The aroma brought Loreda stumbling out of the tent, her dark hair a snarl of tangles, her bangs a fringe well past her jawline. “You let me sleep,” she growled.
“No work today,” Elsa said. “You start school on Monday.”
Loreda poured herself a cup of coffee. She pulled the bucket closer to the stove and sat down. “I’d rather pick cotton.”
Elsa wished she had Rafe’s gift for words, his eloquent way of shaping a dream. Loreda needed that now, she needed some spark to relight the fire she’d had before her father’s abandonment and hardship had snuffed it out.
Unfortunately, Elsa didn’t know much about dreaming, but she knew about school and the hardships that came from not fitting in. “I have an idea,” she said.
Loreda gave her a skeptical look
“We are going to have breakfast and go somewhere.”
“My joy is uncontainable.”
Elsa couldn’t help smiling, even as her daughter’s hopelessness wounded her.
Elsa made a quick breakfast of oatmeal cooked in canned milk and topped with sugar for the kids, and then hurried them to get dressed. By nine o’clock, they were headed out from the camp, walking through a brown field draped in diaphanous gray fog.
“Where we goin’, Mommy?” Ant asked, holding her hand.
She loved that he still held her hand in public.
“To town.”
“Oooh,” Loreda said. “What fun we’ll have standing in line for the few dollars we earned this week.”
Elsa elbowed her daughter. “No member of the Explorers Club is allowed to be unhappy on a Saturday adventure. New rule.”
“Who made you President?” Loreda said.
“I did.” Ant giggled. “Mo-mmy for President, Mo-mmy for President,” he chanted, marching on the soft, wet grass.
Elsa pressed a hand to her heart. “It is such an honor. Why … I never expected such a thing. A woman President.”
Loreda finally laughed and the mood lifted.
They turned onto the main road and walked all the way to Welty. By the time they reached the quaint little town, with its cotton-boll welcome sign, the fog had been burned away by a surprisingly warm sun. The mountains in the distance showed a new layer of snow. The trees along Main Street displayed their autumn finery.
“Wait here,” Elsa said outside the Welty Farms office. Inside, she got into line and waited her turn to cash her chit.
“Here yah go,” the man at the desk said, taking her chit worth twenty dollars and giving her eighteen dollars in exchange. Elsa rolled the money as tightly as she could, mentally calculating the total of their savings. It seemed like a lot now, but she knew it wouldn’t be much by February.
But she wasn’t going to think of that today. She returned to the street, where the children stood beneath a lamppost, waiting.
It was one of those sharp-as-a-tack moments when she saw them: Loreda, thin as a chicken bone in a threadbare dress and shoes that didn’t fit and long, raggedly growing-out hair; Ant, scrawny and with dirty hair no matter how hard Elsa tried to keep him clean, still—thankfully—fitting into Buster’s old shoes.
Elsa forced a smile as she walked out to meet them. Taking Ant’s hand, she headed down Main Street, where the shops were opening for the day. She smelled coffee and freshly baked pastries as she passed the diner, and the familiar smell of baled hay and bags of grain as they passed the feed store.
There it was: the destination she’d had in mind when they left the camp this morning.
Betty Ane’s Beauty Shop.
Elsa had seen the pretty little salon every time she came to town, seen well-dressed women coming out with stylish hair.
Elsa walked toward the salon. It was housed in an old-fashioned bungalow with a fenced yard out front.
Loreda stopped, shook her head. “No, Mom. You know how they’ll treat us.”
Elsa knew better than to make another hollow promise; she also knew that no matter how often you were knocked down, you had to keep getting up. She tightened her hold on Ant’s hand and opened the gate.
Loreda wasn’t following. Elsa knew it and kept going. Come on, Loreda, be brave.
Elsa and Ant walked up to the front door and Elsa opened it.
A bell jangled overhead.
Inside, the salon filled what had once been the bungalow’s parlor. There were two pink chairs stationed in front of mirrors. Cords lay snaked on the floor, gathered up at a machine in the corner. Framed photographs of movie stars lined the pink walls.
