“But we’ll do it anyway.”
Elsa smiled, thinking again of her grandfather. It had taken decades, but she finally knew exactly what he’d meant by the things he’d told her. It wasn’t the fear that mattered in life. It was the choices made when you were afraid. You were brave because of your fear, not in spite of it. “Yes.”
She leaned down and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Sleep well, baby girl. Tomorrow will be a big day.”
Elsa left her children and went into the room next door, where Jack sat on the bed, waiting for her. A single candle burned in a brass holder on the nightstand. The few boxes that held their belongings were stacked along one wall.
Jack stood.
She walked boldly up to him. In his eyes, she saw love. For her. It was young, new, not deep and settled and familiar like Rose and Tony’s, but love just the same, or at least the beautiful, promising start of it. All of her life she’d waited for a moment like this, yearned for it, and she would not let it pass by unnoticed, unremarked upon. Time felt incredibly precious in these hours before the strike. “I promised a girlfriend something crazy.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She brought her hands up, linked them behind his head. “I’ve never asked a man to dance. And I know there’s no music.”
“Elsa,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss her, moving to a song that wasn’t being played. “We are the music.”
Elsa closed her eyes and let him lead.
For you, Jean.
THIRTY-FIVE
Elsa was awakened by a kiss. She opened her eyes slowly. Last night was the best night’s sleep of her life, which seemed almost obscene, given the circumstances.
Jack leaned over her. “My comrades should be downstairs by now.”
Elsa sat up, pushed the tangled hair from her eyes. “How many of you are there?”
“Across the state, thousands. But we are fighting on many fronts. We have organizers at every field we can from here to Fresno.” He kissed her again. “See you downstairs.”
Elsa got out of bed and walked—naked—over to one of the boxes that held their belongings. Burrowing through, she found her journal and the latest pencil nub Ant had found in the school’s trash can.
Settling back in bed, she opened the journal to the first blank page and began to write.
Love is what remains when everything else is gone. This is what I should have told my children when we left Texas. What I will tell them tonight. Not that they will understand yet. How could they? I am forty years old, and I only just learned this fundamental truth myself.
Love. In the best of times, it is a dream. In the worst of times, a salvation.
I am in love. There it is. I’ve written it down. Soon I will say it out loud. To him.
I am in love. As crazy and ridiculous and implausible as it sounds, I am in love. And I am loved in return.
And this—love—gives me the courage I need for today.
The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land, and now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream, that it will be possible again.
Jack says that I am a warrior and, while I don’t believe it, I know this: A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself.
It sounds like motherhood to me.
Elsa closed the journal and dressed quickly, then went to the room next door.
Ant was bouncing on the bed, saying, “Lookit me, Loreda. I’m flying.”
Loreda ignored her brother, paced, chewing on her thumbnail.
At Elsa’s entrance, they both stilled.