Chapter 22

Summer passes, then most of the next school year, and soon it is another spring planting season. Conditions at Harrison School are not much better, but Tazia and Lula Mae have persuaded the first-grade teacher to assign the girls extra reading and arithmetic to do at home. When Tazia comes to pick up her daughter, she finds them “playing school,” with Mirlee Bee as the teacher and Gemma as her star pupil. She and Lula Mae exchange looks of motherly pride.

The hailstorm that demolishes this routine arrives late one April afternoon as Tazia, hoeing around the newly sprouted grain, knots a bandana around her dripping forehead. “Wind’s picking up. Temperature’s dropping fast,” Denton calls out to their crew.

“Thanks goodness,” Tazia says. “I could use a breath of cold air.”

But Denton sniffs and scans the western sky. Nellie, school over for the day, approaches with the water bucket. Tazia wonders why she’s walking funny until she sees her skirt tied around her calves to keep it down against the updraft. Right after Nellie starts back to the farmhouse, the skies darken, followed by thunder and a downpour. But before the rain can soak Tazia’s clothes, the drops turn to apple-size hailstones, pelting the farmhands and flattening the tender shoots.

Tazia reaches for her hoe. “Leave it,” Denton cries. “Make a run for it.” Just as he grabs her hand, an ice ball hits the back of the head. Unconscious, he falls face down, his arms and legs splayed. Tazia puts her hands under his shoulders, but strong as she is, she cannot budge his dead weight. Tapper and his son come running, and with two other men, lift him and head toward the house, slipping in the mud. Cows and horses, likewise heading for shelter, stumble too, their moos and neighs an apocalyptic cry. The farmhouse, hard to see through the icy veil, seems miles away.

“We won’t make it to the house before someone else gets conked,” says one of the men. “The small barn,” Tapper’s son orders, and they veer toward a weathered building only half as far away. Tazia doesn’t race there, but trudges beside Denton to cover his bruised face with her bandana, as if the hailstones will bounce off it. When she finally reaches the barn and bolts the door, the men are praying that the ramshackle structure holds up. “Dio, salvaci,” Tazia joins in.

Tapper peeks between crooked slats toward the house where his wife and Nellie hover in the tornado shelter beneath the kitchen. They hear two loud cracks from the sky, the deafening rat-a-tat of hail on the roof, and then a roar as the farmhouse collapses. Tapper falls to his knees, clawing his scalp. Tazia presses her eye to a knothole and sees that only the kitchen wing still stands. She gently lifts Tapper by his elbows. “Your women are safe,” she says. “God is merciful.”

Miraculously, the small barn is erect too, as is the big barn, where equipment and seeds are stored. It is early enough in the season to replant. The hailstones shrink to the size of olives. Tazia kneels beside Denton, who awakens, jumps up, and staggers toward the door. Two men restrain him. “Not yet,” Tazia says, as another cascade strikes the roof. Twelve minutes later, as suddenly as it started, the storm ends. They wade across a field of ice balls, glinting in the sun, and scoop hailstones off the wagon floor. Tapper’s son gently guides the skittering horses toward town. Other farms have been hit worse. Almost every home and outbuilding has been leveled.

As they pass through downtown, Tazia sees water from the flooded river sluice through debris-filled streets. Stores lie flattened, the splintered lumber carried helter skelter by mud slides. Farther along, the Capitol dome is dented, while the white children’s school is reduced to a pile of bricks under uprooted trees. The farmhands are quiet as they near the Negro section of town. To their surprise, it is largely intact. The hailstones are thinly spread, and women are already sweeping them off the porch, yelling at the children to stop throwing them before someone gets hurt.

Denton leaps from the wagon and races to his porch, where he lifts Lula Mae and swings her around. She pulls his head toward her and plants a big kiss on his lips, whereupon her hand touches the knot on his scalp. “I got beaned,” he says sheepishly. She grabs a hailstone, presses it to his head, and leads him inside. Meanwhile, Tazia sees Gemma down the street, counting ice balls with Mirlee Bee. She scoops her up and runs home, only to find their house has not been spared. Like Tapper’s, the front half with the kitchen is intact, but the back is gone. Only the chest of drawers with Tazia’s hidden treasures stands; their bed looks like a mad axman has cleaved the head from the foot. Tazia thanks God for not sending the storm in the middle of the night.

Relief gives way to despair, however, when she and Gemma have to move back with the Wrights. The girls are thrilled, and Lula Mae accepts them as easily as when they first arrived, but Tazia is disheartened about living again under Lula Mae’s watchful eyes. This time escape will take longer. She has little money for repairs, having spent her savings on Nellie.

That Sunday, Tazia kneels as Father Leon leads Mass in the one room of their church that wasn’t flattened. Its fourth wall is a mud-encrusted tarp. When the congregants emerge at noon, blinking into a bright sun that seems to mock their gloom, they face an assembly from Lighthouse. The Pentecostal men bear tools and leftover lumber from the aborted expansion two years earlier. Their wives carry blankets, food-laden picnic baskets, and toys for the children.

Reverend Balter addresses Father Leon. “Our church was spared. When we sought the Word of Wisdom, God told us to help you rebuild.” Before the priest can answer, the deacon steps forward. He spreads his arms and summons the other men to do likewise, keeping the women and children behind them.

