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62 JOANNA RUOCCO The orchard is altogether changed. Where are the apples, the soft, rotten apples? The orchard is not brown. It is hard and gray. The walls are hard and gray. They drip. They are stone. The trees are stone. The trees have grown together. The faces in the knots of the trees are gray. Every face has an open mouth. The mouths are filled with fluid. The fluid drips down the walls. The pigs press around. They dig in the orchard. They grunt. They squeal. They move against me. They push with wet faces, hard, wet faces. The teeth are inside the faces, behind the thick skin of the faces. They have white hairs on their faces. White hairs cluster around their eyes. They press against me. They dirty the dress. They smear dung on the dress. I can’t breathe with them against me. I can’t breathe. They are squealing . It is coming from the crib. It is coming from the carpet. The pigs are digging through the carpet. There is earth beneath the carpet. The pigs put their noses in the earth. They open 27 63 ANOTHER GOVERNESS their mouths. They eat the earth. They eat the tubers in the earth, the white roots in the earth, the tapered root that comes from the earth. They dig deeper than the dogs. They dig a deep hole in the nursery. I wait for her to come into the nursery, to hook her fingers on the edge of the hole and climb up into the nursery. I would sever her neck with the housekeeper’s shovel but I have only the covers of books. ...

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