Tessie D

Angel noticed the other day that my mood was darkening. My mask was slipping. I needed to go home and be sad by myself.  “Is something wrong? You seem far away.”  “No, it’s just that listening to you talk about books reminds me of what I missed. What I’ve never had.”  “Don’t say that. There’s…

Angel stops by the office now with all the other hands to eat his lunch. He stays for half an hour to chat and “cool down.”  He and the other hands usually mostly do all of the talking. They talk about the dairy and which heifers were especially ornery that morning. What needs to be…

I was listening to the news on the radio in my office. A plane crashed yesterday in New York. Everyone died. More than 200 people. I got up and went into the kitchen to get some water when I saw Mrs. Olsen and Angel sitting outside on the picnic table underneath the big tree. The…

It was a year ago to the day that I lost Baby. I haven’t spoken her name out loud in so long. I’m not sure if I even know how to make the sound. I try not to think about her, but the thought of her sneaks up on me when I least expect it.…

Angel was in the office the other day. He’d been working with cattle when a heifer headbutted a gate, and it slammed against Angel’s finger. The fingernail broke off, and there was blood everywhere. He came up to the office for the first-aid kit. Angel wasn’t mad or yelling or anything like Daddy would get…

I finally had to go to the dentist. I was eating chicken and rice last night — it was soft and cheap — and my tooth broke. I thought this might be coming, so I’d been putting some money aside and trying to be a bit more frugal with my groceries. Going to the dentist…

Angel has been coming early to work every morning. He brings coffee and donuts, and we sit in the kitchen chatting and watching the sun come up. He is so beautiful that sometimes I catch myself staring. His long eyelashes, his dark hair, his wide shoulders, and his narrow waist. If I can be completely…

I could tell from the first day that I met Angel — before anyone told me anything about him and his educated family — that he had money. His jeans, his boots. They were worn but not worn out, like the rest of us at dairy. They didn’t have patches where they’d been snagged on…

I need to take the Women Who Run book back to the library, but I wanted to remember this part: “Women who are gullible or those with injured instincts still, like flowers, turn in the direction of whatever sun is offered. The naive or injured woman is then too easily lured with promises of ease,…

Angel has started coming by before work in the morning. I came in early on Tuesday to get some paperwork done on the quarterly taxes, and Angel came by the office. He asked if I regularly came in early, and I fibbed, telling him I did. I don’t know why I said it. I mostly…