...

"Only fruits and vegetables," says the crosseyed farmer in Spanish to the brown woman who extends to him a foodstamp coupon. She had sought a dozen eggs for her, her teenage daughter, her mother, and the baby strapped to her back. I am likely projecting their relationships. They are all much shorter than me and I am not tall. The teenager, she looks like she might grow taller yet, but not without eggs. I'd seen her on the way to the market. We walked on different sides of the street. She'd paused while her family walked on and jumped once, twice, three times, I lost count, until she successfully plucked an apple from a tree in the front yard of a stranger's house. It was a very hot and sunny day and I marveled at her energy--later, I imagined her hunger. Triumphant, she'd run to catch up to her mother, black hair ribboning behind her.

I asked the farmer for the eggs as they stood next to me. I felt them watching as he performed a silly pantomime, opening the carton and proving to me that not a one was cracked. I knew I wasn't going to eat them, but I did appreciate the chance to see their irregular browns and blues and creams of different sizes. Disculpe, I said, para ustedes, and handed them to the woman. I spoke quietly, under my breath so as not to bring attention to myself. At the crosseyed farmer's stand I often pretend not to know Spanish--the role of the ignorant, benign white person is easier to play than the one who once knew more and has forgotten, though in the end there is no difference. I left as quickly as I could.

I have never held the immigrant's position, but I have been unable to afford eggs. Like me, my grandfather was an only child--the son of a Nova Scotian fur trapper. His father's letters to him often listed out the prices fetched by fox and beaver pelts--forty cents, eighty, less or more depending on the weather and the fashions. Before he left to teach English in America, my grandfather would help him. A rail-thin, anemic man, I doubt the work suited him. Still, until his death his own father reported the prices to him. A barometer, maybe, a reminder that no matter how far he went the price of certain things still went up and down, the snow fell and then it melted, the egg is laid and then it cracks.