Under Pressure

There was very little to harvest in the years after the Great Wash. I was fortunate. My family grew up poor but pleasant, and I was raised on canning jars of beans and venison. I remember having bountiful years of humid summers where we barely had enough jars. I also remember having depression years of dried plants that barely produced a handful of fruit. In those years, my grandmother somehow made every last vegetable stretch through the winter, so we never suffered for hunger.

It was because of my childhood knowledge that we made it through that first foul year of swamp infested living, but many starved in the streets.

My toes prune with each step through the sucking muck as my foot lets in water before pushing it back out through my worn-down boots. The first year, people simply plucked fish from the mud sidewalks after the waters receded. But it was sweltering, and the fish didn’t keep.

I climb over two cars stuck in the muck, and it only takes me an hour to get back to my house. I hoist myself onto the porch roof from the muck yard and crawl through my front window door, the real front door being long camouflaged by the brown wave.

My daughter is sitting at the kitchen table with paper and crayon in hand. She mostly draws trees. I think she misses them. Misses the color green in general.

“We’re running low on beans, mom,” she says as I sit on our ice box cooler to rest my swollen knee, refrigerators being a memory of the past.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to go picking, then.”

She jumps out of the chair, high ponytail bouncing so much it swings around and hits her in the cheek with each step.

The garden out back consists of sorry sticks of sickly stems, one bean plant and one tomato plant. A single shriveled moon shaped pod hides under a yellowing leaf, and my daughter plucks it with glee. The tomato plant has shown no progress yet. Muck isn’t ideal for a gardener.

With even more skip in her step, she runs back to the kitchen and plops the bean into a jar and screws the band around the lid.

“Hold on, skippy,” I say with a smile, “Patience is key to our little operation here.”

I limp down the wooden slats to the cellar where the family pressure canner sits on a shelf by itself. Everything else was ruined in the wash.

I take the pot to the smoke room and grab some cattail heads from the kindling pile. I take mind to look up through the smoke hole in my roof and hold my breath while I kiss the precious match to the dried fluff of the tails.

Whoof! As the fire sparks to life, I grab larger driftwood to maintain the flames and set my makeshift metal grate overtop.

Ponytail comes bouncing in with the jar and stops mid bounce with a concerned look on her face.

“Mama, we don’t have any water in the jug. It hasn’t rained.”

“Don’t worry, love. I went to visit Mr. Flange this morning and got some.”

The worry on her brow furrowed. “You said you weren’t going to visit the trader anymore.” I’m not sure if she means trader or traitor, but they’re both appropriate.

“Desperate times, dear, desperate times,” I sigh avoiding her eyes.

I grab the jug of stale water I received that morning as payment for my time and flesh and pour it into the canner a third of the way. My girl carefully places the jar in the center and pats the top of the lid twice before looking at me in wonderment.

I raise the lid above my head and stare into the smoke riding through the ceiling and take three long breaths in and out, followed by three short hiss belly breaths, and twist the lid into place.

I take my girl by the hand and lead her back into the kitchen where she continues her pictures of green.

I stare out the window into the sea of brown muck and long for the days of green. Green grass, green gardens, green trees. We always had a garden from the time I could form memories. The garden is a reason why I can’t stand tomato sandwiches to this day, having consumed so many in my life. I missed the musty earth smell underneath my fingernails no matter how hard I scrubbed. I missed the smell of the mature tomato plants and chasing the rabbits away from my spinach. I missed not being able to walk through my kitchen from the abundance of vegetables to can, a family tradition.

I think about my grandmother’s hands. Hard with lines from the years of scrubbing sheets at a hotel in a resort for the wealthy folks. The wealthy folks were the first to starve. They just had no idea. No idea the value of a dollar does not include nutrition when there is none to buy, and you can only eat glue and ink for so long before your stomach clenches in upon itself. But my grandmother’s hands were also soft, from years of tender care of children and greens. She’s the reason we were survivors. Her and our canner.

Bubble bubble hisssss.

“Mom! Mom! It’s done it’s done it’s done!” Ponytail bobbing as she prances toward the smoke room.

“Careful now! Don’t touch it,” I call softly. Knowing she already knows this.

I follow her into the room and grab her hand with mine, mitted for protection. We look up through the smoke together and chant softly in unison, “We give thanks for this abundance of nutrition. Keep us safe. Keep us warm. Keep us fed. We thank you.”

I twist the lid and steam comes pouring out the sides. The smell of fresh beans swarms around us. As I lift the lid on a tilt, I can see the seven gleaming jar lids twinkling in the mist, their contents a vibrant green floating in crystal clear water.