“I’ve extended the grace period as long as the bank will allow. The loan payment is six months delinquent, as are your taxes. The insurance hasn’t been paid in a year.”
Ephraim nodded. This day had been coming for a long spell. “I understand, Mr. Thomas.”
“I don’t!” Penny’s voice rose. “You want to get paid, but you’re taking away our livelihood.”
“I don’t make the rules, I’m afraid.” Mr. Thomas took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And I don’t like them any more than you do, if it’s any comfort.”
“It’s not,” Penny muttered, and Ephraim reached over and took her hand in his. These kinds of setbacks were hard on the young. At his age, he’d seen good times and bad. He’d lost plenty. His Anna, and now Minnie. This was just land, he wanted to tell Penny. They’d get on, Penny would see. Right now, she was angry and worried, and he guessed he could understand that, too.
Mr. Thomas continued with the business at hand. “This is your outstanding debt.” He tapped a number on the paper in front of Ephraim. A number with too many digits. “The full acreage of your homestead will be sold.” He pushed the plat across the desk to show them the markings of the land surrounding the house. “With land prices where they are, that will not, I’m afraid, cover the entirety of what you owe.”
Penny’s hand clenched his.
“I will oversee the auction in one week’s time. It will have to include your livestock and farm equipment to satisfy the remaining debt.”
Penny’s breath hitched in a sob, but Ephraim had a glimmer of hope. “Not the house?”
Robert Thomas lowered his voice. “The bank manager has agreed that the house remain in your possession.”
Ephraim wondered how the young man had made that deal, but he figured best not to ask.
“When spring comes, the bank’s land manager will be in contact with you to set up an agreement if you wish to continue farming on a sharecropping basis,” Mr. Robert Thomas finished, looking as if he’d rather be saying anything else.
Penny was silent as a stone as they left the bank half an hour later, after Ephraim had signed his name to the papers that would take everything he and Anna had worked so hard to build. He shook the young man’s hand and wished him well. They’d see him at the auction.
Ephraim took Penny’s arm as they crossed the street and helped her into the Ford. He didn’t crank the engine but slid into the driver’s seat. Their breath fogged the windshield.
“How will we do it?” Penny turned to him, her eyes brightwith tears. “If they auction off the tractor, the plow, everything—to pay the taxes—how are we supposed to make a living, even as sharecroppers?”
“We’ll figure it, my girl.” They had food in the cellar, a roof over their heads. Each other.
She clenched her hands into fists. “If Minnie hadn’t run off...”
“Penny, this isn’t your sister’s fault.” But he didn’t figure Penny would see it like that.
“It is!” She turned on him, two bright spots of color on her cheeks. “If she hadn’t taken the money... If she’d stayed, like I did—”
He leaned over and took his daughter in his arms, wishing he could soothe her anger.
“I hate her, Papa.” She pushed her face into his coat. “I hate her,” she said again, like she was convincing herself. “I hope she never comes back.”
CHAPTER 5
Los Angeles
OSCAR
The Ford sputtered and jerked. Oscar prayed the auto wouldn’t die before he made it home to thecolonia. Just yesterday, Roy Lester had been found dead and Oscar’s job had gone with him. Today, he had nothing to show for putting his last dollar into the Ford’s gas tank. No job, not even a lead, and tomorrow the rent was due.
After attending early Mass with Mamá, he’d gone to the construction site for the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal. With his hat in his hand, he’d asked about work, but the foreman had taken one look and told him they were only hiring real Americans. It was all he could do not to punch the man. Even if he had a birth certificate to hand over, proving he was born not half a mile away, it wouldn’t change a thing. He clenched his jaw and left without a word. It wasn’t fair. This construction site was the very thing that was raising the rent in thecolonia. With the terminal going in,gringoswith deep pockets were buying up the surrounding property, tearing down old buildings and putting up new. Landlords saw their chance and raised rent on their brown-skinned tenants until they gave up and left or got evicted. Anger burned in his belly at the injustice.
The fact was, there were plenty of neighborhoods with lower rents, houses with electricity and water and an inside toilet. But those areas were restricted to white families. Their only choice would be the camps on the outskirts of the city, where cholera was as common as hunger, where men found solace in tequila instead of family. Places where even thegringosocial workers intent on improving the “poor Mexicans” were afraid to go.
He couldn’t let Mamá and the boys go there. He wouldn’t.
But how could he pay the rent without a job?
After the terminal, he’d gone to the packing houses north of the city and the canneries on the coast, even the fields all the way out in Sacramento County. There were no jobs for men who looked like Oscar.