A middle-aged woman in a white frock coat stood in the center of the salon holding a broom. She looked thoroughly, almost stubbornly modern, with waved, chin-length platinum-dyed hair and pencil-thin eyebrows. Her Clara Bow lips were painted a bright French red. “Oh,” she said at the sight of them huddled together.
Loreda slipped in beside Elsa, took hold of her hand, and tugged it. “Let’s go, Mom.”
Elsa took a deep breath. “This is my daughter, Loreda. She’s thirteen and about to start school on Monday, after a season of picking cotton. She expects to be teased, because … well…”
Loreda groaned beside her.
“Let me speak to my husband,” the beautician said, and left the room.
“She’s probably calling the police,” Loreda said. “She’ll say we’re vagrants. Or worse.”
A few moments later, the woman returned to the beauty parlor and faced them, pulling a comb out of her pocket. “I’m Betty Ane,” she said, moving toward them, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floor. She came to a stop in front of Loreda. Close but not too close.
Please, Elsa thought, tightening her hold on Loreda’s hand, be kind to my girl.
At the same moment, a large man in a brown suit came into the parlor from another room, carrying a big cardboard box.
“This is my husband, Ned,” Betty Ane said.
“I understand,” Elsa said. “You and Ned want us to leave. Go back to our kind.”
Ned pulled the hat off of his head. “No, ma’am. We came here in ’30. It was tough to make a living, but nothing like it is now.” He offered her the box. “Here’s some coats and sweaters and such. Winter can be cold here. There’s a shower in our bathroom. Hot water. Why don’t y’all help yourselves? A hot shower and new clothes can be a mighty bit of help in hard times.”
Betty Ane smiled kindly at Loreda. “And I see a girl who needs a new hairstyle for her first day of school. Lord knows thirteen is hard enough without all of this.” Betty Ane gave Loreda an appraising look. “You’re a real beauty, doll. Let me work my magic.”
TWENTY-THREE
Loreda sat in the tufted velvet chair and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Betty Ane had cut Loreda’s black hair in a precise line along her chin and then coaxed it into waves that cascaded down from a deep side part. Her face, scrubbed clean with scented soap, was deeply tanned from work in the cotton fields. A new purple dress accentuated the startling blue of Loreda’s eyes, and Betty Ane had talked Elsa into letting Loreda put a little pale-pink color on her lips.
“I forgot what I looked like,” Loreda said, touching the silky tips of her hair.
Betty Ane stood behind her. “You may be the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.” She turned. “Elsa. Your turn.”
Loreda hated to get out of the chair. It felt magical, a portal to a what-if world where ditch-dwellers turned into princesses.
Her legs were a little shaky, to be honest. In the mirror, she’d seen more than her face. She’d seen the girl she’d been before all of this. A dreamer, a believer. Someone who would go places. How had she forgotten all of that?
It gave her a newfound, or refound, hope, but it fed the anger in her, too. She thanked Betty Ane and moved away from the mirror. Mom touched her shoulder as they changed places.
“Say, is this your natural hair color?” Betty Ane said as Elsa sat down. “It’s beautiful.”
Loreda backed away. Without a glance at Ant, who was on the floor playing
with a toy car, she went outside.
Even the air out here smelled different now.
She straightened to her full height, realizing all at once how life in the fields had hunched and diminished her. She’d spent months trying to be a cog in a wheel, unseen.
No more.
She strode confidently forward in the new-to-her dress with its Peter Pan collar. Her scuffed brown shoes hardly bothered her when coupled with lacy white socks.
She found the library on Pepper Street, set back from the town, on a pretty grass lot, with an American flag flapping from a white pole out front.
A library.
Magic.
She opened the door and walked right in, standing tall, the girl she’d been raised to be. A girl who believed in education and dreamed of being a reporter. Or a novelist. Something interesting, anyway.
