The Matter Is Life (5 page)

The next morning, the THIRD one, we didn’t even go to the bathroom or nothin. Went to bed dressed and ready and got up, grabbed them beat-out tired lunch bags and made it to the bus … on time.

Now, there was a very disgusting group we were goin with and we felt so superior to them mentally and physically. We knew we would be the champs that whole year and we laughed at them and everything! Especially one old lady who looked like she was 109 years old.

We just laughed at everything! We almost rolled in the aisle of the bus, but we kept it down except for that piece of laugh that sometimes busts out in spite of all you can do to hold it in!

One old wino-lookin man was telling everybody bout his experience as a picker and everything he said he would add, “Don’t you know? Don’t you know?” That cracked us up! We didn’t listen to what he said, just how he said it. We found out later we shoulda just listened to what he was sayin.

Well, daylight was coming fast now, and the farther we
drove, the hotter it was gettin to be. It didn’t look hot, but when that big, ole red sun shone down on you through that ole dusty window, it was hot! The scenery was nice tho. You know, space and trees and a big sky and all. To a city kid, it was different. It was good. Like back home. I had forgot I missed it, with all the other stuff I had to have on my mind. We finally just relaxed and enjoyed it. I know it’s some birds in the city, but we could SEE these, justa flying way out all over in the sky. The tall trees wavin and stretchin, like us, in the morning sun. And the sky … the sky was so clear … and blue. I got so relaxed and dreamy, I even dozed off a few times. Doe slept. John was still sniggling at the old wino til I told him to quit it cause he was nudging me with his elbow, lettin me know to listen to somethin and all I wanted, at that time, was to look out the dirty window and dream about stuff.

Anyway after bout two hours or so, the bus arrived at a field and we stretched quickly and flexed our muscles and jumped off. We were ready! Ready to get started on our big money! Everybody else just walked off, natural like. We grabbed two or three sacks each and told the man to point to our part. He said, “You all kin take any part but just stay in this section.” Okey!!

It was an onion field. We started right in diggin and pullin them onions to load our sacks just like we was throwin money in them sacks. We threw the extra sacks around our necks, but in two minutes that sun was so hot on our backs we threw them sacks off, watching where, so we would know how far we had to come back for them. We were organized!

Well, fifteen minutes later the bus driver came out and, waving his hands over his head, he hollered, “Wrong field,
wrong field!” and pointed toward the bus to let us know to head back. Oh shit! we said to the sun (and we didn’t even curse much usually). He continued, “Throw em down, leave em here!” We said to each other, “Not us! Hell, this is hard work!” Everybody else must have said the same thing cause everybody took a few onions out and threw them on the ground, then took their sacks on the bus with them. My cousin John, the city boy, grabbed all ours back when nobody was looking and some of the other ones too! He got on the bus with onions falling every-whichaway, saying they were all his.

Now, that onion smell … in that hot bus … was overpowering, so we were really glad to get to the right field. That took about ten minutes or so, then we were hopping out to get going again!

The sun wasn’t even up very high, maybe it was about 9:30, but it was like it had been up there shining all week! I wanted to take some of my clothes off! But I’m a girl, and a lady, as my grandmama taught me, so I kept em on, even that thick cotton undershirt she had made me put on. Chile, I was hot!

We got started. The field was still onions. I stayed close to my cousins because the 109-year-old lady and I were the only two women and she didn’t get no eye action, but the men seemed to look at me a lot from under their hats. See, I kinda had a little bust line, you know. So I was careful to stay close to protection should anybody lose their mind out there lookin at my new shape I was gettin! Anyway, now we could go to work for real.

Don’t you ever let anyone tell you that an onion is smooth! You had to pull so hard to get them things out of the
ground! My smooth, young skin started comin off on them onions. I went over to the bus man and asked for a knife to dig them with and he asked me, “How old are you?”

I lied, “Sixteen.”

He said, “That ain’t old enough, you have to be eighteen.” He smiled with some yellow teeth between his cracked lips.

