OLD WOMAN BEARING FRUIT by Susan Barr-Toman
Susan Barr-Toman OLD WOMAN BEARING FRUIT My senior year of college, I was set to graduate a semester early. Instead, I took a full-time position at the university and enrolled part-time, hoping it would make things easier. I’d been working my way through college, sometimes cutting classes to meet tuition payments. Always closely eyeing that grindstone with its precarious balance. Spinning. I felt older than my classmates, more grown-up, and it was not a lot of fun. On one of my first days, before the other students had returned to campus, my boss, an older woman named Rosalie, invited me to take a break from the office and walk outside the campus gates over to Belmont, the Little Italy of the Bronx. On our way back, she spotted a man selling produce out of a white truck on the corner and asked if I minded if she stopped to pick … chop! chop! read more!