The first thing she noticed was the smell of books. She inhaled deeply and felt transported for a moment to Lonesome Tree. In her bedroom, light on, reading …
Home.
“May I help you?”
“Yes. Please. I would love to find a book to read.”
The librarian came out from around the desk. She was a sturdy woman with gray pin curls and black-rimmed glasses. “Do you have a library card?”
“No.” Loreda was ashamed to admit it. She’d always had a library card in Texas. “We are … new to the state.”
“Well.” The librarian smiled kindly. “Thirteen?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In school?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The librarian nodded. “Come with me.”
She led Loreda through the library stacks to a large wooden student’s table that was strewn with newspapers. “You can sit here. Let me find you something.”
Loreda sat down at the oak desk, which had a lamp on it. She couldn’t help flicking the light on and off and on again, marveling at the magic of electricity on demand.
The librarian returned with a book. “What’s your name?”
“Loreda Martinelli.”
“I’m Mrs. Quisdorf. You come back for your card, but I’ll trust you with this for now.” She set down a worn copy of The Secret of the Old Clock.
Loreda touched the book, lifted it to her face, and inhaled the remembered scent that made her think of reading at night … with Stella after school; listening to Daddy telling her bedtime stories. Like a flower that had been sucked dry in a drought and felt the first drop of spring rain, Loreda felt herself revive. “Do you have one I could take to my brother? He’s eight. And maybe one for my mom? I’ll bring them back, I promise.”
Mrs. Quisdorf eyed her assessingly and finally smiled. “Miss Martinelli, I believe you are my kind of girl.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT, AFTER THE children were asleep, Elsa swept the tent floor—again—and rearranged the collection of found fruit cartons that had become their pantry. They had sugar, flour, bacon, beans, canned milk, rice, and butter. A veritable feast. But even as the Depression had worsened, food prices had gone up. Five gallons of kerosene cost a dollar. Two pounds of butter cost fifty cents. Six pounds of rice cost nearly half a dollar. It was terrifying how fast it added up.
And today she’d spent seventy-five cents on haircuts for the three of them. She hoped she didn’t regret it come winter.
Hefting the box of clothes she’d gotten today, she ducked out of the tent and walked over to see Jean, who sat in a chair by the woodstove, darning socks by lantern light. Jeb and the boys had taken the truck, hoping to find autumn work in the grape fields. No one expected them to find it this late in the year, though.
“Hey, Jean,” Elsa said, coming out of the dark and into the lantern’s pale light. She and the children had chosen what fit them from the box of clothes and saved the rest for the Deweys.
“Elsa. You look so pretty!”
Elsa felt her cheeks heat up as she set down the box of clothes. “Betty Ane tried.”
Jean touched the wooden bucket nearest her with her toe. “Sit down.”
Elsa settled herself on the bucket, ignoring the way it pinched into her bony buttocks. Lord, those beauty salon seats had felt heavenly.
“Why do you say things like that?”
Elsa looked through the box of clothes until she found what she was looking for. Her fingers felt soft, soft wool. “Like what?”
“Has no one ever said you were pretty?”
Elsa stopped rooting through the clothes and looked up. “I love a friend who lies.”
“I’m not lying.”
“I’m … not good with compliments, I guess.” Elsa said, smoothing the silky, chin-length hair back from her face. She pulled out a soft lavender-blue baby blanket and held it out to Jean. “Look at this.”
Jean took the blanket, stared down at it. “He was dancing up a storm yesterday,” Jean said, putting a hand on her rounded belly.
Elsa knew Jean prayed every day to feel movement in her womb, and that with every movement she felt both joy and fear. “I had a dream last night. I had a job in a diner. I was serving apple pie to women who still wore hats that matched their dresses.”
Jean nodded. “I reckon we all have that dream.”
* * *
WINTER HIT THE SAN Joaquin Valley hard, a frightening combination of bad weather and no work. Day after day, rain fell from steel-wool-colored skies, fat drops clattering on the automobiles and tin-can shacks and tents clustered along the ditch bank. Puddles of mud formed and wandered, became trenches. Brown splatter marks discolored everything.
