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Dear foggy morning memory of someone I think I must have known well once when
we both lived in this place you still call home...
D1.10.1-4
harvesting
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I know I haven't visited you or even thought about you for many days now.
It's just that I'm so busy right now with school and
being a nanny. I get really caught up in things. I get to forget about
you for awhile. It's not that we'll ever lose touch,
I suppose. No matter how far I go, how fast I run or
how much I succeed in getting away from you:
I'll never forget where to find you.
Especially at this time of year, the time of the harvest.
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Tonight I was watching Tabby and Jack sitting in the front
hall unpacking their designer back packs
after their first day back to school. The news was playing in the living room.
I was whipping them potatoes; and, before I could stop it.
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It all came back.
It knocked me hard.
And, I realized ... you are my well.
I am 12. It's so hot tonight and it smells in here.
My grandparents are sleeping in their very different
rooms. I can hear that mean old man who chases me into
Grandma's room with his cane wheezing loud enough to just
miss me when he smashes apart the light switch on the
wall. Then, when the rest run up to the house to see
what's going on, he slumps into his chair and tells the
rest of them I make him sick; that I am the devil.
"No wonder you have no friends," he tells me.
Maybe someday I'll be in a place far enough away that
I will be able to convince myself that he loved me.
I mean after all, I was the blonde one, the one he cared
enough about to drive away.
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But that isn't tonight, is it?
Tonight his wheezing is in sync with the clock.
Across the room on a filth covered shelf,
cluttered with those glass conductor things they used
to put on telephone poles, a tiny red digital clock
glows through the thick layer of dust: 4:21; 4:22;
wheeze, snooze; 4:23; 4:24; wheeze, snooze...
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You would think I'd be tough. You would think I'd be
strong enough to forget my childhood nightmares,
the Davenport. You would think I'd be happy now.
All I ever wanted was to be free.
But, tonight I still lay on that disgusting, sweat
sticking, blue floral Davenport. It smells so bad.
I can only breath when I face outward and lay on my side.
I can't even hide in the damn thing for shelter from the
monsters that lurk in the dark.
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Hey, Penny's awake! Maybe she'll come over here and let
me pet her.
Come here, Penny. Good girl. No. Don't go out to the
porch. Come here, girl. Penny, come back. Please,
come back. I need you. Why won't she come to me?
What's so wrong with me? Why can't she watch over me so
I won't be so afraid. If I weren't so afraid, I could get
some sleep for a change before the roosters start to crow.
Penny, I can't move. I can't come to you. I'm too afraid.
Why did you turn away? What is so wrong with me that the dog
turns away?
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Why
can't I be like Candy Lloyd in her big house on the edge of town?
Why can't I have a pink bedroom, a teddy bear, an air-conditioned
breakfast with a loving family before I go to basketball camp?
Why can't she even look at me?
When I have to sit on Dakota Avenue in the middle of town and sell
my Grandma's vegetables, why can't she and her friends see me? I
mean it's not like I'm asking her to wave or treat me like I'm
human. I just want her, someone, anyone to see, to know what it's
like.
The heat, it gets so hot everyday sitting out here, week after week
with no shade. It's at least 100 degrees every day the whole month of
June. We have to wear those little tops and shorts or we'd die of
heat, I swear. I hate those men looking at me; but, I can't help that.
It's just too hot to hide.
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So hot, yet, I have to jump in the truck, get on my knees and push the
corn up to the front. No where to get away. Gotta get back up front to
help my cousin sack it up. So hot, yet, we gotta shuck it some so it will
fit in the bags without ripping them. Grandma gets mad when we rip too
many bags.
Gotta rub the hardened dirt off the potatoes, so people will buy 'em.
No one likes to buy dirt. What's so wrong with dirt? They can wash it
off easily at home in their sinks. Why do I have to harden and cut my
hands for these people when they won't even look at me?
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I want out of this.
I want away.
I was not meant for this.
Somebody, please help me.
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My body hurts so much. My arms, my legs, my back, my fingers, all of
them bruised, scabbed and hard. I'm only 12, damn it. No one else at
school has to do this. Only a few of them even have to work and what
they do is nothing like this slavery.
Why can't I ever sleep on my back? It's so unfair. Why can't I roll
over? My stomach and thighs burn so bad with sunburn on top of sunburn
on top of sunburn and to have to rub them on this davenport? It's all
so unfair.
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Why is there no shade? No place to hide from harvesting the crop?
I want out. I want out. I want away. I want to sleep. I want to dream.
There is no way, no one, no escape. And, I am so scared, so afraid
because I know in the morning, I'll have to, to, I don't even want to
say it, it can't be real.
Please, make something happen so I don't have to go the field.
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The itchy, sticky, filthy things, the bugs and the corn waiting out
there to scratch and scare me. My drunk, half-breed Uncle always
yelling nasty things at me, calling me a wimp, a slut. I'm 12. It's
bad enough I'm about the only girl in my class to have my period; but,
that does not make me a slut. It's just so hot. I can't help it I have
boobs and when I work my clothes don't fit right and they pop out.
Stop calling me that. It's not fair. Stop and stop making that sick
fucking, drunk giggle-laugh.
It's not my fault they all loved my dad more than you.
You're the bastard. You half-breed, bastard son of a bitch, pit-faced
fuck. You leave me Alone.
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Stop making me cuss.
Stop making me one of you.
I'm twenty-one now.
I just want to be left alone to be free.
Why must I always force myself to remember. I am so ashamed.
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I try to take pride in these muscles, so developed, so defined from
when I was young. They'll never go away. People always want to know
what gym I go to. Why can't I lie? Why can't I nod and spew out some
name I see in the neighborhood on a billboard? Why do I always have to
get real quiet, make them uncomfortable, look them in the eyes, and
with my driest voice tell them I grew up on 'a farm'?
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©2001 AnyaHard.com
- Original Photographs for Harvesting - Betty Knudsen, Jackson, NE -
1985
News Clippings - The South Sioux City Star, August 1, 1985
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