CHAPTER 4

I HAVE FEW MEMORIES of my mother that don’t involve some bucket of water, or rag, or mop. She’d grown up the daughter of a domestic in a wealthy Oklahoma City home, and her determination to keep her humble farmhouse equally pristine nearly drove us all to madness. She’d mop the floors within minutes of Pa’s leaving the room, whether to head out to the barns or into the parlor to read the evening paper. Without saying so outright, she taught me that a woman could have no greater accomplishment than the cleanliness of her home. Her love lived in the vinegar and flowed through the water.

It all fell to me when she died, and while I may not have inherited her zeal, I had the motivation of Pa’s approval to drive my efforts. Not to mention the constant reminders of her standards.

“Yer ma never did leave a dish in the sink.”

“Cain’t let that warshin’ pile up.”

“Gettin’ to look like an Injun teepee, so much dirt tracked on this floor.”

I never did complain, though it seemed unfair that he should have a dozen men working our ranch but wouldn’t bring in a single woman to help with the house. It was his way, I suppose, of keeping me from having any hope of leaving, telling me every day that my duties were at home, with him. First’n last. Before I hightailed it into town, I’d better low-tail it on the floor, makin’ sure he had a man’s dinner waiting in the oven and a clean set of dishes to eat it off’n.

Which I did. Every day. Some nights sleeping at the kitchen table while I watched a stew overnight. Baking biscuits at four in the morning. Madly putting everything right in that precious hour between his leaving the house for his work and my leaving the house to go to school.

Every book I read, every paper I wrote, every test and pencil worn down to the nub —all of it, to get away. My older brother, Greg, had the Great War to bring him escape. His letters fueled my envy, even those that spoke of death and danger. I would have risked it all, my very life, to get away from this place. Until I met Russ, and I knew for certain if he couldn’t get me out of Oklahoma, he could at least take me away from my pa, and that was enough at the time.

When we get home from the church service, I have a single, precious hour to put my house to rights. To run a damp mop over the walls, wipe the countertops and floor with vinegar and water. My dishcloths are caked with as much mud as they can hold, and I use my tea towels to wipe up the remnant. I send Ronnie into the bathroom with a bottle of Lysol to clean in there, not allowing myself to think of Pa’s disapproval of a young man performing such a degrading chore, and put a broom in Ariel’s hand to sweep the outside steps. A useless gesture, but the least harmful, as she alone will have any hope of breathing fresh air.

Tomorrow, the curtains will be taken down and the rugs beaten, but right now I implore Russ to run our electric sweeper over the floors and furniture, just this once, as I know what harm the Oklahoma soil will pose to the machine’s inner workings. He complies, and in the aftermath of silence, I hear Pa’s labored footfall on the steps outside. There is a mumbled bit of almost-jovial conversation —his approval of Ariel’s industriousness, no doubt —and then a knock at the door.

All the years this has been our home, and still he knocks. Even with my daughter on the porch and the shadows of ourselves inside, I knew he would stand and wait for the door to be opened for him. And if not, he’d leave. I used to cajole, “Pa! You’re family. Come on in.” But he’d set his jaw and say this weren’t no more his home than was the drugstore down the street. I know he wishes Russ and I had moved in with him when we married, despite his ugliness at the matter. Truth be told, when we have those days of tripping over ourselves in this little space, I think about that farmhouse with only one old man to rattle around within its bones, and wish the same. I picture little Ronnie growing up running at his Paw-Paw’s heels to help with the livestock in the morning before school; Russ in the cozy parlor nook, preparing his sermon; and myself standing apart from it all, ready for those quiet moments for my own pursuit. Reading, maybe. Or taking up some kind of creative hobby, maybe writing out one of the stories that used to stir in my head.

One meal a week, however, is all it takes to cure me of that delusion.

I open the door to find the man has aged another year in the days since I’ve last seen him. His gauntness makes me worry that he doesn’t eat enough. Truth is, I know he doesn’t eat enough because he has nobody at the house to cook for him. His cheeks are sunken, with an odd crisscross of wrinkles —the scars of a lifetime of smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. His eyes are pale gray, and on the odd occasion of his smile, his teeth —all present and strong —bear much the same color as his hair, a faded yellow with streaks of brown. Thick, and still bearing the tracks of a wet comb, it is badly in need of a trim. After dinner, if I have a clean towel to spare, I’ll wrap it around his neck and do the job myself.

The moment he walks across the threshold, my eyes go straight to the fine layer of dust on his shirt lined up along the seams. It most likely came from the drive —all that fresh, loose dirt kicked up on the road, if the road was there at all. I don’t ask, though, lest it stir up a kind of shame.

