White Dust
Amy Batmunkh
“Dad, promise me you’ll see a doctor soon. I don’t like the way your cough sounds.” “Eh, I’m fine, don’t worry. Your dad is strong, you know,” Dad chuckled gruffly.
This was a lie. Even as a child, I knew my father was not as strong as he wanted my siblings and me to believe. Still, I played along. No one wants to view their father as finite, as mortal.
My father worked as a truck driver, which meant he woke up before dawn. Now that I was in high school, we were often awake at the same time, both getting ready for school and work, father and daughter, mirror images of each other. I quietly closed his room door so that he could continue getting dressed, though no one ever notices the clothes a truck driver wears. Still, Dad never wavered despite the long, early hours. He worked with many other Mongolian men, some of whom were his closest friends. They would get together frequently and reminisce about their high school years and the dreams they once had. I even caught them crying together once, shot glasses and a bottle of vodka on the table as accomplices to the scene. That was the only time I’d seen him cry, and I never knew why. I pretended not to see, so as to protect my image of the hero I needed him to be.
“Please wear a jacket today. I know it’s March, but the weather has been chilly,” I told Dad, a tinge of concern in my voice.
“Alright, mini huu. You’re just like your mother, telling me what to do. I’ll see you tonight,” he spat out between coughs. He put his black coat over his broad shoulders and turned off the closet light, blanketing us in darkness. I felt his warm, calloused hand graze mine, giving it a quick squeeze before he grabbed his keys and left.
As worried as I was about his health, I knew that Dad had a good rapport with his bosses at work. They were Chinese immigrants who owned a meatpacking company. Dad would often crack jokes to them about the Silk Road and the conquests of Chinggis Khan, which were met with laughter and playful slaps on the back. He drove trucks full of freshly butchered beef, pork, and chicken to restaurants throughout the D.C. area. He took orders from restaurants over the phone and maneuvered his wide truck through bustling and narrow lanes, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. I could only imagine how difficult this would be with his coughing fits. Maybe if the coughs became too intense, he could flash them his boyish smile and ask to make up the work another time. I quickly came to my senses. I knew that Dad would never ask for anything.
I crept to the kitchen as silently as possible, since it was still the time in the morning when even the birds were still asleep. Opening the door to the fridge, last night’s dumplings bumbled out onto the floor. In my head I cursed my younger brother Murun, who most likely placed the container haphazardly onto the fridge’s cool shelf. After carefully assembling a mountain of buns back into the container, I grabbed one, still cold. I strategically placed a couple so that they wouldn’t fall out for the next person who opened the fridge. I promptly left for the bus stop, the purplish hue of the sky watching over me.
I nursed my worries with bites of the cold bun I didn’t bother to microwave. I walked sluggishly, the chilly air failing to wake me up as I approached the unkempt patch of cement used as our neighborhood’s bus stop. Tufts of grass, determined to see the light, made their way through the many cracks in the sidewalk. This time of day was my favorite. The world was not quite awake yet, but I was. I let the brisk spring air fill me up, savoring it like a cool drink that would soon lose its chill.
The school day passed without intrigue. My mind kept returning to Dad and what he was doing at each moment. I thought about his name, Chuluunbaatar. He went by the nickname “Chuka.” I rarely heard anyone call him by his full name. Mongolian surnames are the father’s first name, meaning Dad’s last name was his father’s first name, and so on. Chuluunbaatar roughly translates to “stone hero.” I remembered Dad’s voice this morning, scratchy from the cough. I pictured the inner workings of his throat covered in a thick layer of powder-like dust, but quickly shook the image away. Instead, I forced myself to hear his voice and his laughter as strong as his name demanded. Chuka the hero, tough as stone.
I entered my last class of the day, AP Environmental Science. Mr. Washington, who taught the course every year, peered at us through dirty glasses. He had actually asked me a question, which I didn’t hear because I was considering how an individual could make one’s glasses so grimy and still decide to wear them.
“Michelle? Do you need me to repeat the question?” Mr. Washington asked with a slight edge to his voice.
“Yes, please,” I responded meekly, aware that he was going to embarrass me for not paying attention.
“Sure. I asked what you know about the pollution crisis in Mongolia, seeing as you’re from there,” Mr. Washington inquired.
I felt a bit irritated that he singled me out, but realized he may have genuinely been curious about what I knew of Mongolia’s environmental crisis. The truth was, I didn’t know much. I was born in the States and had never been to Mongolia. Every thread of Mongolia that I knew of existed in the lullabies Mom sang to us at night and in the scent of salty milk tea on
Dad’s breath when he told Murun and I that he first drove a truck at the age of 13, and hadn’t stopped since.
