The Four Winds

“I am not mean, Loreda,” Mom said.

Loreda heard the hurt in her mother’s voice but didn’t care. That anger of hers, always so close to the surface, surged up, uncontrollable. “Don’t you care that Daddy is unhappy?”

“Life is tough, Loreda. You need to be tougher or it will turn you inside out, as it has your father.”

“Life isn’t what makes my daddy sad.”

“Oh, really? Tell me, then, with all your worldly experience, what is it that makes your father unhappy?”

“You,” Loreda said.

EIGHT

One hundred and four degrees in the shade, and the well was drying up. The water in the tank had to be carefully conserved, carried by the bucketful to the house. At night, they gave the animals what water they could.

The vegetables that Elsa and Rose had tended with such loving care were dead. Between yesterday’s wind and dust and the relentless sun, every plant had either been torn out by the roots or lay wilted and dead.

She heard Rose come up beside her.

“There’s no point watering,” Elsa said.

“No.”

She heard the heartbreak in her mother-in-law’s voice and wished she could say something to help.

“You’ve been awfully quiet today,” Rose said.

“Unlike my usual chatty self,” Elsa said to deflect a conversation she didn’t want to have.

Rose bumped her shoulder against Elsa’s arm. “Tell me what is wrong. Besides the obvious, of course.”

“Loreda is angry at me. All of the time. I swear, before I even speak, she gets mad at whatever it is I’m about to say.”

“She is at that age.”

“It’s more than that, I think.”

Rose stared out at the devastated fields. “My son,” she said. “Stupido. He is filling her head with dreams.”

“He’s unhappy.”

“Pssht,” Rose said impatiently. “Who isn’t? Look at what is happening.”

“My parents, my family,” Elsa said quietly. This was something she rarely talked about, a pain too deep for words, especially when words wouldn’t change anything; Loreda’s opinion of Elsa lately had brought all that heartache of youth back. Elsa remembered the day she’d taken Loreda, swaddled in pink, to her parents’ house, hoping her marriage would allow them to accept her again. Elsa had worked for weeks on a lovely pink dress for the baby, trimmed it in lace. She knit a matching cap. Finally, she borrowed the truck and drove to Dalhart alone, pulling up at the back gate. She remembered every moment in detail: Walking up the path; the smell of roses. Everything in bloom. A clear blue sky. Bees buzzing around the roses.

She had felt both nervous and proud. She was a wife now, with a baby girl so beautiful even strangers remarked upon it.

Knocking on the door. The sound of footsteps, heels on hardwood. Mama answering the door, dressed for church, wearing pearls. Papa in a brown suit.

“Look,” Elsa had said, her smile unsteady, her eyes filling with unwanted tears. “My daughter, Loreda.”

Mama, craning her neck, peering down at Loreda’s small, perfect face.

“Look, Eugene, how dark her skin is. Take your disgrace away, Elsinore.”

The door, slamming shut.

Elsa had made a point of never seeing them or speaking to them again, but even so, their absence caused an ache that wouldn’t go away. Apparently you couldn’t stop loving some people, or needing their love, even when you knew better.