Anna’s fingers curl around the seeds.
“You can take my row,” says Maria and heads back to the garden. Anna follows, kneels down in the dirt, opens her hand, and plants a shriveled pea. All around her the sound of work resumes.
THE FOLLOWING WEEKS ARE A CONSTANT VIGIL FOR THE first green sprouts to poke their heads up. The peas are first, followed shortly by beans, then onions, lettuce, carrots…until the entire black earth is speckled with tender green. Mornings are for watering to fend against the drying sun. Daytime is for weeding and searching for insects hungrily intent on devouring the crop. Everyone participates, checking the rows for caterpillars, potato beetles, cutworms, aphids, spider mites…an endless barrage of invading armies.
Each person has their own killing style. Maria, Dania, and Lesya efficiently remove the offender and crush it between their nails without a second thought. Maria actually finds the sound of the bug’s shell popping somewhat soothing. She starts debugging a row of potatoes, her mind spinning with the day’s chores, but bythe time she reaches the end of the row, having killed fifty or sixty bugs, her mind has calmed just to the sound of— pop— .
Sofia can’t bear touching the bugs and makes Katya pull them from the plant. They have a killing block, a small piece of board they put the bug on and stomp. Once, Sofia was in such haste to annihilate a cutworm that she accidentally stomped Katya’s retreating hand. A purple bruise bloomed like a cauliflower. Katya was assigned to another row, and Sofia was forced to pick the bugs from the plant herself.
Ivan and Petro prefer to race. Ivan in lettuce, Petro in cabbage, they count: ready-set-go. The first few games the victor was whoever finished first, but once Maria inspected their rows and found at least twenty bugs in the first ten feet, the rules were changed to the victor being the one who killed the most. The boys gather three or four bugs at a time, then rub their hands together, holding up the smeared remains to each other’s delight. Large bugs, like cutworms, are gathered in jars so the final count can be verified, but also to act as execution chambers.
They experiment with myriad techniques: sometimes drowning, sometimes heat, suffocation, dehydration, dismemberment. The most dangerous method is frying them on the woodstove. The boys are certain the punishment will be severe if Maria discovers what the burned crisps are that she scrubs off the stovetop every night. The best method, by far, is leaving them on Sofia’s side of the bed.
The garden is constantly under attack. The first tender shoots are prone to damping off—a soil infection that will rot the seedlings and decimate the crop.
If the infant plants manage to survive, they still need to overcome early blight, late blight, rust, and downy mildew. Any sign of a fungus is a call to arms. Infected leaves are pulled off, wholeplants sacrificed, and their remains cremated in the woodstove. Maria concocts a sulfur mixture and pours the toxic tea over and around the plants.
If the plants survive the blights, they still face late frosts. Maria nervously steps in and out of the shack on the nights the temperature starts to drop. On more than one occasion, she sounds the alarm after the children have climbed into bed. Sofia and Dania follow their mother into the night, illuminated by the kerosene lamp, to cover the plants with burlap. Not until mid-morning, after the sun has warmed the soil, does she gently lift the burlap off, relieved to feel the escaping heat and find the plants still thriving.
There are so many enemies. The birds; the cats that dig at the furrows for a place to shit; their own clumsy feet; and the cow that got loose when Ivan left the barn door open because he said the cow told him it was afraid of the dark and didn’t want to be alone.
Maria prays that there will be no hail, no drought, no frost, no swarming infestations, no floods, no
“You can take my row,” says Maria and heads back to the garden. Anna follows, kneels down in the dirt, opens her hand, and plants a shriveled pea. All around her the sound of work resumes.
THE FOLLOWING WEEKS ARE A CONSTANT VIGIL FOR THE first green sprouts to poke their heads up. The peas are first, followed shortly by beans, then onions, lettuce, carrots…until the entire black earth is speckled with tender green. Mornings are for watering to fend against the drying sun. Daytime is for weeding and searching for insects hungrily intent on devouring the crop. Everyone participates, checking the rows for caterpillars, potato beetles, cutworms, aphids, spider mites…an endless barrage of invading armies.
Each person has their own killing style. Maria, Dania, and Lesya efficiently remove the offender and crush it between their nails without a second thought. Maria actually finds the sound of the bug’s shell popping somewhat soothing. She starts debugging a row of potatoes, her mind spinning with the day’s chores, but bythe time she reaches the end of the row, having killed fifty or sixty bugs, her mind has calmed just to the sound of— pop— .
Sofia can’t bear touching the bugs and makes Katya pull them from the plant. They have a killing block, a small piece of board they put the bug on and stomp. Once, Sofia was in such haste to annihilate a cutworm that she accidentally stomped Katya’s retreating hand. A purple bruise bloomed like a cauliflower. Katya was assigned to another row, and Sofia was forced to pick the bugs from the plant herself.
Ivan and Petro prefer to race. Ivan in lettuce, Petro in cabbage, they count: ready-set-go. The first few games the victor was whoever finished first, but once Maria inspected their rows and found at least twenty bugs in the first ten feet, the rules were changed to the victor being the one who killed the most. The boys gather three or four bugs at a time, then rub their hands together, holding up the smeared remains to each other’s delight. Large bugs, like cutworms, are gathered in jars so the final count can be verified, but also to act as execution chambers.
They experiment with myriad techniques: sometimes drowning, sometimes heat, suffocation, dehydration, dismemberment. The most dangerous method is frying them on the woodstove. The boys are certain the punishment will be severe if Maria discovers what the burned crisps are that she scrubs off the stovetop every night. The best method, by far, is leaving them on Sofia’s side of the bed.
The garden is constantly under attack. The first tender shoots are prone to damping off—a soil infection that will rot the seedlings and decimate the crop.
If the infant plants manage to survive, they still need to overcome early blight, late blight, rust, and downy mildew. Any sign of a fungus is a call to arms. Infected leaves are pulled off, wholeplants sacrificed, and their remains cremated in the woodstove. Maria concocts a sulfur mixture and pours the toxic tea over and around the plants.
If the plants survive the blights, they still face late frosts. Maria nervously steps in and out of the shack on the nights the temperature starts to drop. On more than one occasion, she sounds the alarm after the children have climbed into bed. Sofia and Dania follow their mother into the night, illuminated by the kerosene lamp, to cover the plants with burlap. Not until mid-morning, after the sun has warmed the soil, does she gently lift the burlap off, relieved to feel the escaping heat and find the plants still thriving.
There are so many enemies. The birds; the cats that dig at the furrows for a place to shit; their own clumsy feet; and the cow that got loose when Ivan left the barn door open because he said the cow told him it was afraid of the dark and didn’t want to be alone.
Maria prays that there will be no hail, no drought, no frost, no swarming infestations, no floods, no
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