1935

a brief snapshot of the great depression

1935

She could taste the grains of dirt on her tongue. Carried by the rough Oklahoma winds, the dirt seeped its way into the house, as insidious as the plague. It crept underneath the doorways and trickled in through the rusting wire frames covering the windows. The air was heavy with it, so dry and gritty she would wake up with nosebleeds. In that long summer, her skin felt old and cracked, mummified by the unrelenting heat.

Trying to bring herself back to life, she walked through the house, deliberately giving her movements purpose. Straighten those cushions. Wipe off that table. Line up the books. The rooms were deathly silent, almost eerie. She caught sight of herself in the hall mirror and was momentarily startled. Absurdly, she thought there was another person in the room with her. But it was ridiculous, a wish, the phantom she imagined only herself in all her untidy glory. Her appearance was worn: a homespun dress, a nest of unbrushed black hair bundled upon her head, a pair of stockings torn up the line of her calf. 

It took a lot of effort to get up in the mornings. Sometimes she would sit there on the edge of her bed, half-dressed, and stare down blankly at the floor. The meaninglessness of her life crashed in down upon her, while the speck-like existence she was scrabbling to maintain slowly slipped out of her grasp. She was so tired, so very, very tired these days. It was no longer easy to muster up the will to survive. The floorboards beneath her feet were rotting away -- hell, the entire house was falling apart around her -- and it didn't even matter. She didn't care. She didn't have the money for the repairs and what was the point of fixing the place up anyways, out here in the dead, depleted cornfields of the Midwest.

When did it all begin? Well, she remembered the day clearly, every moment of it stricken upon her mind. Each breath had been an excruciating whiplash, her diaphragm twisted from the pain below. She had woken to find her bed sheets covered in blood and the tiny remains of her miscarried child. She felt old then, as ancient as the earth on her farm, which had so clearly given up. Refusing life, it was as barren as her cruel womb. 

How difficult it was to smile now, knowing the loneliness surrounding her was growing more and more permanent with each passing day. Jimmy, her husband, had left her. One Tuesday morning about three months past, he had told her he was going to the next town over to ask about jobs. But he hadn't returned. He did not come home to her, even though that night she had cooked him dinner, a roast chicken from their last rooster, a molting, pathetic bird whose tough meat bespoke of their hard times all too clearly. She gave the uneaten food to their dog, who soon followed his master and ran away. 

Remembering the heartbreak, she felt dizzy. She breathed in the dirt air and stepped outside onto the porch. The creaking porch swing swayed in the breeze and she sat down on it, humming a tune -- Cheek to Cheek -- to herself. The sky was so blue it hurt her eyes and the sunlight covered everything in a dazzling sheath of brightness, exposing a detailed, starkly grotesque beauty. In the distance, she saw Annabel's carcass, a black hulk surrounded by the last of the picking vultures. 

She felt slightly faint from hunger. The kitchen had been bare for days, only the dying vegetables in the garden left to sustain her, unappetizing as they were. Perhaps, someday soon, she would go to California. She had heard stories of the place -- the Eden of America, where the rains fell and the orchards flourished, the trees heavy with unpicked fruit. Maybe, just maybe, she could go there in search of a better life… She could fall in love again, remarry, try for a child that would be healthy and smiling and life-sustaining. No more would her dreams be filled with images of a blood-smeared embryo cradled in her palms. Things like that didn't belong in Paradise. 

The sadness welled within her, but she could not cry. The pain was nestled too deep. Instead, she breathed in deeply and stared out into the yard, past the fence, and along the gravel road, which shrunk into the horizon. It went on for miles, that road, beyond all the abandoned farms, the dingy, whitewashed churches, the empty schoolhouses. It wound around the places that made up the memories of her childhood. Could she travel through that broken America, and survive? Could she really find happiness elsewhere? Could she? Could she?