The Dust of Days

 © Judith Lawrence

The dust of days settled on everything. The land was dry. There had been no rain for months. I wandered from room to room, carrying the duster in my hand. It was a useless task, this dusting. All it did was move the dust into the air only to fall, a moment later, onto another surface.

There was a layer of dust on me too. The water was too precious to use for unimportant things, and in my listlessness I felt unimportant, inconsequential, useless, an object waiting to be covered with dust. I couldn’t remember the last time I bathed. The heat was intense. I breathed the hot dust of days into my lungs. My mouth craved a sip of spring water.

I paused in front of one of the windows, closed against the heat and dust, and wondered again if it wouldn’t be more sensible to open them up, so as to catch a breeze should one arise. I reminded myself that Johnny had said to keep them shut. I swiped my duster at the window and searched the steel blue sky with longing eyes. A tiny white puff of cloud hung there. Perhaps it was smoke.

Last Sunday’s Bible reading came into my mind, the preacher’s voice like thunder and his message full of false hope. How the prophet Elijah saw the cloud, no bigger than his hand, rising out of the sea and becoming a deluge of rain.

I went outside where a slight breeze stirred the tumbleweed and blew it across the ground in front of me. The cloud was bigger now, and the breeze whipped into a wind that lifted and tugged at my skirt and flapped it against my legs. It pulled at my hair loosening its strands from this morning’s careless fastenings.

A drop of rain, then another, spat onto the earth and dust exploded into the air. I lifted my head and let the water wash over my face. My hair fell on to my shoulders and sang with delight at the rain’s cleansing touch. My sodden skirt clung to my legs like a lover entwining his body with mine.

I twirled in the wind with my arms extended, and laughed into the rain. Johnny rushed from the barn and joined my dance. We tumbled together in the mud and made love in the life-giving rain. We opened our mouths and drank in the moisture. Then lay on our backs, side by side, naked and quiet.

Released, in an hour of rain, was the long pent up energy of the dust of days.