Suzanne by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette

Author:Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: 2017-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

The hens haven’t laid any eggs. The hens turn out to be roosters. Ten roosters. You’ve been had.

You break their necks one by one. You cook them down to the bones, which you boil for hours, filling the air in the house that September is settling into.

In the field, beet stems brave the grey, their bright green breaking up the monochrome.

Soon it rains, and everyone heads out to help with the harvest. Ten acres of beets to pull from the ground, in the cold rain.

You plunge your red hands into the mud, eager to feel the bulb of the vegetable, which you loosen before pulling on the leaves, in a clean jerk. The memory of the dandelion fields comes back to you, the rage that you harnessed to pull up thousands of them. You gulp it down. You remember your shamefaced father, defeated, shoulders sagging and heavy. You remember the Hole and the dirty child who may well still be there, stooped and grimy. You remember your fragile mother and her hands tired from rocking her children, the river that unearths the dead and the jam-packed church. You move from furrow to furrow, as in war. You uproot the vegetables that will feed your children.

One day is not enough, and you spend entire weeks outside; you become a field of mud.

Bags of beets are piling up in the house. You sleep with the smell of sweet earth, which turns your stomach now.

Fall creeps between the walls, settles into your bones.

Finally one morning, delivery men from the plant come by. They collect the hundred-odd bags picked by the young people from the city, whom they mock behind their backs.

They weigh them in the back of their truck, and give you a price. You don’t haggle. This isn’t your world.

You find out later that they paid you half of what they should have for the harvest. No one has the energy to fight. The house is cold. Winter’s cruel incursion has started.

You announce to Marcel that you’re pregnant.

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