“See you got the girl workin’.” He rarely calls Ariel by her name.

“Always lots to do.” I glance over my shoulder to see Russ putting the sweeper in the closet and hope it will be shut away before Pa notices.

Too late. Those gray eyes narrow in disapproval, as do his thin, dry lips, but I refuse to rise to the unspoken challenge. Instead, I open my arms wide in welcome and invite him to sit on our clean furniture before offering a cool drink of water.

“Is the glass clean?”

“Yes, Pa. Washed it a bit ago, along with all the other dishes.”

He grunts an approval and accepts the glass. Dark rings of soil frame his fingernails; more is caked in the folds of his knuckles. Such has always been the case with his hands: evidence of hard labor —and the sole measure of a man’s value. He always worried my brother’s hands would sentence him to a life of weakness.

“You get hit hard at your place?” Russ asks, sitting in the chair next to him with his own drink.

“No more’n anyone.” If his house had blown down he’d say the same. His place is long past suffering any new losses from the storms. It has been two years since a single head of cattle grazed his land. He had a head start on the loss that now consumes us all.

I remain silent, knowing anything I say will only result in an accusation of abandonment. I haven’t been out to visit my father’s house in months, citing the convenient excuse of not wanting to be on the road should another storm kick up. Not that the same fears have stopped me from driving to Boise City when the need arises.

“Need any help out there?” Russ asks the same question with every visit, only to be rebuffed. Pa would rather work himself to raw bones than take help from a stranger. And to him, Russ is still very much a stranger.

“Dinner will be up in a bit,” I say, knowing my place. “Haven’t had much time at the stove, so it’s just a corned beef hash and potatoes. I meant to bake a pie, but . . .”

“No need,” Pa says, close to reassuring.

Thankful for the escape, I return to the kitchen. I scrape my wooden spatula along the bottom and sides of the skillet, moving the hash to a pile in the center. The potatoes were parboiled earlier, so I slice them thin and layer them in a surrounding moat of melted butter. Salt, pepper, and let them sizzle to a golden hue while I look down and divide the food into portions. Pa, Russ, Ronnie —Ariel and I can share. Just enough, but in the spirit of hospitality, I call out, “Russ? Is your friend coming for dinner?” and steel myself for the answer.

“What friend is that?” Pa asks, always wary of inviting strangers into our lives.

“A guy I knew in college —” to which Pa gives the snort he always does at the mention of the institution —“and, no.”

“Are you sure?” I reportion, imagining enough. My own stomach feels too rebellious to want more than a bite. “There’s plenty.”

“Not if I’m invited.” Ronnie peeks over my shoulder. He smells clean and I twist my head to kiss his cheek, an act confined to our home.

“Don’t make me have to choose,” I chide before ordering him to summon his little sister inside to wash up.

When we gather around the table, hands joined for the blessing, I escape into the darkness and imagine the light of that single lamp, illuminating the faces of all gathered here. Try as I might to hear my husband’s prayer, though, my mind wanders until he mentions his name. Jim. Asking God to keep him safe and lead him to a meal this day.

After we all say, “Amen,” I ladle the food onto each plate and ask Russ if he knows where Jim is eating this day.

Russ shrugs. “I’m not sure.”

“But you did invite him here?”

“I told him he was welcome to join us.”

“But what exactly did you say?”

“I said something along the lines of, ‘You’re welcome to join us for dinner.’”

“But that’s not the same as ‘Please join us for dinner.’ You made it his decision.”

Russ chuckles at this. “My darling Nola, heaven forbid a man make his own decision once you’ve set your mind to something. Shall I leave right now? Track him down in the streets and bring him here?”

“Woman’s just tryin’ to do a kindness,” Pa says. He rarely uses my name, either. He keeps his eyes trained on his plate, shoving food onto his fork with a torn piece of bread, but when he chews, he looks at me with familiar suspicion, stripping my facade away.

“I have two tins of peaches in the pantry,” I say, perhaps a little too quickly. “Might make for a nice dessert. I can send one home with you, Pa, if you like.”

He says nothing, not given to comment one way or another on domestic decisions. Of my own accord, after dinner, I spoon peaches into shallow dishes and sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon. With all served, I fetch Greg’s letter.

Reading my brother’s letter after Sunday dinner has been a ritual since he left home, even when it was just Pa and me out on the farm. It was a voice from the outside looking in, with knowledge and familiarity bridging the distance. More than that, his letters offered hope —a glimpse into a world far from here, and footprints to follow to get there. From college, he wrote about the antics of academia, the rigor of the classes, and the energy of a generation poised to take on a new century.

