As soon as she woke, Natalie’s eyes flew open and she held her breath, checking for danger. Her ears divided indoors from outdoors and under the house. No, nobody was inside, or they’d be in the kitchen at this early hour. How she loved the silence!

She strained for the bump and scratch of the wild dog that lived under the lounge room floorboards. Nothing. It must have gone out already, its back curved and running low to the ground. She shuddered. It reminded her of a hyena, hunched and ugly and cunning at getting away, its head low and sly, scrabbling across the loose stones then scampering over the grass to disappear into the orchard. How she wished Papa could be quick enough to kill it! It was the only time she was glad to see him get out the shotgun. Whenever he fired at the sparrows on the wire outside her window in the morning, she squeezed her eyes shut.

Sparrows. She could hear them now, twittering. It was the only sound she could hear. No chug-chug from Adams’s dairy; even the radio had been turned off, so they must have finished mucking out. She loved to watch the hose whoosh the thick khaki sludge out of the yards, leaving the concrete so clean. Once, when it was her turn to collect the milk, Mr Adams had asked her if she would like to have a go, but she was in a hurry to get away from the dairy dogs who watched her with their tongues hanging out between their teeth. And she had seen what happened if you didn’t hold onto the hose really tightly: it thrashed around in a crazy way across the concrete, spewing water all over the place. It might snake back and hit her.

She could smell cow dung. The wind must be coming from that direction. Papa would be mad! She couldn’t hear any farm noises. They must be picking far from the house. She let out her breath a little.

The slit between the curtains was already bright with sunshine. Must be about seven o’clock, she guessed. That was enough lazing around. The others had probably already been working for an hour. What if Papa came inside to the toilet and saw that the breakfast things hadn’t been cleared away yet?

She worked really fast to wash, dress and leave the kitchen neat. She carefully closed the screen door on her way out and looked away to the shed, shading her eyes from the sudden glare. They must have started picking early because she could count seven full bins of pears. It was already hot and not even seven-thirty yet. The breeze was very weak and the cicadas had already started their thrum.

She quickened her step down the back path onto the gravel past the peppercorn tree. This morning there were only a few bees dancing around the hole in the trunk. Must be too hot even for them. The shed was still cool and dark, though, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She blinked. Where did Mummy say the spare picking bag would be? There it was, hanging on a nail on one of the beams: a dusty, crusty bag that looked as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. She plucked at it with two fingers, careful to check for spiders, and gave it a shake. Pooh! Her chest tightened as she caught the whiff of dust and old pears and pesticide. She trembled. The shed with its diesel fumes and dark monstrous machinery seemed safe compared to going down the orchard to pears and heat and sweat and flies and Papa.

But she would have to go right away. She could hear the tractor’s grumble—Papa would be coming towards the shed. She slung the bag on her shoulder and stepped into the sunshine. She brightened her face and walked along the track between the rows of trees. She heard the tractor change gears and roar on its way towards her. Keep going, keep going, keep going, she told her feet. She clenched to control the tremble in her tummy. Maybe he’ll be in a good mood today. If I keep walking the tractor will pass me and it will be all right.

The tractor rolled out of the row of trees onto the track, towards her. She listened for the slowing of the engine, but it was going to be all right. Papa wasn’t stopping to talk to her. Should she smile? It was so hard to see what his expression was like under the brim of his grimy hat. His faced looked red, but that could just be the heat. Sweat glistened at his throat; it had soaked his singlet and was running down his dark brown arms. He held tightly to the steering wheel as the tractor lurched from side to side: the track was bumpy and the load on the back heavy. As he passed he lifted his fingers off the wheel at her in greeting. Smile, but just a little bit, she told herself. Don’t look too happy. Wave the same as him. She had to move to the side of the track into the dry grass for him to pass, so that was something to do. Her heart slowed as the roar became a distant drone behind her.

It would be easy to find Mummy and the boys now: just retrace where the tractor had been. She turned into the row, glad to step from the full sun into the dappled light that came through the canopy of green leaves. It always seemed so much quieter once you were under the trees. No breeze could ever get in, unless there was a big storm. The air always seemed heavy and hard to breathe. Sometimes she felt she might suffocate. She was already feeling sticky under the arms and around the waistband of her jeans. How was she going to survive until dinnertime if she was already so hot?

as she walked her feet slushed through the clover. She loved it, the clover. She has never seen such huge leaves anywhere else, or so many four, five and six-leaf clovers. The fertiliser mutated them, her mother had told her. She looked up. These trees had been picked already—there were only a few small, hard, green pears hanging in clumps at the very bottom of each tree. There were twigs and broken leaves strewn about on the ground underneath. They were stripping them, then. Good. That was easier than picking with a size ring. It was so hard measuring every pear before you picked it.

There was Mummy, suddenly, in the row a little further on. Her heart skipped with warmth and she hurried now, so glad. Mummy—covered in an old blue man’s shirt, cotton gloves and big hat for protection. She was climbing down her ladder with a full picking bag hanging from her strong shoulders. She was supporting it from beneath with her arms and arching her back from the weight.