“Mongolia is really cold, and they burn coal for heat, but it causes a lot of pollution,” I responded. I let go of the irritation I felt at being singled out. It gave me an opportunity to participate and act as an expert on the topic, even though I wasn’t.
“That’s right, thank you Michelle.” Mr. Washington replied. “There are many adverse health effects experienced by the Mongolian people. The miners excavating the coal are especially harmed. This could be something for you to consider researching for our upcoming project,” Mr. Washington raised his eyebrows at me.
I pondered his suggestion as he continued teaching. He shut off the lights at one point to project video footage of the wildfires of California. As I rested my head on my hand, I thought about how little I truly knew about Mongolia. I had never been there. Both Mom and Dad talked very little about their homeland, known as the land of the blue sky, perhaps to avoid stirring up sadness. The truth was, if they returned home to their ancestral blue skies, they wouldn’t have the documentation to come back to Murun and I in the States. Mom and Dad would never be able to take me to their birthplaces and teach me about where they came from, so they avoided talking about it, perhaps grateful that I would never know that kind of pain. Emee, Dad’s mother, passed away last year; Dad couldn’t even return to grieve and bury her because of his false papers. Mr. Washington had a point. I felt a sense of duty to understand the land Mom and Dad called home. Maybe I could go one day and take them with me.
I snuck out my phone to begin the research process as Mr. Washington paused and played the video, interrupting National Geographic’s narrator with his own comments and questions to keep us awake. Before I knew it, the shrill ringing of the school bell disrupted my research, signaling my temporary release from this cold and sterile environment.
I made my way back onto the bus. It was a chilly and wet day. The warmth of our bodies on the bus made the windows fog up, with my peers scribbling curse words and the names of their crushes with their fingers. I barely avoided the puddles as I made my way home. I encountered the same tufts of grass I saw earlier that day, now dripping with drops of rain and still demanding to be seen. The rainwater seeped into my sneakers and sent a chill through my bones. Impatiently, I entered my key into our beat-up door handle. I couldn’t wait to get inside and return my body temperature to normal. The doorknob had scratches from so many failed attempts at unlocking the door.
It usually took me a while to get started on my homework assignments after a long day at school, but I couldn’t get Mr. Washington’s questions about Mongolia out of my head. I sat at my desk and opened the old Dell laptop, typing into the search bar on Google: “Mongolia smog and health crisis.” I clicked on the first article and discovered that copper mines in Mongolia heavily contributed to the health crisis afflicting many Mongolian men, women, and children. I had seen videos about the smog crisis in China and Mongolia on social media, but this was the first time I sought details. An article I found detailed how small particles of dust containing lead, zinc, and arsenic form a white fog, covering people’s clothes and cars in a toxic blanket of white. The particles are known as “white dust” among the locals. I took some brief notes and shut my computer because my room had become a couple of shades darker.
I migrated to the wooden twin bed I had used for at least ten years. Despite its age, I could still detect its woody scent, taking it in with each breath I took as I dreamed. Lying on my back, I wondered if Mom and Dad remembered seeing white dust coat their surroundings when living in Mongolia. Both of them were born and raised in the city, away from any of the mines, so I was curious if they were even aware of it. I had heard Mom rush into the house after a long day at work, a childcare center where she fed, clothed, and taught affluent white children.
Without knocking, I entered her room, immediately smelling the distinct scent of incense. To me, the smell indicated distress. My mother only lit incense in the house when someone was dead or dying.
“Eej, did something happen?” I asked, trying not to let the anxiety pour out of my voice. “It’s your dad,” she replied in Mongolian. Immediately, my mind went to our brief meeting this morning. It played in my head like a silent film, zoomed in shots of Dad’s tobacco-stained teeth, the closed curtains, and our hands briefly making contact. I maintained eye contact with Mom, silently asking her to elaborate. If I had spoken, I’m certain no sound would have come out.
“He had to pull over on the highway. He called his coworkers, barely able to get the words out,” my mom explained. “He was coughing blood.”
I started to feel a current of dread run through my body, reaching every vein and artery, pumping me with the unmistakable sensation of fear. I tried to stay calm as my mom explained that she was heading to the hospital where he currently lay in critical condition. I was told to wait for Murun to return from school, and then a friend of the family would take us to the hospital together.
Mom left our apartment in a rush. The front door closing shook the whole house. I retreated to my room, unsure of how to wait.
Shortly after Mom left, I heard Murun knock on the door, since the only keys to the apartment belonged to my dad, my mom, and I. I quickly told him the news, trying to avoid the hard lump of tears that welled in my throat.
