The Farm by Joanne Ramos

Author:Joanne Ramos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

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AMALIA, FULL OF milk, has fallen asleep in the stroller, which is both easier and harder for Ate. It is easier because it means that Amalia will not demand attention, and so Ate can focus on her errands. It is harder because it means that when Ate gets to the store she will need to bring the stroller inside. She will need to lift the stroller if there are stairs and maneuver it through narrow aisles and around people who stand in the way and then sigh in annoyance when the bulky bags hanging from the stroller’s handles accidentally bump them.

Luckily, the entrance to the MusicShack is easy, with only one step. Ate tilts the stroller to lift its front wheels up over the threshold and enters the store. It is loud, with music blaring and a wall of flat-screen televisions turned to different channels. Ate walks up to a young man wearing a red shirt with a nametag pinned onto his chest. He leans against a tall speaker and types on his cellphone with his thumbs.

“I need to find a music player. And earphones,” Ate announces.

The man looks up from his phone and wordlessly saunters away. Ate follows him. They pass the television and computer sections and come to an area full of stereo equipment.

“I need something smaller. Like a Walkman,” says Ate, staring dubiously at the large machines surrounding her.

“You know you can download music to your phone, right?” The young man speaks slowly, as if Ate’s age has made her stupid.

Ate shakes her head. Roy does not have a phone. He could not talk on a phone even if he did have one. His yaya owns one, of course, but Ate thinks what Roy needs is a simple machine for music, and also good headphones, like the ones the Herrera boy had. That way wherever his yaya brings him, Roy can listen to music.

Ate says this to the young man without mentioning Roy and describes the Herrera boy’s blue headphones with the lowercase b etched on the sides. “But the music machine must be very basic,” she instructs. “The more basic, the better.”

Ate learned about music therapy through Mrs. Carter. They keep in touch, despite how badly things ended with Jane. Most recently, Ate helped Mrs. Carter find a new cleaning woman after hers became ill with throat cancer. Mrs. Carter worried that the cancer was caused by inhaling too many fumes from cleaning products, and she asked Ate to recommend someone who knew how to clean well without using toxins. Ate received not only a referral fee but a new business idea: “organic house cleaning.” For this, she could charge a premium, like the grocery stores do for organic bananas.

Mrs. Carter emailed Ate an article about “neurologic music therapy” after seeing it in the newspaper. Several studies showed that such therapy could help people with damaged or diseased brains. There was a company in Massachusetts that used the therapy to help a man with brain damage learn to walk without a cane.

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