I Will Send Rain (28 page)

“Everyone all right?” Samuel finally asked.

“Sure, Pop,” Birdie said. He smiled a naked smile such as she hadn't seen since before Fred died. He stood and peered up, the last drops falling in a languid rhythm.

And then he laughed.

“I didn't want a flood,” he said, “when it came down to it.”

He could hear the runoff sluice below, a shallow pond around them. He pulled off a hanging slat from the barn wall and tossed it onto the deck.

“I'll put a kettle on,” Annie said.

Samuel felt calmness like a fire-warmed blanket over his shoulders. He had been tested and he had been spared. He believed that. He felt neither pride nor regret, delight nor despair. He just was. A man, a farmer. It was the most solid he had felt in months. There was flickering sadness there, too, for the feeling of purpose that was gone. He was just like everybody else. Returned. He thought of Fred and his small arms sawing in the lamplight and how together they had built this beautiful, worthy thing.

*   *   *

S
AMUEL DIDN'T KNOW
that there would be years of dust storms yet, years before the conservationists and tree planters came, before terracing and crop rotation transformed the fields, before grasses held the soil down again, before the end of the drought, before farmers tapped the Ogallala Aquifer, that endless-seeming source of water, before waterwheel irrigation turned the Plains into a grid of giant green circles, before the Ogallala began to run dry, a resource only thousands of years of rainwater could replace. But in the still of the aftermath of the almost-flood, he felt something restored in him. He had his small family. He had his old farm. It had rained. He had hope.

He didn't yet know that Styron would have the boat towed to town, to the center of an old parcel of land that had once held the feed store. Crows would make a nest in the hutch. People would come to see it from neighboring towns, and, when Styron finally got his sign up on the highway, the curious would trickle in to see the Ark of the Plains. Samuel wouldn't mind. He'd let go of the boat as soon as the rain had stopped.

“I'm going to bed,” Birdie said, yawning. “What time is it? It must be almost morning.” She climbed off the boat on her own before Samuel had a chance to help her.

The birds had begun, twittering and chirping, the air heavy with the smells of mud and wet spring green. Annie thought of the wildflowers that would burst up in the coming weeks. She would burn the old letter from Jack Lily. She would not begrudge Samuel his faith. Maybe God posted signs visible only to those with eyes to see. She wasn't one of them, but she could accept that maybe her husband was.

“Let me help you down, Annie,” Samuel said.

She took his hand. There is grace here, she thought.

*   *   *

A
DAY PASSED
and the water was sucked into the earth. The dugout had filled, leaving it a dank and mucky pit. Inside, the trunk of Fred's things had floated, most of its contents spared. Annie saved a lot of what she had canned, though some of the pickle jars had cracked. The last of the wheat sacks were sodden and would soon mold. Samuel would fill in the old rooms and raze the roof. It was time to dig a proper cellar.

*   *   *

A
T THE KITCHEN
table, Birdie closed her history book. She laid her head on her arm on the table. Annie stood near the sink peeling and cutting carrots for roasting. They could hear Samuel repairing the barn wall, pounding in slats of lumber he had at the ready.

“I thought you had a test this week.”

“Tomorrow.”

“You haven't done much studying.” Annie glanced at her and went back to the carrots.

“I'm sleepy,” Birdie said. “What does it really matter?” She would have to leave school when she had the baby anyway.

“It matters to do well. To learn. It's easy to be common, Barbara Ann.”

The comment nettled her. She stared at the red loops of her mother's apron strings, which hung uneven and limp. After Fred, Birdie had tried to bury what she suspected about her mother. But she suddenly felt so tired, of secrets, of the whole past year, she wanted to fling open the door and be done with it. She said it before she could change her mind.

“Your apron.”

Annie stopped chopping.

“Fred found it, he told me. At Woodrow's.”

Annie shrank into herself, pulled in close around a cold polished center. She had thought the affair had been hers to put away. But that was too tidy an ending, she knew, to how she had strayed. Of course Birdie had caught on. How reckless Annie had been.

