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Papaya: Lancaster County Inside the Amish health food S[Qre Mattie, the eldest daughter, stuffs wedges ofpapaya into plastic bags and fastens them with rubber bands. the thick brown braids ofher hair tied back beneath a bonnet. I think about papaya, swinging in far globes on the trees ofa COUntry she'll never visit. being harvested by people she might Struggle [Q imagine, and ofthe way it's sliced and dried and shipped across an ocean [Q end up in her hands in this dim Store where a wooden sign says Milkr's Food. Horse Tin in Back. No Photography, Pkase; and the docks are never changed to daylight saving. It's early, only seven-thirty. standard time. Later, [Qurists will come with cameras and brochures and photograph her weighing onions, slicing cheese. But now, her face inscrutable and calm, she moves among shelves ofalmonds and pine nuts, herbal teas and remedies that reek ofhay. She nods. but we don't speak. We're strangers, really. I know nothing ofwhat she does or doesn't long for. Ifwe meet at all it's through the dumb heaviness oHruit, lined from palm to palm, our fingerprints joining in the bright Aesh ofthe papaya, the puckered skin ofthe prune. 33 ...

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