Sarah Zettel: Dust girl

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.

Dr. Kenny was just climbing into his car. He saw me running across the dead, dirty yard, though, and stopped with one foot on the running board.

“Please.” I panted. “Please. Take me… us with you.”

The doctor hunched in on himself. I saw how tightly his belt cinched his waist, and how wrinkled and sunburned the skin on his hands was. He’s drying up . “I wish I could, Callie, but…”

But your mother won’t go . He didn’t say that, but I could hear the words anyway.

“Please.”

“We’ve only got the Model T, and there’s five of us as it is.” His gaze drifted to the flat horizon, as if there was a magnet pulling everything over its edge. “You’ve got to talk to her, Callie. She does love you.” He laid one big, hairy hand on my shoulder. “She’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

So that was that. I turned away and trudged back across the yard. The car’s engine coughed and I coughed back. Its tires ground against the dust and the doctor drove away.

Look shhhhaaaarrrrp . The wind gusted hard around my ears, and the dust scraped like hot fingernails against my cheeks. Wheeeerrrre? Wheeeerrrre issss shhhheeee?

I lifted my head. “Who are you?”

Closssse , the wind and dust answered. Weeee knoooow shhhheeee’s closssse… And it was gone again.

Maybe I should’ve told Dr. Kenny about the voice. If he’d known I was starting to hear things, maybe he would’ve taken me with him. Maybe I was better off never having to watch him make that choice.

Shaking, I walked back inside.

Mama wasn’t in the kitchen. A clean napkin covered my plate. The Maxwell House coffee can where we kept the ready cash sat on the table, with the bills and coins laid out neatly beside it: a five, two ones, and six pennies. Not enough for train fare for even one person as far as Topeka, never mind Georgia or California.

The bankbook lay there too, but that was useless. Slow Run’s bank had crashed and closed all the way back in ’29. The farmers went out to Constantinople to pay their mortgages, the ones who could still pay, that is. The rest of us didn’t bother with banks anymore.

I took the deepest breath I could and tried to think. There had to be some way to get money, someone we could still sell out to. My bodiless dust voice and Mama’s empty-headed dreams couldn’t be all we had left.

There was only one place Mama went when the news got bad. The Moonlight Room. It was her favorite place in the whole world. Once upon a time it had been mine too. The Moonlight Room had served as the Sunday parlor for everybody within fifty miles of Slow Run. The Moonlight held weddings, dances, and political banquets. We even had a movie projector and a screen we could pull down at the back of the little stage.

It also had my father’s piano.

I’d never actually seen the instrument. Under its starched sheet, it hovered like a ghost at the edge of the Moonlight Room’s half-circle stage. I’d tried to lift the corner of the sheet once to creep under during a game of hide-and-seek, but Mama caught me and slapped my hands so hard I cried.

“Nobody touches the piano!” she shouted. “Nobody but your papa!”

The Moonlight Room was always dark now. Cobwebs streaked its velvet curtains. Netting covered the gilt and crystal chandelier. I walked down the exact center of the red carpet runner, down the broad front hall that ran from the hotel lobby to the Moonlight. If I moved slowly enough, maybe an idea would find me before I got to the door.

There has to be something I can say , I prayed with every part of me. Something I can do. I’ll do anything. Please…

“Please.” Mama’s voice drifted into the hall, a perfect echo to my own frightened prayer. Except she wasn’t praying to Heaven. “Please, Daniel. You promised. You swore to me…”

I eased the door open. The tables and chairs stood like half-carved headstones under their dustcovers. Mama was on the stage, doubled over like me when the coughing got bad. Both her hands clutched the white sheet that shrouded my father’s piano.

“I’ve tried, Daniel. I waited as long as I could…”

I swallowed a cough. “Mama?”

“Callie!” Mama straightened up fast, yanking her manners and deportment over her. “Good. Come here, honey.”

I didn’t like the light tone to her voice. It didn’t match her eyes. They held a wildness I’d never seen before.

I inched forward. It was wrong to be afraid of my own mother, but fear choked me like the dust in my lungs.

“Help me with this.” Mama lifted the edge of the sheet and tugged.

I gasped. She never uncovered the piano. No one was allowed to touch it, not ever.

“Close your mouth, Callie, you’ll catch flies.” My jaw snapped shut. “Now help me, there’s a good girl.”

It was like she’d asked me to unwind an Egyptian mummy. I’d come in here thinking to beg her to leave, or maybe yell at her, or get down on my knees like in a melodrama. Never in a million years did I expect her to ask me to uncover the piano. But she just stood there, and I didn’t know what else to do. So I climbed the three steps to the stage, grasped the dust-stiffened cloth, and helped her lift it aside.

My first sight of my father’s piano was sort of disappointing. It was the same kind of upright piano you could see in any parlor in town. The only remarkable thing was that its pale wood was absolutely clean. Not a speck of dust marred the curlicue and thistle flower carving across its front. The white keys all but glowed in the dark.