“He did find it there,” Annie said. She kept her voice up, holding on to the slim chance the moment would pass without incident. “Didn't even know I'd lost it.”

She started again with the knife, but nicked her finger. She held it in the faucet stream before bringing it to her lips. She closed her eyes and waited.

“I can't make sense of it,” Birdie said, quietly.

Whatever Birdie knew, it was enough. The truth, with its steely resolve, had a way of making itself known.

“Neither can I,” Annie said.

So it was true, Birdie thought. Her steadfast mother. Birdie had hoped against reason that she had been mistaken. But she wasn't really surprised. Even Fred had known something. Oh Freddie, how she missed him.

“The mayor,” Birdie said.

Annie stood still and silent.

“You and the mayor,” she said. “Mama.” But the words fell sad and soft. Birdie could not make her anger rise.

“I stayed,” Annie said, barely above a whisper. “I would have never left you and Fred. I'm your mother above everything.” She squeezed her bleeding finger in a towel and held it to her chest. There was a pause in the hammering outside, and then it began again.

Birdie started to cry, couldn't help it. She wanted to go back years. It was dizzying how you could just send your life in a different direction. One choice and then another.

“I'm sorry,” Annie said. “I'm sorry.” Her chin quivered. “I don't forgive it.”

“Does he know?”

Annie shook her head. “I love your father. Will always.” She dropped the blood-dotted towel in the sink.

Birdie thought of Fred's small coffin and knew that more punishment was not hers to mete out. So much sadness let loose. She felt so old. Older than sixteen, older than the moon. Birdie couldn't help but feel a kernel of wonder. Her mother, who never seemed to yearn for anything. All that I don't know, she thought.

Annie walked closer and placed her hands, firm and warm, on Birdie's head.

*   *   *

T
HE PAIN STARTED
in the early morning a couple weeks later, like a low ache Birdie couldn't quite locate. She didn't think much of it until it felt like monthly cramps, and it took her a moment longer to realize she didn't get monthly cramps anymore and oh, Lord in heaven it was April. Flashes of tightness came through the morning as she milked Greta and fed the chickens, rising through her until they died back down. It should not have been a surprise that this day would come but she was shocked, overwhelmed by how her body had taken over.

Annie came in, dirt across her forehead and rare color in her cheeks, to find her daughter doubled over, the bones of her knuckles straining against skin, clutching the table ledge.

She pressed on Birdie's lower back until the spasm passed.

“I don't know what to do, Mama,” Birdie said. “I don't want a baby.” She cried then, her hands in fists against her forehead.

“We will be fine, Barbara Ann. Let's walk.”

The wind was up, but the ground was sticky with new mud. They passed the mangled barn Samuel had begun to repair, the boat still sticking out.

“Think people will ever stop talking about us?” Birdie asked.

“People are always going to talk,” Annie said. “If it's about us or not is neither here nor there.”

Birdie winced as the grip of labor rose to its height, and she squeezed her mother's strong hand until it passed.

“No one will ever see me the same.”

“You won't be the same, after today.”

“I know it.”

“It's not a bad thing. Even if it's not what you want.”

“Like lima beans.”

She is so young, Annie thought. But she had been, too, and she had managed. Mothers managed.

“There is good about it, too, Birdie,” Annie said. “A child is always a blessing.”

*   *   *

A
NNIE KNEW ENOUGH
to be a midwife. Most country women did. She laid out towels and tore sheets into squares, boiled a knife and a clothespin for the cord, warmed water for the cleanup, spread old newspapers on the floor near the edge of the bed. She sudsed her arms in lye soap to her elbows. Samuel stood by as his wife, transformed by agency, bustled about.

“Get a big bowl,” she told him.

“For the baby?”

She shot him a withering look. “The placenta, Samuel.”

Samuel had birthed animals his whole life, but had not been allowed at his wife's births, shooed away by the attending midwife, and he found himself stuck in cement, unable to react or move as he wanted. In those leaden days after Fred's death, when Annie had told him about Birdie, he had felt the revelation from a distance and marveled how, at another time, the news would have stirred thoughts of his daughter's sin. Now he could do little more than mourn the loss of her freedom, his daughter who had always been perched on the edge, ready to take off. But there was buoyancy, too, giddiness even, in welcoming the arrival of the newest Bell.

