Field of Greens
The women load the wheelbarrow with bags of beefsteak and tomatoes the size of mutant softballs. They pick eggplants, twisting them off the vines as if unscrewing lightbulbs, and left the velvet leaves draped over a string fence looking for purple string beans. Then the times comes to enter the dark green rows of corn. “Yo, Priscilla, what’s the name of that movie where the plants eat you up?” says a woman who refuses to get lost in the maze of tall stalks. Cora Johnson, after warily skirting the corn patch, decides the venture in, saying farewell: “You tell my grandchildren I love them.”