The Four Winds

“No, it isn’t. Let me drive you home?”

“Back to Texas?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Jack, what I want doesn’t matter one whit. Not even to me.” She wiped her eyes, ashamed by the weakness she’d revealed.

“It’s not weak, you know. To feel things deeply, to want things. To need.”

Elsa was startled by his perceptiveness. “I need to go,” she said. “The kids will be out of school soon.”

“Goodbye, Elsa.”

She was surprised by how sad he looked when he said it. Or maybe disappointed in her. It was probably that. “Goodbye, Jack,” she said, and walked away, left him standing there. Somehow, she knew he was staring after her, but she didn’t look back.

* * *

BY THE END OF March, the ground had dried, the ditch-bank camp had filled again, Loreda had turned fourteen, and the Martinelli family was deeply in debt. Elsa did the math obsessively in her head. So far, she and Loreda would have to pick three thousand pounds of cotton just to pay their debt. But she still had to pay rent and buy food. It was a violent, vicious cycle that would start all over again when winter came. There was no way to get ahead, no way to get out.

Still, she went out each day, looking for work while the kids were in school. On good days, she made forty cents weeding or doing someone’s laundry or cleaning someone’s house. She and the kids made weekly visits to the Salvation Army to pick through the give-away clothing bins.

In April, she counted down the days until she officially became a resident of the state and could qualify for relief. It no longer even crossed her mind to refuse aid from the government.

On the appointed day, she woke early and made flour-and-water pancakes for the kids and poured them each a half glass of the watered-down apple juice they sold by the quart in the company store.

Still sleepy eyed, the kids dressed and put on their shoes and filed out of the small cabin and headed for the bathrooms, where there would be a long line.

When they returned, Elsa served them two pancakes each—doctored with a precious dollop of jam. They sat on their bed, side by side.

“You need to eat something, Mom,” Loreda said.

For a moment Elsa saw her fourteen-year-old daughter in heartbreaking relief: bony face, prominent cheekbones. A gingham dress hung on her thin body; her clavicle stuck up from the hollowed-out skin on either side.

She was supposed to be going to square dances and having her first crush on a boy at this age …

“Mom?” Loreda said.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Are you dizzy?”

“No. Not at all. Just thinking.”

Ant laughed. “That’s no good, Ma. You know better.”

Ant stood up. He was all knobs and sticks, this boy who had just turned nine; with elbows and knees and feet that were all too big for his skinny limbs. In the past few months, he’d found friends and begun to act like a boy again; he refused to have his hair cut, hated any sort of games, and called her Ma.

“Guess what today is,” Elsa said.

“What?” Loreda said, not bothering to look up.

“We get state relief,” Elsa said. “Real cash money. I can start paying down our debt.”

“Sure,” Loreda said, plunging her empty plate into the bucket of soapy water.

“We registered with the state a year ago,” Elsa said. “We can get aid as residents now.”

Loreda looked at her. “They’ll find a way to take it back.”