My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki

Author:Ruth Ozeki
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Fiction
ISBN: 9781922148568
Publisher: Text Publishing
Published: 1998-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The next morning we went to Cemetery Hill to shoot the panoramics of the town. It was one of those beautiful Montana mornings, when you wake up and walk outside and it hits you: Oh, right, this is why they call it Big Sky country. I mean, the sky is so big and so blue, you can’t really think about anything else.

Cemetery Hill wasn’t much of a hill at all, but it provided enough of a rise to simulate a vista. A chain gang was working at one end of the cemetery, weeding and tending the graves, though most of the men were just enjoying the weather, smoking and sitting on the headstones. These guys were from the penitentiary, where at one point the sheriff had threatened to send us. I recognized a deputy, who waved to us. After a brief discussion of my editorial needs, I left Suzuki to get the shots of the town. He tends to work better on his own, especially when he is hungover, which is most of the time.

Two white moths were chasing each other, and finally they locked together and tumbled out of the air, landing on the thick green grass of a grave, where they fluttered and mated, then came to rest. The small battered headstone read:

our

Belov’d daughter

Ann Wren

born March 10, 1848

died March 24, 1848

Ann Wren. It was a sweet, plain name. Her parents had given it to her, known her for two weeks, fourteen short days, before she slipped away from them—buried here, belov’d for eternity. I wandered on, moving from stone to stone, reading off the names of the early settlers and the dates of their lives and deaths: Nathan Field, 8 years old; Jasper Beckwith, 3 months; Elsa May Foster, 2 years.

So many children.

There were adults buried here too.

But the tiny, crooked headstones were the ones that drew me.

Then suddenly it came to me, why I was here.

Whispering the beautiful names of these dead pioneer children, I was testing them for sound, invoking their identities, trying them on the nascent son or daughter who had settled inside me. It was unreal. Name is very first thing. Name is face to all the world.

But you shopping for one in graveyard?

I could hear Ma’s horror and it made me smile. One thing was finally clear—I wanted my baby.

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