Dust, Emily Kowal

Dust

Australia was in the throes of a terrible drought that finally ended for some parts of the country when massive storms hit. Emily Kowalwrites creatively about this phenomenal event.

THE DUST GLISTENED IN the beam of sunlight, and for a moment I was transfixed. It twinkled, a lone spark of beauty in my frayed apartment. The omnidirectional buzz of the city slowed to a hum as I recalled the incessant battle fought between my mother and the dust. Though she rarely complained, it had always bothered her. Armed only with feathers, each day she would engage in a fruitless war. It was a nuisance, a pain to be dealt with, yet observing it now, I struggled to fathom how something we once found so abhorrent, could be so alluring.

The memories of my childhood were tainted with dust. It covered our clothes, our shoes, a translucent film over our eyes. We grew immune to it, my brothers and I. Fathers would turn their eyes as we tumbled on the cracked land, their faces masked behind the bottom of a bottle. Our mothers pretended not to notice as our lanky bodies became lost in the folds of our clothes. Childhood innocence protected us, covering us like a blanket in the night. We were safe under its quilted mask, oblivious to the drought that was slowly wasting away our family.

We did not see the bones that protruded from the cattle, nor the calves that clung to their mother’s teat, nuzzling for the elixir that would not appear. They would turn to us sometimes. Thinking it was a game, we would let them wrap their tongues around our sticky fingers, giggling as they tugged at our joints. Our father sent them early that year. My brittle hair absorbed the fire of the midday sun, as I stood beside him watching. When I tentatively touched his elbow to ask him why it was so early, his response was a whisper in the howling, parched wind: “it is cruel to continue to let them starve.” We ate properly for the first time in a month that night.

As we grew, the mask was lifted from our eyes and we began to notice the drought that sucked the life from us.

We saw the sunburnt country, thirsty for plump droplets of water.

Together my brothers and I would sit on creaking planks of the front porch, unspoken worries hanging heavy above our heads. Our mother, sensing our anxiety, would sit with us, her fingers trailing through our unruly hair. We rarely ventured into the town. The ride was tedious, and the heat was intense. My mother though, sick of our despondency, surprised us all with a brown package, tied neatly with string. Though all nearly adults, childlike excitement riddled us and together our fingers tore into crisp parcel, as we eagerly fought to reveal our prize. The disk was smooth, its black lacquer soft against our skin.

My mother placed the vinyl in the record player, and as the notes drifted from the machine, our nightly rain dances began. They became our most sacred ritual. Even my father who preferred to spend his nights behind the spread of a paper, would join us in our clumsy jigs, laughing in time with the raspy music. As we twirled, the world outside our frail living room became a dream. My father would hold my hand as I spun, and my older brothers would take turns waltzing with me. Though it never did rain, the dancing was like a medicine, our laughs erasing the worries that gnawed at our insides.

Pictures: Lisseth Portillo

They say my brothers ended it in the end. To my brothers the great war was the liquid which would quench their thirst. Finally, they had an escape from the cracked land, and with tipped hats they left our home, crooked smiles spread across their faces. The drought ended the day the telegrams came. They say that the boys did it, my brothers with their impish smiles and carefree nature.

I saw true rain for the first time that day.

My mother and I stood out on the steps where they too once stood, our tears lost in the precious gift from above.