Jean smiled tiredly, her hand resting on her big belly. The buttons of her dress gaped; one was missing. “Hey, Elsa. How did it go?”
Elsa reached into the box and withdrew two cans of milk, as well as a few slices of bread from the loaf she’d been given. It wasn’t much, and yet it was. The two families shared whatever good fortune came their way. “Here you go,” she said, offering the food.
“Thank you,” Jean said, giving her an understanding look.
Elsa returned to her own tent and ducked inside. The floor was mud now. No wonder people were getting sick. Ant sat on the mattress they all shared, doing his homework.
Loreda sat on an apple crate sewing a black button onto the purple dress she’d gotten at the beauty salon. At Elsa’s arrival, she looked up. “How was it?”
“Fine.” Elsa’s hands were so cold, she almost dropped the box.
Loreda got up and wrapped a blanket around Elsa, who sat down gingerly on the edge of the mattress.
“You should have seen how many people there were in line, Loreda,” Elsa said. “The soup kitchen line was twice as long.”
“Hard times,” Loreda said woodenly. It was what they always said.
“What would Tony and Rose say if they knew we were living on the dole?”
“They’d say Ant needed the milk,” Loreda said.
Elsa knew now how Tony had felt when his land died. There was a deep and abiding shame that came with asking for handouts.
Poverty was a soul-crushing thing. A cave that tightened around you, its pinprick of light closing a little more at the end of each desperate, unchanged day.
* * *
CHRISTMAS MORNING DAWNED BRIGHT and clear, the first dry day in nearly a week. Elsa woke to blissful quiet. She had slept in. They all had. These days there was no reason to rise before dawn. There was no work to be found and school was closed for the holiday.
She got out of bed slowly, moving like an old woman. Indeed, she felt like one. The combination of cold, hunger, and fear had aged her. All she wanted to do was climb back in bed with her kids and cuddle under the covers and sleep. It was her only escape. But she knew how dangerous escape could be. Survival took grit and courage and effort. It was too easy to give in. No matter how afraid she was, she had to teach her children every day how to survive.
She grabbed the water jug and went outside to make coffee.
The camp wakened with her. People came out of their tents, blinking mole-like at the unexpected sunlight. Folks smiled and waved. Someone was playing a fiddle. A banjo joined in. Someone somewhere began to sing.
Elsa wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and followed the music to a group gathered by the ditch, now swollen with fast-moving brown water. She found Jean and Midge standing together beside a tree. There were men sitting on rocks or fallen trees along the bank, playing the instruments they’d brought across the country. Women stood with buckets they’d filled and set down.
Jean and Midge began to sing. “Will the circle be unbroken…”
Others joined in.
“… by and by Lord, by and by.”
Elsa felt the music rise up in her. In it, she heard the best of her past, church services with Rose and the family, Tony playing his fiddle, box suppers, even the one time Rafe had danced with her at Pioneer Days.
She went back to the tent and wakened the children and hustled them out to the bank. The three of them stood alongside Jean and Midge.
Within moments, Jeb and the Dewey kids showed up. A crowd formed around them.
Elsa held her children’s hands. They stood on the muddy bank and looked up to the bright heavens and sang hymns and Christmas songs, and by the end, none of them cared that the local churches denied them entry or that their clothes were ragged and dirty or that Christmas dinner would be small. They found strength in each other. Elsa and Jean looked at each other as they sang the words be unbroken.
When the men finally stopped playing, people looked each other in the eye for the first time in weeks, wished each other a merry Christmas.
Elsa held on to her children’s hands as they walked back to the tent.
Loreda stoked the fire, then poured two cups of coffee and handed one to Elsa.
Ant dragged a stool and two fruit crates outside. They sat in front of the tent, close to the stove’s warmth. They’d made a tree out of nailed-together tin cans and kindling and decorated it with whatever they could find—utensils, hair ribbons, strips of cloth.
Elsa pulled a small, muddied, crumpled envelope out of her pocket and opened the letter that had arrived last week, general mail at the post office.
