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Heritage Everbearing Taking the straw hat that that rested on the knob of the bedpost, she set out into the shimmering heat of a day that would be on fire by noon. This was her routine since he’d been gone. She stalked the deep yard, where the rough grass cross-hatched her calves until she came to the dividing line between his folk’s yard and theirs, separated by brambles that they planted, Heritage Everbearing. The raspberry bushes were chosen for their hardiness and resistance to disease. They’d watched over the thorny, bent growth with a wild patience. She spread a rough blanket in the grass, pulled her knees up to her chest and cried hard. She looked up and saw his father standing above her. He looked so “old world” in his sleeveless white tee shirt and blue serge pants. He held a silver bowl in his hands with defiance, intending to pick the raspberries he’d never had access to before. She no longer wanted or desired the berries and resolved no one else would either.
The old man stood still, ready for the words her barbed tongue usually had at the ready. Instead, she raked at the bush with shaking hands, dislodging the fruit, stomping with her bare feel what had fallen on the ground. He stared at her with the disgust she’d never grown used to. She wished he would strike her. He was still a strong, muscled man despite his age. The blood from her hands mixed with the sticky pulp of the fruit. “Selfish,” he hissed in accented English, pointing a gnarled finger at her. He threw the bowl down, hard. It bounced once, landing near her feet. When she cried softly, he smiled, let out a mirthless laugh. She heard the croak of his wife calling to him, sounding like a faraway cry from underwater. Wanting to deprive everyone of something they cherished and still have them pity her grief gave her a purpose. The old folks’ line stopped with their son, her husband. All she had left of their life together was the HeritageEverbearing. They were left with nothing. She remembers the blooming of those bushes, how they fed one another the sweet and sour fruit, while telling stories of the future that now had the twisted aura of a fairytale. In the still, summer air, across and through the brambles, she heard the wild rant of his father, venting to his wife in a language she was grateful not to understand. They could do nothing for each other. Destined to a sentence of cruel wanting with no end in sight she realized that the fruit, if she chose to eat it, would be bitter indeed.
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