One time, I was following my abuelo down a long row of tomatoes.
At the beginning of each row, you couldn’t see the end.
Ah, such is the life of a migrant worker.
We were bending at our backs, stooping close to the ground, parting the leaves of the plants, looking for ripe tomatoes.
As we picked them and placed them into our burlap sacks, carefully so we wouldn’t bruise them, we put a few in the big pockets of our shirts to take home to mamí.
She stewed them with okra and chicken legs in a big cast iron pot over an open fire beside our bus.
We ate in the cool of the evening in peace and quiet.
After we set down our bowls and stretched out our legs on our wooden benches, patting our stomachs with the palms of our hands, my abuelo spoke.
“It’s okay you don’t talk, little salt,” he said.
If you talked all the time, you wouldn’t learn anything.”
He’s right, you know.
We learn by listening.
I learn by listening, for sure.
I’m listening to life.
- trevor scott barton, stories for brown-eyed girls, 2021
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