Haunted Alexandria

By Lydia Tadross Marks

Her breath is heavy, heavy heavy, and when she bends over to pick the okra she can hear it loud. It is so hot, even in September, and the okra pricks her fingers, but she won’t wear gloves, won’t do it, no. She reaches the edge of her row in the field. It is her row after all, she always picks this row. By the end of the row her body tingles, allergic to the prickly skin of the plant. Okra is related to hibiscus, her boss tells her, and cotton. It is hot, hot, and she runs back to the shed so she can wash her arms with cold water, get rid of the stinging, sit down. 

On the farm it is quiet. Only her heavy heavy breath, and only heavy enough to hear when she picks. No birds here, no trees. If she sits around and does nothing, the only sounds are the wheat rustling and bees. It is haunted, definitely.

On her drive home she turns on the radio. There is no working CD player, no cord, so she listens to the Top 40. There is something to be said for the Top 40, she thinks, she thinks it tells you something about something, and the songs are always changing, which is good for her brain, which she is a little worried about.

At home Grandfather was forgetting everything. Where do you work, he asked. The farm, she reminded. He didn’t remember where it is, up the road just there, up the road. He didn’t remember, not even when she told him they passed it all the time on the drives they used to go on. He didn’t remember the drives, the long drives in his beat-up car, and it hurt her that he had forgotten them, forgotten the old days which were so precious to her. 

What time is it, Grandfather asked. She didn’t reply. Grandmother was in bed.

She was all alone in that house. At the farm there are people, and ghosts, and bees, and one praying mantis in the shed. At home there were grandparents, but not really.

She made dinner for everyone. Grandfather asked where were you today. At work, at work. Work, he asked, where do you work, don’t work so much. The farm, up the road, she said quietly. She forced conversation at the table. It was good for the disease, to combat the disease, so rather it was bad for the disease. Tell me about your village, Grandfather. Your old friends, and why you don’t like to swim. He remembered that kind of thing. Grandmother remembered everything, so she helped him.

At the farm, she tingles from okra. Sometimes she picks tomatoes instead, but tomatoes are no fun, they don’t prickle at all, and she gets bored quick. She sits in between the vines and shoves her fingers into the dirt, so the dirt is stuck under her nails. She cleans her hands in the dirt, annoyed. Tomatoes aren’t related to anything as good as hibiscus, but they’re alright, they’re fine. The other farmers don’t like her, she’s a spoiled brat, she only picks what she wants to pick. 

Today her car won’t start right away. Someone has to help her. She thinks there’s a ghost behind this, she says, and he says ghosts! and laughs. He picks peppers and he stares at her when she runs back to the shed to rinse her arms with cold water. She hates him. On the way home she listens to the Top 40. 

At the house Grandfather was still forgetting. She made dinner, like usual. She brought home okra, and made it how he liked it, but he didn’t know that it was how he liked it. Didn’t remember the word okra. When he ate it he sort of remembered, and she cried, but only Grandmother noticed, and Grandmother cried all the time, so she wasn’t a comfort to anyone. Where did you get this, Grandfather asked, and she replied at the farm, up the road, up the road. He asked why she went there.

At the farm, she hears ghosts when there is no wind, so she knows it’s haunted. But haunted is the wrong way to say it, she thinks, because it sounds bad, and these ghosts are okay. They are lonely, she thinks, that’s why they try and get her to stay on the farm. Ghosts is also the wrong way to say it, she thinks it’s too mumbo-jumbo.

She picks okra today because she wants to, and she notices Pepper-Picker stare as she runs back to the shed. It’s so hot, even though it’s October, and she only hears her heavy heavy breath, no wheat. You always pick peppers, spoiled brat, she yells to him when she goes past. He smiles. On the way home she listens to the Top 40, but the ghosts make it cut in and out until she drives off of the property. They’ve done that before, many times before, so she guesses they don’t like the Top 40 much. Maybe music was better when they were around, she guesses, or maybe they don’t like radio. She wonders how old they are.

At home, Grandmother was cooking. That was a good sign. She decided to catch up on her correspondence in the kitchen, to keep Grandmother company. Who are you writing to, Grandmother asked, and she told her about all of her dear friends, at school, at home, all over. It is nice to write letters, she said. Yes, Grandmother agreed, it is more intentional. 

In letters she wrote about the farm, and the ghosts. Nothing of her grandparents. There was no news, anyway, or the news was always the same. And nobody wanted to hear about it, really, not really, and she didn’t want to write about it, not really, she had already written about it. There had been so many letters coming and going all summer. She wrote instead about the ghosts, and the Top 40, and okra, the tingling good feeling from okra. Her big boss wanted everyone to wear gloves, and starting next week, it would be mandatory, but she had already figured out a plan, she would say that she was allergic to the gloves, the ugly gloves, so she could get the allergic reaction to the okra, the good okra. She probably notices the ghosts better when she picks okra, the tingling helps, she thought.

