Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Calisthenics   #1      Week #2

     I am hoeing and pulling weeds in a peanut field because my father was afraid he couldn't pass trigonometry to get into the pilot training program in the Army Air Corps.  I continue down another long row carrying my favorite light-weight hoe.  Thank God, the hot July day is hazy, with cumulus clouds continually drifting and covering the blazing sun.  I picture rich bitch Lynn lying on the quartz-white sands of Panama City Beach.
     From ahead on his row, Daddy reminds me to be sure to get all the roots of the gigantic coffee weed that dared to shoot toward the sun on my row.  Obligingly, I squat and grab the dirty stem low near the roots.  I slowly wiggle it from the soil to keep it from snapping off and leaving roots that would have to be extricated with the hoe.
     "Look, Daddy!  I got it all!"  I hold the intact plant up for his inspection and approval.
     "Good work.  You're learning."
     I pull the plastic baggie from the top of my two-piece bathing suit and take out the wet wash cloth.  I scrub the rain-splattered dirt clinging to the stem from my hands.
     "Look at the princess!  Too good for a little dirt!" my sister Phyllis shouts for all to hear.
     "Shut up!  The dirt on your hands will get so embedded your hands'll be stained forever.  No one will ever ask you for a date with those filthy hands!"
     I think of Lynn again and wish I could wash my hands in the saline-rich waters of the Gulf.  My consolation prize is the "tanfastic" solar glow that will be mine.  Thanks to the gift of melanin-rich skin from my Cherokee Indian great-grandmother, Susan Birdsong, I tan easily and rarely burn.  I picture Lynn, her fair skin screaming with a painful red sunburn.  Not that I'm sadistic, but I'm glad that I"ll have a tan, and not just the three dollars, for my hard labor in the field.
     When the sun finally drops behind the oaks and pine trees, we hoist ourselves into the back of the pick-up for the short ride home.  I go into the bathroom immediately upon arrival and strip off my bathing suit.  I survey my svelte 15-year old body in the full-length mirror and decide that my beautiful tan lines just might be worth all the agony of the day.
     I shower, eat supper, and fall into bed.  It takes a long time to fall asleep because the constant chopping of the hoes is too loud in my sun-baked brain to allow sleep.  My last thought, before succumbing to sleep, is that I probably had been very close to dying from a heat stroke.