You need to be here, Nola, he’d written. Girls —women, everywhere, taking on subjects they wouldn’t have dreamed of a generation ago. You’re smart, smarter than me in a lot of ways. Doesn’t seem right that I’m the only one to get an education just because I’m a boy, not that Pa even holds it the right thing for me. I suppose it is strange, going off to study agriculture as a way to get away from a life on a ranch. But it’s all I know. You, though, Sis. You know more about things that matter on a deeper level. I can’t name a single soul in that place who thinks the way you do. Be careful you don’t get stuck.

Later, when Russ joined us as an element of courtship, Greg wrote from France about the horrors of war, though he left some details out for reasons of both security and sensitivity. Always he writes his letters to me. Dearest Nola, or My Darling Little Sister. We’ve always been each other’s shield from Pa’s wrath, and I know if I’d asked him to, he would have stayed home, a sometimes-physical barrier. But I all but shoved him out the door, asking him to scout a path for both of us. He met Russ through my letters and gave approval with a telegram, but never offered more than Give my regards to Russ, in case there would come a time when he might have to defend me on that front, too. And always, at the end, Please share this news as you will with Pa. Give him my love.

Which I do, faithfully, though Pa considers Greg’s position working for the Department of Agriculture in Washington to be a greater betrayal than leaving the farm to attend college in the first place.

“Shall we see what he has to say?”

I slip the folded papers from the envelope, enacting a poor ruse that I haven’t pored over the contents like a spy, deciding what and how to read it to keep a moment’s peace at my table.

“Nothin’ we ain’t heard before,” Pa says.

As if to confirm, Ariel tugs at my sleeve, asking to go to her room and play. I excuse her and look to Ronnie, but he has no intentions of leaving. Sitting in on the postdinner conversation —especially in the light of Greg’s letters —has proven to be a rite of passage, along with a cup of coffee and a man-size portion of the meal.

“I think it’s a good thing to have someone from home up in Washington,” Russ says.

“Ain’t been his home goin’ on twenty years.”

“As long as we’re here, it’ll always be home,” I say before launching into the contents of the letter.

It begins, as they all do, with a greeting addressed to me, but in the moment I amend it to Dear family. And then the usual lines, hoping that all is well, before launching into startling details.

It amazes me how, from hundreds of miles away, Greg seems to be better informed about our crisis than we ourselves are. We are the ones who are living in the midst of a drought, passing the days under one cloudless sky after another, praying for rain without any hope of an answer. I hear his voice like he is shouting from a mountaintop above us. Acres of eroded farmland, the plight of the livestock, and the number of people fleeing in hopes of a better life.

“He’s worried about us.” I paraphrase the next paragraph or so, in which my older brother, living in a single room in our nation’s capital, seems to strip away hope like it’s Oklahoma soil. “Thinks we should sell, cut our losses, and go.”

At this, Ronnie’s eyes light up with familiar possibility, which Pa snuffs right out.

“Ain’t nobody buyin’.”

“This is our home,” Russ says with a more comforting air. “Times of drought are always followed by seasons of rain.”

As always, Russ speaks with such confidence it seems a sin to doubt. I don’t want the taint of Pa’s bitterness, nor do I share my husband’s assurance. It seems all I know is that it hasn’t rained this day, nor the day before, nor likely the next. Moment by moment, dry as stone, and weighed down. Any hope I ever had of leaving disappeared the minute I laid eyes on Russ, though I didn’t know that until I was too gone with his child, and each year we sink down deeper to each other, and deeper in this place.

“Finish up,” Pa says.

I read Greg’s final line: “We’re doing what we can here, to help.”

“How’re they gon’ help? Think them fools can make it rain?”

“We’ll have to see,” I say, folding the letter and putting it carefully back into its envelope. He’d written hints of programs to purchase land and cattle, just to put cash into the hands of the people, something Pa would surely call a handout and refuse.

With the ritual of the letter complete, I take a few minutes to trim Pa’s hair while Ronnie entertains us with the play-by-play of his school’s most recent baseball game. After, I fill a paper sack with the other can of peaches, a few biscuits wrapped in wax paper, a small ball of butter, and the remains of today’s dinner —one portion, too small to be of any good to our family. He makes a show of refusing it at first —as he does every week —and I turn my back to allow him to take it in privacy. The dish holding today’s leftovers is a pale blue, with apple blossoms painted around the rim. Not one of mine. Part of the illusion that we don’t send food home with Pa comes from the fact that he never returns my dishes from week to week. To compensate, I’ve taken to buying plates and bowls for pennies apiece at rummage sales hosted by neighbors who, with no one to tell them any better, sell their worldly goods to seek a better life out west. Or north. Or east.

Anywhere but here.