Cruel Harvest (7 page)

“Take them out to get some ice cream,” he said.

My heart raced and my mouth watered. We children looked at each other, our eyes excited and hungry. When I looked up at Mama, I sensed something was not right, but the thought of ice cream kept me from heeding the warning. I had only had ice cream once before at my uncle's house, and we were so hungry.

As we skipped to the car, the first sign of trouble became clear. I heard Daddy over my shoulder.

“No, you stay.”

I spun around, panicked that he meant me. Instead, he had a hand on Brenda's shoulder, and his fingers looked to be digging into her flesh. His face looked flush and his eyes glassy. Mama stopped.

“Get out,” he hissed at her.

Mama didn't move. It was as if her body, standing in one place, shook in two different directions. Fear told her to get into the car. Her maternal instincts told her to stay. Daddy pushed Brenda back away from the door of the shack, and he stepped forward threateningly. Mama flinched and hurried us into the car.

“Be gone for an hour,” he ordered.

Mama didn't say anything. Nellie and Robbie were talking about the ice cream. I was, too, but I kept looking at Mama as we drove to the gas station. Susie sat in the front seat with Mama.

Mama led us inside the Dairy Queen, and we stood in line. Each of us got a cone with one scoop of vanilla. By today's standard, it was small. To us, it was the greatest treat we could imagine.

That first lick was like heaven. The creamy sweetness took my taste buds by surprise. I smiled in delight and let the coldness turn warm before swallowing it down. Mama got us back in the car and started off. She headed away from the cabin.

After a few more licks, I thought again about Brenda. She was alone with Daddy, and she didn't get any ice cream. I decided I would save the rest of mine for her.

Mama kept driving around. It felt like we were going in circles, and eventually I realized that we actually were. All I could do was watch as my ice cream melted. I tried keeping it in the cone, but trails of milky white ran down its edges. I used my dress to wipe up the part I couldn't lick off.

The sun set, and still we did not go home. The hour started to feel like a month.

“Are we going back home?” I finally asked.

She did not answer. I don't even know if she heard me, she seemed so lost in thought. Finally, hesitantly, Mama pulled to a stop outside the shack. Before she could say anything, I burst out of the car and ran to the door with the melted cone still dripping down my arm. I pulled the door open, and the truth hit me like a fist to the stomach.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. It was sickeningly musky and hung in the air like an accusation. Darkness had descended outside, and a single lantern burned in the shack. It lit Brenda, cowering on the floor at the corner of the table, whimpering like a wounded animal. Her long, brown hair hung in front of her face in bloody strands, and her clothes were torn and soaking wet. Her face was bruised and swollen.

I stood in the doorway staring at her, and a realization without words crashed into my young mind. I can remember the feeling of the melted vanilla ice cream that had run down my arm, dripping to the floor of the shack. I finally understood what it was that Daddy had torn from Brenda. It was her innocence.

Mama understood right away. Maybe she had known since he sent us out to get ice cream. What she knew, and I did not, was that this was not the first time Daddy had hurt Brenda. Mama brushed Brenda's hair as she passed by her and I watched Brenda shrink from her touch. Mama got the younger kids put down to bed on our usual pile of cardboard and dirty clothes. Brenda followed, quietly and unwashed. I always slept next to Brenda, so when Mama left us, I reached a hand out, scared but determined. I touched Brenda and she did not shy away. All I could think to do to make her feel better was rub her back. I did that, and I felt her sobs.

“I love you, Sissie,” I whispered. “No matter what.”

Brenda cried all night, and I rubbed her back lightly, as you might a baby. After a while my arm ached, but I would not stop. I almost fell asleep, but I forced myself awake again. With all my soul I wanted to take the pain from Brenda, and this was the only way I knew to relieve some of it.

In that darkness, as I reached out to comfort my sister, I realized something else. I lost my innocence that night as well. Unlike Brenda's that was ripped violently away, mine melted like the ice cream cone I'd tried to save for her.

Several months later
our family situation took a new turn. Mama started gaining weight, and she seemed different, but we were so busy it took awhile for me to notice. One day, out in the field, I asked Brenda.

“What's wrong with Mama?”

Brenda didn't say anything at first. I looked up and found her staring off into the distance. Then, in a soft voice, she spoke.

“She's gonna have a baby, honey.”

I did not understand at first. But I was getting older, so it didn't take me long.

“We're gonna have a baby brother or sister?” I asked.

Brenda nodded. I jumped to my feet. Unable to stand still, I pranced in place.

“Oh, I hope it's a sister,” I said. “Wouldn't that be wonderful?”

Brenda petted my hair as she looked to where Daddy worked a few hundred feet away. “Let's get back to work.”

Chapter 5
Baby Girl

The season changed
as the baby grew in my mama's belly. Her feet swelled, and she got tired quickly when working out in the fields. I was almost seven. It was the first time I could remember seeing this miracle. I decided it was to be a girl, and I could not wait to meet my baby sister.

Cotton season in Oklahoma was over, and Daddy put us on the move again. Daddy continued in what was a cycle of jobs that crossed the country in conjunction with the harvests. This time he made a deal for another car and drove us north. We eventually stopped in Manistee, Michigan. He arrived too late, and the farmer had already hired all the workers he needed. We were not permitted to move into one of the migrant worker shacks. The weather was turning cool, so he moved us into a single-wide trailer outside of town.

Our new home, though there was nothing really new about it, sat on a lonely piece of land overgrown with flowering weeds and bushes the size of an average tree. I clearly remember the look and feel of a small window in the front of the trailer. It cut a hole in the rickety front door and was covered in a layer of greasy dust, adding a haze to the view of the outside. The dirt and gravel driveway twisted about a hundred yards to the one lane road out front. The remains of a long untended apple orchard backed up to the trailer.

