Nita: A Short Story

It was just before planting season when father decided I should drop out of school. We’d finished dinner, and mother was putting away the uneaten rice for breakfast. I was looking out the window; somebody’s cow had gotten loose and was wandering between the houses, and the fields beyond the village were turning purple in the dusk. Suddenly, father stood up from where he’d been sitting on the floor, with no shirt on, and said, “Daughter, I want you in the fields with me tomorrow.”