Family Photos
They are long-forgotten by anyone living. "I remember," we say, but we are so often wrong. We know something from the archive of photographs and script and type. We get fragments of the stories from largely unreliable narrators, narrators drawn to the comforting, the comical, the heart-wrenching, or the scandalous, according to their own needs.
Anna Baird Ferguson left behind a single photo, taken at the ice cream social in the summer of 1910. She is standing against her schoolhouse door, wearing the white muslin with the wide shawl collar, her watch pinned above her heart, dark hair pulled up and away from the summer heat. She was sitting alone in quiet comfort, enjoying the lull in routines and conversations, when Cletus Pearson came by with his new camera. She preferred the solitude, but kindly stood and posed, a faint shadow of annoyance in her eyes.
September
As the pan warmed and the bacon released its first smoky smell, a flutter of nausea passed over Anna, light but unmistakable. She willed it away; any reason but that to explain the brackish taste at the back of her throat.
It would be a long day. "Take these off our hands," the neighbor said, handing over the apples with a brusque charity that Anna welcomed and resented. Her trees had lost most of their blossoms to frost, leaving a meager season, and a bushel was nothing to refuse. Her husband and the oldest boys were in the oat field and would be gone until sunset. The twins would help with the fruit while their younger brother kept an eye on the babies. Anna had washed the jars yesterday. She did not like to keep the girls away from their lessons and wanted this chore done before the new term began next week. She ate toast with honey to settle her stomach. Her coffee sat untouched as she started the girls on peeling and coring the fruit.
"What will I do?" The question intruded across the day in spite of Anna’s efforts to brush it back and pretend that she felt no different than the day before.
If, if, if . . . it all came down to that single speculation. If it rains at the right time and stays dry at the right time. If the hail, grasshoppers, prairie fires, and mosquitoes stay away. If there is no influenza or diphtheria or burst appendix. If there are no lightning strikes on the barn, the haystacks, or the house. If the winter and loneliness and failure don’t drive you mad. If they hang on for another stretched thin year. If there are no more babies squalling, sucking, demanding; always demanding.