Toes are first to bend in wrinkles. At the base of the Panawe Rice Terraces, I stand flamingo to examine my foot. My pistachio toes have had too much water, too much light climbing these green steps. My skin smells like the orange salamanders dodging our wrinkled hands as we break the water to pull the rice roots. I peek at the other trabajadoras — by now their feet must be tuberous plants rooted in the slips of earth. I want to retire to cool, wooden floors, puffing dust clouds with each step. I want to eat chico fruit, sweet lanka, anything but rice. I want to crush cricket shells with my heel, hear their cellophane sound in death. You devilish vegetable, push your shoots tomorrow and tomorrow, but enough for today. Under my hat, I mutter sunless words: pagod na pagod — careful so my supervisor will not hear. My tongue catches a drop of sweat in the corner of my mouth. Sometimes these steps ripple upward on their own, as if we climb past our very hilltop, high enough to brush young rain, cloud, wing. "Working the Rice" is from Fishbone, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Snail's Pace Press, Cambridge, NY). ©Aimee Nezhukumatathil 2001. Used by permission of the author and of Snail's Pace Press. Aimee Nezhukumatathil

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