The Epiphany

When I was 12 my father seized me up, pulled on my arms, kicked my foot with his foot, poked me in the belly with his index finger, and concluded that I was fit to contribute to the well-being of the family. He looked me in the eyes and told me in a loud, angry, voice, that he would no longer clothe me. If I wanted to dress sharp, look good, or just stay warm, I’d had to buy my own shit.


I worked with him in the fields from then on—until I left for college when almost 18. I worked in the summers, starting in mid-June and going ‘till mid-August. Whatever money I made I kept. It usually wasn’t much. The first check was $80 dollars—for the whole summer. I made it by tying rubber-bands over cauliflower leaves—a practice meant to protect the cauliflower head from some harm or other. I wasn’t fast enough to make more than a couple of dollars a day. I bought a pair of pants (Levis’-$24), two T-shirts (plain-$20), a pair of shoes (Addidas—$30), and a necklace that I wear to this day, for which I put my last $6 as a down-payment. When I was fourteen I got a permit to work after school. I would hurry home and put on my boots, meet my father’s mayordomo outside the house and do as he said. This paid a bit more: about $25 a day.

When I was 17 I knew my father’s work. I knew what I needed to do and I did it well. But it was hell. On a warm summer morning in 1992, as I finished moving a heavy aluminum pipe up a green carrot hill, I looked over to my father, who did the same thing some 50 feet away, and yelled: “I don’t’ want to do this anymore!” He didn’t hear me, but I heard me. It was the first time I’d heard anything for years. I shook the mud off my boots and went for the next pipe. But I had a sense that I had made a decision and, for the first time that summer, I was really fucking happy.