The Hole

I woke up just as I had always awoken, to the metallic clinking of the shovels. Even before I opened my eyes, I could smell the rich coarseness of the earth around me. It was in the beginning of these days that my mother would always wake up the earliest of us and dig out a small burrow at the corner of the hole. She would take out the small plastic pouch that she used to gather the scraps of old food, earth worms and rain water we would collect from the previous day and she would mix them all together in the only bowl we owned. This was our breakfast. One day when I was younger and complained about this food, she grew cross, knocking the bowl out of my hands.

“Our ancestors rode on ships to get here and they often didn’t eat at all! If they could’ve eaten the shackles off their wrists, they would’ve,” she growled. The bowl, still chipped, remained a reminder of this fact. It kept me quiet when I ate for a long time afterwards. But at that time, I didn’t know what a ship was or the sea my ancestors rode on or why they wore chains.

All I knew was the hole.

Before those days, we had been so deep that the glint of the sun wasn’t yet visible. My mother was just a shadow that held me to her breast to suckle when I was hungry and my father was a silent figure that grunted in the dark as he worked. I would watch them in wonderment in that small grey space. I would watch how they would carefully carve away at the earth around us and pack that same soft earth underneath us till it was nice and hard and flat. Hour after hour. Day after day. For years. The clanging of their shovels scraping against rocks and forcing itself into clay was the music of my life, their sweat and blood was the lubricant that shifted one day into the next.  Once, my mother in the monotony of her work and in the strain of her fatigue, slipped and jammed her hand into a sharp rock. She fell back as her cry of surprise punctuated our cramped hole. My father immediately stopped to help her but she pushed him away.

“Keep going,” she said coldly, sucking in air from between her teeth. As she tore a strip of cloth from her shirt and wrapped her hand, she looked over at me, her smile just barely visible. “Keep going for our boy.”

I had smiled back at her, scrambling to climb into her arms but she pushed me away as well and went back to work. She wasn’t finished for the day yet. During those days I would play by myself, quietly rolling a bent soda can on the ground and then I would move out of the way when it was time to pack the earth. Every night, after my parents had carefully placed their shovels against the side of the earthen wall and we had each taken a turn eating out of the bowl, I would sit in my father’s lap and run my small fingers through the hard calluses that ran along his palms as my mother told me stories about the world above us.

She told me that there were seas of water that spread out as far as you could see. She held up a seashell she had found in a bottle a few days earlier and said that someday we would go to see this expanse of water. She told me about how the sun made the air warm and the thought of it beaming down around us would almost help me forget the chill of the cold damp hole. But the most important story, the story she told almost every night was the story about us. She called it her hole and ladder story. It wasn’t my favorite story but even when I asked to hear another about animals that swam in the sea or contraptions that flew in the air, she would still tell this one to me first. 

It always began the same way.

“There are two types of people born into this world: Those who are given ladders and those who are born in holes,” she would say with a wag of her finger. Then she would always ask me the same question.

“Which one are you?”

The answer was so obvious it began to annoy me as I got older. The walls were all round us. They had always been around us. My parents worked every day to fill the hole. We had lived in it all of our lives.

“Which one are you!?” She would demand if I took too long to answer. She made it known that this question could never be rhetorical.

“Hole people,” I remember mumbling as a kid. She had smiled then, a fleeting flash of brilliance in the dark as she pulled me out of my father’s lap.

“Yes, but you must never forget that despite this, we are a whole people. A people that are more than capable of overcoming what this life has given us,” she had laughed and rubbed my shoulders with her rough hands.

Then she grabbed the seashell again and scraped at the side of the wall with it. She took the crumbles of dirt, patted them softly into the ground and handed it to me as she pointed to the wall.

“Your turn,” she said, shifting out of the way so I could crawl over her to the spot.

Delighted to finally be allowed to do grown folk’s work, I pushed past her and tried to scrape off as much earth as I could fill in my small shell. I carefully balanced it all as I dumped it onto the ground. I patted it proudly as I looked over to my parents. I couldn’t clearly make out their faces but I could feel their arms wrapping around me and the warmth of their bodies.

I wondered if this was what the sun would feel like some day.

The Promise

The most important part of the Hole and Ladder story was the promise that came at the end. Anyone who made it out of a hole was finally given a ladder. Once you had a ladder, you could touch the sky. My father told me that it was a promise that had been passed down to him from his father and his father before him and his father before him and so on and so on. He said that it was a promise that we got closer to each day with every inch of earth we put back under our feet. But honestly, sometimes I would look up and wonder if it was possible at all. As we worked in the near dark every day – me with my seashell, the clinking, the bowl and the promise - I began to get angry. It started as an opaque emotion, one I would often confuse with fatigue or boredom. But then I began to think about the other kids.  The ones with ladders.  I stared blankly at the dark walls around us as we all dug, scrapped and patted. My hands had already grown calluses over the cuts and my arms had already gotten used to the strain of digging for hours on end. I had looked over at my father and realized that I was almost shoulder to shoulder with him now as we stood next to one another. I could faintly make out the glint of sweat beading up around his temple. 

