Momma

Today is October 27, 1933, and momma finally let her tears out. We hadn’t seen the sun in two days. I didn’t even know what time of day it was, the dust has swallowed our home. In between waves of dust filled air, momma lets me run outside and chase off the birds. The dust has covered our house so much that I can walk right up on top of it. But it ain’t no fun up there because the view is the same for miles and miles out. We’ve got neighbors, but their houses are just little mounds of dust like ours too. We used to have cows but they all walked away from here once the dust was high enough for them to make it over the fence. If I was a cow and all my pretty grass was covered in the dir, then I’d walk as far as my legs would carry me. It’s been this way for three years I believe. We’ve been livin’ off bread, milk, and the small squirrels that had scurried into the safety of our house. I know it’s not nice to the squirrels and that they’re just trying their best like me and ma, but my stomach was calling for them. I hated eating the squirrels, but my belly was so scrawny and sunk in that my momma made me eat them. Todays my 9th birthday, and my pa ain’t here for it. For the past few weeks, mommas been sayin’ he’s out tending the cattle in the state over, but today is when I knew he wouldn’t be home ever again. Mommas tears told me all I needed to know. They whispered in my ear, “Your pa was taken by the dust that touches your skin,”. They poured from her twinkling blue eyes like she was tryna wash the dust away. Man, if tears could wash it away then I’d let mine fall too. But her tears weren’t doing that, they were washing over my shoulder as she held me close. For the past three years, she’d always kept it hidden from me. She wanted me to be her strong person and she knew she had to keep a brave face on for me. But this dust could break even the hardest man. It broke me after the third storm. I asked momma when the ground was gonna stop spitting on us and she told me she wasn’t sure. She tried to keep her breathin’ steady so I didn’t notice, but I knew the wetness on my shirt was from her crying. Ain‘t nothin’ else around here bringing water. We pray for rain every day before we eat and beige we sleep. We ask the Lord to put his blessed band over us and that he have mercy on me and ma so that we can live to serve him. I guess the dust catches our prayers before they reach God, because it seems like nothing is ever gonna change. Momma tells me to keep praying and that God will favor us, but if this is his favor, then I don’t want it anymore. She cried and cried until I eventually fell asleep to the unsteady shake of her breathing. I dreamt of paradise. Our little table was filled to the edge in warm, fresh food that didn’t crunch with gritty, unforgivin’ dirt when I ate it. Me and momma was playing out in the field as we weaved fresh beautiful flowers into crowns ab we showed the earth beneath us that we were stronger than it. That we could thrive and live because we were greater than the hard ground that we walked on. Pa was even there. He was out in the pasture with the new calf that was born right before these storms of darkness began. He held his hand out and fed it so that I could pet her head. Her tufts of fur swirled and spiraled in the middle, and it felt like I had my own little piece of the clouds above me. I dreamt that I was living the life me and so many other wished for. But my life of abundance was stripped from me as my mind was brought back to my body. Ma was violently shaking me awake, frantically begging for me to open my eyes. Her tears had become storms of their own, and if she kept it up then it might‘ve really washed the dust away. My eyes shot open and I realized why my pleasant dreams were disturbed so rudely. My throat had betrayed me. The dust rattled my lung and terrorized my every breath. My whole chest felt like there was a herd of cows running inside of me. I panicked and began to breath harder, faster. Momma pulled me close and threw my head back with her strong muscular hands and pulled my cloth down from over my face. She grabbed what little water we had and pushed it past my lips and forced it down the little bit of throat I had left. It trickled at first, fighting the dirt off and repairing my breathing. Then it flooded me with muddled promises of better air. It sloshed in my empty belly and I tried to hack and cough up the rest of the dirt in my lungs. Momma had stopped crying by then. I guess she realized that she had to keep fighting for the both of us, because my eyes had begun to give out. Now that I was wide awake and my body was fighting to survive, I could see my dreams coming back. The lush green fields and the wrinkly and sun-tanned skin of my pa were more than just a dream now. My body knew it had to keep living, it had to stay with momma, but my mind knew I had lost. The dust bowl had claimed another life with its cruel punishment, but now I can live the life I had always dreamed of.