Sarah Zettel: Dust girl

“Now, Callie, I want you to play,” said Mama.

“Play?” I shifted my weight uneasily.

“Yes. Sit down, and play the piano.”

This is it. She’s gone right round the bend this time . “I can’t play piano, Mama,” I reminded her. “You never let me learn.”

“Well, you’ll just have to do your best.”

“But why?”

“So your father will hear you.” Her knuckles turned white as her hands clutched at each other. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but he won’t listen to me.”

Disbelief slackened my jaw again. “That’s because he’s gone , Mama! He left us!”

“He just doesn’t know what kind of trouble we’re in.” Her demeanor remained terribly calm. “But he’ll know it’s you playing his piano and he’ll have to answer you.”

“That’s crazy, Mama!” I screamed. “You’re crazy!”

The slap was so sudden, I didn’t even know why my cheek hurt, or why the world spun. But there was Mama, rearing up over me as angry as I’d ever seen her, hand raised high.

“Calliope Margaret LeRoux, you will do as you are told!”

My knees buckled, sitting me down hard on the bench. Dazed, I scooted around to face the piano. The keys were smooth white and pure black, reflecting what little light oozed between the velveteen drapes.

Waiting for me . The thought popped into my spinning mind as I stared at those shiny keys. They’ve been waiting a long time .

I touched a black key with a tentative finger. One thin note lifted into the stuffy room. My heart fluttered in my chest, and my blood went still in my veins.

Mama nodded. “Louder, honey. He’s got to hear you.”

I fit the fingers of my left hand to the white keys, the ones on my right to the black. Something rose inside me. It pushed against my heart and crowded my dust-filled lungs.

“Mama…” The thing was trying to get down to my hands, and there was no telling what it would do once it did.

“Play, Callie!”

I pressed down on the keys. A chord, a full, clear moment of music rang through the room. Its vibration resonated through the keys, through my skin, and into my finger bones. It caught hold of that thing inside and pulled.

My wrists lifted. My fingers rearranged themselves on the keys. My left hand started to rock and jump back and forth on the low, deep keys, making a steady beat. At the same time, my right hand danced up and down across the high, bright keys, setting a lively melody free to soar through the room.

Boogie. I was playing boogie-woogie, joyous, infectious, dangerous music. Music that made Reverend Schauenbergh slam the pulpit and bellow about the end of the world. But Reverend Schauenbergh was long gone, and here at the end of the world this music had blown into my head, and into my suddenly nimble hands.

“That’s it, Callie!” cried Mama. “Play loud!”

Mama. Mama, who’d let her mind trickle away waiting for a man who would never come back. Mama, who’d kept us here while the dust crawled into my lungs. She should have gone, she should be gone…

“No, Callie. Oh, no. I know you’re angry, but you mustn’t play for me, not like that. Play for your papa, honey. Play him back to us.”

Anger burned at the base of my throat. It swelled in my dust-filled lungs and surged down my hands. Papa was the last person to sit at this piano. My fingers touched the keys like his did. Papa had gone off and left us, left me to choke and die in the dust… The beat under my left hand grew harder; the dance in my right grew faster. I was going to die. The man who had played this piano, he broke my mama’s heart so hard her mind broke with it, and he didn’t even know I was alive. I breathed in music the way I breathed in the dust. Breathed it in and poured it out again, loud and wild and sick and angry.

“No, Callie!” cried Mama. “Not like that!”

But Mama seemed a long way away. Mama was already gone. And I was here. For just this little while, I was still alive and my papa was going to know about it. Just this once, wherever he was, whoever he’d left us for, he was going to hear me. The whole world was going to hear.

There she issss! cried a voice, low and wild as the wind rattling the shingles. There! THERE!

“Calliope, stop !”

The world spun like when Mama had slapped me, and something hard slammed against my shoulder. I gasped, coughed, and shuddered. I was on the floor of the stage with Mama standing over me, trembling. She must have knocked me off the bench. I was stunned and furious, but only for a minute.

The music had stopped, but the other sound, the roaring sound, hadn’t. Mama went white. She ran to the windows and yanked back the curtains.

“No,” whispered Mama.

On the edge of the flat Kansas prairie, a range of midnight-black mountains loomed over Slow Run. But they weren’t standing still like mountains should. Those mountains surged and boiled, and they lumbered slowly forward.

Heeeerrrre! the mountains roared. Sheeee’ssss heeeerrrre!

“Dust.” I struggled to my feet, coughing the whole way. “Mama, it’s a duster!”

Mama ran out of the Moonlight Room without looking back. Weak as a kitten, I staggered down the stage steps and into the hallway after her.

A door slammed.

Oh, no. No, please, no .

I stumbled into the kitchen, and a gust of wind almost knocked me over. The door swung free on its hinges.

“Mama!” Dust slammed into my eyes and nose and filled my open mouth. Reeling, I snatched the napkin off the remains of my breakfast and pressed it over my face.

“Go away!” Mama screamed from outside. “Go away! She didn’t mean it! She’s just a child! She didn’t mean it!”

Yes, she did , laughed the voice. Yessss, she did! Weeee sssseeeee you noooow! Weeee got you now!

“No!” I hollered into the cloth. “Leave her alone!” My flailing hand hit the threshold, and the mountains tumbled down over me.

A burning, roaring darkness swallowed me, like I was Hansel and Gretel’s witch shoved headfirst into the stove. I shrieked and swallowed dust. The floor hit my knees, my chest, my chin. I lay there, blind, deaf, and burning. Grit scraped every inch of my skin, and the storm wind drove it in like needles. My head went dizzy, and a dozen different pictures flashed in front of my blind eyes-Reverend Schauenbergh shouting that this was the end of the world; Dr. Kenny’s rattletrap Model T rolling down the road; my hands on the gleaming piano keys; people dancing in an arena with a crowd cheering them on; a huge, ugly man striding grimly through the dust with a sawed-off shotgun tucked under his arm; a skinny, mangy dog staggering through the storm; Mama stretching her arms out as the mountains poured down.

Mama. Have to find Mama .

I fumbled with the corners of my napkin and got it knotted around my face. I found the door frame and hauled myself up. Hanging on tight, I made myself open my eyes, just a crack.

Lightning flashed overhead, and for a heartbeat, I could see the wind. Red, beige, and black, it billowed and moaned past the door. The steps had already vanished under drifts of dust. So had the path to the henhouse. So had the henhouse.

“Mama!” What if she’s fallen? What if the dust already buried her?

Lightning flickered again, showing a black shadow against the whirling red dust, a human shape staggering through the storm. I made to rush forward, but I stopped. I could barely see, and all the landmarks were gone. What if I got out there and couldn’t find the way back? It happened in blizzards. We could both be lost a few feet from our back door.

The thought of blizzards gave me an idea. Mama kept a clothesline on a shelf in the canning room. I ran for it and threw the coil over my shoulder. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, but I gritted my teeth until they hurt and I managed to get one end of the rope knotted around the doorknob.