It is officially International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. (More information here.)

Basically the upshot is that as a writer I am free to share my writing in any way I please.

Today is also LD's birthday. He is two. Today is also traditionally William Shakespeare's birthday and date of death. It's a good day to give out stories. A gift, as it were.

In honor of this most blessed day, I am offering my first published short story, "I Dream of Strawberries". It originally appeared in Two Cranes Press' Scattered, Covered, Smothered food fiction/poetry/recipe anthology which is, sadly, sold out.

I know part of the point of this exercise was to offer a never before published professional quality story. First of all, I can't say I've written anything of professional quality, yet. Secondly, all of my other stories that haven't been published yet are either out at market or have been bought and are in the process of being published, or I'm not ready to open the door on. And thirdly, I feel very strongly that as authors we have the right to offer our stories as we wish, so I really want to participate.

Besides, this story is special to me, as all first published stories are, I suspect. Also, it carries a lot of themes that are important to me. It was the second story I worked on conceiving when I started writing fiction. I spent almost 1 1/2 years mulling it over before I sat down and wrote it one night about two years later.

***

I Dream of Strawberries


We went up the elevator to make better lives, to start fresh, to have something to live for. We were promised a home, a job for the man, a way for the mother to be with the babies. Most importantly, we were promised real food in our bellies, and not the soy garbage we’d been living on. We were offered a way off of the God-forsaken world called Earth.

***
After Alex lost his job, our small family lived decently for about a year while he looked for another. Out of so many who were suddenly out of work after collecting $150,000 paychecks, we were some of the lucky ones; we had planned well and had food storage and savings. Besides, I was a pretty experienced cook and could turn almost anything into an appetizing meal.

The year anniversary of Alex's termination came and went, and still there was no job. He had started looking for another position as a software engineer and ended up applying for all available jobs. He had no problem asking, "Would you like fries with that?" The freezer, cupboards and bank account were diminished and there were no prospects.

We cut back even more. Alex and I opened the packages of soy we'd stashed away for Armageddon, figuring we'd never really have to eat them, but we'd wanted to be prepared. All the real food went to Jack. There was no way a nine-year-old could thrive on such delicacies as "Soy Pasta Surprise", "Soy Seafood Catch", or "Whiskey Soy Patties". I remember the first night I finally had to feed Jack one of our soy dinners. He bravely ate the "Soyfuroni and Cheese", and though I knew he was famished, as most young boys are at dinnertime, he ate with a reserved silence. Even though, if prepared correctly, soy products can be quite delicious, there was very little I could do to make the prepared soy packages into fabulous meals.

It wasn't just the change in diet that caused the shift in Jack's demeanor. No matter how we tried to shield him from the world's bleak outlook, as if he were still in the womb, he, and the other children, knew their world was falling around them. They could sense their parents' tension, our sorrow for providing a world with such golden opportunities.

I remember lying in bed one winter night, my back pressed against Alex's for warmth, when I heard Jack's muffled crying. I padded down the dark hall, clutching an afghan around my shoulders in a fruitless attempt to stay warm, and went to comfort my son.

"I miss strawberries," was all he said.

I understood; I missed them, too.

***

When Jack was two, while his dad was on a business trip, we started our tradition.

During strawberry season, when the berries are large, juicy and plentiful, we would go down to the store at the bottom of the hill where we lived and grab a crate of the fruit and a bag of fried chicken. We would gorge ourselves on the berries and chicken until our mouths and chins, hands and shirts were greasy and covered in juice. The last time we had our feast, Jack had looked at me and said, in a very serious tone that only a young child can give voice to, "It's the nectar of the gods, Mama."

That's why, when Alex came home late that night in May, I was so excited with the new opportunity he'd found.

***

Five years before, after the elevator from the Earth to the moon was completed, the rich slowly began populating the moon's surface. It was a "pay only" venture to help recoup the enormous costs from the construction of the elevator and Bradbury City. As conditions on the Earth worsened, the rich began to flock to the moon, and a couple more cities were constructed to fill the demand.

"They're dissatisfied," Alex said, "They don't have to deal with all the problems down here, but the amenities they're accustomed to are practically non-existent. The government is hiring for all sorts of jobs, anything you can imagine. From food service to a guy who can come out and fix your computer."

"To the moon, Alex!" I laughed, "We're going to the moon!"

We sold most of what we had to pay for our way up the elevator. If we couldn't sell it, we gave it away to those who would stay behind and need the items more than we
would. We carried what was left in packs on our backs, like tortoises, hauling our home into the darkness of space.