“A letter from Grandma and Grandpa!” Ant said.
Elsa unfolded it and read aloud.
My dearest daughter and grandchildren,
Another dust storm hit this week, and after that, a cold snap.
It has been a tiresomely cold winter, I must tell you. We are envious of your California warmth. Mr. Pavlov tells us you must have seen a palm tree by now. And perhaps the ocean. What grand sights.
Your grandfather thinks the soil conservation program shows promise. Much of what we planted was hit hard by the continuing drought, but after a light rain this month, we see a little sprouting.
Still, thanks to the Virgin, the well is working. We have enough water for the household and the chickens, so we carry on, hoping again for a crop. The ten cents per acre we get from the government has kept us afloat.
Your last letter spoke of cotton picking. I must say, it is hard to imagine you in the fields, Elsa, but more power to you all for thriving in these difficult times.
Hard times don’t last. Love does. We are sending along small gifts for our beloved grandchildren so that they remember us well.
With love,
Rose and Anthony
Elsa pulled two pennies out of the envelope and handed one to each of them.
Ant’s eyes lit up. “Candy money!” he cried.
“And there are more gifts in my suitcase,” Elsa said, warming her hands around her cup of coffee. “Because I know a young man who likes to snoop.”
Ant wheeled around and went into the tent and came out with two packages, one wrapped in newspaper, the other in cloth.
Ant ripped his open. Elsa had made him a handsome vest from the seat fabric of an automobile that had been abandoned in the camp, and she’d bought him a Hershey’s chocolate bar.
Ant’s eyes rounded. He knew the candy bar cost five cents. A fortune. “Chocolate!” He peeled back the wrapper slowly, revealing a sharp brown corner, which he bit off in a mouselike nibble. Savoring.
Loreda opened her gift. Elsa had repaired Loreda’s shoes, used tire rubber to fashion a new set of soles, which would last longer and be more comfortable than cardboard. Beneath the shoes lay Loreda’s brand-new library card and The Hidden Staircase.
Loreda looked up. “You went back? In the rain?”
“Mrs. Quisdorf picked that book out for you. That card, though, that’s the real gift. It can take you anywhere, Loreda.”
Loreda’s fingers traced the card reverently. Elsa knew that a library card—a thing they’d taken for granted all of their lives—meant there was still a future. A world beyond this struggle.
Ant bounced up and down on the stool in excitement. “Can we give Mommy her present now?”
Loreda walked over to the truck and pulled out a small package wrapped in newsprint.
“Open it!” Ant said, bouncing to his feet.
Elsa carefully unwrapped the gift, not wanting to rip the newspaper or lose the strips of cloth that bound it all. Everything mattered these days.
Inside lay a slim leather-bound journal full of blank paper. The first few pages of the book had been ripped away and the cover was water damaged. Several pencils—sharpened down to stubs—rolled out and plopped onto the ground.
Loreda looked at her. “I know you have stuff you need to say, but we’re kids so you stay quiet. I thought maybe writing it down would ma
ke you feel better.”
“I thought that, too,” Ant said. “I got the pencils from school! All by myself.”
The journal reminded Elsa of who she’d once been: the girl with the bad heart who had read books and dreamed of going away to college to study literature. She’d dreamed of one day writing.
Do you have some hidden talent of which we are all unaware?
Elsa hated that she heard her father’s voice now, of all moments, at this time when her love for her children almost bowled her over and she thought, even in the midst of all this hardship and failure, I have raised good children. Kind, caring, loving people.
“I’ll write something,” Elsa said.
“Will you let us read it, Mommy?” Ant asked.
“Maybe someday.”
1936
One thing was left, as clear and perfect as a drop of rain—the desperate need to stand together … They would rise and fall and, in their falling, rise again.
—SANORA BABB, WHOSE NAMES ARE UNKNOWN
TWENTY-FOUR
On the last day of January, a cold front moved into the valley and stayed for seven days. The ground turned hard; fog lay for hours every morning. There was still no work.
