Dust girl

2

“Calliope! What on earth…?” cried Mama.

I shoved the kitchen door shut behind me and leaned against it, wheezing hard, pain clamping down on my lungs and stomach with each breath.

“What’s the matter, Callie honey?” Mama shook out the match she’d been using to light the stove and came over to undo my scarf.

Mama had never been a big woman, and work and heat had worn her thin and bled the color from her golden hair. Nothing had touched her eyes, though. Those were still big and blue with dark lashes, the eyes of a little girl in an old woman’s face.

“Snake,” I croaked as Mama pulled my scarf off. “Rattler… in the yard. Startled me.”

“Good heavens, that’s all we need.” Mama stepped around me and opened the door, peering out into the haze. “Well, I can’t see anything now. We’ll just have to hope it stays out there.” She shut the door firmly and put the latch on it, as if that would make a difference. “Did you get anything from the hens?”

“Six eggs.” I set my pretty brown prizes on the counter. Fortunately, they’d survived all my charging around.

“Well done!” She clapped her long hands, and her blue eyes sparkled. “We’ll save three for supper.” Mama selected the eggs with care and laid them in a bowl in the icebox. There was no ice, of course, but it made a good pantry because the dust had a hard time weaseling its way through the sealed door. “See if there’s any bread left in the box, Callie.”

There was, a hard brown heel wrapped in layers of cheesecloth and newspaper. I sliced it carefully so it wouldn’t crumble. Humming “The Midnight Special” under her breath, Mama dropped the bread into the cast-iron skillet, where it could fry in the grease alongside the other three eggs. Reverend Schauenbergh said it wasn’t a decent song, but it was her favorite. She used to sing it to me as a lullaby when I was a baby, and just hearing it could make me feel better, especially when it came with the smell of Mama’s cooking.

Mama was an amazing cook. Everything she put her hand to turned out delicious. Back when the hotel was open, she’d fixed whole banquets: roast beef and roast turkey with heaps of creamy mashed potatoes, and all kinds of breads and puddings and congealed salads. She could trim up a wedding cake with sugar flowers you’d swear were just picked in the garden. When she brought her pies to the county fair, the other ladies just gave up and went home. Grandma once said it had been Mama’s cooking that really caught my father’s attention. It was one of the few times Grandma mentioned him at all.

The smell of Mama’s good cooking filled the kitchen, and my stomach squeezed so tight it forced a fresh barking cough out of my lungs.

“Oh, honey!” Mama dropped her fork and ran to me, rubbing my back firmly. “Let it go, Callie.”

I tried. My lungs strained and coughed, and strained and coughed, but there wasn’t any room to get the air in. Mother whacked me hard between my shoulders. A spill of bitter brown goop splatted onto the table.

Now I could breathe, long, harsh gasps. Mama took me in her arms and held me tight. Her embrace was hot and she smelled like sweat, dust, and grease, but I wanted her. I wanted to crawl inside her mind to find that place that let her smile and sing through the worst dust storms. If I had to be crazy, I wanted my mama’s kind of crazy, because she was never afraid.

“It’s all right now, Callie,” she murmured, sitting me down at the table. She put a cup with an inch of water in front of me.

“Sip it slow, honey. You’ll feel better in a minute.”

My cheeks and eyes burned with shame for having spit up all over the table where we had to eat. Mama said nothing, just wiped up my mess with one of her cleaning rags. The water was warm and tasted stale, but it felt good sliding down my raw throat.

Mama forked our breakfast onto clean plates and set them on the table. She’d given me two whole eggs and most of the bread. My throat hurt at the thought of trying to swallow the hard bread.

“I’m not that hungry, Mama.”

“Nonsense.” She sliced her fried bread into tiny, ladylike bits with her tarnished knife. “You’re a growing girl. When your father gets back, I don’t want him thinking I’ve starved you.”

Mention of my father took away what was left of my appetite, but I picked up my fork and knife and cut through my eggs. Golden yolk ran across the white china and leached into the fried bread. If I didn’t look up, I wouldn’t have to see how Mama’s eyes emptied out like they always did when she thought about my papa.

Daniel LeRoux had been a piano player. He didn’t come through Slow Run on the train like most people, or even in a Model T Ford. He drove up to the front door in a brand-new buggy pulled by a team of matched horses. He said he was out of Kansas City and looking for work. He could play all the new dances, so my grandparents let him stay.