True to their word, the United World Government provided us a home -- a cinder block box surrounded by other cinder block boxes. They gave Alex a job making house calls for sick computers. We had real food to eat that came out of the moon's terraformed fields. Though the meat we usually had was synth or soy, it was hard to tell the difference from real meat. Occasionally, however, one of Alex's clients would share some meat they had sent from earth. Hamburger over toast became a delicacy at our house.
Our first night there, we gorged ourselves on fried potatoes, onions and greens. Sick from eating so much, we lay in the beds that came with our cinder block palace and moaned with pleasure.

Still, even eventually after having a steady income for a year, we couldn't afford the strawberries.
And I began to dream of them.


Back on Earth, before he lost his job, it had been one of Alex's and my greatest pleasures to try a new wine or cheese just for the fun of it. It was a hobby, really. Instead of eating out like some couples, we savored the experience of preparing gourmet meals of our own. Alex could do amazing things with fish, poultry, or meat. I often made sumptuous vegetables, or tangy cheese plates, or dangerously delectable desserts. We'd find a lovely wine and feast.

I wanted us to be able to live like that again. I considered finding a job. I had a degree; I could work while Jack was in school. But that's not how things were set up here on the moon. Women were to stay in the home; a woman who wanted to work was suspicious, so my job search didn't last long.

And then there was the accident and Alex was simply gone, crushed into the bloody pulp and bone that constitutes the human body.


Jack and I were back where we'd started two years before -- living on some savings, food storage, and the hope of a better life. I tried again to get a job, but no one was hiring a middle-aged single mother on the moon. I half considered going home, but there wasn't anything there either. We couldn't afford the elevator anyway.

We began to sell our luxuries -- the car, the vidscreen, Alex's computers and tools, my wedding ring. We bought two ancient bicycles that actually required the riders to use their legs to push peddles to make the contraption move instead of hovering over the ground like a normal bike. I think the elderly gentleman, who had been a client of Alex's and had shared his meat with us, sold them to us because he felt sorry for us. They were incredibly cheap, especially considering their antique value. "I'm going to die soon, then be cryogenically frozen, and I don't have the space to store them. I probably will have forgotten about them by the time I'm thawed anyway," he justified.


Daily, while Jack was riding his bike to school because we couldn't afford the TRAM, I was riding my bike to the library to use a computer to look for jobs. After that, I went to the United World Government's office's to search there. Because I was the breadwinner, they finally allowed me special clearance to try to obtain a job. I think they wanted to send Jack and me back to Earth, but somehow, we were allowed to stay.

For the rest of the day, I would apply for job after job and check back on the jobs I'd applied for the previous week. Then I would go to the fields and glean potatoes and other vegetables missed by the farm workers.

At first, I was usually the only one there gleaning, but after a few weeks there were more and more people, searching the mulchy earth for anything they could uncover. The NWG had overestimated the demand for new jobs and consequently the number of people the moon could support. The economy began to look like it was heading the way it had on Earth.
Still, no matter what we ended up eating, even when we ate some variation of potato soup or potato casserole for nights on end, Jack and I were grateful; it was real food.

Alex and I had thought things would be different on the moon. Everyone had. But the line between the haves and have-nots was perpetuated in what we had prayed would be our Promised Land.

Still I dreamt of strawberries.

***

Jack and I rarely went to the store, but one day, after being out of powdered milk for a week, and knowing Jack needed milk, we ventured into temptation. I went straight to the milk, grabbed it, and went to the check out line. I was almost to the front when I realized Jack was missing. As I left the line, I looked from one end of the store to the other, hoping to see him and call him over.
He was nowhere.

"Please, no. Please not Jack, too. Please not my son," I whispered my mantra through aisles of chocolate, sugar, breads and pastas, sauces, T-bones and turkeys, rows of ruby apples, peppers, avocados, tomatoes, bananas, nectarines. Usually my stomach would have growled as I prowled the aisles. This time it churned with fear.

I found Jack with the strawberries, his eyes big and wanting.

I looked at the price for the berries. My mind shuffled through all the possibilities, but I knew there is no way we can afford even a pint.

"I'm sorry, Jack. We just don't have the money."

"I know, I just liked looking at them," he said. His eyes betrayed his appetite for the berries.

An older couple wandered by. Feeling embarrassed (what kind of person can't afford a pint of berries?), I tried to guide Jack back to the checkout counter to buy the milk.

"Do you think we'll be able to afford strawberries ever again?" Jack asked.

"I think so," I answered, trying to believe my own feigned optimism.

