The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. —FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

The pain of him leaving kept expanding inside of her, taking up more and more space.

“I know how much it hurts right now, Elsa. You can’t unlove someone even if you want to, even if he breaks your heart. I understand not wanting to wake up. Lord, with this life of ours, who could blame you.

“Remember, cara, hard times don’t last. Land and family do.”

As Loreda stared out across the San Joaquin Valley, she felt a hunger open up inside her, one she’d never imagined. Seeing all of this unexpected beauty, such colors, such majesty, she wanted suddenly to see more. America the Beautiful—the wild blue Pacific, the snarling Atlantic, the Rockies. All the places she and Daddy had dreamed of seeing. She wondered what San Francisco looked like, the city built on hills, or Los Angeles, with its white-sand beaches and groves of orange trees.

The sight of them helping others when they themselves had lost everything made her proud. After all they’d suffered—the hardship, the loss, the disappointment—there they were, smiling and handing out food. Helping people. It gave her hope for the future.

“For my mother,” he said. “She came here at sixteen because she was starving and had been disowned by her family because of me. I still don’t know who my father is. She worked like a dog to support us, doing whatever she had to do, but each night, at bedtime, she kissed me good night and told me I could be anything in America. It was the dream that had brought her here and she passed it on to me. But, it was a lie. For people like us, anyway. Folks who are from the wrong place, or have the wrong color skin, or speak the wrong language, or pray to the wrong God. She died in a factory fire. All of the doors were locked to keep the workers from taking cigarette breaks. This country used her up and spit her out and all she ever wanted was for me to have opportunities. A better life than she’d had.”

Fear is smart until…” He headed for the door, paused as he reached for the knob. “Until what?” He looked back at her. “Until you realize you’re afraid of the wrong thing.”

THAT NIGHT, WHILE THE children slept, Elsa got her journal out of the box that had been in the truck. She turned through the pages. The children had been right that writing helped. Words jumped out at her: rain, baby in a lavender blanket, no work, waiting for cotton, the demoralizing rain. Tonight, later, she would write about her constant fear, how it strangled her all the time and the constant effort it took not to show it to her children. Writing about it would remind her that they had survived. As bad as the flood had been, they were still here.

You see yourself as they see you, and no matter how far you come, you bring that mirror with you.” “Break it,” Jean said. “How?” “With a gosh dang rock.” Jean leaned forward. “I’m a mirror, too, Elsa. You remember that.”

“My grandfather was a Texas Ranger. He used to tell me that courage was a lie. It was just fear that you ignored.” She looked at him. “Well, I’m scared.”

It had been written on the back side of Elsa’s last letter to them. No reason to waste paper.

So the state cracked down on illegal immigrants and called the Mexicans criminals and deported them. By ’31, the majority of them were gone or in hiding.

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.

She wrapped her fingers around the soft velvet pouch at her throat. Saint Jude, patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes, help me.

“What do I do without you?” Elsa tried to smile but couldn’t. She was too tired. Too weak. “You live, Loreda,” she whispered. “And know … every single second … how much I loved you.”

“Moms know everything, kid.” Loreda closed her eyes and thought of all the things she wished she’d said to her mother. I love you. I’m proud of you. I’ve never seen anyone so brave. Why was I so mean for so long? You gave me wings, Mom. Did you know that? I feel you here. Will I always? When she opened her eyes, there were stars overhead.

I look like any other girl my age, but I am different from most. A survivor. There is no way to forget what we went through in the Great Depression or to unlearn the lessons of hardship. Even though I am only eighteen, I remember my childhood as a time of loss.

She can sense when the sadness rises in me; some days she gives me space with my grief, some days she takes my hand. I don’t know how, but she always knows which I need.

It is a grainy black-and-white photograph of my mother, standing in the back of a truck, with a megaphone to her mouth. The caption reads: Union organizer Elsa Martinelli leads strikers amid a spray of tear-gas bombs and bullets.