“Is he going to be ok?” Murun asked.
I was afraid that speaking would unleash the dam of worry accumulating in my throat, but I forced myself to. I felt compelled to give him an answer, even if I wasn’t certain.
“Yes,” was all I could muster.
Soon after, our family friend, an aunt who was not actually related to us by blood, arrived with a feigned smile on her face. With no family members in the US, my parents relied on the few other Mongolians we knew, making aunts, uncles, and cousins out of strangers. I could tell she was worried about my dad, trying to save face so that Murun and I wouldn’t be scared, as if we weren’t already. Her name was Zaya, and she was especially close with my mother. She offered us packaged snacks, squid chips and soft buttery buns that she pulled out of her large purse. She worked at a convenience store owned by Koreans, where they sometimes let her take groceries home. We politely declined, unable to stomach the news of our father, let alone the foreign foods she offered us.
By now, the overcast sun had fully descended, casting the world in an indigo glow. The rain clouds from earlier had migrated, and now tiny white stars speckled the sky, like salt spilled on a table. Murun and I both sat in the back of Zaya’s secondhand SUV, not wanting to be apart from each other. Even though he was only twelve years old, I was in awe at the composure he presented. He stared silently out of the window, clutching my hand. I rubbed his thumb, appreciative that we shared the same blood.
The speckled stars made me think back to the white dust I learned about, how it was slowly entering the lungs of Mongolian citizens and making them sick. It was a bit strange, learning about this health crisis at the same time Dad was showing similar symptoms. Maybe there was a different kind of white dust in the US, one that was invisible.
Zaya sped down the highway as I kept my gaze locked on the drab industrial buildings that always seemed to surround long and fast roads. I realized that the hospital was another one of these colorless buildings as Zaya hastily parked her car in the lot. Murun and I had trouble keeping up with her fast pace. She was a single mother to a five-year-old boy, and just like Mom and Dad, also undocumented. Despite her difficult circumstances, she never slowed. It’s like she charged towards fear and the unknown instead of running away from it.
The inside of the hospital was just as dim and lifeless as it looked on the outside. Mom had texted Zaya Dad’s room number. At this point, I shivered and felt a chill as if I’d been outside without my jacket. I was shaking, afraid to see Dad in such a vulnerable condition. I had never even seen him with so much as a scrape on his knee, let alone in a hospital bed. We waited for nurses and doctors in periwinkle blue scrubs to exit the elevator. They walked with their eyes up and in a hurry, knowing exactly where to go and who to save. We approached the space they were just in, with our eyes down and feeling afraid to look up.
“Wait, I want to press the button,” Murun said quietly. He reached toward the button for the fourth floor with his index finger. He pressed it slowly but firmly, the bravest push of a button I’d ever seen.
My heart thrashed in my chest as we left the elevator, walking toward the room where Dad lay sick. Nausea rose up from my stomach, filling my mouth with the acid that always prefaces vomit. I forced it down with a swallow, hoping it would stay away for the time being. I almost didn’t want to see Dad, but Mom said he was in critical condition. There was no choice at this point. I held Murun’s hand as Zaya opened the door to his room.
Dad and I made eye contact immediately. He was sitting up and looked paler than I’d ever seen him. Mom sat next to him, eyes bloodshot and hair disheveled. We made eye contact too, and she smiled weakly at us. Dark bags had swelled under Dad’s eyes but they crinkled when Murun and I entered the room.
“Mini huuhduud,” he said. “My children.”
We spent an hour together. There wasn’t much talking, mostly because Dad’s voice and body were weak. Mom informed us that he would have to stay in the hospital for a couple days. It would also be a while before he could return to work. Dad became too weak to talk at one point, prompting Zaya to take Murun and me back home. Mom wanted to stay behind and make sure Dad fell asleep.
As Zaya drove us back home, I noticed that the sky had fully blackened. Stars still peppered the space above, now shining even brighter than before. They seemed almost electric. I wanted to pluck them from the sky, pocket them, and take them to Dad. I wanted him to be bright and whole again.
Later that night, I dreamt of the steppes of Mongolia. In the dream, I sit cross-legged on yellow-green grass, feeling its dry but firm touch against my hands. A boy, aged nine or ten, approaches me. His hair is messily shaved, close to his head. He beckons me to stand up, extending his hand out to mine. When I hesitate, he steps closer, nodding and flashing me a toothy grin. I reach for his hand, realizing I’ve seen that crooked smile before. His hands even look familiar. I look at mine, and notice they’re just like his. I chase after him and he looks back at me with knowing eyes, laughter in his full, red cheeks. We run towards the endless blue sky above, not a cloud or speck of dust in sight.