t have to hear the grown-ups talk about Roosevelt or how this year would be better than the last. And we didn’t have to hear talk about Germany, whatever was going on there.

  The best part, I thought, was that I didn’t have to see the cornflower-blue eyes of Eddie on me through the whole meal.

  One Sunday, Ray leaned in close to me, like he had a secret to share. I hoped it was about something exciting like a circus coming to town.

  Instead, he about broke my heart.

  “We’re fixing to go to California,” he said, biting into a lump of fried dough. “Ma said she seen a handbill. Mr. Smalley read it for her. It said they got jobs in California for fruit pickers. Paying jobs. For women, even.”

  I thought about the handbill Millard’s pa had seen back before they came to Oklahoma. I wondered if the advertisement Mrs. Jones had seen was as full of lies as that one had been.

  “You aren’t really going,” I said. “Your mother has a job here.”

  “Washing laundry doesn’t get her enough.” He shrugged. “If you don’t believe me, fine. Guess you’ll find out for yourself when I’m gone.”

  “I ain’t never leaving,” Beanie said, using her spoon to spread around the sauce from her beans. “I ain’t never gonna leave Meemaw here.”

  Neither Ray or me knew what to say to that, so we finished eating without talking.

  After dinner, the men all climbed into Daddy’s truck. They were going to take a look at the cattle that were still alive.

  “We gotta see if any of them are still good,” Millard had told me.

  Daddy’d invited Ray to go along and even messed up his hair as they walked out the front door. Ray shimmied into the bed of the truck and sat up a little straighter than I’d ever seen him. I waited on the po
rch for them to ask me to come, but they didn’t.

  They drove away, and Ray waved at me, a big grin on his face. Not a smirk, but a real, happy smile. I decided I couldn’t be mad at him just then.

  It was just as well. I wouldn’t have wanted to be around Eddie all afternoon, anyhow.

  Still, getting left behind stung.

  “Read me a story,” Beanie demanded as soon as I stepped back into the house.

  “Where are your manners, Beanie Jean?” Mama asked, clearing a stack of plates.

  Mrs. Jones stared at me, like she was studying me. I couldn’t meet eyes with her. I was grateful when she turned and went to the kitchen to help Mama.

  “Please,” Beanie begged, tugging on my arm.

  “Sure, I’ll read you a story,” I said, going over to the shelf. “Which one?”

  “The boy and girl.” Beanie grinned for the first time since Meemaw’d passed away. I wondered if she’d forgotten all about her. “The story about the boy and girl dropping crumbs.”

  “Hansel and Gretel?” I pulled the thick fairy-tale book from the shelf.

  “How about you take it up to your room to read?” Mama nodded, letting me know that I didn’t have a choice.

  Beanie and I obeyed and sat on our bedroom floor, the book open in front of us. I read for a few minutes before Beanie got up and climbed into bed.

  “Keep reading,” she instructed.

  Before long, she was fast asleep, her breathing deep and her eyes shut tight.

  I got on my tummy, leaning on my elbows, and read to myself. The clinking and sloshing of washing dishes from downstairs ended. Then I heard Mama’s voice.

  “What exactly are you getting at, Luella?” she asked. “Just be straight with me.”

  “All I’m saying is you done it before.” Mrs. Jones’s voice wasn’t as clear, still I could make out her words.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m asking if you won’t take Ray.”

  Silence from below. I rested my head on the floor, hoping I could hear better through the spaces between the boards.

  “Take him?” Mama asked. “Take him where?”