Some farmers set their properties on fire for insurance money. Some abandoned their farms entirely, uprooting their families for a new life elsewhere. Stories spread about those who left creatively placed manure for the bankers to find. Other farmers killed themselves. Suicide from the barn rafters was popular. One dad a few farms down from us did that. Farmers like to go out making a statement, too. Especially when no one has listened to them in a long time.
Overall, though, pain was hushed. It was everywhere, but muffled. By distances, by social norms, by the notion that the settlers who had farmed the same rocky hills and traversed this mucky swampland generations before had it much harder yet survived. There was a feeling of a constant drag downward. Around me, around everyone I knew. We were drowning in something we couldn’t see. But—at school, by teachers, by parents, by the evening news on the local radio station— I was told that somewhere, someone had it worse than me, was being pulled under that very minute. Someone had lost their dad, their farm, was starving in Africa, was living on the streets, was dying of cancer. So who was I to complain?
“Stop crying. Or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
“Children should be seen and not heard.”
So I got quieter. And quieter. My problems were my own. And they should stay that way.
If I was sad about being mocked at school, or about my parents skipping school plays to stay home and drink, I pictured them when they were my age, in WWII Holland. How much worse they had it, with air raids, friends and family being killed or hauled away. Hiding neighbours in the walls. Sleeping in the basement as bombs dropped. At least I could turn the lights on in my room and go outside. Plus, I had skills. I knew how to be seen and not heard. I was bartending my parents’ parties by the time I was seven. I could make a perfect whisky and ginger. I was a darling. Two ice cubes, one part to three. A pat on the head. A joke about how I’d grow up to be a great little bitch someday, pretty as I was and already mixing good drinks.