love. Elsa backed away from the heartbreak of watching Jean whisper into the baby’s blue ear.
Outside, Elsa found Loreda pacing.
Elsa looked at her daughter, saw the question, and shook her head.
“Oh, no,” Loreda said, slumping her shoulders.
Before Elsa could offer comfort, Loreda turned and disappeared into their tent.
Elsa stood there, unmoving. That terrible, terrible image of a baby coming into the world on a crumpled newspaper over a dirt floor wouldn’t go away.
I’ll name her Clea.
How had Jean even been able to speak?
Elsa felt tears rise up, overtake her. She cried as she hadn’t cried since Rafe left her, cried until there was no moisture left inside of her, until she was as dry as the land they’d left behind.
* * *
AT A LITTLE PAST ten o’clock that night, Loreda finished digging the small hole and dropped her shovel.
They were far from camp, in an area surrounded by trees; a place as dark as the mood of the two women and one girl standing beneath them.
Anger suffused Loreda, overwhelmed her; she felt it poisoning her from the inside out. She’d never felt its like before, not even when Daddy left them. She had to hold it inside her one breath at a time; if she let it go, she’d scream.
And look at her mother. Standing there, holding a dead baby in a clean lavender blanket, looking sad.
Sad.
The sight of it doubled Loreda’s rage. This was no time to be sad.
She fisted her hands at her side, but who was there to hit? Mrs. Dewey looked dazed and unsteady. Ghostly.
Mom knelt down and carefully placed the dead baby in the small grave and began to pray. “Our Father—”
“Who the hell are you praying to?” Loreda snapped.
She heard her mother sigh and slowly get to her feet. “God has—”
“If you tell me He has a plan for us, I’ll scream. I swear I will.” Loreda’s voice broke. She felt herself start to cry, but she wasn’t sad; she was furious. “He lets us live like this. Worse than stray dogs.”
Mom touched Loreda’s face. “Babies die, Loreda. I lost your brother. Grandma Rose lost—”
“THIS ISN’T LIKE THAT!” Loreda screamed. “You’re a coward, staying here, making us stay here. Why?”
“Oh, Loreda…”
Loreda knew she’d gone too far, had said too cruel a thing, but there was no stopping this rage, no slowing it. “If Daddy were here—”
“What?” Mom said. “What would he do?”
“He wouldn’t let us live like this. Burying dead babies in the dark, working our fingers to the bone, standing in line for two hours to get a can of milk from the government, watching people get sick around us.”
“He left us.”
“He left you. I should do the same, get out of here before we’re all dead.”
“Go, then,” Mom said. “Run away. Be like him.”
“I might,” Loreda said.
“Good. Go.” Mom bent down, picked up the shovel, began filling the grave with dirt.
Scrape, thunk.
In minutes there would be nothing to show that a baby had been buried here.
Loreda marched back through the squalid camp, past tents overfilled with people, past mangy dogs begging for scraps from folks who lived on scraps. She heard babies crying and people coughing.
The Dewey tent was closed up, but Loreda knew the little girls were in there, waiting for their mother to comfort and reassure them.
Words. Lies. Nothing would get better.
She was done living like this.
At her tent, she flung the flaps open, found Ant curled up on the mattress, his body as small as he could make it. They’d all learned how to sleep together on the too-small bed.
Her heart gave a hard ping at the sight of him.
Loreda knelt beside the bed, ruffled his hair. He mumbled in his sleep. “I love you,” she whispered, kissing the hard bone of his cheek. “But I can’t stay another second.”
Ant nodded in his sleep, murmured something.
Loreda went to the small suitcase that held all of her ragged clothes and her beloved library card. From the food crate, she took three potatoes and two slices of bread, and then opened the metal box that held their money. All they had in the world. Loreda felt a twinge of guilt.
No.
She’d wouldn’t take much. Just two dollars. It was her money as much as Mom’s. God knew Loreda had worked for it. She carefully counted out the money and then scrounged for a piece of paper. She found a bit of crumpled newsprint. Smoothing it as best she could, she used one of Ant’s pencil stubs to write a note to her