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Sparkle (4)
Today people call the farm I lived on when I was a little girl a "hobby farm." For us, it was more than that: our farm was a survival farm. That's where our milk, our vegetables, our beef, and our pork came from. We had hay fields, oat fields and corn fields to feed the animals. Dad worked for Ma Bell, but the farm was an important part of our survival. Most years, Dad planted winter wheat as a cash crop. One year Dad planted beans; beans could pay out big time.
One year Dad planted soybeans instead of wheat. Soybeans sold for $3.00 a bushel and wheat, only $1.30. That was going to put money in the bank, that's for sure. Only it rained and rained in September and October, and Dad couldn't get the beans out of the field. Dad took me out there one day, just like he usually did with the wheat. He rolled a handful of bean pods between his palms, same as he did with the wheat. Only with wheat, he blew like a whisper on his palm and the chaff flew into the breeze, leaving behind a treasure of crunchy kernels to pop into my mouth and snack on, right then and there. The bean pod opened up all limp, revealing black, moldy beans that smelled like the mildew that got around the basement walls in August and had to be washed off with bleach. Dad clenched his teeth together in that way that sent ripples up along his jaw, and he looked way out across the field like he was searching for something.
Dad never seemed so far away and, at the same time, right there in the field beside me. I felt worse than when he yelled at me, 'cause when he yelled
at me, I always thought of something to say back. Even when I kept it in my head, I at least knew I had something to say. Standing together in that field almost touching and feeling so far apart, well, I just felt empty.
That was the same year that Dad's stories about Ma Bell got a whole lot less fun. Instead of laughing with all her silver fillings showing, Mom started leaning forward when Dad talked and covering his hand with hers with her brown eyes looking into his blue eyes -- the same way Dad searched out over that soybean field. Dad talked about his friend Clem and about who was getting overtime and who wasn't, and how the list for overtime got put together, and who was watching who worked how much. That was the year Ma Bell lost her generosity, and Dad was out of work.
Mom brought home gobs of processed cheese, kinda like Velveta, and butter and flour and sugar. Everything with no regular labels like Kraft or Land-o-Lakes or Pioneer; just plain wrappers, with U.S.D.A. Farm Surplus printed in black. I loved to read, even labels. Mom brought home so much butter, we had one pound for each person in the house every single month. That was way more than we could eat, so Mom put it in the freezer with the day-old bread she got for 10¢ a loaf. I loved Macaroni and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches, so the cheese was super-great. Usually Mom only made that stuff on Friday, when we had to abstain from meat; now we got it anytime of the week. Neat-o, keen-o.
Two ladies in Sunday dresses, and wool coats with fur collars, drove up in the circle drive with a big basket of food all wrapped up in cellophane with a big red bow up top, plus a huge Thanksgiving Day turkey about the same size as baby Frankie. Those somebodies came up to the front door and knocked. That's how I knew they were strangers; friends and family always come to the back door, strangers and salesmen come to the front door. Besides nobody I knew wore Sunday dresses and smelled like lily of the valley in the middle of the week, unless they were going into the city, like for a doctor's appointment
