Mama had invited Millard and Mrs. Jones over to listen to the president’s fireside chat. She set out a few straight-backed chairs in the living room, making a semicircle around the radio, and perked a fresh pot of coffee, the smell of it filling the house with richness.
Once they’d arrived, we took seats, and Daddy switched on the radio. Millard passed out candy to Beanie and me, and we were already sucking on the sweets, letting them melt on our tongues. Ray hadn’t come. Mrs. Jones said he didn’t feel all too well.
I asked if he had a cough, and she shook her head. Just a stomachache, she told me.
The president’s voice warbled, singing over the pop and crackle of the radio. I pretended that it was the noise of his fireplace. Half of his words sounded like a foreign language to me, but it seemed that all the grown-ups understood him just fine. Their heads nodded, and sometimes one of them would make a hm-mm sound in the back of their throat.
“Why’s he talking like that?” I asked Mama.
She shushed me.
“He’s from New York,” she whispered in my ear. “That’s how they talk there.”
I guessed folks from New York didn’t use the letter r as much as Oklahomans did. I tried a few of his words under my breath.
“Owe-nahs” and “tray-dahs.”
I only got to try a few before Mama whispered my name and shook her head.
All I had left to do was listen, and I just didn’t follow too well. He used so many big words I didn’t understand. A lot of his ideas were beyond my knowledge. But he had Daddy and Millard’s interest.
As for me, it didn’t make monkey sense.
He did say something I understood well enough. “My friends,” the president said. He said it so many times I decided to believe him, that we really were his friends and that he was ours.
Friends came to visit, and I imagined how it would be when he would come. He would drive into Red River in a long car. The sun would glint off the automobile, but not in a way that would hurt anybody’s eyes. The president would have a big map spread out on the seat next to him with a circle drawn around all the places he’d stop on his trip. Red River would be ringed in bright blue. All the town would come out of their houses and dugouts and line the streets, waving at him as he drove past.
A regular old parade like folks around Cimarron County had never seen before.
He would make sure to go slow so that he wouldn’t kick up too big a cloud of dust behind him.
Once he reached our house, he’d cut the engine and get out of his car. He stood at least a head taller than all the other men from Red River.
“Sorry Mrs. Roosevelt couldn’t come along this time,” he would tell us, shaking hands with Daddy and winking at Beanie. He would tell us how she was busy sewing dresses for orphans and canning jelly for widows. “Next time I’ll bring her along for the ride.”
He would come in for a cup of coffee and a thick slice of Mama’s johnnycake. He’d let her drizzle molasses all over top of it, even if he was from New York. He’d hum as he ate it because it tasted so good. He’d make sure to ask for her recipe so Mrs. Roosevelt could make it for him at home.
After he’d had his bite to eat and his cup of coffee, I would take his hand and march him right over to the Jones’s dugout. He’d let our hands swing between us as we walked.
Once we made it to the sharecroppers’ cabins, I’d point at the Jones’s place and say, “You see that wall caving in there? And if we go inside, you’ll see the centipedes.”
He would shake his head. “Oh my. Oh my.”
Last, I would hold his hand tighter so that we’d both have courage when we looked at Baby Rosie’s empty cradle. We’d stand together, gazing down at it and making no noise at all because we would want to respect her memory. I would pretend not to see the tear that hung on his eyelashes.
President Roosevelt would see with his own eyes what the dust had done to us. He couldn’t help but let his heart get broken.
“I want to help,” he would say, setting his jaw.
He would walk right up to Mrs. Jones and shake her hand.
“He-yah’s a little something to help you, my friends,” he’d say, reaching into his own pocket for a wad of folding money. “I’ll have Mrs. Roosevelt send ov-ah some fresh socks she’s been knitting. My good friends, everything is going to get bett-ah for you.”
Mrs. Jones would wipe her eyes, taking the money into her hands. She would thank me for bringing the president over so he could help them. Mr. Jones would be there, too. Maybe he’d even get a job out of the whole thing. He’d make enough money to build a new home above ground.
Then the president would walk me home, lifting me high on his shoulders. Even though I was far too big for that kind of thing, I’d let him carry me. A man that kind had to have been mighty strong.
The click of the radio turning off broke through my daydream.
“Well,” Daddy said, standing.
He and Millard walked Mrs. Jones home, and Meemaw put away the mending she’d been working during the talk.
“Mary, let me get them dishes washed up.” Meemaw sighed when she got up, her face wrinkling with the effort. “Pearl, I’ll ask you to do the drying.”
In the kitchen, Meemaw let the water rise up over her blue-veined, thin-skinned hands and well up past her wrists. She sighed and smiled. “That feels mighty good on my old fingers.”
After a minute or two of soaking, she started washing up the dishes and handed them to me to wipe with the towel. It only took us a minute or two to get them all washed up and put away.
“Now,” Meemaw said, her dishrag dripping. “Go on and give your mama a kiss. Tell her good night.”
Mama hadn’t moved from her seat since Daddy had turned off the radio. Her eyes were rimmed red with purple crescents under them.
“Good night, Mama,” I said.
“Is it time for bed already?” she asked.
Nodding, I stepped toward her and leaned over to kiss her cheek.
“That was nice, darlin’.” She smiled, but not the kind that would have showed her teeth.
“Are you okay, Mama?”
“I will be,” she answered. “I’ve just been thinking about Rosie a lot.”
Mama’s fingers fumbled with a bit of hair that had gotten loose from my braid. She pushed it behind my ear.
“I’m sorry about Baby Rosie,” I whispered.
“Me too, darlin’.”
Beanie and I lay next to each other in our bed. The springs under our mattress creaked as she flipped and flopped, trying to get comfortable.
“Quit it,” I said.
She didn’t.
Before I even gave it a second thought, I jabbed her with my elbow. “Lay still,” I grumped.
That time, she did what I said. Except she cried out, too.
Hurting her made me feel all kinds of mean and terrible.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Her hollering cry turned into a whimper, which turned into her staring at me with her out-of-focus eyes.
Beanie was born good as dead. That was what Mama had told me. Something or another was wrapped around her neck, cutting off the air she needed. She was blue and not breathing. Somehow they got her untangled, and she got enough air in her lungs to come to life.
Baby Rosie was born just fine. Mama had told me that, too. She was pink and screaming her entrance into the world. Then her air ran out.
Jesus didn’t call her forth or take her hand and ask her to wake up.
Boy, did I ever wish He would have woken her up.
I dreamed of Baby Rosie. She lay on a leaf from our kitchen table, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes closed. The whole town of Red River stood outside the Jones’s dugout, crying and carrying on.
Jesus came along and walked right up to the dugout, ducking His head to go inside. He knelt next to Rosie and picked up her hand.
He called her “My friend.”
I did believe He meant it.