The Berry Pickers

by Amanda Peters

But even then, as a boy of six, I knew that wasn’t true. Blackflies don’t discriminate.

our presence a testament to their failure to prosper.

why do they bother having a house at all if it’s just gonna be all windows?”

“No but. Just get back to work and be kind to Frankie. You never know when you might need kindness from people.”

“A shame to lose a child. I lost three before birth and a little one to the fever some forty years back. Not something a woman ever gets over.”

Cleanliness was Mother’s answer to most problems.

and if I’m going to be honest—and when you’re almost dead, honesty is so much easier—I

Words are powerful and funny things, said or unsaid.

They always seemed to be looking for a fight, but no one ever took them up on it, leaving them to take out their violence on each other most of the time.

I was determined to live where sunlight streamed through open curtains and children played in the yard, where pictures took up too much space on the walls and hushed conversations were a thing of the past.