by Patty Russo
She
came straight from the dust bowl even though she's too young for it. From the
time I was little, I thought she looked like a monkey, like one of those waxy
faced beasts on Planet of the Apes, (the series, not the movie) which re-ran on
cable every afternoon at four. That was before I knew about The Depression;
about Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange. Now all I can see is the dry misery, as if
she herself had been made by the camera. As if young Dorothea had scraped her
out of the mud and set her inside the lens. But misery, as a look, is not such
a bad thing. Not entirely. There's purity in a barren face, a kind of reprieve
in looking at a surface so worn. So much is new nowadays. Everybody wants to be
new. Be new, and possess the old.
That's
why everybody wants to take my aunt's picture. She reminds them of things they
believe are more real than what we are now. As if farm children with groaning
bellies (or whatever else they heard when they looked at their photos) were
more human than me, in my house, with hot water and hot cocoa. But weren't
they? More human, that is. I've never wanted to be that little girl in the torn
dress and dirty knees but I wouldn't mind being that old woman. That one, right
there. The one that looks like a monkey.