Darn! I hadn’t lied enough! So I gave him a mean look and went on back to my row and my sack. I had about half a sack only. John and Doe were not too much further ahead of me, but everybody else was on their second row and their third or fourth bag! The 109-year-old lady even was workin on her third sack! Maybe she was only a hundred years old!

Well, anyway, at lunch time, two and a half hours later, I had a bag and a half. John had two bags and Doe had about two and a half! I know John had stole some of them onions from the other sacks when he went to start a new row. At fifteen cents a sack, we had made ninety cents! Altogether.

Ach! (This picking was teaching me how to speak German.) We only had three hours more to go and it was goin to cost us $1.25 each to pay for the bus trip! Ach! We hadn’t asked Gramma for no money because that didn’t make sense! WE were going to make plenty money! Besides, she would have screamed anyway. One, for waking her up, and two, for the money. The hundred-year-old lady had fifteen sacks. Fifteen! All by herself!

Lunch time. We got our lunch bags from the bus and looked for some shade. Quick as we wipe the sweat away it would come right back. It was hot, hot, HOT! I have to say it three times! We were hot, sweaty and dirty and tired. Oh Lord, we was tired. My hands were raw. The sack was heavy
and only half-filled. I had to lug mine with me everywhere just to keep my own cousins from takin any. We looked at each other and we almost cried! But … we were too strong for that. Besides, nobody wanted to be first to cry. We all knew one thing tho … we HAD to get enough onions to get home. That $1.25 each!

We opened our lunch bags (under no shade) and those bologny sandwitches were almost rolls, they had turned up so far! The lettuce, an ugly shade of greenish-brown, we threw away. The tomato, we just sqwished and threw in the dirt (even the birds flew away from em). We ate at the rest.

Then a bean lunch truck drove up. Those beans were smelling GOOD! All over that field! And we didn’t have any money! Now … I knew enough to know that some of those men had been eyeing me all day and so I just walked over to the bean truck and stood there lookin like a hungry fool. My cousins just stood back and watched me. Somebody beckoned me to the bean window, but I shook my head with the saddest face I could make, I wasn’t playin either, and said I didn’t have any money. After a little while, the wino-lookin older man bought me a bowl of beans. A whole bowl of beans! Oh! they smelled so good! I smiled down at them and almost screamed with delight as I walked away from the man, thanking him. I even forgot how hot and tired I was. Only for a minute tho.

I had swallowed two mouthfulls when I felt the heat from the peppers. The stuff was loaded with peppers! Flames seemed to, and did, come out on my breath! I wished I was still starvin again. I gave the bowl to my cousins who began to fight over it as I rushed to the water can! I was still drinking water when they got there in a little while and
pushed me away from the water. Them beans was hot! Now we were burning up on the outside from the sun and on the inside from the beans. We were broke and had about six sacks between us! I went to sit on the bus, mad, to try to think this out, since I am the one with the brains. I snatched that paper contract we had signed, that the busman gave me a copy of, from my pocket and started to read the fine print. Could they leave us out there, God only knows where? If we didn’t have the dollar twenty-five each? You had to pay them when they paid you, just before you left for home. Home. Oh, home, home, home. Oh, Gramma, Gramma, sweet Mama, sweet Daddy. I woulda cried cept I had to save my strength. But my heart felt like it was too big for my chest, and it hurt to swallow.

My associates came on the bus to get the lowdown and I gave it to them! We had to have the money. As we sat there, I looked out the window and saw the old lady; she had bout eighteen sacks or more now. That beat-up old lady! She had gone back to work early! She was taking care of her business. You know? I looked at that old lady and I respected her! I respected her because she was doing what she had to do and she was doing it good!

I turned back to my problems cause I meant to solve em and respect myself too.

I looked at my cousins … two of my problems! I told em where we all stood. Doe, the country cousin, went back out there and really started packing those onions. John, the city cousin, went out there to see whose onions he could steal; his eyes darting back and forth over the people in the field. My grandmama say you can just about tell who is gonna go to jail in life, just by watchin what people do in
their daily livin. I began to understand her more. Then, I went to talk to the busman and show him my sore, raw hands, so I could get some sympathy and maybe a free ride home, but he was busy, he said, so I got my sack and started digging onions again, with tears in my eyes and evil in my heart!