I tossed my seashell to the side of the hole.

“Why do we even have to do this,” I mumbled under my breath.

I don’t know that my mother heard me but my father immediately stopped digging. I could feel him looking over at me. I sat sluggishly on the ground looking defiantly back at him in the greyness of the hole.

Before my eyes could catch up to his movements, I could feel his thick fingers pressing into my shoulders. His breathing was ragged but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the digging or if he was mad about what I had said.

“My boy,” he said quietly and solemnly, the sound of my mother digging almost overtaking his words. “You must know that this hole will be me and your mother’s grave but we will die to make sure it’s not yours.”

He stood over me like this for a while. I felt wet drops fall on my face and chest but again I couldn’t tell if they were his sweat or his tears.  Or both. He grabbed my hand and pulled me gently to my feet and he grabbed his shovel.

I grabbed the shell.

After a while, we started to notice that we could see a little better in the hole and that there was now a small pin prick of light above us. On that day, we woke up and cried together. I looked harder at their faces that morning, making out all of the lines and wrinkles I hadn’t seen before. My mother was more beautiful than I had imagined. Her waist length locks, formed from the hard clay of the hole, fell loosely around her round face. My father looked much frailer then I had imagined. His arms looked strong but thin and his muscles stretched tightly across his chest. My mother pulled out a piece of beef jerky she had hidden in one of the folds of her shirt and passed it to me with a grin I could see much more clearly now.

“We will make this day your birthday,” she said, glancing over at my father as tears slowly filled her eyes. He smiled back at her, delighted at the idea.

“Yes! Yes! Eat it,” he said pushing the small piece of jerky to my mouth. “This is a day to celebrate!”

My words quavered as I tried to speak. I coughed, tasting the salt of tears on my lips.

“P-please, eat some with me,” I said holding the jerky out to them.

“No,” my mother said stubbornly as she wiped her eyes. My father pushed the jerky back to me.

“Eat it son and we will sing the birthday song to you,” he said with a nod.

It was tough in my mouth but it tasted wonderful. My mother chided me to chew more slowly as my father sang a song I hadn’t heard before. We all laughed when I burped loudly afterwards and then we began digging now with more fervor than we ever had. They, simply determined for me to see the world and I determined to make sure they would see it with me.

But one day shortly after that first day of real light, my father didn’t wake up.

He laid there as if he were still peacefully asleep. We sat there almost all day looking at the deep creases of his shoulders, the low curve of his neck.

My mother suddenly pushed herself up stiffly to her feet and without looking at me said “we will make a hole for your father.”

She grabbed her shovel and began to dig. I wondered quietly through my tears why we didn’t just get the dirt from the sides and pat it around him as we had been doing but then I realized that this was the way we would respect him in death and respect ourselves in life.

I picked up my father’s shovel.

The Ladder

We had passed the bowl already and it was after the story about big houses with so much space someone could run through them if they wanted, that I finally asked the question I had been wondering about.

“What happens - after we touch the sky.”

My mother paused so long I almost began to ask the question again. Her small hand reached over and gently patted my forearm which had grown thick with muscle from all of the digging.

“I don’t know exactly,” she said looking up at me with a slight shake of her head. “You would be the first from our family to get up there but I imagine being up that high – you could see everything we’ve talked and dreamed about. It will all be there at your fingertips.”

“You mean it would all be there at our fingertips,” I said, looking at her solemnly.

She smiled quietly and slowly leaned her head against my shoulder. Her clothes seemed bigger on her these days and she got tired a lot faster. One time a few days ago she actually sat down for a few minutes to catch her breath but still scolded me harshly when I stopped to see if she was ok. The light above us that used to be a tiny glint was now a small circle a little bigger than the tip of my pinky finger. Each day, we awoke before the sunrise and only stopped shoveling till after sunset but each day, we watched that circle hungrily.

My mother started coughing when the circle was still small enough for me to be able to cover it with my upheld thumb. It started as her just clearing her throat a lot as she shoveled but then the coughing got so debilitating that sometimes she couldn’t catch her breath and I was afraid she would pass out. At this point she couldn’t even wave me away anymore so I would stop and hold her as I poured rain water from the bowl between her parched lips.

“Please,” I would plead with her at night now. “Just rest, we’re almost there. I can do the rest by myself. It’s ok.”

