cows,” my mother would later say,
“one of the oxen.” She and her
cousins were up at half past four,
plowing fields and herding animals
before the sun baked the soil as
hard as cement and made it too hot
to be anywhere but in the shade.
For dinner there might be one
chicken to feed fourteen children.
My mom would have to fight with
the bigger kids to get a handful of
meat or a sip of the gravy or even a
bone from which to suck out some
marrow. And that’s when there was
food for dinner at all. When there
wasn’t, she’d steal food from the
pigs. She’d steal food from the dogs.