The trailer itself was ten feet by sixty feet and smelled of mildew and oil. The linoleum had worn down to the subfloor in spots, and there was no electricity. Instead, kerosene lamps provided the only light at night, and Mama cooked on an oil stove. I was excited, though, when I found we had running water.

The trailer was somewhat furnished. It had a single threadbare sofa that was missing a leg and wobbled when you sat on it, which I thought was funny. There was a table in the kitchen with chrome legs and two red vinyl chairs that were in pretty good shape. Each end of the trailer had a small bedroom. The kitchen and living room were in the middle, and we children slept in the bedroom on the opposite end of Mama's room. We still didn't have beds, but we laid down cardboard and piles of dirty clothes for softness and warmth. We still had the green wool army blanket that all of us shared.

As we settled in the trailer, I became even more aware of the changes that had come over the family. We didn't start off the next day working at a farm. Instead, when the sun barely peeked over the horizon, I heard Daddy leave. I laid on the floor, not daring to move until car tires crunched down the rocky drive.

The other children stirred about the same time. We knew when Daddy was moving around and when he wasn't. No one said anything, though. I didn't get up right away even after the car had clearly left. It was peaceful just knowing we were alone.

After a while, it seemed that the only movement was the birds calling from the overgrown orchard behind the trailer. Finally, I got up and walked out of the room the children shared. The sunlight made horizontal lines across the thin kitchen as it cut through the dingy windows. Mama busied herself cleaning.

No matter what conditions were forced upon us, Mama always tried to make it clean. She never stopped tidying and sweeping. Finding her hard at work was not strange to me. Instead of bothering her, I went about playing with my most precious possession: my paper dolls. During our travels from camp to camp, I had found several old magazines and a Sears catalog. I pulled the pages out, folded them in half, and tore along one half of a silhouette, making a perfect little person, arms and legs outstretched. Susie, who was the brightest of us, showed me how to tear out dresses for the girls and pants for the boys. I tore a small tab out on each side of each garment so that the clothes would stay on the paper dolls when the tab folded over.

I played by myself for hours, pretending each doll had a name. The mama and daddy were nice, and all the children were happy. Nobody was hungry. Every once in a while, I would look up or make a noise, hoping Mama would notice me. She never looked my way, but kept on cleaning things even if it looked as though she'd cleaned them already.

Eventually, everyone was up. Brenda went about helping Mama, but I don't remember them talking much. I went outside to play with Nellie and Robbie. Nellie and I did not get along very well. Most often, we would end up fighting and cutting any game short. I think it was because we were so close to the same age.

When I finally got too frustrated with Nellie to play anymore, I went back inside. Daddy's absence left an air of relief and excitement. The house lightened when he was gone, as would Mama. I found Brenda, Susie, and Mama inside reading some old magazines. I wanted to play, but Brenda and Susie wouldn't talk to me. When I made my presence known, only Brenda looked up, so I chose her as the target of my seven-year-old ways.

“Stop reading and let's play,” I said.

Brenda glanced up just long enough to give me a glare.

“Stopped-up-nose-Brenda, read, read, read,” I teased.

Those were the worst words I could think to say. Daddy's absence gave me courage, so I took the game to its next step. I darted to where my sister sat on the floor and snatched her magazine away, giggling.

“I got your magazine, ole read-a-lot-Brenda.”

I waited in front of her just a second to see what she was going to do. When she got up from the broken couch, I raced, giggling, out the door to the front yard. Then I heard the door swing open behind me, and Brenda gave chase, calling out to me with a good-natured warning.

“I'll get you Frances!”

I ran as fast as I could. Brenda tried, but she couldn't catch me. This made the game all the more fun for both of us. Even Brenda was laughing when I finally relented. I handed her the magazine and she laid it on the dry grass. She took me by my two hands and started to twirl me through the air—a game I loved!

I remember feeling so happy in that moment. The air blew my already unruly hair into my eyes as the ground spun below me. I laughed, knowing what would come next. The game was called
statue
. When Brenda eased me toward the ground and let go, I tried to fight the dizziness and freeze in place.

“Statue!” Brenda called out.

The idea was to stay the way you landed when the person turned you loose. I stumbled to one knee and put my arms out like I was still holding on to her. I would not move until Brenda said, “free.” Then we did it again and again until I felt like the world spun whether I did or not. The dizzier I got, the more I liked it. We were laughing so loud that the others heard us and came running to join in the fun. Brenda set up a game of red light, green light. We played for some time, all of us enjoying the rare taste of freedom. Eventually, even we tired of the games and headed back inside together.

Brenda went back to her book. Before the beating she took, Mama would have been right in the middle of our game, laughing louder than the rest of us. Not this time. I found her sitting in one of the kitchen chairs. She seemed to be staring off into nothing. I moved over to where she sat and climbed up onto her lap. I expected warm arms to embrace me. Instead, it was like climbing onto a fallen tree. Mama did not touch me. She did not even acknowledge I was there. I ended up rolling right off her and sliding to the floor.

Rising to my knees, I looked up into Mama's face. Her eyes were blank—as though she was not there any longer.

On another night
weeks after we arrived in Michigan, Mama was sweeping the floor of the small living room. Even though a seven-year-old can usually send troubles rolling off her like water, I found myself watching Mama and thinking about when I had climbed up onto her lap. She stopped sweeping at one point and looked out the small window in the door. She had been doing that most days, staring out that glass for what felt like hours without moving or saying anything.

Curious, I walked over and stood beside her. I rose up to my tiptoes and tried to look out the window.