Two Girls in a Georgia Cotton Mill (poem)
I love the DIA. I love taking my kids there. I think everyone should check out this exhibit, with or without kids, because it looks amazing. But that's not what today's blog is about.
I can't shake this photo.
An old photograph takes a reality that's unavailable and puts it in your face. A 90-year-old fist socks you in the gut. That's how this picture hits me. These girls are dead by now, as is the era of American child labor they were part of. But in the picture, they share a moment of happiness with each other, and with us as we look on. Meanwhile, the machinery of the cotton mill stretches behind them, promising the future that waits for them once the moment is over.
The girl on the left looks like one of my daughters' close friends, a first-grader. The girl on the right reminds me of my oldest. The familiarity is wrenching. Our kids could've been born to work in the cotton mills and coal mines of the mid-19th century. They could've been born to equally hopeless conditions in Sudan or Myanmar or Afghanistan or Haiti in the 21st. Instead they wound up with us, our relative affluence and privilege. Why? How then should we live?
Here's a better look at the photo, followed by a poem.
Two Girls in a Georgia Cotton Mill
I have such a crush. Girl on the left full of a laugh she can barely hold in, frumpy dress and braids be damned. I'm in love with the tattered jacket of the girl on the right, her chaos of hair, that smile like she's seen a dove hatch from a hand, pleased as if youth could shrug off the teeth of the machinery aligned behind her, eating up the frame, the promise of her life, six days dawn to dusk 'til never. The photo hides the stench and heat, freezes the light before afternoon thins into three feet of dark between brick and steel, leaves out the promise of beatings, pennies of pay to barely keep them eating. This lucky moment, the smiles despite, that's what ruins me about history, all that joy, all those sparks its falls over like a mute bell built to smother. Please, yank them free, pack knapsacks with sandwiches, shove them on a yellow bus. Keep their eyes from blurring to nothing like the ghost of the woman who rises behind them.
Scott Beal is a stay-at-home dad and Dzanc Writer-in-Residence for 2009-10 at Ann Arbor Open School.
Comments
Scott Beal
Wed, Sep 30, 2009 : 7:09 a.m.
Hey Sierra -- I really appreciate your comment, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to respond to it. The child slavery situation is absolutely harrowing. At the Call and Response website, I found this list of ways people can make a difference: http://callandresponse.com/33responses.html
Sierra Elizabeth
Sun, Sep 27, 2009 : 2:05 a.m.
Scott - I'm on a commenting roll, so hopefully this doesn't seem like just another bantering comment but seriously, I loved the poem, and it's especially appropriate given my current frame of mind. I really feel for these children trapped in these exploitative situations. Today I went with my friend Katy, who initiated the Invisible Children screening and another documentary screening here, to a documentary called Call and Respond (callandresponse.com) at a local church. She wanted to bring it to Hope's campus, but they had already planned to screen it out there. Oh. My. God. Kids are sold into sex trafficking networks at the age of 6 years and younger, and are ritually raped in order to be broken in. Talk about a war culture running between lines of gender. They're buying and selling younger to insure that they don't have HIV. Then they (the pimps) create addictions within the population to drugs such as meth. A girl was bought by a journalist, but ran back to the brothel she'd grown up in because she was so addicted. And the worst part? These women are victims, and there's such cultural stigma that everyone forgets it. Police even visit these places and expect services for free. I really want everyone to know about it, because that's just absolutely hideous. by the way, the last three lines stun me.
Pam Stout
Thu, Sep 24, 2009 : 7:57 a.m.
Amazing, Scott. Haunting. With a little spark of hope as we see the girls finding a glimpse of joy in the darkness. Thanks for sharing--I'll likely be thinking about this all day!
Gee
Wed, Sep 23, 2009 : 7:22 a.m.
Love it. Matter. And ghost.
Scott Beal
Tue, Sep 22, 2009 : 11:55 p.m.
A brief story on global child labor from earlier this week, with links for more information: http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/09/20/new-reports-detail-global-child-labor-products-and-abuses/
Scott Beal
Tue, Sep 22, 2009 : 11:05 p.m.
Daniel, thanks for your comment. The idea of such young children bent to such grueling labor is devastating. I think many Americans have a hard time acknowledging the reality of child labor across the globe, and even the best-intentioned little know what to do with that knowledge.
DanielF
Tue, Sep 22, 2009 : 2:55 p.m.
Scott- thanks for writing this piece. I grew up in India, and have seen kids as young as 5 yr old, working. WORKING at hard, difficult jobs!!!!! It killed me then,and does now. I hope a lot of people read this piece.