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 herself. “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.
And look at her mother. Standing there, holding a dead baby in a clean lavender blanket, looking sad.
Sad.
The sight of it doubled Loreda’s rage. This was no time to be sad.
She fisted her hands at her side, but who was there to hit? Mrs. Dewey looked dazed and unsteady. Ghostly.
Mom knelt down and carefully placed the dead baby in the small grave and began to pray. “Our Father—”
“Who the hell are you praying to?” Loreda snapped.
She heard her mother sigh and slowly get to her feet. “God has—”
“If you tell me He has a plan for us, I’ll scream. I swear I will.” Loreda’s voice broke. She felt herself start to cry, but she wasn’t sad; she was furious. “He lets us live like this. Worse than stray dogs.”
Mom touched Loreda’s face. “Babies die, Loreda. I lost your brother.
Grandma Rose lost—”
“THIS ISN’T LIKE THAT!” Loreda screamed. “You’re a coward, staying here, making us stay here. Why?”
“Oh, Loreda…”
Loreda knew she’d gone too far, had said too cruel a thing, but there was no stopping this rage, no slowing it. “If Daddy were here—”
“What?” Mom said. “What would he do?”
“He wouldn’t let us live like this. Burying dead babies in the dark, working our fingers to the bone, standing in line for two hours to get a can of milk from the government, watching people get sick around us.”
“He left us.”
“He left you. I should do the same, get out of here before we’re all dead.”
“Go, then,” Mom said. “Run away. Be like him.” “I might,” Loreda said.
“Good. Go.” Mom bent down, picked up the shovel, began filling the grave with dirt.
Scrape, thunk.
In minutes there would be nothing to show that a baby had been buried here.
Loreda marched back through the squalid camp, past tents overfilled with people, past mangy dogs begging for scraps from folks who lived on scraps. She heard babies crying and people coughing.
The Dewey tent was closed up, but Loreda knew the little girls were in there, waiting for their mother to comfort and reassure them.
Words. Lies. Nothing would get better. She was done living like this.
At her tent, she flung the flaps open, found Ant curled up on the mattress, his body as small as he could make it. They’d all learned how to sleep together on the too-small bed.
Her heart gave a hard ping at the sight of him.
Loreda knelt beside the bed, ruffled his hair. He mumbled in his sleep. “I love you,” she whispered, kissing the hard bone of his cheek. “But I can’t stay another second.”
Ant nodded in his sleep, murmured something.
Loreda went to the small suitcase that held all of her ragged clothes and her beloved library card. From the food crate, she took three potatoes and two slices of bread, and then opened the metal box that held their money. All they had in the world. Loreda felt a twinge of guilt.
No.
She’d wouldn’t take much. Just two dollars. It was her money as much as Mom’s. God knew Loreda had worked for it. She carefully counted out the money and then scrounged for a piece of paper. She found a bit of crumpled newsprint. Smoothing it as best she could, she used one of Ant’s pencil stubs to write a note to her mother and Ant, leaving it beneath the coffeepot.
She carried her suitcase to the tent flaps, looked back one last time, and walked away.
She passed the truck, full of things they should have left behind. Ant’s baseball bat lay cocked against a mantel clock, neither of which they needed, but neither Loreda nor her mother had the heart to tell Ant his baseball days were over before they’d begun. God knew if they’d ever need a mantel clock again. They would have packed differently if they’d known. Or maybe if they’d known what waited for them in California, they’d have stayed in Texas.
They shouldn’t have left.
Or maybe they should have gone farther.
It was Mom’s fault. She’d chosen to stop here, said, We have to.
Everything had gone wrong from then.
From that first fatal lie: one night.
Well, it had been a lot of nights, and Loreda was getting the hell out.
|
ELSA AND JEAN STOOD together in the darkness, staring down, holding hands. Time fell away, passed in long swaths of silence between women who knew there were no words at a time like this.
There was no marker here to commemorate the baby, nor markers to commemorate the others buried in this section of the camp.
“We’d best get back,” Elsa said at last, buttoning up her ill-fitting wool coat. “You’re shivering.”
“I’ll be along,” Jean said.