Their savings decreased, but Elsa knew they were the lucky ones; they’d saved cotton money and there were only three of them. The Deweys had six mouths to feed and soon it would be seven. The migrants who had just arrived in the state, most of them with nothing, were trying to survive on federal relief—paltry amounts of food handed out every two weeks. They lived on flour-and-water pancakes and fried dough. Elsa could see the ravages of malnutrition on their faces.
Now it was past suppertime, which had been a cup of watery beans and a slice of skillet bread for each of them. Elsa sat on an overturned bucket by the wood-burning stove, with the metal box open on her lap. Ant sat beside her, taking his daily nibble off his Christmas Hershey’s chocolate bar. Loreda was in the tent, rereading The Hidden Staircase.
Elsa counted their money again.
“Elsa! It’s time!”
She heard Jean shout her name. Elsa stood up so fast she nearly upended the box of money.
The baby.
Ant looked up. “What’s wrong?”
Elsa ran into the tent and hid the box of money. “Loreda,” she said. “Come with me.”
“Where—”
“Jean’s having her baby.”
Elsa ran to the Deweys’ tent. She found Lucy outside, crying. “Loreda, take the girls to our tent. Tell them to stay with Ant and not to come back until you come to get them. Then come back to help me.”
Elsa entered the Deweys’ dark, dank tent.
A single lantern glowed, barely banishing the shadows. She saw gray lines in the dark: a pile of food stores, a makeshift washbasin.
Jean lay on her side on a mattress on the floor, as still as a held breath.
Elsa knelt beside the mattress. “Hey,” she said, touching Jean’s damp forehead. “Where’s Jeb?”
“Nipomo. Hopin’ to pick peas.” Jean panted. “Somethin ain’t raht, Elsa.”
Not right. Elsa knew what that meant; every woman who’d lost a child did. A mother’s instinct was strong at a time like this.
Loreda came into the tent.
“Help me get her to her feet,” Elsa said to Loreda.
Together they got Jean upright. Jean leaned heavily on Elsa. “I’m taking you to the hospital,” Elsa said.
“No … sense.”
“It’s not nonsense. This isn’t a child with a cough or a fever, Jean. This is an emergency.”
“They … won’t…” Jean’s face tightened as another contraction hit.
Elsa and Loreda got Jean settled in the passenger seat of the truck. “Watch the kids, Loreda.”
Elsa started the engine and hit the lights and they were off, rattling down the muddy road, driving too fast.
“Can’t…” Jean said, clutching the armrest. “Take … back…”
Another contraction.
Elsa turned into the hospital parking lot; the building glowed with expensive electrical lighting.
Elsa slammed on the brakes. “Wait here. I’ll get help.”
She ran into the hospital, rushed down the hallway, and stopped at the desk. “My friend is having a baby.”
The woman looked up, frowned, and then wrinkled her nose.
“Yeah, yeah. I smell,” Elsa said. “I’m a dirty migrant. I get it. But my friend—”
“This hospital is for Californians. You know, the folks who pay taxes. For citizens, not vagrants who want to be taken care of.”
“Come on. Be human.Please—”
“You? Telling me to be human? Please. Look at yourself. You women pop out babies like champagne corks. Find one of yours to help you.” The woman finally rose. Elsa saw how well-fed she was, how plump her calves were. She reached inside a drawer, pulled out a pair of rubber gloves. “I’m sorry, but rules are rules. I am allowed to give you these.” She held out the gloves.
“Please. I’ll scrub floors. Clean bedpans. Anything. Just help her.”
“If it’s as dire as you say, why waste time begging with me?”
Elsa snatched the gloves and ran back to the truck.
“They won’t help us,” she said through gritted teeth as she climbed in. “The good, God-fearing folk of California don’t care about a baby’s life, I guess.”
Elsa drove as fast as she could back to camp, rage trapped inside of her, tightening her breathing.
“Hurry, Elsa.”
At the Deweys’ tent, Elsa helped Jean into the dank interior.
“Loreda!” Elsa shouted.
Loreda ran into the tent, banged into Elsa. “Why are you back?”