As Natalie approached, she became aware of her brothers, too. The twins were sitting in the bin, picking over the pears, tossing the bad ones over the edge into the grass. She could hear the swish and rustle of Max’s arms high up in the branches. He must be on a ladder. Mummy looked tired but her eyes smiled as she waddled to the edge of the fruit bin and emptied the bag of pears. She straightened up, took off her hat and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. Her hair was matted and sweaty; her face was flushed.
“Hello, darling! This is hot work! Can you pass me the water? It’s just behind you.”
“Where’s Julia?”
Her little sister was nowhere in sight.
“Next door with Giovanna.”
Natalie could hear the tinkle of ice as her mother lifted the water container from under a tree. Not all melted yet, though it was so hot, even in the shade. Her mother took a long drink and patted some water onto her cheeks.
“That’s better. Did you sleep well?”
They both heard it at the same time. The tractor, returning.
“You can pick with me,” her mother said, quickly, quietly.
The smile had gone from her eyes.
“Just start from the bottom and reach as high as you can. I’ll get the rest with the ladder. We’re stripping them now, so only leave the really small ones or those that are badly marked. The Aerogard is over there if you want it. The flies are shocking this morning because of the smell from the dairy. Okay?”

Natalie nodded. She slipped the picking bag over her head and shoulders easily enough, but it was far too big and hung to her knees. She struggled with the rusty buckles, trying to hurry, undoing them and doing them up again to make the straps shorter. Finally she was able to hook the flap up, forming the pouch to hold the pears. The tractor was quite close now, so she didn’t bother with the insect repellent. She moved straight to the other side of her mother’s tree and began to search among the leaves for pears.

She was clumsy at first because the pears and the leaves were the same green; she couldn’t distinguish between them. She fumbled, and several pears thudded to the ground. She wanted to gather them up to hide her mistake but remembered just in time that you couldn’t do that: once they had fallen they were no good. Bruised, even though they seemed so hard and green. “Don’t twist; lift,” her mother had explained to her on her first day out, and she remembered now that if you lifted the pear upwards at just the right angle, very gently, it just snapped away from the twig.

She had been picking for half an hour when she heard a commotion. She looked down to see one of the twins cowering beneath Papa, near the tractor.
She saw her father’s hand whip out at Dean, slapping the little head in a flurry of blows. Dean fell over and scrambled backwards, arms covering his head, trying to get away. Papa was shouting at him in Italian, and still hitting. One more smack sent Dean flying back into the tractor tyre. He had been silent, but now he cried out in pain. Papa stopped, then.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked.
“He’s hurt himself,” said her mother, from far off.
Papa swore again and walked away to his ladder. Dean was crying and holding onto his bottom. He had fallen on the hard sticking-out air tube of the tractor tyre. It had a hard metal cap on the end. It must have hurt so much.

Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Mummy stood with a worried look on her face all white and pinched, but she did not go over to Dean. Natalie understood. Papa might come back and hit some more, or shout.

Dean had stopped crying now. His face was still wobbly; Natalie could see his tears. He stood up and limped to a tree, still holding the sore part. Everyone started picking again. Mummy too.

Natalie groped around for pears. She couldn’t stop reliving it over and over in her mind: her father slapping, her brother falling and crying out, Mummy watching…
Natalie’s heart hurt in her chest. Her throat lumped. Eyes prickled. But it wasn’t safe to cry.
How could she keep picking stupid pears, pretending nothing bad had happened? Well, she wouldn’t.
Then she had her best idea: she would pretend to faint. Before she could think any more about it, she fell on the ground and lay as still as she could in the long itchy grass.
She heard her mother cry out Natalie! She felt her arms being shaken and her face being touched by her mother’s scratchy fingertips. She opened her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
Mummy was looking at her with that same worried face, so close that Natalie could see the green flecks in her hazel eyes and the dust on her lashes and the red veins threading across her cheeks.
“What’s wrong with her?” called her father, from somewhere above.
Natalie held her breath.
“She’s sick,” said her mother. “She’ll have to go inside.”
They both waited.
“Okay,” her father said. “She picks too slow, anyway. Let her bring the food.”
Her mother patted her and smiled.
“Off you go,” she whispered. “Bring the morning tea around quarter to ten. Use the big pot. Can you remember what to bring?”
Natalie nodded, suddenly feeling guilty that Mummy had to stay.
“I’m sorry, Mummy,” she said.
Her mother smiled again. It was all right.

s Natalie got up and emptied her picking bag as quietly as she could. She turned down the row to walk back through the clover to the house. She could barely believe what she had done. But she had done it. And it had worked!

She walked, faster and faster; once out of sight she skipped, then ran, then skipped again. Free! Hadn’t Papa said that she picked too slowly? That meant she didn’t have to work any more, didn’t it? Maybe she really did faint…she was not strong enough to work out in the orchard. It was true. She was free! No more picking!

She ran past the shed and the peppercorn tree, along the concrete path to the back door. She stepped into the cool of the house and let the door slam behind her. She would take off her outside shoes, and the socks with grass seeds sticking to them. Next time she could wear sandals; she wouldn’t be picking. She would wash her feet in the trough, splash her face, run a brush through her hair to get the twigs out; flop down on her bed with a book. There was plenty of time before morning tea.