Free The Year Everything Changed by Georgia Bockoven Page A

it wasn’t possible to add one more thing to that old truck, Ma lined everyone up to say good-bye. She made my sister, Rose, hug me, but my brother, Bobby Ray, refused. He punched me on the arm harder than I felt was right or fitting, so I hit him back. We would’ve been down on the ground rolling in the dirt if Grandma hadn’t stepped in to pull us apart. She put her hands on my shoulders and held me there, looking at me like she knew it was for the last time.
    “You got no business staying behind by yourself. There’s nothing for you here. It’s done with, Jessie. Leave it be and come with us to California.”
    Somehow she’d gotten it in her head that I was staying behind to work the farm. Pa never could tell her that it didn’t belong to them anymore, that the bank had foreclosed. “I gotta try, Grandma,” I said figuring it was what she needed to hear.
    When it came Pa’s turn to say good-bye he shook my hand like I wasn’t just his boy anymore but a grown man. “You stay out of trouble, Jessie.”
    Ma was crying when she put her arms around me, squeezed me like it would hurt to let me go, and whispered in my ear, “If things don’t work out the way you want, you come lookin’ for us.”
    “I will.”
    She wasn’t taking the easy answer. She grabbed hold of my wrists and looked me straight in the eye. “You promise me.”
    “I promise,” I told her. And I meant it. Finding them in California one day was part of my plan. But I wouldn’t go there because I needed something. When I arrived it would be with pockets full of money that I’d use to buy them another farm.
    Ma didn’t look back at me when the truck pulled out on the road, only my brother and grandmother. And then it was just Bobby Ray. He stood in the back of the truck, balancing himself on the trunks and mattresses and pots and pans, swinging both arms in the air like he was cheering for me and not mad anymore that he couldn’t stay, too.
    It was the last time I saw my brother. I’ve been back there a thousand times in my mind looking for something, wishing I could find a look or word that let him know I thought he was the best brother a kid could have and that I loved him. But I never do. Bobby Ray wasn’t much for sentimentality and would’ve been all over me if I’d have tried something like that.
    I stayed rooted to the spot like one of the dying sycamore trees out back watching until there wasn’t anything to see but a long trail of dust hanging in the noon sky. When I was sure they weren’t coming back for something they might have forgot, I went inside to get the suitcase that Ma and I had hidden in the front bedroom closet.
    Knowing there was no way I’d ever be back, I took a last look around the place. Ma had left the sheets hanging across the ceilings, her way of catching the dust that seeped from the attic like talc through a sieve. Right up to the day she left she’d changed those sheets every morning before breakfast. She’d sweep and dust and check the rags stuffed in the cracks around the windows and under the doors while the rest of us were washing off the dirt that had settled overnight on our faces and in our ears and noses. Even with all she did, we could write our names in the dust on the edge of our plates by the time she had the eggs fried. When the winds blew, my sister washed dishes before and after we ate and we still felt the grit between our teeth with every bite.
    It was my job to help with the laundry. I’d empty the wash water three or four times before it came anywhere near close to running clear, dumping it in the vegetable garden and spillin’ as much as got there. Ma would hang the clothes out to dry, and I’d watch for wind so we wouldn’t have to do it all over again. Sometimes it worked, most often it didn’t.
    She was the last one to bed and yet still got up in the middle of the night to check the sheets she’d hung over my sister’s bed and the wet rags she’d given me and Bobby Ray