My grandmother, Sallie McBride, pictured on a farm as a young woman. Date unknown.
I’m proud of this story. The red dirt shines something righteous under a Carolina sun. It’s 1942 and my grandmother plucks cotton ‘til her hands sing up the Blues. Rain is coming. She can tell because the air bloats and drags about her. She is withholding her water from the world, too. If I say flower bulbs for her knees and storm for her hands, in the eye of which is a wet and probing vengeance blooming – just blooming. If she lets herself play God and pours all that water – that water stored deep in this land, the sky, that water swelling up in her eyes, that thick and sweet stuff shimmering all over her – if she pours all that out onto the white balls of her labor, what then? What of the scale they will use to weigh the cotton? What of the money she will get in return? What of the water she be keeping for herself?