“They turned us away.”
“You mean—”
“Go get water. Boil a lot of it.” When Loreda didn’t move, Elsa snapped, “Now!” and Loreda ran out.
Elsa lit a kerosene lamp and helped Jean to the mattress on the floor.
Jean convulsed in pain, gritted her teeth to keep from crying out.
Elsa knelt beside her, stroking her hair. “Go ahead and scream.”
“It’s coming,” Jean said between pants. “Keep … the kids … away. Scissors in that … box. And there’s some string.”
Another contraction.
Elsa stared at Jean’s writhing belly and knew she only had a few moments. Elsa ran back to her tent, ignoring the children, who looked at her with frightened eyes. There wasn’t time to comfort them now.
She grabbed a stack of saved newspapers and ran back to Jean’s tent, where she laid the newspapers down on the dirt floor, grateful that they were relatively clean.
Headlines flashed out at her: “Typhoid Outbreak in Migrant Camps.”
Elsa helped Jean roll onto the newspapers. Elsa then put on the gloves.
Jean screamed.
“Go ahead,” Elsa said, kneeling beside her. She stroked Jean’s wet hair.
“It’s … now,” Jean cried out.
Elsa moved quickly, positioned herself between Jean’s open legs. The top of the baby’s head appeared, slimed and blue. “I see the head,” Elsa said. “Push, Jean.”
“I’m too…”
“I know you’re tired. Push.”
Jean shook her head.
“Push,” Elsa said. She looked up, saw the fear in her friend’s eyes. “I know,” Elsa said, understanding Jean’s deep fear of this moment. Babies died in the best of circumstances, and these were the worst. They also lived in spite of all odds. “Push,” she said, meeting Jean’s fear with a quiet hopefulness.
The baby whooshed out in a stream of blood into Elsa’s gloved hands. Too tiny, spindly almost. Smaller than a man’s shoe.
Blue.
Elsa felt a roar of anger move through her. No. She wiped the blood from the tiny face, cleaned out her mouth, begged the infant, “Breathe, baby girl.”
Jean pushed up to her elbows. She looked too tired to breathe h
erself. “She ain’t breathin’,” she said softly.
Elsa tried to help the baby breathe. Mouth-to-mouth.
Nothing.
She smacked the tiny blue bum, said, “Breathe.”
Nothing.
Nothing.
Jean pointed to a straw basket. In it was the soft lavender blanket.
Elsa tied off the umbilical cord and cut it, then got slowly to her feet. Weak. Shaky. She wrapped up the tiny, still baby.
As she offered the baby to Jean, tears blurred her vision. “A girl,” she said to Jean, who took her with a gentleness that broke Elsa’s heart.
Jean kissed the blue forehead. “I’m namin’ her Clea, after my mom,” Jean said.
A name.
The very essence of hope. The beginning of an identity, handed down in love. Elsa backed away from the heartbreak of watching Jean whisper into the baby’s blue ear.
Outside, Elsa found Loreda pacing.
Elsa looked at her daughter, saw the question, and shook her head.
“Oh, no,” Loreda said, slumping her shoulders.
Before Elsa could offer comfort, Loreda turned and disappeared into their tent.
Elsa stood there, unmoving. That terrible, terrible image of a baby coming into the world on a crumpled newspaper over a dirt floor wouldn’t go away.
I’ll name her Clea.
How had Jean even been able to speak?
Elsa felt tears rise up, overtake her. She cried as she hadn’t cried since Rafe left her, cried until there was no moisture left inside of her, until she was as dry as the land they’d left behind.
* * *
AT A LITTLE PAST ten o’clock that night, Loreda finished digging the small hole and dropped her shovel.
They were far from camp, in an area surrounded by trees; a place as dark as the mood of the two women and one girl standing beneath them.
Anger suffused Loreda, overwhelmed her; she felt it poisoning her from the inside out. She’d never felt its like before, not even when Daddy left them. She had to hold it inside her one breath at a time; if she let it go, she’d scream.
The Four Winds Page 26