“Good,” Mom said. “Let’s go pick cotton.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT, AFTER ANOTHER long, hot day in the fields, there was a letter from Tony and Rose to cheer them all. After supper, the children climbed into bed with Elsa and she opened the envelope and withdrew that letter. It had been written on the back side of Elsa’s last letter to them. No reason to waste paper.
Dearest ones,
It has been a hot, dry summer. The good news is that the wind and dust have given us a respite. No dust storms for ten days. Not enough to call an end to them, but an answer to prayers anyway. August and the first half of September were entirely unpleasant. All we did, it seems, was sweep, but these last few days have so far been kinder. Also, the government has finally realized that the help we most need is water and it is being delivered by the truckload. We pray there will be a crop of winter wheat. At least enough to feed our two new cows and the horse. But hope is hard to come by.
Sending you all much love. Miss you terribly.
Love, Rose and Tony
“Do you think we will ever see them again, Mom?” Loreda asked in the silence that followed Elsa’s reading of the letter.
Elsa leaned back against the rusted metal bed frame. Ant resettled himself, laid his head on her lap. She stroked his hair.
Loreda sat opposite Elsa, against the narrow foot of the bed.
“Remember that house I stopped at in Dalhart, on the day we left for California?”
“The big one with the broken window?”
Elsa nodded. “It was big, all right. I grew up there … in a house that had no heart. My family … rejected me, is I guess the best way to put it. Looks mattered to my family, and my unattractiveness was a fatal flaw.”
“You’re—”
“I am not fishing for compliments, Loreda. And God knows I’m too old for lies. I’m answering your question. This one, and one you haven’t asked in a while. About me and your grandparents and your father. Anyway, my point is that as a girl, I was lonely. I could never understand what I’d done to deserve my isolation. I tried so hard to be lovable.” Elsa drew in a deep breath, released it. “I thought everything had changed when I met your father. And it did. For me. But not for him. He always wanted more than life on the farm. Always. As you know.”
Loreda nodded.
“I loved your dad. I did. But it wasn’t enough for him, and now I realize it wasn’t enough for me, either. He deserved better and so did I.” As she said the unexpected words, Elsa felt them reshape her somehow. “But you know how my life really changed? It wasn’t marriage. It was the farm. Rose and Tony. I found a place to belong, people who loved me, and they became the home I’d dreamed about as a girl. And then you came along and taught me how big love could be.”
“I treated you like you had the plague.”
Elsa smiled. “For a few years. But before all of that, you … You couldn’t stand to be apart. You cried for me at naptime, said you couldn’t sleep without me.”
“I’m sorry,” Loreda said. “For—”
“No sorries. We fought, we struggled, we hurt each other, so what? That’s what love is, I think. It’s all of it. Tears, anger, joy, struggle. Mostly, it’s durable. It lasts. Never once in all of it—the dust, the drought, the fights with you—never once did I stop loving you or Ant or the farm.” Elsa laughed. “So, my long-winded answer to your question is this: Rose and Tony and the farm are home. We will see them all again. Someday.”
“They were crazy,” Loreda said. “Your other family, I mean. And they missed out.”
“On what?”
“You. They never saw how special you are.”
Elsa smiled. “That’s maybe the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Loreda.”
* * *
ON FRIDAY EVENING, AFTER another long day of picking cotton, Elsa and her children snuck out of camp and drove to the end of Willow Road for the strike meeting.
Inside the barn, typewriters clattered; people talked loudly and moved about. Communists, mostly. Not many of the workers were here.
Jack saw them in the doorway and came over. “The growers are getting nervous,” he said. “I heard Welty is fit to be tied.”
“The camp was full of men with guns last night. They didn’t threaten us, but we got the message,” Loreda said.