The Seeds of Texas

I. THE MYTH OF FLESH AND FRUIT

Long before Jesus married the South, before his skin was whitened and his Wonder Bread was broken with politicians, the earth and its people loved and were loved by a woman. There were no hymns written for her, no holy trinities or days of rest, for she was the daughter of a whore whose name sounded nothing like God. As the story goes, the girl’s mother gave birth to her in the hollow of an oak tree — a womb emptying into a womb — leaving the dripping sap and bark to midwife the child into a mythic existence. As she grew into adulthood, her name became familiar to the ears of every creature, but no human tongue could ever tame it — she was called by the sound of wind in the tall grass, the bubbling of catfish in the river, the crack of lightning in the hills. Generations later, when her history had been forgotten, fragments of her name could be found only in the whirr and clank of Farris wheels or in the sizzling deep-fryers of festival concession stands. But before her destruction, before the Texas fairgrounds, she was the link between man and nature. A voice of reason in negotiations between frugal clouds and desperate farmers. 

Through her, the land flourished and the people who loved her so dearly rejoiced in her miracles. Everything she learned from the earth and the sky she shared, teaching them the ways of the give and take. They praised her message, swore upon it as gospel, for they had never known want and believed they never would. 

But of course, greed is not so easily evaded. The people ate and drank the fruits of her labor until they were full, and as the seasons came and went, they found that the fullness of their bellies could no longer satiate them. Gospel forgotten, their gnashing teeth demanded more, and their beloved women acquiesced. She begged the trees, the fields, the sky, for everything they had until they had nothing more to give. A season of want fell upon the lone star land, the dry riverbeds and dustbowl farms causing her people’s once meaty stomachs to wither into peach pits. Their throats chapped around accusations aimed at their only advocate, and their grasping hands tore and beat at her supple skin, trying and failing to find the key to their suffering in her veins and marrow. 

Despite this, she loved them. She loved them through the betrayal. She loved them even as they left her for dead in the brittle countryside. As she laid with her flesh baking in the sun, tears, hard and dark, fell from her eyes. The cracked earth spread itself to accept her offering, soil suckling on her grief, until she was nothing but the seeds of salvation. Her children took root — grew round and sturdy in the shadow of their mother’s blood — the stretch-marked rinds of her womb guarding their ruddy organs and black teardrops. A parting gift, green bodies of fruit and water, ready to be devoured by those who never had enough. 

A Moral: Remember that in this land, your value as a woman rests in the womb, as the womb, or in the grave. 

II. THE AGE OF SLEEP

There once was a town trapped in a lullaby, cradled away in the Texas hills, and rocked to slumber by a curiously steady sound: Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Thump. To those who heard it, the song rang hollow and ripe, like a muffled knock on a wooden door or a lover’s heartbeat through knitted wool. It was this hypnotizing rhythm that gave the town its name, Luling, for it captured and clouded the minds of anyone who stopped to listen. 

Of the five senses, hearing took precedence in this world of oppressive sound; so much so, in fact, that the people of the land had forgotten how to see. It was true that, born with their eyes closed, the soothing song of the Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Thump had forever delayed the natural urge to blink awake. Like creatures found in the darkest depths of the sea, the people of Luling had no use for sight, and their bodies adapted accordingly. Their eyelids, weak from years of disuse, had crusted and sealed together; a pair of flesh-woven window-shades protecting their weakest of organs.

Those who heard the very first Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Thump had been dead and buried for decades, but the descendants of those killers would be the ones to bear the burden of the song. The blind sons and daughters of Luling knew nothing of their ancestor’s deeds — they had never even tasted the sweet fruit that their forefathers had killed for. Even though the name of the sacrificial woman still drifted over the dips and curves of the earth — the wind, the river, the lightning — there was no longer a person on earth that recognized the shape of her within those sounds. Yes, the people had forgotten, but her children never did. On the days when their leaves were kissed by sunlight, or their roots suckled upon rare raindrops, the lonely children pretended that it was their mother tending to them. Without even knowing her, they missed her. From the tears she buried within them sprung grief, and from their grief sprung determination. 

Far upon the hillsides, secreted away from sightless stumbling of the townspeople, her garden of plump green melons shivered and jerked to a familiar rhythm: Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Thump.

Like a frenzied clutch of robin’s eggs struggling to hatch, raw little fists and feet beat at the inside of the rinds, blow after blow landing in tandem to create their song. They were not watered by vengeance, but rather by the need to be seen and heard by those who had hurt them the most. They wanted the people of Luling to know their mother’s name, to know their names, to know the loss they had wrought. Seasons of children had grown, rotted, and grown again with this goal in mind — each generation bumping and shifting just a little closer to the town — and now, clinging to the steep hillside by the thinnest of vines, the singing brood excitedly prepared for freedom:

Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Thump. 

A hope for the future. A fist to the wall. 

Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Thump. 

 A chance at forgiveness. A cry for Mama.

Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Th- 

A snap, and off went their leafy chains. Thrumming with exhilaration, the children rolled down in a stampede of green, racing one another to the bottom. Splitting themselves on rocks, bouncing off of stumps and cracking their sides, not a single child arrived at the foot of the hill unscathed. 

A blessing in disguise, for through these fractures they wiggled their little hands and feet until their limbs sprouted out from the rind. Although the children had no mother to guide their first steps, they focused all the energy in their pudgy legs towards propping up their melon bodies, swaying under the weight of their rounded shells. They toddled their way towards town, their soft fists tapping on their armor to the beat of the song they had been singing for years.

The people of Luling crowded the streets to listen to the approach of this strange sound. They had never known their lullaby to be so loud, so urgent, and it scared them more than darkness. They braced themselves against the waves of noise that enveloped them. 

