The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when it felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.

I came west in search of a better life, but my American dream was turned into a nightmare by poverty and hardship and greed.

A man. It was always about the men. They seemed to think it meant nothing to cook and clean and bear children and tend gardens. But we women of the Great Plains worked from sunup to sundown, too, toiled on wheat farms until we were as dry and baked as the land we loved.

To damage the earth is to damage your children. —WENDELL BERRY, FARMER AND POET

In her lonely bedroom, surrounded by the novels that had become her friends, she sometimes dared to dream of an adventure of her own, but not often.

she knew that she had always been an outsider in her own family. They had sensed the lack in her early on, seen that she didn’t fit in.

There was a pain that came with constant disapproval; a sense of having lost something unnamed, unknown. Elsa had survived it by being quiet, by not demanding or seeking attention, by accepting that she was loved, but unliked.

The Age of Innocence had awakened something in her, reminded her keenly of the passage of time.

For women, it was different. Hope began to dim for a woman when she turned twenty. By twenty-two, the whispers in town and at church would have begun, the long, sad looks. By twenty-five, the die was cast. An unmarried woman was a spinster. “On the shelf,” they called her, shaking heads and tsking at her lost opportunities. Usually people wondered why, what had turned a perfectly ordinary woman from a good family into a spinster.

image was everything to the Wolcotts. Her parents prized it above all else.

And what would she have to show for her life? How would her time on this earth be marked? Who would remember her, and for what?

A life, not merely an existence.

She was to stay quiet and out of sight, not to go out into the world.

If she didn’t do something soon, something drastic, her future would look no different from her present.

She had to believe there was grit in her, even if it had never been tested or revealed.

There had to be opportunities out there, but where would she find them? The library. Books held the answer to every question.

Wheat will win the war! was a phrase that still filled the farmers with pride. They had done their part.

Hard work and like-minded people creating good lives from the soil.

Don’t worry about dying, Elsa. Worry about not living. Be brave.

It sometimes seemed they wanted her to be ill.

At first she tried to read. Books had always been her solace; novels gave her the space to be bold, brave, beautiful, if only in her own imagination.

“How old are you?” Elsa asked. “Eighteen, but my mother treats me as if I’m a kid. I had to sneak out to be here tonight. She worries too much about what people think. You’re lucky.” “Lucky?” “You can walk around by yourself at night, in that dress, without a chaperone.”

You broke away. D’ya ever think life must be bigger than what we see here, Els?”

“The old are just old.

She knew now what she hadn’t known before, hadn’t even suspected: she would do anything, suffer anything, to be loved, even if it was just for a night.

“A pretty dress doesn’t make one pretty, dear.”

Learn to be happy with real life. Throw away your silly romantic novels.”

Instead of voicing her discontent, she buried it and went on. It was all she knew to do.

On the few instances when she dared to look up from a beloved book and stare out the window, she saw the emptiness of a spinster’s future stretching out to the flat horizon and beyond.

She’d learned how to disappear in place long ago. She was like one of those animals whose defense mechanism is to blend into the landscape and become invisible. It was her way of dealing with rejection: Say nothing and disappear. Never fight back. If she remained quiet enough, people eventually forgot she was there and left her alone.

her window looked out on the Great Plains night sky. Her childhood portal to adventure. How often had she stood at this window and sent her dreams into those unknown universes?

“What do you dream of, Els?” She was so surprised to be asked, it took her a moment to answer. “Having a child, I guess. Maybe a home of my own.” He grinned. “Heck, that don’t count. A woman wanting a baby is like a seed wanting to grow. What else?”

She would take whatever she could get from Rafe and pay whatever price there was for it. Even going to hell. He’d made her feel more beautiful in one minute than the rest of the world had in twenty-five years.

A lady doesn’t reveal emotions, was one of her favorite adages. Elsa had heard it every time she’d cried from loneliness or begged to be allowed to go to a dance.

She and Rafe had only been together a few times. And each coupling had been so fast. Over almost before it began. Surely no child could come from that. But what did she know of such things? A mother didn’t explain sex to her daughter until the wedding day, and Elsa had never had a wedding, so her mother had never spoken to her of passion or having children, it having been assumed Elsa would never experience any of it. All Elsa knew of sex and procreation came from novels. And, frankly, details were scarce.

She touched her flat, nearly concave stomach. She couldn’t imagine a baby in her, growing secretly. Surely a woman would know such a thing.

Elsa stared at her overstuffed bookcase. Books lay on top, were stacked on the floor beside it. More books covered her nightstand. Asking her to choose among them was like having to choose between air and water.

She thought she’d known shame before, would have said it was even the ordinary course of things, but now she saw the difference. In her family she’d felt ashamed for being unattractive, unmarriageable. She’d let that shame become a part of her, let it weave through her body and mind, become the connective tissue that held her together. But in that shame, there had been hope that one day they would see past all of that to the real her, the sister/daughter she was in her mind. A flower closed up tightly, waiting for the sunlight to fall on furled petals, desperate to bloom.

“Will you love this child?” Elsa asked. “As you would have loved one borne by Gia?” Mrs. Martinelli looked surprised. “Or will you just put up with this puttana’s child?” Elsa didn’t know what the word meant, but she knew it wasn’t kind. “Because I know about growing up in a household where love is withheld. I won’t do that to my child.”

She could live among these strangers unwanted; invisibility was a skill she’d learned. What mattered now was the baby.

For this child, Elsa would marry a man who didn’t love her and join a family who didn’t want her. From now on, all her choices would be thusly made. For her child.

Only tough women lasted on Texas farmland.

Elsa wanted to tighten her hold on his hand, give a squeeze to show how much those words meant to her, but she didn’t dare. She was afraid that if she really held on to him, she’d never let go. She had to be cautious from now on, treat him as she would a skittish cat; be careful to never move too fast or need too much.

she’d cried in her sleep. Good. Better to cry at night when no one could see. She didn’t want to reveal her weakness to this new family.

He led her along the edge of the harvested wheat field; the shorn crop struck her as broken, somehow, devastated. Much like herself.

Elsa had never thought of land that way, as something that anchored a person, gave one a life. The idea of it, of staying here and finding a good life and a place to belong, seduced her as nothing ever had.

Elsa took her daughter in her arms and stared down at her in awe. Love filled her to the brim and spilled over in tears. She’d never felt anything like it before, a heady, exhilarating combination of joy and fear.

“Believe me, Elsa, this little girl will love you as no one ever has … and make you crazy and try your soul. Often all at the same time.”

In Rose’s dark, tear-brightened eyes, Elsa saw a perfect reflection of her own emotions and a soul-deep understanding of this bond—motherhood—shared by women for millennia.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.… 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.