SEEDFOLKS ( 1- KIM) by PAul Fleischman

In my "Culture and Language" class, professor gave an assignment of reading this book for 2  week. Yesterday, I visited to near public library to find the book and audio book that is CD  as well. So I borrowed both. The CD would be used in my car when I ride a car alone. This morning I put the CD in  the CD wreckand listened the story in my car on the way to school. The story  was not difficult because it is for the the young (the lexile of this book is 710) . But Recording in CD was done by several person's vioice according to character in each episode. Because their voice is changed by their feeling and situation, it seems like listen to soap opera through tthe radio.,
Here, I am copying whole stroy day by day after finishing listening  and reading. Why? Because I want  to read again in some day. And, for someone who comes by my blog wants to enjoy reading.

Now, I start!

KIM

I stood before our family altar. It was dawn. No one else in the apartment was awake. I stared at my father’s photograph-his thin face stern, lips latched tight, his eyes peering permanently to the right. I was nine years old and still hoped that perhaps his eyes might move. Might notice me. The candle and the incense sticks, lit the day before to mark his death anniversary, had burned out. The rice and meat offered him were gone. After the evening feast, past midnight, I’d been wakened by my mother’s crying. My oldest sister had joined in. My own tears had then come as well, but for a different reason.

I turned from the altar, tiptoed to the kitchen, and quietly drew a spoon from a drawer. I filled my lunch thermos with water and reached into our jar of dried lima beans. Then I walked outside to the street.


The side walk was completely empty. It was Sunday, early in April. An icy wind teetered trash cans and turned my cheeks to marble. In Vietnam we had no weather like that. Here in Cleveland people call it spring. I walked half a block, then crossed the street and reached the vacant lot.


I stood tall and scouted. No one was sleeping on the old couch in the middle. I’d never entered the lot before, or wanted to. I did so now, picking my way between tires and trash bags. I nearly stepped on two rats gnawing and froze. Then I told myself that I must sow my bravery. I continued farther and chose a spot far from the sidewalk and hidden from view by a rusty refrigerator. I had to keep my project safe.


I took out my spoon and began to dig. The snow had melted, but the ground was hard. After much work, I finished one hole, then a second, then a third. I thought about how my mother and sisters remembered my father, how they knew his face from every angle and held in their fingers the feel of his hands. I had no such memories to cry over. I’d been born eight months after he’d died. Worse, he had no memories of me. When his spirit hovered over our altar, did it even know who I was?


I dug six holes. All his life in Vietnam my father had been a farmer. Here our apartment house had no yard. But in that vacant lot he would see me. He would watch my beans break ground and spread, and would notice with pleasure their pods growing plump. He would see my patience and my hard work. I would shop him that I could raise plants, as he had. I would show him that I was his daughter.


My class had sprouted lima beans in paper cups the year before. I now placed a bean in each of the holes. I covered them up, pressing the soil down firmly with my fingertips. I opened my thermos and watered them all. And I vowed to myself that those beans would thrive.