The Cows

The Cows
by Margaret Peña

She fought her first battle with the cows when she was four. They were amazing, grazing contentedly in the field. She and her mother and father lived in a new housing development that occupied former farmland. Pastures still surrounded the development on two sides and they were enclosed by barbed wire. Standing on the fence to get a better view, she snagged her new outfit which her mother had stayed up all night to sew just the day before. The more she struggled, the more entangled she became. She was firmly ensnared, her outfit in tatters, before she was rescued. Blood streamed from the hundreds of cuts. She lost the battle of the fence. The tetanus shot was painful. The second time occurred when she was six. She was locked in with milk cows who returned from the fields in the evenings to the milking barn, a huge structure with cows on either side. Large stacks of hay occupied one end of the barn which was deeply shadowed and smelled of manure. The barn was claustrophobic when the doors were closed in spite of its immense size. Cows now create feelings of anxiety in her.