I sat by the window in my favorite blue sweater, staring out at our old studebaker. Everyday it sunk deeper, like a wrecked ship being pulled under. The wheels were almost completely buried. My brother, Adam, was sitting on the floor plowing little piles of dirt with his toy tractor. He isn’t supposed to do that, play in the dirt. It makes him cough so hard it sounds like his lungs might bust. My mother said the dirt gets in his chest and makes him sick. She’s in the kitchen, endlessly wiping at the windowsills in a futile attempt to clean the house. It will never be clean, not as long as the wind blows and the rain never comes.
     Oklahoma is so dry, not a single plant can be seen for a million miles. My Daddy used to be a farmer. I don’t know exactly what happened that made everything get all dusty, but we started to get these big black clouds in the middle of the day that would make it really windy. The black clouds brought sand and dirt that blew in the wind so hard it stung your skin if you got caught outside. It stopped raining in the spring and when summer came everything got so hot you couldn’t leave your house without getting heat blisters and rashes from the sand in the air.
     There’s some train tracks right across the lawn. We’ve never seen a single train on it, but Adam and I used to think it came in the middle of the night when we slept. When we could still play outside we used to put things on the tracks to see if the train would flatten them, but it never did. No trains.
     “Adam, get off the floor, you know better!” My mother shouted across the room. He was coughing again. She hurried to his side, bringing a damp cloth to his mouth as his burning lungs fought the sand that dared infiltrate his respiratory system. 
     “I bet California isn’t dirty like this,” I mumbled under my breath.
     “What was that?” My father asked, getting up from the kitchen table and walking towards me. “Get away from the window, that’s just as bad as being on the floor.”
     I laughed and moved away from the window. “Compared to standing in the middle of the room and breathing in all this dirt that gets stirred up whenever we move?”
     Adam was gently moved to his bed by our mother. She went back to the kitchen to boil some water, it ran yellow from the faucets. Wetting a towel, she laid it over Adams pillow for moisture. I don’t know if we can keep this up much longer, I don’t know how long Adam’s tiny lungs can last.
     “Oklahoma is just fine. It’ll rain soon enough and everything will be back to normal. It’s a waiting game. If we left Oklahoma today, it would rain tomorrow,” my mother explained.
     “Does it matter? Doesn’t it take a long time to fix the dirt? That’s what Daddy said. I was interrupted by the shaking if the floor boards. My mother had a panicked look in her eyes and she immediately ran to the kitchen and I followed, helping her wet cloths to hold over our mouths. The house was shaking, except this time it wasn't the wind. A loud horn blew and we knew it was a train. The chugging if the engines rolled past and we tried to stay as still as possible as to not disturb the dirt.
     The train had passed and the dirt had settled. We removed the wet cloths from our faces and breathed a sigh of relief in unison.
     “Maybe California would be better,” my father finally choked out.
     “Alvin, you don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re doing just fine here,” my mother corrected, looking like she had been betrayed.
     My father’s face turned as bright as a tomato, he was angry. “I don’t know what I’m talking about? Look at Adam! Does he look fine to you?” He spat.
     Adam coughed once more, helping my father’s case. My mother grew up here, she was born and raised in Oklahoma and she’s never left. She isn’t the kind of person that’s very open to any kind of change. I, however, would appreciate a change of scenery. I’m sick of staying inside and feeling like my lungs are on fire. I’m sick of reading all of these wonderful books about all of these beautiful fairy tales about majestic forests and blue skies. Everyone’s gone to California to start over, to get away from these ‘dirty thirties.’ Now it’s our turn to start over.
     My mother stared at Adam without a word and ran her hand through his messy blonde locks.
     One, two, three, four, five strides my father took back towards the kitchen table. “We’re leaving.”