Elsa mourned every dollar spent, counting and re-counting her money on a daily basis. She was frugal, but even so, her savings diminished. She hated that she and the children had had no choice but to buy galoshes this month. There had been nothing in their sizes at the Salvation Army or the giveaway box at the Presbyterian church.
By late December, her savings had dwindled enough that she lived in a constant state of fear. Cotton hadn’t earned them enough to last through the winter; she understood that now. She needed help to feed her children; it was as simple, as heartbreaking, as that. She couldn’t get money from the state until April, but she could get food from the feds. It was better than standing in a line at a soup kitchen, bowl and spoon in hand, but she knew that could be her future if she wasn’t careful. Honestly, she’d be doing it now if she hadn’t heard that the supply at the soup kitchens was stretched to the limit; she didn’t want to take free food out of the mouths of people who had no other choice, not while she still had some money.
“It ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of,” Jean said when Elsa told her.
They were standing in Elsa’s tent, having a cup of coffee together in the relative quiet of mid-morning. Loreda and Ant had left for school hours ago. Rain thumped on the canvas, rattled the poles. “Really?” Elsa said, looking at her friend.
They both knew better. It was something to be ashamed of. Americans weren’t supposed to take handouts from the government. They were supposed to work hard and succeed on their own.
“None of us got a choice,” Jean said. “You don’t get much—beans and rice—but every morsel matters.”
That was the truth of it.
Elsa nodded. “Well, I won’t get help standing here wishing life were different.”
“Ain’t it the truth?” Jean said.
The women exchanged a smile.
Jean left the tent, closed the flaps behind her. Elsa buttoned up her hooded coat and stepped into her oversized galoshes and began the walk into Welty. In this weather, it was slow going.
Nearly an hour later, splattered with mud, bedraggled by rain, Elsa stepped into the long line of people in front of the federal relief office. She stood in line for two more hours. By the time she reached the interior of the office, she was shivering violently.
“Els-s-s-inore Martinelli,” she said to the young man seated at a desk in the small office. He ran through a tin box full of red cards, pulled one out.
“Martinelli. Registered arrival in the state on April 26, 1935. Two children. One woman. No husband.”
Elsa nodded. “We’ve been here almost eight months.”
“Two pounds of beans, four cans of milk, a loaf of bread. Next.” He stamped the card. “Come back in two weeks.”
“That’s supposed to last us two weeks?” she said.
The young man looked up. “You see how many people need help?” he said. “We’re overwhelmed. There just isn’t enough money. The Salvation Army has a soup kitchen on Seventh.”
Elsa picked up her box of commodities and settled it uncomfortably in her arms. With a tired sigh, she stepped back out into the rain.
“Join us, raise your voices. Workers of the valley unite!”
Elsa looked over at the man standing at the corner, shouting; he wore a long, dark-colored duster and a hood. Rain slashed at him.
He raised a fist for emphasis. “Unite! Don’t let them make you afraid. Come to the Workers Alliance meeting.”
Elsa saw how people moved away from him, drew back. None of them could afford being seen with a Communist.
A police car rolled up, lights flashing. Two officers got out and grabbed the man and started beating him.
“You see this?” the Communist shouted. “This is in America. The coppers are hauling me away for my ideas.”
The cops shoved him into the squad car and drove away.
Elsa resettled the box of commodities in her arms and began the long walk back to the camp. It was late afternoon when she reached the field.
There were almost a thousand people living here now, more than four times the number that had been here when they had arrived.
Elsa splashed through ankle-deep mud toward her tent.
A few people were out and about, scavenging for anything that they could use.
She stopped at the Deweys’ tent. “Anyone home?”
The flaps were opened by Lucy. Elsa saw the whole family—all six of them—gathered inside. Jeb and the boys had been as unable to find work as everyone else.
The Four Winds Page 25
