But it’s clear now that you can’t save us, and Mama can’t save us, and God won’t save us, and the Electric won’t save us.
So we have to try and save ourselves.
P.S. Please tell Mama we are all right. I’m too angry to write to her, and I imagine she’s too angry to want to hear from me.
Love, Catherine
AUGUST 5, 1934
Dear Ellis,
It’s taken two days of walking and catching rides to make it to Harrisburg. Mostly, when we’re not riding, I carry Beezie on my back. I count our money every night, and it’s never enough.
Today we crossed paths with a group of travelers who overlapped us like a big galaxy swirling around a little one—we shared news and a little food and then parted ways. People are drifting all over the country, crisscrossing each other—carrying suitcases, camped beside the road, or sleeping in their cars. We’re homesick all the time, but we’ve decided we can’t get enough of the miles and miles of lush green pine trees. We’ve seen ugly and beautiful things—an airplane pulling an ad that said Smoke Lucky Strike Cigarettes, misty hills and fog-filled lakes that look like they’re out of a fairy tale.
The thing I hate to see is the way people look at us—like we’re carrying something they don’t want to catch.
Last night, Beezie took me by surprise.
“How are you going to marry Ellis if he’s in Canaan and we’re in New York?” she asked. She always picks up on more than you think she does.
“What makes you think I’d marry him?” I said.
She had a coughing fit after that, but it didn’t deter her. “I don’t want you to end up an old maid,” she said as soon as she could breathe again. “All alone.”
“I’m not alone. I’m with you, aren’t I?” I said.
“Doesn’t count.”
“Of course it counts.”
“Not if you’re an old maid.”
I gave up. As you know all too well, you can’t win an argument with Beezie.
She’s wheezing beside me now, in her sleep. I always know exactly where she is because of that whistling sound in her chest that fills me with dread. I’ve taken her out of the dust, but that hasn’t taken the dust out of her.
All day all I think about is taking care of Beezie, and whether this will help her, and I only let my mind wander to other things after she falls asleep—mostly to you and to Mama and Lenore.
The more I think, the more I wonder who am I if I’m not Mama’s and the farm’s, and the girl who’s always been hoping to be yours? I’m trying to find out. And I’m sorry to be so blunt, and to tell you about you and me as if it weren’t you I was talking to. But you are the only person I can show myself to, Ellis. You always made my rough edges feel real.
It’s strange, but what makes me angriest with Mama is not that she lied to me and that all this time I had a mother I didn’t even know about (though I can’t think of Mama as anything but Mama, even now, and it’s hard to think how Lenore was my mother too, though I know it’s true). What hurts me worse is how Mama abandoned her and tried to pull her down when they were kids. I wonder more than anything whether, when the woman who gave me life showed up with me in her belly, was Mama happy to see her? It seems to make all the difference, whether or not she loved her in the end.
Where are you sitting while you read this? Do you still think I’ve made a mistake? Are you angry with me? Do you want to forget me? I wonder these things all the time.
Love, Catherine
AUGUST 6, 1934
Tomorrow, it happens. I’m breathless and maybe more scared than I’ve ever been by any duster. If all goes well, we’ll arrive in New York by walking across the George Washington Bridge. I’m so scared and excited and hopeful and terrified my hands are shaking as I write. What will we find when we get there?
For the last night of our journey I’m sitting here with only our campfire and the big black sky and the millions of stars to keep me company.
Tomorrow feels like flipping a coin. Every moment I wonder if I’ve done the right thing, but tomorrow we begin to find out, and I almost can’t stand the thought of that.
We’ve seen so many other people trailing in the same direction as we are, cars packed to the gills. I want to have hope for them too, but in my mind, I’m ruthless. I want other people to survive, but I want Beezie to survive more. I want to think that I’m special and Beezie is special and that whoever is up there, if anyone is, has His eye on us . . . and that we’ll make it even if other people don’t. I want Beezie to be the lucky one. I am so selfish for her welfare I think I could smother anyone who got in the way, and I know that’s evil, and yet I can’t feel any other way.
I’ll mail this from the road tomorrow if I can. And I’ll write again when I can tell you whether New York is going to save or sinks us. I won’t write until I know for sure.
I think it would be too easy, otherwise, to get turned back once we are there. I think now is the time I need to put you and home behind me, if I’m to make any go of it at all.
Love, Catherine
JANUARY 15, 1935
Dear Ellis,
It’s been almost six months since I last saw you, and five since I wrote, and I think this may be the last letter I ever send to you. After so much time, I wonder if you think of me as much as I think of you. And I wonder if you do, what you think. Are you still waiting for me or have you let me go? I think time works differently depending on where you are, and whether you’re the leaver or the left, so I can’t assume I know.
I’m sitting against the living room radiator in an old apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. My face and hands are freezing, but my back feels like it’s on fire. Still, I can’t bring myself to pull away from the heat.
The room is shared with five other people, Okies like me. It’s cramped, shabby, and cold—with peeling paint and mice scrabbling up and down behind the walls.
It’s not where I expected to be, and there’s so much that has changed, and so many things have happened, and some are harder to write than others. I think this whole time, I’ve been trying to keep my promise to you and myself, of waiting until I could say that yes I’m coming home, or no, I’m not. But until now, it’s been hard to make out what’s ahead of me, and at first, the days were just too full to think straight.
It rained the entire first week we arrived in Manhattan, but it was good luck for us. So few people were out in the downpour that I was the first to reply to a Help Wanted sign that was posted at a local laundry. (Jobs are so hard to come by here.) By asking around I rented a spot in this apartment that same night—just a section of the living room, really, shared with three other people separated by sheets—and have lived here ever since.