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.
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 make 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