Elsa squeezed her friend’s hand. With a sigh that felt drawn from deep in her tired bones, she carried the shovel back to camp and threw it in the back of the truck, where it landed with a clang.
Thoughts of Loreda pushed their way in. Elsa should have comforted Loreda at the grave site. What kind of mother snapped at a grieving thirteen-year-old? Loreda had seen too much loss. Elsa knew that. There must be words Elsa could find that would help.
Elsa just had nothing left right now. She felt emptied by the baby’s death. The last thing she could do was face her daughter’s fury.
Better to let a little time smooth over the edges. A night, at least. Tomorrow the sun would shine and Elsa would take Loreda aside and offer what comfort she could.
Coward.
“No,” Elsa said out loud to reinforce the decision. She would not look away from this. She would hit it head-on, try to comfort Loreda as best as she could.
She lifted the tent flap and went inside.
The quilts were tangled, but it was clear that Ant was in bed alone. Loreda wasn’t in the tent.
Elsa went to the truck, banged on the side of the bed. “Loreda? Are you in there?”
She examined the bed, saw the boxes of goods they’d brought with them, things they’d thought they’d need: candlesticks, porcelain dishes, Ant’s baseball bat and mitt, a mantel clock. “Loreda?” she said again, her voice spiking in worry when she saw that the cab was empty, too.
Elsa stepped back.
He left you. I should do the same … get out of here before we’re all dead. Go, then. Go. Be like your father. Run away.
Maybe I will.
Good. Go.
A chill moved through Elsa. She ran back into the tent.
Loreda’s suitcase was gone. So was her sweater and the blue wool coat she’d gotten at the salon.
Elsa saw a note peeking out from beneath the coffeepot. Her hand shook as she reached for it.
Mom,
I can’t take it anymore. I’m sorry.
I love you both.
Elsa ran out of the tent and didn’t stop running until there was a stitch in her side and her breathing was ragged.
The main road stretched north and south. Which way would Loreda go?
How could Elsa even guess?
Elsa had told her thirteen-year-old daughter to go, to run away and be like a man who didn’t want to be found. To go out into a world full of bindle stiffs walking the roads and riding the trains, gangs of desperate, angry men with nothing to lose, who lurked like packs of wolves in the shadows.
She screamed her daughter’s name.
The word rang out through the night and faded away.
|
LOREDA WALKED SOUTH UNTIL her shoe broke and her back ached, and still the empty road stretched in front of her, bathed in moonlight. How much farther to Los Angeles?
She had always dreamed of finding her father, just bumping into him, but now, standing here alone on the side of the road, she understood what her mother had said to her once.
He doesn’t want to be found.
How many roads were there in California, going how many directions, to how many destinations? So what if her father dreamed of Hollywood? That
didn’t mean he’d gotten there, or that he’d stayed there.
And how far had she walked? Three miles? Four?
She kept walking, determined not to turn around. She was not going to go back and admit she’d made a mistake by leaving. She couldn’t stand this life anymore. Period.
But Ant would wake up and miss her. He’d think he was easy to leave, that there was something wrong with him. Loreda knew that because it was how she’d felt when Daddy had left.
She didn’t want to hurt her brother.
She saw headlights in front of her, coming up the road. A truck rolled up to her and stopped. It was an old-fashioned truck, with a square wooden and glass cab that appeared to have been stuck on the truck’s black chassis. The hinged windshield was open.
The driver reached over and rolled down the passenger window. He was as old as Mom, with a face that was like most men’s these days—sharp and bony. He needed to shave, but Loreda wouldn’t call him bearded. Just scruffy. “What’re you doing out here all by yourself? It’s midnight.”
“Nothing.”
His gaze flicked down to her suitcase. “You look like a girl who is running away.”
“What do you care?”
“Where are your parents? It’s dangerous out here.”
“None of your business. Besides, I’m sixteen. I can go where I want.” “Yeah, kid. And I’m Errol Flynn. Where are you headed?” “Anywhere but here.”
He looked up the road. It was at least a minute before he looked at her again. “There’s a bus station in Bakersfield. I’m headed north. I can give you a lift. I just have to make a stop along the way.”
“Thanks, mister!” Loreda tossed her suitcase in the back of the truck and climbed in.