We got into line again and bought our milk. The older couple from the produce section was behind us, buying meager supplies: cheap discounted synth meat, onions, potatoes, and a pint of berries. Jack and I were leaving the store when the older man called to Jack.

"Son," he called, "Son? Could you help me carry some of these groceries out to the car? The potatoes are just too heavy."

Jack was happy to help, and carried the potatoes out to the trunk of the couple's old beat up car. It looked like it would barely hover above the ground. We had turned to leave when the man said, "Son, don't forget your payment. A good turn deserves a reward." They tried to hand Jack the pint of strawberries.

Jack knew as well as I did that the couple couldn't afford such an extravagant transitory item, let alone give something like that away.

"Thank you, sir, but my mom won't let me take anything for helping someone out."

The old man looked at me, his eyes a little sad, as if pleading with me to let Jack have the berries. I turned my head and looked at Jack, whose skinny slight shoulders stood firm. I looked at the berries. My mouth filled with saliva, and my stomach began to feel a little sick from desire.

The woman came up to us then, "Will you take just a few then? We can't eat them all. They'd go to waste."

Jack finally agreed to take a few. The couple left, and we walked to our bikes. "Here, Mom," Jack held his hands with the berries out to me. "Have some." I combed his fair hair away from his blue eyes, eyes like his father's.

"Oh, Jack," I sighed, "They're yours. I want you to have them."

He didn't eat them in front of me.


As we rode our bikes home, the box of milk in my bicycle basket, the berries in Jack's, I thought of a book I had read twenty-five years before called The Grapes of Wrath. I remembered the part where a father and his two children end up at a café to buy bread for the long journey ahead. Initially, the woman at the café doesn't want to sell them the bread; they're not a store and she needs it for her customers. Besides, the bread costs fifteen cents and the man only has ten cents to spend. Finally, the woman sells the man a loaf of bread. In the meantime, the two children are coveting two pieces of candy. The man has a penny. He asks the woman if the candy is penny candy. She says they're actually two-for-a-penny when they're really nickel candy. The book broke my heart, but that part haunted me.

As I thought of that book then, I realized I was beginning to understand what both the father and children felt, and I could feel those two separate desires at the same time. There was my own desire for lovely, delectable food, and the desire to fill my son's stomach with fried chicken, strawberries, chocolate and anything else he would ever crave.

I thought of the generous couple who had seen my child's want and had tried to fill it. I couldn't imagine what they were going to have to sacrifice in order to buy the berries. Power? Other utilities? Some meals?

I remembered The Grapes of Wrath again, and the part that said, "Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor. Pray God some day a kid can eat."

At least my son was eating. It was possible that soon he wouldn't be. I had to find work. And still, no one wanted to hire a widow with a son. At least the NWG wasn't throwing us out of our apartment.

Thank God, for now, while there was still some money for a little food and some space for me amongst the gleaners, I knew how to cook poor.

Later, that night, while cleaning Jack's only pair of pants for school, I found some dried, small, pointy green strawberry stems in his pocket.

***

It was not long after the grocery store, when the cupboards were bare except for a few potatoes which would be boiled, and which were Jack's and Jack's alone, that I passed out in line at the NWG's office while waiting for job applications.

I woke up on the floor of a small cubicle.

A young man squatted nearby, holding a cool cloth to my forehead while speaking on the phone. "She's awake now. Yes. Yes. We'll see. Of course. Yes."

"I'm sorry," I apologized, trying to pick myself up off the hard floor.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" he asked.

"Yes, yes. Just waiting in line for so long," I tried to smile. "It wears on you after a while."

"How long were you there?"

"Every day for the last three months."

He raised his eyebrows. "Who's your case worker?"

"I don't have one," I said.

He picked up a scanner off his desk. "I'm Brad," he offered his hand. He shook mine and then scanned my ID chip, so small it was practically nonexistent within the palm of my rough hand. "I'll be right back. Have a seat."

He was gone for quite some time. I was finally able to get off the floor and sit in the chair he'd motioned towards. I was about ready to leave (I had to get back in line and fill out applications) when Brad returned, my case file disk in his hand.

"Mrs. James, I'm your case worker. Let's get you set up."

When he found out my financial situation, he set me up with a governmental aid allowance for food, utilities and other necessities while Jack and I got back on our feet.

At first I tried to refuse, "I can't accept charity. There's other people here, other people on Earth, who need this. Just find me a job."

"You can't work if you're starving. Besides, your husband paid his dues to the system. You and your son have got to eat."