The children closed in, reaching out their hands to touch and sooth the cowering people, calling out:

Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Thump.

We’re here. Our mother is not.

Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Thump.

We’re here. Witness our pain.

Thump-a-Thump, Thump-Th-

 We’re here. We forgi-

A stomping foot had silenced the song, crushing through rind and flesh in a moment of blind terror. A beat passed, the children horrified and quaking, but the frantic people paid no notice. Panic overtook the townsfolk, each of them stomping and kicking at the smooth creatures that had invaded their homeland. Red pulp and black teardrop seeds scattered the ground, the juice of the children dripping from the hands and feet of their killers. A massacre. 

In the moments after, the people of Luling heard something they never had before: silence. Without their lullaby, their eyes flickered behind their lids, a foreign feeling that sent another burst of fear throughout the crowd. They scratched at the fused flesh on their faces, prying and pinching until the light of day fell upon their eyes. They gazed at one another in astonishment, trying to recognize their loved ones without the help of their voices and the feel of their hands. They embraced, eyes devouring every inch of their friends and family, before turning their inspection upon themselves. In this celebration, they did not spare a glance to the slain fruit of the womb or the gore that marred the earth, because they believed they were the heroes that stood their ground and brought sight to the world. In the end, there would be no justice for watermelon children and their mother, for the people tasted the blood from their hands and thought it sweet.

A Moral: Never forget that as a Texan, it is your God-given right to protect yourself and your way of life. 

III. THE TRIAL OF SUSIE WEISMAN

In the wide-eyed town of Luling, there lived a girl who was as hard as the watermelon seeds that the boys sucked on and spit out in the Texas heat — a dark little pit positioned on the tongue like a bullet in a gun’s chamber. Hanging their heads from the windows of their trucks, they would whistle and ask, “Do you spit or swallow, Susie?” By the looks of her boots and the cut of her hair, they already knew her answer, and they hated her for it. 

She came into this world with her fists clenched, because even then she knew her life would not be easy. There was a hunger inside her spirit that could not be satisfied with food, or friends, or festivals — all of which the town had tried to stuff her with before she even knew the word no. The town’s prized tradition, the Watermelon Thump Festival, had been going on long before Susie was born — a celebration of melons for who-knows-what reason. In these times, the people believed that watermelons were just watermelons, and seeds were just seeds. White Jesus had come to town, and the Texas Church told the world that a woman’s sacrifice was worth about as much as a can of soda and a bag of nuts from the gas station. Sacrifice was a woman’s duty — nothing to build a religion out of. 

Susie knew deep down something was missing from her life. She tried her best to live as others did, attending the Thump to spit seeds and carve rinds, following all the silly traditions that had no other meaning than good clean family fun. She felt like she was wading through a fog. 

While the people of her town were known for their unusually wide eyes, Susie was the only one of their bunch that understood true sight, for she discovered the root of her hunger without the suffering of another. It was while chewing on the stick of a corndog, sitting alone on a splintering fence, that Susie’s life changed forever. From afar she watched the annual Thump pageant play out, the beauty queen contestants with their big hair and even bigger dresses strutting across the stage to the roaring applause of their admirers. She used to scoff and roll her eyes at this tradition, but today, as if nailed to the post she rested on, Susie sat transfixed. It wasn’t until the new Thump Queen was crowned, a kind girl with freckles and a hiccupping laugh from her Algebra class, that Susie was struck by a sudden clarity: she did not want to eat the fruits of the earth, she wanted to worship the fruits of womanhood. In that moment, she could imagine the taste of melon ChapStick on the queen’s lips, her name on the queen’s tongue, and the heady juice between the queen’s thighs. Like a key unlocking the secrets in her chest, Susie could put a name to her desire — and it terrified her. 

While the Thump Queen was paraded off the stage and onto the crepe paper piled festival float, Susie made up her mind. She took off running, booted step after booted step, until she was in the midst of the clamoring crowd. She wanted a glimpse of the beautiful girl up close, to see her through the lens of this new discovery that rattled her spirit. Susie peered over shoulders and between jostling bodies, desperate to catch even a sliver of the girl — and for one gorgeous moment, she did. Looking down from the float, the Thump Queen met Susie’s eyes, recognition blooming as she smiled and wiggled her manicured fingers in hello. Stuck breathless, Susie reached a hand out to her, to wave or to hold, even she didn’t know. And, for a fleeting second before the float jerked away in a cloud of dust, Susie could swear the queen reached back. 

Long after the crowd dispersed and the parade ended, Susie stood in the place where she had felt the crackle of their eyes meeting, dreaming of a world where she could make the queen smile like she did again, again, again. But she was not alone in her dreaming. The spitting boys had seen the way that Susie worshiped their queen with her eyes, and they hated her for it. 

Susie never made it home that night, and no one saw a damn thing in that town full of open eyes. No one saw her pain, her fear, her struggles. They saw her joy, queer and untamed by man, and they punished her accordingly. Blind once more, just for her. 

Sure, Susie’s name sounded nothing like the wind in the tall grass, the catfish bubbling in the river, or the crack of lightning in the hills — but it was said that when the seasons came and went, and the fresh melons sprouted anew from the earth, the people of Luling could not help but notice just how many seeds spilled forth from the rinds. Susie’s tears, the children’s tears, their mother’s tears, hundreds of slick drops flowed freely into the hands of those responsible. They licked their fingers, searching for the sweet tang of sacrifice that they had built their world upon — but all that was left for them was the bitter taste of blood.

Amoral: Our people have suffered, and yet, we plant our roots and love on.  

About the Author