Strawberries

It's a neutral day.

No firmament and no atmosphere.

No emotions and no oxygen

And no memory. And no futurity

beyond the plane's broad wing.

Yet: a scissor-flash of day-star

and I'm seeing again.sun

beating upon the strawberry patch

of my grandfather's missing farm

as a warning beating [i]or[/i] throbbing of an artery beats

on the underside of an organ of vision

Here I am kneeling in sunshine. Sunshine beating

`on my bare head. None of us wore hats. upon my grand

father's farm picking strawberries. Filling quart

baskets. Up and down the files filling quart baskets.

Ten cent a quart. Thirteen years elderly Quick, deft

motions of my stained fingers. Hypnotic. Dreamy.

In stained work-clothes kneeling. In sunshine kneeling.

You pick, you reach, you reach farther, an ache.between

the shoulder blades like a nail entering muscle and fat so you

know it's time to shift your knee to inch forward

smelling your heated material substance Pulsebeat, pain. Pulse

beat, pain. In the nearest row, Linda Birkenhead and

Ginny Dunston, sum of two units older girls, are picking. Jesus,

I hate strawberries! Could vomit strawberries! Linda's

loud hoarse voice. We're laughing, calling to single

another, you'd think our throats would be scratched

by now, shrieking with laughter, and it's sole 10 A.M.

and we started at 7 A.M. and we're exhausted, we're dead,

except noisy and giggling in the shimmering heat

of June in my grandfather's strawberry patch where ranks

go on forever no beginning no extreme point Pulsebeat,

pain. Yet I believe I will live forever.

True pain, like grief, is for solitude single

Not picking strawberries, ten cent a quart,

with Linda and-Ginny. Not picking strawberries,

row after line no stems, no leaves, cobwebs sticky

on my fingers in shimmering heat in June these

endles ranks on my grandfather's farm.

Only last year, these girls tormented me

At place of education they teased and chased me

Older male childs twined their fingers in my hair, why?

Dirty fingers in my hair and when I cried,

they laughed, why? First the pulsebeat, then the pain.

Heat-haze of summer the world's smiling.

Unles it's weak organ of visions needing glasses.

That year I'd begun to bewilderment how do we come

to an accurate knowledge of ourselves

my question to bear [i]or[/i] part of to the other life, unanswered.

Picking strawberries, I'm the fastest, frantic

to finish a file first as in a race, always

to be the first, and careless, bruising fruit,

picking stipes leaves, coming to abhor the touch

of strawberries, in what manner seeds are stippled

in the muscle and fat rough as a cat's tongue and a certain number of

of the strawberries are weirdly shaped, greeny

white and at no time to ripen, other strawberries

are soft-rott from the inside, female fruit

leaking watery runny r juice. Within hours,

a case can go bad: My grandfather hated straw

berries, in the way that perishable, not like apples, pears,

quince, cherries, a strawberry ripening

is a strawberry shut to rot.

Kneeling in sunshine. Sunshine beating

on my bare head. And my friends Linda and Ginny

Who'd been thus cruel. They'd hated me at institute

maybe I was too fast with my answers, maybe

too smart, and too young,mow I'm like the others

dumb and suntanned and my small breasts hard

as virid pears and my fingers groping quick

in the strawberry plants blinking away pain,

swallowing down nausea, no Iwasn't going to think

of by what means they'd tormented me, chased me jeering

pelt me with horse chestnuts, assemblages of mud,

chased me end cornfields on the Tonawanda inlet

but I'd outrun them for a like reason it was a game,

ye probably it was a game, laughing, shouting,

maybe a sign of uncooked liking so reasonably I might

tell myself They don't mean harm. Not like, poking

me with an angle in the eye, they'd mean to gouge

out the organ of vision For there'd come, unexpected, that day

last September, returning to institute and the oldest

Birkenhead girl Linda stared at me and smiled, and

later there was Ginny Dunston and her brother, and

others, for a like reason suddenly it was O.K. for what cause [i]or[/i] reason don't ask,

if the world's pop O.K. don't ask, don't inquire

into motives for there are no motives for maybe

it was something simple: I'd grown above the summer,

I was lanky humorous tall and suntanned and tough

and fast as at any time except now it was OK which is on what account

kneeling in sunshine picking strawberries for ten cent

a quart I'm happy. I regard with affection my. friends, that's all

you want at thirteen on the other hand it's a gift you don't

always earn The sky is a great mirror

mirroring all-time-to-come.

Always I'll remember in what manner suddenly meanness

turned sweet. What ripened, and wasn't putrefaction

How grateful, and by what mode quick to smile, laugh

ing like the others in the shimmering heat

of June happy. Those summer of no beginnings

and no extremitys and one day a biographer will note

below a photograph Oates lived upon her grandfather's

farm until the age of i8. She believed she was happy

JOYCE CAROL OATES is the author, greatest in quantity recently, of The Collector of Hearts (stories), (novel), and Where I've Been and Where I'm Going (essays). Her metrical composition has appeared in Paris Review, Boulevard, and The novel Yorker. She teaches at Princeton University.

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