“Soap up,” Annie said. “I'll need your help.”

Downstairs at the sink, Samuel pressed his palms together and prayed for help, until Annie called for him and he snapped to it, lathering the harsh soap up to his armpits.

He raced back up to their bedroom.

“Baby's coming,” Annie said. She smiled then, a quick small smile that opened her face, and Samuel saw goodness there.

“Grab her leg,” Annie said.

Birdie clung to the iron headboard, and Samuel placed his hand on his daughter's wobbling leg.

“Hard. Grab her thigh and push it back. Come on now.”

He did as he was told, holding his weight against Birdie's leg as a little dark head crowned.

Birdie grunted and yelled and Annie told her to push and Samuel, bewildered, waited for his next instruction.

“Hold both legs. Hold them steady,” Annie said. She crouched under him and ran her finger around the baby's head to ease it out and Birdie let out a sound that was both scream and primal moan.

“Birdie. Barbara Ann Bell, you listen to me,” Annie said. “You are doing just fine. Now push.”

*   *   *

I
N THAT MOMENT
of fire and pain and fear, when the baby's head inched its way out and Birdie felt herself rip open, she knew. I will go, she said to herself, I will go. It was decided. Go, go, go, she said to herself as the baby slid out into her mother's hands. I will go.

*   *   *

I
T WAS A
new configuration of family. Give us this day our daily bread, Samuel thought. The baby girl turned from bluish to pink as Annie rubbed her with a towel. She cut and clamped the cord, as the baby let out her first cries. She wrapped her with an expert one, two, three swaddle of a blanket and placed her on Birdie's chest.

“You hold it, Mama,” Birdie said, handing her back. She scooted down into the mess of birth on the bed, turned over, and fell asleep.

 

CHAPTER 17

Birdie closes the door quietly behind her and walks away, one step and then another and another. It's dark but the birds are already busy. Her old dress, which she hasn't been able to wear since the fall, doesn't fit right—her body still soft and bulging—but she is back to herself, or what passes for herself now. The sun is close. She can almost feel the coming of the light. She does not look back at the house. The risk is too great. She is leaving everything. It's been a week since the baby; as she walks, her belly feels empty, loose, and she keeps touching it to remind herself of where her body ends.

A skirt, a shirt, a sweater. Extra socks and underthings. A smooth stone Fred gave her that he thought looked like butterscotch. A napkin full of biscuits. A jar of water. Twenty-two dollars from her father's dresser. She knows he would have given it to her if she had asked, not that it makes her feel better about taking it.

She walks. The crack of light on the horizon announces the morning. The inevitability of the sun comforts her. Do not think about what you are leaving, she tells herself, or you will get nowhere. There will be time for that later. There will always be more time for that.

Birdie walks west, and then she will walk south, in the direction of Amarillo, where she will pick up Route 66. She will walk and walk. She hopes to hitch with a family, since plenty of people are moving that way. She knows to stay clear of men alone, though she also knows, in the reaches of her mind, that there will be sacrifices along the way, compromises she will make to get where she wants to go. She thinks back to the day of the first dust, when she didn't yet know a damn thing. What if she had not gotten pregnant? What if Cy had taken her with him? The what-ifs can go on forever if you let them, she heard her mother say once, and Birdie knows she was right about that. “What if” will get you nowhere, and she has many miles to go.

There is light now, the ground still damp with dew. Birdie turns around and can just make out the sign for Black Mesa to the north. The dinosaur people are still up there. They found footprints, and now they have found bones. She thinks about bones, porous and strong, smoothed by sand and bleached by the sun, buried, waiting to be found. Maybe it's like that for her, she thinks. She will bury her childhood in all this Oklahoma dust and it will wait for her to come back someday to dig it up. Even now, when all she wants to do is leave, she knows that she might spend the rest of her life looking back, wondering about those bones. It will take a lifetime to organize her memories of Oklahoma into a coherent shape, a story she can tell herself without falling apart.