But just two weeks later, Henry and I found ourselves standing on the street with our suitcases by our feet. As cheap as it was, the rooming house fees had cleaned us out, and the CCC did not offer Henry a job. Even if they had hired him, his employment would only have lasted till his twenty-fifth birthday—just two short months away. Not even Henry’s charm could circumvent the eligibility criteria for an in-demand government program. We learned that when the CCC advertised vacancies in the past, the line of applicants stretched around several city blocks. For every potential job in El Paso, there was a hundred or more desperate candidates.

“It will be okay,” Henry said firmly. “Maybe we sleep outside tonight, but something good will come up tomorrow.”

I was already growing a little tired of Henry’s insistence that things were going to turn around, but it would do me no good to discourage him. I scooped up my suitcase and pointed to the west.

“I saw a camp of homeless folk that way,” I said wearily. “Let’s see if we can find somewhere to sleep down there.”

Days began to blend into weeks, but I was too tired to keep track of how long we’d been in the city. We found ourselves a cast-off square of canvas and Henry fashioned it into a kind of tent, strung across rope between a tree and the side of a bridge, in a camp full of other makeshift tents. We slept on piles of old newspapers I collected from trash cans while Henry lined up at a church, waiting to be given someone’s old blankets.

Henry and I traversed the city knocking on every door asking for work until we knew its dead ends the same way we’d once known every field on the farm. At the end of the day, we would meet up at a soup kitchen for dinner.

At night, as we lay top-to-toe beneath that tent, I’d think about Mother. I knew what she’d say if she was still with us. She’d remind me that I was strong. A survivor, she’d say. She’d tell me to have faith. She’d tell me to keep going, even when it felt hopeless.

But while I waited and I prayed and I tried to be patient as I persevered, I came across an emotion I’d never felt before—I started to feel lost.

I knew downtown El Paso back to front after a few months, but I still couldn’t figure out who I was in that place, or who I was meant to be.