Dust Tracks on a Road

Hurston recounts her mother’s death and the break-up of the Hurston family in the aftermath. Hurston opens the chapter by stating that she had been aware of her mother’s ill health for some time. Lucy had gone to Alabama to nurse a sick sister who ultimately died, gotten into a bitter conflict with her mother over the possible sale of the abandoned Potts homestead in Alabama, and lost a beloved nephew to a violent death.

Hurston was nine when her mother called her in one day to ask that she not allow the family to remove the pillow from underneath her head, cover the mirrors, or stop the clock (folk rituals associated with death) when her time came. Hurston thought nothing of the request until later, when the gathering of women from their town made it clear that Lucy was dying. When Hurston tried to tell the gathered adults about her mother’s wishes, no one listened, and John Hurston restrained the little girl to stop her disruption of these rites.

Hurston writes that her mother’s death began the wandering foretold in her visions. Hurston was to be sent to