town.”
Jean coughed. “I heard. Don’t know how we’re gonna make it till cotton.”
“We’ll make it.” Elsa opened her hand slowly, looked down at the thirteen dollars and fifty cents she had to feed her family until next month. She peeled off two one-dollar bills and handed them to Jean.
“I can’t take that,” Jean said. “Not money.”
“Of course you can.” They both knew that the twenty-seven dollars the Deweys got from the state wasn’t nearly enough to feed six people. And Elsa could get things on credit from the store. The Deweys couldn’t.
Jean reached for the bills, trying to smile. “Well. I am saving up for our bottle of gin.”
“You bet. We will get rip-roaring drunk real soon. Bad-girl drunk,” Elsa said, smiling at the thought. “I was only a bad girl once in my life, and you know what it got me?”
“What?”
“A bad husband and a beautiful new family. So, I say we be bad.”
“That a promise?”
“You bet. Someday soon, Jean.”
* * *
ELSA WALKED BACK TO Welty Farms and went to the company store. On the way home from the relief office, she had made calculations in her head. If she used half of her relief money to pay down her debt each month, it would be tight, but they’d have a chance.
In the store, she picked out a loaf of bread and one of bologna and a can of chipped beef, some hot dogs, and a bag of potatoes. A jar of peanut butter, a bar of soap, several cans of milk, and some lard. More than anything, she wanted to add a dozen eggs and a Hershey’s candy bar. But that was how people were ruined by credit.
She placed her items on the counter.
Harald smiled at her as he rang up the items. “Relief day, eh, Mrs. Martinelli? I can tell by your smile.”
“It’s a relief for sure.”
The cash register clattered and rang. “That’ll be two dollars and thirty-nine cents.”
“That sure is steep,” Elsa said.
“Yep,” he said, giving her a commiserating look.
She withdrew the cash from her pocket, began counting it out.
“Oh. We don’t take cash, missus. Just credit.”
“But I have money, finally. I wanted to pay on my bill, too.”
“It doesn’t work that way. Credit only. I can even give you a little spending money … on credit. With interest. For gas and such.”
“But … how do I get out from my debt?”
“You pick.”
The reality of the situation sank in. Why hadn’t Elsa figured it out before? Welty wanted her in their debt, wanted her to spend her relief money lavishly and be broke again next winter. Of course they’d give you cash for credit—probably at a high interest rate—because poor folks worked for less, asked for less. All she could do was try to use her relief money to buy goods in town, at lower prices, to offset her accruing debt at the company store, but it wouldn’t make much of a dent. They couldn’t live on thirteen dollars a month. She reached into the basket and removed a can of chipped beef, which she set back on the counter. “I can’t afford this.”
He recalculated her credit total, wrote it down. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Are you? What about going north, to pick peaches? I suppose I’d have to pay for the cabin in advance while I’m gone.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. You’d have to give up the cabin and the sure-thing job of picking cotton.”
“We can’t follow the crops?” Elsa stood there a moment staring at him, wondering how he could stand to be a part of this system. They couldn’t follow the crops and keep the cabin, which meant they had to stay here, without work, waiting for cotton, living on relief and credit. “So, we’re slaves.”
“Workers. The lucky ones, I’d say.”
“Would you?”
“Have you seen the way folks live out by the ditch bank?”
“Yes,” Elsa said. “I’ve seen it.”
Holding her bag of groceries, she walked out of the store.
Outside, people milled about: women hanging laundry, men scavenging for wood, young children looking for any bit of junk to call a toy. A dozen stoop-shouldered women in baggy dresses stood in line for the two women’s toilets. There were more than three hundred people living here now; they’d pitched fifteen new tents on concrete pads.
She looked at the women, really looked. Gray. Slanted shoulders. Kerchiefs on untended hair. Drab dresses mended and re-mended. Fallen stockings. Worn shoes. Thin.
Still, they smiled at one another in line, talked, wrangled their runaway children, those young enough not to be in school. Elsa had