My pride stifled, I accepted the aid as he fed the information into the chip in my hand with his scanner. He slid the disk with my information into his computer and began to read. "You have a degree?"

"Yes."

"Have you been telling employers that?"

"Yes."

"Don't tell them you're educated. They don’t trust a woman trying to find a job up here in the first place. Telling them you're educated will make them even more nervous."

He clicked on some more buttons. Finally he shook his head. "I don't know how you've lived for so long on so little. What did you eat?"

I told him I knew how to cook poor. I knew how to cook rich, too, but that wasn't very useful right now, I joked.

"Do you know a lot about food?"

"I know a good bit."

"How about things like wines? Chocolates? Coffees? Meats and cheeses?"

"Sure," I said. I tried not to think of those times with Alex when we sampled lovely new foods, or cooked together, but the memory was there and it brought tears to my eyes. Tears for the food we'd enjoyed, tears for my Alex.

"I think I may have a job for you," Brad said. He wrote something on a piece of paper and slid it across his desk towards me. "Tell Ida, I wrote her name down there, that I sent you. I think she may have something. If not, come back and see me."

I thanked him and went to the address he'd written down for me.

I found myself at the mall, the rich mall, where a dress cost more than I'd ever make in a year and a meal more than I'd ever make in two months. I walked into "The Vineyard", a large store filled with cheeses, breads, meats, chocolates, coffees and wine.

A handsome man approached me and offered to let me sample a new Camembert that had just arrived.

I simply asked for Ida. "Brad sent me," I said.

"I'll be right back."

A beautiful petite woman approached me. "I'm Ida. I hear my son sent you? Brad?" She clarified.

I nodded. I didn't know what else to say.

She led me into her office and offered me a glass of wine. I wanted to try it so badly; it had been so long since I'd had wine, but I didn't dare drink it on an empty stomach, especially since this could be a job interview.

Ida took out a scanner, read my palm, as it were, and pulled up my information on her computer. Her screen was tilted in such a way that I could partially read it. It looked like Brad had enhanced my resume.

There was my history in detail, my experience, and a note that said:

"We were there once, too, Mom. Please give her a break and see if it doesn't work out.

"Love,

"B".

She smiled slightly and said, "Tell me what you know about wine." So I did.

Her smile increased. She took me out into the store, and asked me to try some wines.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not sure that I should right now."

"Why not?"

"I haven't really eaten for a couple of days."

"Mike," Ida called to the handsome man, "Make this woman a sandwich!"

Mike brought me the most beautiful sandwich I had ever seen. It was huge, piled with meats and cheeses and spicy mustard on a thick, hearty honey wheat bread. I took a bite, and then another and another and another, trying not to stuff the lovely sandwich into my face. I was about halfway through when Mike came back with some pomegranate juice. I couldn't remember the last time I'd come near a pomegranate.

After I was done, Ida quizzed me about the sandwich I'd eaten. What were the cheeses? The meats? Tell her about the bread, the juice. I filled her in, describing in extreme detail the feast I'd just devoured while trying to ignore the nausea that began to come over me from eating so much so quickly.

"You're hired," she said. "What holes in your knowledge you may have, we can fill in. Come in tomorrow, nine sharp."

I tried not to cry.

On the way home, I stopped at the store.
I had been dreaming of strawberries again.
I picked up a flat of berries and two boxes of fried chicken. I ignored the glares from the people in line and the cashier when I paid with my NWG chip.

Jack and I ate on the berries and chicken for three days. I would have thought it would have disappeared sooner, but our stomachs were so small.

After that, while we were on NWG assistance, we were moderate and bought only necessities. But it didn't matter; Ida often sent me home with a bit of this or that that they
couldn't sell because it was passed it's prime, or wasn't the quality her customers expected. No matter what we bought at the grocery store, or didn't buy, we were still spoiled.

Food, glorious food. Not synth, not soy, but real.

***
Jack's a teenager now. At a time when most boys never want to be caught with their mothers, Jack doesn't mind spending hours in the kitchen with me creating magical meals. I'll bring home lovely, delicious food from "The Vineyard"(where I'm now a manager) and the grocery store, bought with money I've earned. We treat ourselves to delectable creamy cheeses, sweet exotic condiments, meats with names that you have to approximate an accent to pronounce, smooth chocolates, and strawberries. Always strawberries.

Even though we eat them regularly when they're in season, I still dream of strawberries, of the sweet burst which floods your mouth when you first bite the plump fruit, of the intense smell that overrides all other senses.

Of the feeling of having a full stomach after a fabulous meal with the person you love most.


***

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