But she would just shake her head stubbornly. She did allow me to tell the stories now as she laid her head in my lap. I would recount them just as she had for so many years. The story of buildings so high they go beyond the sky, cars that carry people everywhere and food that grows from the ground. When I got to the Hole and Ladder story, I would ask her “Which one are you?” in the same voice she had used to say it and she would laugh sometimes so hard, she would start coughing again.

The mornings were always the hardest for me though at this time. Sometimes I would have trouble sleeping because of the fear I felt when I awoke. Every morning, I would peer over my mother and watch her chest to see if she was breathing. Her breathing was so shallow at this point that sometimes my heart would stop just waiting for what seemed like ages to be sure she was still there with me.  Once I made sure of that, I’d prepare the scavenged scraps for breakfast and leave them in the bowl next to her and start digging. She hated when I didn’t wake her up to start as my father had once did but I worked the hardest at those times in hopes that she wouldn’t have to do as much for the day.

It was on one of these days that she woke up angry that I had already begun and that I hadn’t eaten yet. I stopped for a moment to take a piece of hard bread and a sip of water and went back to digging. At this point, the light at the top of the hole was slightly smaller than my upheld fist. I could hear my mother carefully cleaning out the bowl before she grabbed her shovel. She could no longer thrust the edge of it very deep into the clay so she often worked on the same spot for hours, slowly softening the earth so that it would eventually fall at her feet in small chunks.  Her breathing was laborious and loud and sometimes she would drop the shovel to rest her shoulders. On this day, she stopped shortly after she had begun.

“I need to sit for a bit,” she said wearily. I could hear her sigh as she slowly sat down.  I continued to work, thankful that she was allowing herself to get more rest.

“You know, when you were a baby I would strap you to my back and dig,” she said, proudly.

I stopped for a moment and looked over at her with a grin but she waved for me to keep digging.

“My big boy,” I didn’t have to see her smile to know that it was creasing her high cheek bones.

I imagined what that must have been like. It was probably completely dark in those days.  How hard was the heft of my body on her back and the shovel in her hands?  I thought about how far we’d come and how far we were going to go.  I’m not sure how long I was thinking all of this but I looked back for a moment. She was sleeping. I shook my head thinking about how she was going to be mad at me again for letting her nap but it would be worth it. I worked throughout the day and it wasn’t until I looked up at the orange light of the sunset that I became alarmed. 

She had been sleeping too long.

“Momma,” I called out, without turning around, without stopping my shoveling.

“Momma!” I shouted.

There was no answer.

I looked at the wall of earth in front of me, terrified at what was behind me. I kept shoveling. I kept at it until the sun had gone down. I didn’t pat the earth down because I didn’t want to turn around so I just kept shoveling. The subtle morning light came and the loose dirt had gathered up to my calves but I couldn’t stop.  If I didn’t stop then she would just be sleeping. The muscles in my arms were aching and my legs were stiff and numb underneath me. It was around the second sunset that I began to get dizzy. I dropped the shovel in a haze, the metal handle streaked with blood from my open calluses. I sagged into the mound of dirt that had gathered around me leaning forward against the hard wall. I didn’t want to turn around but as my body reluctantly drifted into slumber, I knew that I was alone now.

When I awoke, a daze of confusion greeted me with the light of the sun.  In her small hands, I gently placed the seashell. I buried her just as we had buried my father on the same side of the hole. After that was done, I took the earth I had dug up and patted it firmly under my feet and I looked up.  I took the bowl and ate and drank alone. I took a thin piece of twine we had found when I was a little boy and strapped my father’s shovel to my back. Then I picked up my mother’s shovel and began to dig. I dug for two days at a time now.  I would always collapse on the evening of the second day and wake up with the sun high in the sky the following day. But by now, I could feel its heat just as my parents had described. It did not feel as good as their embrace but it felt like hope. The circle of light above me was bigger than my outstretched fingers now and as I worked in this way, it kept getting larger and large much faster now. When the depth of the hole was just triple my height, I began to hear something. The only thing I had heard in all of my life were the low voices of my parents and the clink of the shovels, so I didn’t know what it could be. As I continued to dig and pat the earth down, I imagined all the things my mother had described and wondered if any of these things could be making such a sound.

Then one day shortly after, I looked up and realized I could touch the top edge of the hole.

Hurriedly, without picking up the bowl to make my morning meal. I grabbed my mother’s shovel and frantically began gouging out the sides of the hole. I threw all of this earth to one side until it was two feet high and then I patted it down so that I could use it as a step. With it, I could firmly grasp the edge. So I tried to pull myself up but my arms were still fatigued from the previous two days of digging. I backed up as far as I could in the hole and ran at the ledge, giving myself more clearance. I pulled myself up over my elbows and onto the hard surface above.