Her breath is heavy when she picks okra, but with tomatoes, she can’t get there. It’s hot in the field, but hotter, much hotter in the hoop house where the tomatoes grow, but she doesn’t get tired at all. She takes lots of breaks with tomatoes, they’re boring. She cleans her hands in the hoop house dirt. Sometimes she eats a tomato, and they are so big, and they taste good, and taste like dirt.

There aren’t tomatoes like this anywhere else, she thinks. She takes a bite of a tomato before she picks it, still on the vine, still breathing on the vine. Juice splatters and the bugs scram along the vine. She grins. Still not as good as okra, but these tomatoes are the best of tomatoes. They are clean with dirt. If she calls the tomatoes organic then the big boss gets mad, because organic is hard to get, it’s the government that gets to decide what’s organic, these are better than organic, even better, says the big boss, because they are the same, they are pesticide-free, you can tell because the vine is crawling with beautiful bugs.

She can’t take too long picking or someone will yell at her. She breathes loud to tell the ghosts she is there. She forces it heavy, since she’s not tired. Nothing happens. It is okra-specific then, so even though the tomatoes are okay, she decides, she is right to prefer okra, because the ghosts prefer okra. She runs back to the shed, and she rinses her arms with cold water, even though she isn’t tingling, just because the hoop house is so hot.

On the way home she listens to the Top 40, and the car starts fine, and the radio works fine. Maybe the ghosts are tired, and lethargic, so they can’t be bothered today, because even though summer is over, it is still so hot.

At home, she made dinner for everyone. No okra today, but other good things, corn and meat. The grandparents thought everything was really good, and she asked Grandfather about his village, and his friend who he was telling her about the other day. Remember Grandmother, you were there too, what was his name again, and after some coaxing Grandfather remembers the name but not that he told this same story three days ago, not that, how could he. She tried not to get angry at him. Grandmother was angry enough. 

At night it was so lonely. She wished the ghosts were there too. They could know Grandfather. Maybe they would haunt her if she turned off the Top 40. Maybe they would follow her home. 

She is banned from okra until she agrees to wear the gloves, they tell her. Tears well in her eyes, and she nods. Everyone feels bad, and she puts on the gloves, and goes to pick, and they watch her go and nod to one another, say spoiled brat but tenderly, smiling, finally charmed after all these months. When she gets to her row, it is her row, everyone knows, they can’t see her that well, she thinks, and she takes off the gloves and shoves them into her boot. They know she will take them off, of course she will, they don’t have to wait and see her do it. They laugh and nod their heads knowingly. She knows they know, and she smiles. She can hear the ghosts better when she is tingling, and the ghosts are decent company, she thinks, and she loves to pick. 

When she gets in the car she decides to try a different radio station, to please the ghosts, the ghosts who don’t like the Top 40. She fiddles with the dial to find one that she likes, but she can’t find anything good, nothing as good at the Top 40, so she gets angry, and she hits the dial with her hand and it turns off. She starts the car fine, and hopes the ghosts will follow her home this time, she hopes they’ll like the heavy sound of her breathing enough to accompany her.

At the house, Grandfather was talking about the army, and politics, and he was so lucid, what’s changed, she wondered. It was probably just a good day, which happened once in a while. Grandmother was unimpressed. She sat between her grandparents on the nice couch and they watched soap operas, and ate ice cream, and it was so like before, so she cried and cried. Grandfather noticed, and gave her a squeeze and told her this show had a happy ending, he’d seen it a long time ago, so she shouldn’t cry because it would be fine, so it was a good day. At night she hummed a song, Top 40.

At the farm, the big boss eventually stops caring about gloves, so she doesn’t have to half-wear them anymore. She is happy to hear the ghosts. She picks her row, her very own row that she loves so dearly, hands naked, and she tingles, and she picks slow so she can stay out there longer, and it’s still so hot even though summer’s long over. She breathes heavy, heavy heavy, and they hear, and breathe back. Spoiled brat, she takes her time, and the big boss and Pepper-Picker and the others study her out there and nod their heads to one another. She doesn’t rinse off this time, she decides to keep tingling, despite the heat and the dirt.

On the way home she drives in silence, breathing heavy heavy, and hopes the ghosts like it. She hopes the ghosts are following, please, she whispers.

At home, after her grandparents went to bed, after telling stories that were bad for the disease, in her room, she opened the windows to a windless night, she heard rustling, wheat rustling, and breathing, although she was far from the fields, and she was so happy to hear it, oh thank you, thank you, she said.

LYDIA TADROSS MARKS is an MSt Modern Languages student at the University of Oxford. She has, as of late, caught a fever from the radiator.

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