Dust Tracks on a Road

Two months after school started, Sarah left Hurston alone at school in order to return home to Eatonville. She wrote Hurston a week later to tell her that John Hurston had re-married. Sarah had always been spoiled and her father’s favorite, but her new stepmother refused to tolerate being second place in regard to her new husband’s affections. In the end, according to Hurston, the stepmother forced John to put his daughter out of his house and to hit her with a buggy whip.

Hurston was so angry about this turn in the relationship between her sister and father that six years later she got into a nearly-fatal fight with her stepmother. After the fight, Hurston’s stepmother moved out and ultimately divorced John because of his failure to take her side. Hurston’s hatred of her stepmother was such that she sought her out years later to finish the fight. The woman was by then ill with a wound that would not heal, so Hurston abandoned her effort.

Hurston once again picks up the thread of what happened after she was sent to school in Jacksonville. At some point, John Hurston stopped paying Hurston’s tuition. The assistant director of the school would demand that Hurston address the unpaid fees in humiliating private meetings and public conversations. Hurston was eventually put to work cleaning and cooking, so she was not immediately expelled. She won a spelling bee as well, and the attention it brought the school seemed to be enough to stave off her departure. Hurston also developed a crush on the school director, President Collier, which came to a swift end when he spanked her for putting a cold, wet brick in a teacher’s bed.

When school ended for the year, no one came for Hurston. Weeks into the summer, the assistant director told Hurston that John had sent a letter asking that the school adopt Hurston, saying there was no place for her at home. The assistant director was unwilling to take on the responsibility. With uncharacteristic gentleness, she gave Hurston enough money to return to Eatonville and put her on the boat home. Hurston grew increasingly happier as the boat brought her back to the natural landscapes she had missed so much while in Jacksonville.

Hurston disembarked the next day at Sanford to take a train to Maitland. Hurston was well known to the men who worked the train. She had tried to escape from her father years before, when he had tried to take her on a train ride, and a neighbor's son had just managed to grab her before the departure. Hurston had grown to love the porter and conductor, who treated her with kindness on her ride home this time.

When Hurston arrived home, it was to find a sad state of affairs. Her stepmother neglected the four remaining children at home, and the older children left as soon as they could. John Hurston, who avoided conflict whenever possible, said nothing as the four younger children were eventually parceled out to Lucy Potts Hurston’s friends. Hurston won an argument with her stepmother over a feather bed Lucy had promised Hurston. Hurston’s brother, John Jr., faced down their father, who confronted his son with a knife. In the aftermath, John forced his son to leave. John Hurston was a diminished man in the eyes of his children at that point.

Hurston writes of this time in her life that it was a fulfillment of one of the visions she had had as a child. She found herself “homeless and uncared for,” and the vision of being “in some long, arctic wasteland with no one under the sound of [her] voice” was a mental reality rather than a physical one (85). Hurston knew that the visions predicted happiness for her in the end, but enduring her suffering in the meanwhile was painful.

Hurston’s life during this period was difficult. From the time she left school in Jacksonville, she was shifted from house to house and had only inconsistent access to education or books with the exception of a shabby copy of Paradise Lost she found. Despite her circumstances, she still refused to be “humble” (88) and was a discomfiting presence to the people who took her in.

When she was 14, Hurston began working to support herself, despite a lack of training and her small size, which made potential employers believe she was too young and weak to work for them. She took a job as an upstairs maid and did well for a time as a playmate and babysitter. The job ended when her employer’s husband grew jealous of the freedom having a babysitter gave his wife and the African-American housekeeper threatened to quit since the work Hurston frequently failed to complete fell to her.

Hurston’s next job was in a household with an invalid wife and a husband who sexually propositioned Hurston repeatedly. When Hurston finally told the man’s wife about the harassment, the wife was devastated, and Hurston swore she would never tell a wife about such harassment again. Hurston left her lodging to escape the man, who insisted that he needed a black mistress to run away with him to Canada. Hurston heard weeks later that he had done just that, taking funds from his job with him.

Hurston stayed briefly with her father again, but her time at home ended with the aforementioned fight with her stepmother. Her father’s reputation had never recovered after he quickly married after Lucy’s death, so he was a miserable man. The fight between Hurston and her father’s wife destroyed what little credibility he had with the members of his church.

Hurston took a job as a temporary replacement for a friend who worked in a doctor’s office but left the job to accept her brother Bob’s offer to go back to school and live with his family. When she arrived, she was soon put to work as a babysitter and housekeeper. She despaired of ever being able to go to school again, received no pay for her work, and went about dressed shabbily. With the help of a friend, Hurston next found a job as a lady’s maid to an actress identified as “Miss M—-.” Miss M. worked for a touring theater troupe with performers who were mostly from the North.

Hurston quickly settled in with the troupe. Her employer paid for a course that taught Hurston how to manicure, and Hurston loved working for her. Hurston was frequently the butt of sexual and racial jokes that she describes as good-natured pranks and teasing that taught her to be less sensitive about such matters in the years that followed. Hurston dished out her own share of insults and even created a tradition of posting tongue-in-cheek stories and jokes on the theater bulletin board.

The manager of the company, who was also an actor, left the company to take a part in a Broadway play. His replacement was a man who propositioned the actresses until he found one who was willing to be his mistress. He was fired six weeks later for stealing box office receipts.

When the tour finally ended, Hurston followed Miss M. home to Boston to stay while Miss M. waited for her next engagement to begin. During this time, Hurston was surprised by her employer’s extreme mood swings. The reason for Miss M.’s mental state became clearer once Hurston went to stay at the home of Miss M.’s family, which consisted of Miss M.’s aging mother, Charlie (a firefighter), and Johnnie, an unattractive, unemployed man who liked to play pranks.

During the visit, Johnnie nearly killed his mother while attempting to steal some valuables. Hurston learned he had served an eighteen-year sentence for a murder he committed when he was 17. His entire family, including Miss M., had given up their dreams to keep watch over him when he was paroled to his mother.

Hurston followed Miss M. to Pennsylvania when she got another part. Four months into the tour, Miss M. Fell in love with a wealthy man and decided to give up acting. She insisted that Hurston continue her education and promised to support her.

Hurston had spent eighteen months with Miss M., and during that time she had access to an excellent library (a former Harvard man had been among the actors in the touring company), had gotten an education in classical music and opera from the performers that surrounded her, and had the privilege of living on terms of equality with people from varied classes and races. The latter experience made Hurston unconscious of her race in any setting. Beyond race, the example of people using work to fill gaps left by failed relationships or other difficult emotional circumstances taught her something about life.

Hurston writes that her life during this time had been like “sitting by a warm fire for a year” (119) and that her seventh vision, which had come true while she worked without pay at her brother’s house, was behind her. Hurston vacillated between fear and hope as she contemplated fulfilling her dream of continuing her education. Nevertheless, she was sure that it was time to act.