I don’t know where they got that song from, “Shine On, Harvest MOON,” cause I will never forget that sun shining on me in that harvest. We really worked, tho. Doe was tryin to tear up those rows, and John was stealin so fast that a man stopped him and musta told him a few hard things that made him see the benefit of diggin his own onions cause he did work a few rows of his own for awhile. For awhile. No-body wanted to walk home after this hot, bone-tired day. We didn’t talk, laugh or even smile anymore. Cause wasn’t nothin funny no more.

Well … we got on the bus when it was time to go home. Somehow we had made it! We had thirteen cents over the fare. Don’t ask me how. Just thirteen cents, thats all. We sat with our mouths poked out all the way home. Thinking hard.

We had never really thought about labor and unions and all that stuff. Or given too much attention to the civil rights movements, cause it didn’t seem to touch us too much where we lived. But, now, we noticed there were not but two white people on the bus. All the rest of us were black, with a few mexicans, I guess, all colored in some way. But all poor, even the white ones.

I looked at that hundred-year-old lady who had worked so hard. She might have been twenty years old for all I knew. Just tired and wore out, thats all! A hundred years
worth of tired! My respect grew and something else I didn’t know what to call it.

I tried to give the man who had bought the beans for me the thirteen cents, but he just shook his head, “No.” Said, “Help somebody else on down the road someday.” Then cracked his face into a kinda smile and waved me on away.

We were even too tired to doze off after we were crumbled in our seats. We didn’t see the trees and the sky on our way home. But I’m glad the space was out there … we needed it in that old, creaking, rattling, heaving bus that was hot and funky with the sweat of a hard day’s “honest” work.

But there was something more … the smell of poor … the smell of somebody’s home being worse than those fields. Some had packed a few onions in their pockets or lunch bags. What, I wondered, would they buy with that body-breaking little money to go with those onions? I felt something … something … but I don’t know what it was. It was just there in my mind.

My grandmama, even my mama, my daddy had done this kinda work a little. I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to be quiet and feel it til I knew what it was. It felt a little like resignation … I seemed to catch it from the people in the bus. Something in me refused it. I changed it to indignation. For myself.

When we got off the bus at home, I knew why the people walked hurriedly away. To rest … and forget, until tomorrow or … death, I guess. I don’t know. I only know that day has made me think so hard. So hard.

We started home with the thirteen cents. Somehow, I started crying and they almost did, until we started laughing. Then we each took a penny and threw it in the street. Then
we almost cried again from our aching bones, til we laughed again. We finally got home and told Gramma about it. She laughed so hard at us, we got mad at her and cried til we couldn’t help laughing at each other.

She made us bathe. We didn’t want to, we just wanted to fall out in the bed. After, we were glad we had washed all the onion, dirt and sweat off. Gramma gave us a good hot meal, store bought, then we hit that bed and I believe I was sleep midair on my way to the pillow. Gramma said we all snored like old men.

We always have to go to church every Sunday, whether we feel like it or not because Gramma says we have to learn what road to take in life. Nowwww, I understand what that means, a little better, cause I’m not takin that road out to them fields again! Not if I can help it! We like God too, I guess, because when we really couldn’t think of what to spend that dime on and how hard we had worked for it, we decided to give it to Him. I don’t know what the preacher did with it, but we gave it to God.

I don’t know what John and Doe thought, but I said a prayer for that hundred-year-old lady, then for the man who bought the beans, then broke down and included them all. But the last thing I said to God was, “Please, please, don’t let me make my life like that. Please.”

Lately, I pay more attention to the labor and black movements. Or just poor people movements. Maybe I would be a labor official or something where you have some say bout what you do. I don’t know. All I do know is I don’t ever want to go pick nothing in no field no more unless it is my field, my own. Or I was the boss.

You know, you don’t have to be white to be president of
anything. Even of the United States. I could be president! Black as I am! And if you white and poor, you don’t have to be rich to get to be president either.