Day ran into day with hardly anything to make one different from another, apart from a duster rolling through every once in a while. The roof of the school building had caved in, and Miss Camp had had enough of Red River. Her mother sent money for her to take the train back home to Kentucky or South Carolina or one of those states back East.
Nobody could find a reason to blame her for leaving.
We didn’t have school anymore, which was fine by me. I had all the books I could read. Besides, most of the kids in town had left or were fixing to with their families. All of them on their way out West to find work. Sundays were the only days that felt different from the others. Sundays were the days of my green dress and extra food cooking on Mama’s stove.
Sundays we had a houseful for dinner.
Mama let Ray and Beanie and me sit on the living-room floor to eat so we wouldn’t be so close together at the table. None of us gave a word of complaint. We didn’t have to hear the grown-ups talk about Roosevelt or how this year would be better than the last. And we didn’t have to hear talk about Germany, whatever was going on there.
The best part, I thought, was that I didn’t have to see the cornflower-blue eyes of Eddie on me through the whole meal.
One Sunday, Ray leaned in close to me, like he had a secret to share. I hoped it was about something exciting like a circus coming to town.
Instead, he about broke my heart.
“We’re fixing to go to California,” he said, biting into a lump of fried dough. “Ma said she seen a handbill. Mr. Smalley read it for her. It said they got jobs in California for fruit pickers. Paying jobs. For women, even.”
I thought about the handbill Millard’s pa had seen back before they came to Oklahoma. I wondered if the advertisement Mrs. Jones had seen was as full of lies as that one had been.
“You aren’t really going,” I said. “Your mother has a job here.”
“Washing laundry doesn’t get her enough.” He shrugged. “If you don’t believe me, fine. Guess you’ll find out for yourself when I’m gone.”
“I ain’t never leaving,” Beanie said, using her spoon to spread around the sauce from her beans. “I ain’t never gonna leave Meemaw here.”
Neither Ray or me knew what to say to that, so we finished eating without talking.
After dinner, the men all climbed into Daddy’s truck. They were going to take a look at the cattle that were still alive.
“We gotta see if any of them are still good,” Millard had told me.
Daddy’d invited Ray to go along and even messed up his hair as they walked out the front door. Ray shimmied into the bed of the truck and sat up a little straighter than I’d ever seen him. I waited on the porch for them to ask me to come, but they didn’t.
They drove away, and Ray waved at me, a big grin on his face. Not a smirk, but a real, happy smile. I decided I couldn’t be mad at him just then.
It was just as well. I wouldn’t have wanted to be around Eddie all afternoon, anyhow.
Still, getting left behind stung.
“Read me a story,” Beanie demanded as soon as I stepped back into the house.
“Where are your manners, Beanie Jean?” Mama asked, clearing a stack of plates.
Mrs. Jones stared at me, like she was studying me. I couldn’t meet eyes with her. I was grateful when she turned and went to the kitchen to help Mama.
“Please,” Beanie begged, tugging on my arm.
“Sure, I’ll read you a story,” I said, going over to the shelf. “Which one?”
“The boy and girl.” Beanie grinned for the first time since Meemaw’d passed away. I wondered if she’d forgotten all about her. “The story about the boy and girl dropping crumbs.”
“Hansel and Gretel?” I pulled the thick fairy-tale book from the shelf.
“How about you take it up to your room to read?” Mama nodded, letting me know that I didn’t have a choice.
Beanie and I obeyed and sat on our bedroom floor, the book open in front of us. I read for a few minutes before Beanie got up and climbed into bed.
“Keep reading,” she instructed.
Before long, she was fast asleep, her breathing deep and her eyes shut tight.
I got on my tummy, leaning on my elbows, and read to myself. The clinking and sloshing of washing dishes from downstairs ended. Then I heard Mama’s voice.
“What exactly are you getting at, Luella?” she asked. “Just be straight with me.”
“All I’m saying is you done it before.” Mrs. Jones’s voice wasn’t as clear, still I could make out her words.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m asking if you won’t take Ray.”
Silence from below. I rested my head on the floor, hoping I could hear better through the spaces between the boards.
“Take him?” Mama asked. “Take him where?”
“Keep him here. As your son.”
“Luella …”
“I can’t do it no more, Mary. I don’t got any life left in me.” Mrs. Jones’s voice sounded like she was crying. “I don’t trust nobody else with him. I know y’all would take good care of him.”
“What are you saying?”
Quiet again.
“Luella, you ain’t thinking of—”
“No. No,” Mrs. Jones said, interrupting. “I ain’t gonna kill myself.”
“Good lord, but you’re making me nervous the way you’re talking.”
The scraping sound of a chair being pushed. Then a cough.
“Mary, I’ve got to leave. And I can’t take Ray.”
“I don’t know why not.”
“Because he’s better off here.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Well, he ain’t getting a good life being with me,” Mrs. Jones said.
Shoes clomped on the floor.
“We can’t take him,” Mama said. “Luella, he belongs with you.”
“I got nothing to give him.”
“You’re his mother. He needs you. Especially after all that’s happened.”
Another round of clinking plates. The cupboard door shutting.
“You’ve took in a kid before.” Mrs. Jones’s voice was flat.
“Luella, I’ll ask you to keep your voice down,” Mama scolded. “The girls are upstairs.”
“All I’m saying is you done it before.”
“I know,” Mama said. “But I can’t do it again. It’s—it’s just different now.”
“Mary, you’re the only hope I got for him.”
“No, Luella.”
Quiet for longer than I liked. I wondered if Mrs. Jones was about to leave our house. But then she spoke again.
“Mary, I’m begging you. I don’t want him ending up like Rosie. And I don’t want him turning out like Si.”
“The answer is no,” Mama said.