Dust Eva Everson (story reading txt) 📖

a little girl. She’s a baby, really. A little over a year. Will that mean I can’t go to college up there?”

“I already figured that was the case … And, no. It’s not impossible. A baby will make things more difficult; I’m not going to lie. But you won’t be the first woman to pull it off.”

Woman … he thought of her as a woman. And he thought she could do this … and she could. She had to …

“Listen,” Dr. Miller continued as the cook hollered out her name and rang the godforsaken bell. “When you get your GED, call me back. I’ll see what I can do.”

“I gotta go,” she said.

“I know. I heard. I hope I’ll hear from you again, Cindie. I have a feeling you’re a very bright girl.”

No. She was stupid. But she was going to be bright. And, when she got that way, she was going to outsmart them all.

Although Cindie’s body felt beat to a pulp, when she got home her mind whirred with possibilities. Of course, Michelle decided that that evening was a good one to be fussy. “Teething,” Lettie Mae announced like Cindie didn’t know the difference between cutting a tooth and diaper rash. “Rub some whiskey on her gums. That always helped with you young’uns.”

Cindie retrieved her mother’s favorite toddy elixir from a kitchen cabinet, shook it, caught a drop or two on her index finger, and rubbed Michelle’s swollen gum. Her daughter sucked on her finger, her eyes holding to Cindie’s, her lashes soaked with tears. They glistened in the moonlight streaming through the window over the sink, and Cindie swiped them with her thumb. “Sweet baby,” she cooed. “Mommy is so, so sorry those nasty teeth have to hurt you. But pain is all a part of growing up … and one day, those little teeth of yours are going to be so pretty. You’ll have the prettiest smile in all of Georgia. In the whole wide world.”

Within a minute, Michelle had calmed, laid her head against her mother’s breast, and fallen asleep. Cindie breathed a sigh of relief, then poured herself a finger’s worth of the same elixir into a glass she found turned upside down in the drain. She downed it in one swallow, then shuffled into the living room where she stretched on the sofa, her daughter still asleep on top of her.

She spent the rest of the night caught between the fog of sleep and Michelle’s restlessness, between her tears and drops of whiskey. She woke the next morning with a stiff neck and a headache and gratitude that she didn’t have to go into work that day but also with a new reality. Many a woman may have gone to college with a baby, but she didn’t see any way clear to do it.

Not that she had changed her mind on going. There were just other things to consider. And so she came up with another plan … a plan as clear in her mind as anything had ever been. She could see it. Taste it. Practically touch it. Her heart fluttered at the mere thought of it.

“Mama,” she said after a hot shower, after getting herself dolled up for the first step in her independence from stupidity and toward her path of becoming Mrs. Westley Houser. “Can you watch Michelle for me? She’s settled down now and I need to run an errand.”

Her mother narrowed her eyes at her. “What kind of a’ errand?”

Cindie sighed, counting the seconds she’d be free of all this. “I need more Kotex, for crying out loud. Must you know everything?”

“Don’t you sass me. And don’t go down there to that drugstore in Odenville neither. You don’t need to come into contact with that boy. Make him come to you. You listen to me on that.”

“Keys?”

“You hear me?”

“I hear you … Keys?”

“In my purse.”

She drove straight to the drugstore in Odenville where she found Westley in the Nose and Eye aisle holding a small box containing a bottle of Afrin, his eyes scanning the back of it. “Hey,” she said.

He looked over at her, a smile on his lips until he recognized the bearer of the greeting. He frowned but smiled again as if he’d not known her until that moment. “Hey, yourself.” He placed the box of nose spray back on the shelf with the other remedies for stuffy noses.

“You got a cold?”

“What? No …” He pointed to the box. “This stuff is addicting. Don’t ever use it.”

Cindie frowned. Once she got to Atlanta, Westley would be one less person to tell her what to do. “I don’t get many colds.”

“Good.” He turned toward her. “Are you here to tell me I can see my daughter tomorrow afternoon?”

“I need to apologize …”

He raised a brow. “You ought to.”

There it was again. Control from someone she should have the upper hand over. She could—should—resume their argument on such a line. But, if she wanted to win the war and not just the battle, she’d have to bite her tongue. For once. “No. Really.” She looked around, spotted the old biddy who usually stood guard at the cash register now staring down the aisle at them. She made a face at Westley, one she hoped would ease things between them. “We have company.”

Westley smiled as he raised a hand. “I’ve got it,” he called. To Cindie he motioned toward the pharmacy and said, “Let’s go back here.”

Cindie followed him until they found an alcove of privacy. “Is everything okay with Michelle?”

“Oh, yeah. She’s teething. Kept me up most of the night.”

“I can give you something for that.”

“Whiskey worked just fine.”

He gave her a look that made her feel stupid all over again, which only affirmed her decision. “You gave a baby whiskey?”

“No … I just rubbed some on her gums. That’s what Mama used to do for all of us and it works.” His face turned a light shade of red and she raised her hands.