Tazia slips out from underneath. “We thank you for your help, Reverend Balter.” She hands a doll to Gemma and spreads a blanket on the ground. Then, facing the Catholic women, she makes eye contact with the mother of Gemma’s favourite Sunday school playmate. The woman takes a breath and ducks out from behind her husband, towing her daughter. By ones and twos, other women come forward to set up the picnic lunch. Father Leon removes his robe and accepts a board, hammer, and nails from the reverend. Other Heart of Mary men follow suit, except for the deacon and his group who hustle their families into carriages and teeter down the rutted roads.

Similar standoffs occur the following week when Tapper leads his Negro field hands to help the white farmers. Unlike at the church, only a few accept the offer, but Tazia sees it is as a first step and is grateful. She is also glad when the Negro farmhands take it for granted that she will join their building crew. Denton teaches her to hammer and saw. “Measure twice, cut once,” he instructs, making her think of embroidery. She can now also help Denton fix her house, but the work goes slowly. Impatience makes Tazia testy. Three months after the hailstorm, when Lula Mae invites her and Gemma to Sunday dinner for what feels like the hundredth time, she snaps, “Must I tell you again that I’d rather pack a picnic lunch for the two of us to eat at the park?”

“Of course, if our food ain’t good enough for you ...” Lula Mae hitches her shoulders but blinks away tears. Tazia apologizes but won’t back down. Sundays are the only private moments that she and her daughter have these days. Tazia’s moodiness affects Gemma too. She spurns the extra homework the teacher assigned her over the summer and when Mirlee Bee begs her to play school, runs off with the other children. Mirlee Bee comes crying to her mother.

“You and Gemma are welcome to stay as long as you need,” Lula Mae tells Tazia one hot evening, “but if it’s making my little girl cry, we got to find a quicker way out.” Tazia agrees but can’t afford the building materials she needs. Lula Mae continues. “Years ago, when Denton got hurt, Elvan sent money until he was back on his feet. Ain’t you got no family can help you out?”

Tazia feels her face turn to stone.

“I’m not talking about Gemma’s daddy. There’s plenty of no-accounts around and Lord knows, he ain’t none of my business. But maybe you got parents or siblings you can call on?”

Tazia shakes her head.

Lula Mae plows on. “They still in Italy or did any kin come with you to America? I know you’re too proud to ask, but I ain’t afraid to ask for you. That’s why God made families. Unless…” Pity clouds her face. “They did something bad to you or you did something ... to hurt them?”

Angry tears fill Tazia’s eyes. How dare she ask such a question? When Lula Mae puts a sympathetic arm around Tazia’s shoulder, her body stiffens.

“Ain’t no shame in bringing a baby into this world,” Lula Mae says. “Only shame is in not loving it. You love that child, but you ain’t giving her grandparents a chance to love her too.”

Tazia’s fury mounts. Not only is she homeless, with a defiant daughter on her hands, now this woman is reviving her guilt over the family that she hasn’t let herself think of in six years.

That night, after Gemma is asleep, Tazia appeals for a divine message. Toward dawn, it comes. God tells her she should not rebuild in Topeka, but start fresh someplace else. Two years ago, when Lula Mae hinted it was time for Tazia to move back with her own kind, she was right, but for the wrong reason. Race has little to do with it. Rather, people who are like you don’t need to ask questions. They simply assume you’re like them. The way to end prying from Lula Mae and her kind is for Tazia to go where she and Gemma will blend in and not arouse curiosity.

Tazia finds the map Nellie used to play a reading game with the girls. They’d close their eyes, point to a spot, and sound out the name. Once, Gemma’s finger landed on Las Vegas, which Nellie said was Spanish for “The Meadows.” Tazia pictures something green and lush, if less hilly than Loro Piceno. She’s had enough of the dry, searing winds of the Midwest and Plains states. Also enough cold. Spaniards, like Italians, are warm-weather people. She will feel at home there.

She wastes no time telling Gemma. That Sunday, eating lunch at the park, Tazia says they are moving to that warm place on Nellie’s map. Gemma frowns. “Is Mirlee Bee coming too?”

“No, Cara. Just you and me. The Wrights are fine here, but it will take too long for us to fix our house. In Las Vegas, the weather is always nice, and we won’t ever lose our home again.”

Gemma throws her lunch to the ground, sobbing. “I don’t want to go. I’ll never see Mirlee Bee again. Or have another friend. Why, why, why do we have to move away?”

Tazia repeats that the storm took everything they had. It was an act of God, she explains, and they must accept His will. Slowly, Gemma calms down. She’s still unhappy, but if God is the reason they must leave, she accepts her mother’s word that it is the right thing to do.

Two days later, the Wrights wait with Tazia and Gemma for the trolley that will take them to the train depot. Denton presses a few dollars on Tazia “for the sake of the child.” Lula Mae silently hands her a basket of food, then turns her face in the direction the trolley will come from.

The girls cling to each other, cheeks glistening with tears and snot. Seeing them, Tazia is no longer sure she understood God’s message. By doing what feels right to her, is she doing what is wrong for her child? She reaches for Lula Mae as the trolley comes into view but withdraws before making contact. Gemma wrenches herself from Mirlee Bee and jumps on the runner. Tazia hefts their satchel and follows her on board. The half-rebuilt city gradually recedes from view.