Mama said he had a wonderful smile, that he could sing like an angel and play like the devil. “But you don’t need to tell anybody else that,” she whispered to me. “We’ll just let people go on thinking their fool thoughts. We’ll just keep your papa our secret, all right?”

I’d promised, and I kept that promise, not because Papa was a jazz musician, which was bad enough, or because he’d never married Mama, which was worse. But because of the thing we never, ever talked about.

My papa was a black man. That made me a black girl. That meant there was a whole world of things I couldn’t do, and places I couldn’t go. I couldn’t sit in the Moonlight Room, or go to the white school, or try on clothes at the emporium, or ride in a Pullman car on the train, if we ever went anywhere. If anybody knew about Papa, and I got caught doing any of those things, I could end up in jail. Or dead.

That was the real reason Mama just let people go on thinking my father had been an Irish traveling salesman named Mike McGinty, and called me Callie McGinty to anybody official. But it was Daniel LeRoux’s ring she never took off, and Daniel LeRoux she insisted was coming back.

A knock sounded at the door. Mama wiped her mouth and folded her napkin neatly before she got up to answer it.

“Mornin’, Maggie.” Dr. Kenny shook the dust off the brim of his Stetson hat before he stepped inside. He was a big gray man with cheeks that sagged loose around his face.

“Good morning, Doctor,” Mama said, as polite as if welcoming in a king. “Won’t you sit down? I’m sorry, the coffee’s not done yet…” There was no coffee, not even chicory. A glance at the stove with its single pan would tell Dr. Kenny as much.

“Nothing for me, thank you,” he said. “I just came by to say…” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to tell you we’re leaving.”

“Oh?” Mama raised her eyebrows, as if she couldn’t think of a single reason why someone would do such an odd thing.

“I hoped we’d be able to stick it out, but… well, it’s been five years since the county’s seen a drop of rain, and there’s the children to think of, and Mrs. Kenny’s got cousins in Chicago. So…”

He was talking to me. I put my fork down quietly, even while egg and bread tried to come back up my sore throat.

“Well. Chicago.” Mama’s voice wavered just the tiniest bit. “I do hope you’ll write to us. I’d love to hear about Chicago, and I’m sure Callie would too. Wouldn’t you, Callie?”

“Yes, please.” But inside I was thinking, The doctor’s going. That’s got to be the last straw. There can’t be anything left if even he’s going.

He looked at me like there was a whole lot he wanted to say, starting with “I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat again. “I wanted to give Callie’s lungs one more listen before we left.”

“That’s very kind, Dr. Kenny. Thank you.”

He put his black bag down on the table and got out his stethoscope. He polished its steel bell carefully with a huge white handkerchief before he laid it against my chest.

“Breathe deep, Callie.”

It hurt, and I coughed, which hurt worse, and I coughed again. Dr. Kenny sat back, pulling the stems out of his ears and shaking his head.

“Maggie…” He looked Mama straight in the eye. “I’m telling you for the last time, you’ve got to get this girl out of here.”

“We’ll manage fine, Doctor. Callie wears her scarf every night and when she goes outside…”

“This is the dust pneumonia, Maggie. Scarf or no scarf, her lungs are filling up with dirt, and pretty soon she won’t be able to breathe at all.”

“Her father will be back soon and we’ll all go together.” Mama laid the words down like bricks, one on top of the other, blocking off the only door.

The doctor’s sagging face twisted tight. “If it’s money, Maggie, I can loan you the train fare. You pay us back when you get settled someplace, maybe in St. Louis, or Atlanta…”

“That’s very kind of you, but we’ll be perfectly all right.”

Dr. Kenny bowed his head. “I do hope so, Maggie. I do.” He dug a bottle of soothing syrup out of his bag and handed it to Mama. She nodded her thanks, and he gathered up his things.

“You be a good girl and mind your mother, Callie.” His eyes met mine once more. He was sorry. Maybe even real sorry. But we both knew that wasn’t going to change anything.

The door closed hard behind him.

Mama sat back down at her place. “Don’t you worry, Callie.” She sliced up the last of her toast and dipped it neatly into the drying egg yolk. “We’ll be fine.”

My stomach heaved. Maybe she’d be fine, but I wouldn’t. I had the dust pneumonia. The dust was going to keep right on filling up my lungs until I smothered and died. Then my crazy mama would bury me next to my grandparents in the Methodist churchyard and keep right on waiting for a man who ran out on her. On us.

I jumped up and ran after Dr. Kenny, kicking up clouds of dust.