I lay there for a moment, the sun above me and the ground below me in stunned wonderment of what I had just done. The sun blazed with a heat so bright it sunk into my eyes even when they were closed. I slowly stood up looking out onto a wide expanse of ground filled with holes as far as I could see. I fell to my knees, overwhelmed at it all. My vision blurred as tears filled my eyes.

I wept.

I wept for mother and father, wept for the sun and wept for the people in all of those holes.

A loud humming sound suddenly jarred me from myself. I could just make out something or someone moving on the horizon.  As it got closer I could make out a person sitting in something that I guess was a car? This person wore a clean dark clothes, carefully smoothed hair and covers over their eyes. As he got closer, I could see his pink trimmed finger nails clasping a board with several papers on it. 

I stood up nervously as he approached.

He wheeled his vehicle very close to me and motioned for me to back up so that he could have more space to climb out.

“Is this a car?” I asked in amazement. Looking at its buttons and wheels.

“Um, no,” he began scratching his papers with a stick, occasionally looking up at me and grumbling to himself. “It’s a golf cart,” he clicked the end of his stick with a sharp jab at the board. “Kind of standard issue here but enough about me, let’s talk about you.”

He pulled a cover over his right hand, the thin material stretching over every finger. Then he extended it to me.

“Congratulations on all of your hard work! You are just something else aren’t you,” he said vigorously shaking my hand. “You’re actually only my 5th successful candidate this year so kudos to you my friend.”

I smiled, feeling tears beginning to well up in my eyes again. This was it. This was what my parents had sacrificed so much for and now I can be here for both of them.

“Thank you. Thank you,” I said, my throat choking on the words as I quickly wiped away my tears. “My parents are the - “

“That’s great,” he said, cutting me off as he pushed the board into my hands. “I’m going to need you to sign just at the highlighted portions and initial on the last two pages for me champ.” He pushed the stick into my hand so quickly, it slipped between my fingers and clattered to the ground.

I quickly knelt, my thigh cramping slightly as I picked it up at his feet. The pain of my open calluses made it hard for me to sustain a good grip but I made the marks where he said and he gave a satisfied nod afterwards.

“I am ready for my ladder,” I said to him as I handed over the board.

“Ok, one second,” he said. There was a buzzing in his pocket where he pulled out his phone. He looked at its screen and began talking to someone on the line. I stood there for a while waiting but my knees began to shake, so I sat down next to him.

This was it. I would get the ladder and do everything my parents and I had dreamed of for so many years. I could still hear the humming sound I had heard in the hole but it was much louder now. I looked out at the sea of holes around me and wondered how many people were in each one, trying to do what my family and I had just done.

The man in the suit went to the back of his golf cart and grabbed something while he was talking on the phone. It fell out with a large thud, its contents spilling out onto the hot surface of the concrete. He cursed under his breath and waved me over.

“Here you go champ,” he said, motioning to a pile of wood scraps and rope.

“What is this?” I asked, confused. It didn’t look at all like what my mother had described a ladder would look like.

“Your ladder,” he said with a chuckle before he turned back to his phone.

“But -,” I started, trying to explain.

“No, no, no. I don’t want to have to always get into this with you people. Hold on,” he held a finger up and told the person on the phone he’d call them back. “The agreement was and I know it forwards and backwards my friend, that we will give you a ladder. We didn’t say it was going to be put together. We didn’t say we’d wrap it in a pretty bow or make it 100 meters tall. We said you’d get one ladder and this is it.”

I looked at the pile.

“Do you know how much it costs for us to manufacture all of this for your people? And guess what – you hear that,” he said placing a hand around his ear in an exaggerated gesture. “That rumbling or whatever is the sounds of hundreds of thousands of your people trying to get up here. That’s noise pollution, right?! There’s nothing we could possibly do to bring up the property value within a 50-mile radius of this place.  But guess who gave your people the shovels to do it? Us,” he said jabbing a thumb into his chest. “I get that us ladder folks made some mistakes in the past but things are different now. You’ve got opportunities,” he said motioning to the pile of wood scraps and rope. “So make the best of it,” he patted my back and before I knew it, he had wheeled his golf cart across the expanse of holes, his phone already in hand.

I watched him as he left and even after he had completely gone.

I looked back out among the holes and then at the pile of wood.  I went back to my hole and filled it completely that day. When I was finished. I broke off the wooden handles from my father and mother’s shovels and pushed the metal blades into the center of the mound.

I looked down at the wooden handles and pile of scrap wood. Then I looked up at the warm blue sky.

I knew that I would make the longest ladder I could so that I could lower it down into the other holes.