Take the Stairs

by Take the Stairs (retail) (epub)

  Kate liked the pictures. We read them on the bus on the way back to the Building.

  “Look, Roger! Lots of baby chicks all together! And a mommy one. She’s sitting on her eggs, isn’t she, Roger? Here’s an egg cracking. Here’s a just-born chick. It’s all wet. Why is it all wet, Roger? Oh, I like this fluffy one, don’t you?”

  I was squeezed into a corner seat with Kate beside me. She held the book right up to my face so I couldn’t see anything.

  “Cute,” I said.

  Flynn and Tony were hanging outside the Building when we arrived.

  “Roger has eggs.” Kate bounced up and down on her heels. “He’s going to make them hatch. Aren’t you, Roger?”

  “I guess.”

  Flynn hooted. “Welcome to the farm!” He pushed open one of the double doors for us—the lock was busted again so we didn’t need a key.

  Tony leaned against the other door and grinned wickedly. “Wouldn’t want the super to hear about those eggs.”

  He glanced over at the super, Mag Jennings, slouched in her lawn chair outside her main-floor apartment. She was puffing on a cigarette and squinting over at us.

  “Guess not.” I pushed Kate inside before she could say anything else.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, MOM AND KATE WATCHED TV while I lay on my bed and read my library books. The bed was softer than the couch, and I propped my head up with a pillow. I didn’t even miss my shows.

  From the books, I learned what the X was for. Someone had marked the eggs for turning. Maybe it was Dad. Maybe he had done something right for a change.

  I had to turn the eggs three times a day, just like a mama would. The eggs had tiny bumps all over them. When I turned them over the first time, I saw an 0 in pencil on the other side. X O X. Every day. O X O. Like the kisses and hugs on my birthday card from Mom. Kate noticed the O’s, too.

  “Can I color on them, too?” she asked.

  “No coloring.” I made her promise.

  But she insisted on turning them. I didn’t know how else to turn them while I was at school. So I turned them when I woke up and when I went to bed, and Kate turned them when I was at school. I told her to wash her hands before she turned the eggs, but I couldn’t tell if she did. And I told her not to shake them.

  At school I wondered about my eggs all the time. Most days, I did the least amount of work possible and avoided anyone who might want to push me around. Not that many did, because of my size, but a few who suspected that I was soft sometimes came after me. Like Josh, a basketball player with a big nose. Maybe he was trying to make up for the size of his honker, but he liked to pester me as I thumped down the hall.

  “Hey, Black Jumbo, what’s doing?” Josh bounded along beside me.

  I could have pressed Josh away from me with one hand, but I didn’t.

  “Leave him alone.” It was Jennifer, from the Building. I thought she was after Tony but she was draped over Josh right then.

  Jennifer left off pawing Josh to link arms with me. “He doesn’t know anything about race relations,” she confided to me. Josh turned red in the face.

  I shook Jennifer off. Why didn’t everyone just leave me alone?

  By day four, I knew just what to do with my eggs. I marked on my wall calendar each day that had passed with a big X. I kept the water pan in the incubator full of water. I kept the temperature set for chicken eggs just because I didn’t know what else to do. Would Dad have given me snake eggs? The duck eggs in the book looked bigger than my eggs. So I guessed they were chicken eggs.

  I now knew that chicken eggs took 21 days to hatch and duck eggs took longer. I didn’t think I could hatch any eggs, but I had to try. I couldn’t just let them die.

  On the night of day seven, while I was turning them, I noticed a crack in one egg, and it wasn’t hatching early. At first I thought it was a hair. The egg lay, like the others, with its bigger round end higher than the pointy end. Then I saw how the crack ran from the big end to the X in the middle and disappeared underneath.

  Kate was already in bed. Mom had the TV blasting on some stupid sitcom. I found two eggs with cracks. They were ruined. Dead. Never to be hatched. It must have been Kate.

  I thought that maybe I shouldn’t let Kate touch them anymore. She might love them to death. Yet she cared about them almost as much as I did, and I couldn’t stand her tears. What could I do?

  I took the cracked eggs out of the incubator. They were small and white in my big brown hands. I remembered reading in one of the library books that only about half of all fertilized eggs hatch. With Kate around, I would be lucky to hatch any.

  Mom looked up at me when I shuffled down the hall, an egg in each hand. She narrowed her eyes at the eggs. I waited for her to say something mean, but she just turned back to her show. Good thing she kept quiet. I might have thrown one at her.

  I dropped the eggs down the garbage chute.

  * * *

  I STOPPED TURNING THE EGGS near the end because the book said to. It said that the chicks, if they were chicks, would be getting ready to hatch and not to disturb them. So I didn’t.

  Day nineteen passed with no hatching. And day twenty. And day twenty-one. I checked my calendar to see if I had counted wrong. I hadn’t.

  Then, on day twenty-two, Tony cornered me in the washroom at school.

  “I heard you were moving in on Jennifer.” He backed me into a corner, puffing out his chest like he meant to do me harm.

  I shook my head. He only came up to my chin but I still didn’t want to hurt him.

  “Josh saw you in the parking lot with her. What do you say to that? You denying it?”

  “You’ve got the wrong guy,” I said. “Talk to Josh.” Then I pushed past him and headed home. I had enough to worry about with my eggs. I didn’t need his problems on me, too.

  When I got home, Kate met me at the apartment door. She was bouncing on her toes.

  “Roger, there’s a crack in one egg.” She pulled at my coat. I remembered the two cracked eggs banging down the garbage chute. If she had cracked another one, I wouldn’t be able to trust her with my eggs any more.

  I raced down the hall to my room without even taking off my backpack. We passed Mom in the bathroom. The door was open a sliver and I could see her in her waitress uniform, trying to straighten her hair.

  In my room, Kate pointed. “Look!” Her eyes were shining black jewels and her cheeks burned deep burgundy.

  I looked. One egg had a hole in it. Not a crack like before, but a hole.

  I felt my face heat up and I was about to set into Kate when I saw the egg move. Then a tiny point—maybe a beak—tapped a larger hole in the egg.

  My eggs were hatching! They really were hatching! I couldn’t believe it.

  I could see another egg wiggling. Not like when I first got my eggs and I thought I saw one move. I mean, really rocking.

  “Listen.” Kate tucked her hand behind her ear and leaned over my eggs.

  I turned one ear to them and heard a faint “peep.”

  Not snakes. Not lizards. Must be chickens. Baby chickens.

  I smiled so wide my face felt as if it would split in two. If this was being a farmer, I liked it.

  Mom came in after a while. She didn’t say anything, but she watched for a long time. She watched with us as that one little chick cracked a line around the middle of the egg. I remembered that chicks have a small bump near the end of their beaks that they use to break out of their shells. Two other eggs were wiggling, and a hole appeared in a fourth egg. But that first chick was still way ahead.

  It would stop for a while and I would think, don’t stop. Keep going. You can do it.

  Kate spoke in a whisper-song the whole time, “Come on out, little chickie. Come on.”

  After about two hours, my legs were cramped from kneeling on the floor. We were all crammed around that tiny incubator, although Kate would run around in excited circles every now and then. By then my chick had made a crack around the whole eg
g, but it took another half an hour for it to push one end of the egg off.

  My first chick had hatched. Wet yellow feathers and a scrawny body. Too small to be alive. The chick was weak. It flopped down only half out of its shell to rest. I wanted to hold it, but I let it be.

  “Angels above!” Mom whispered. She gripped my arm with a warm squeeze. I noticed that she was late for work. I guess my eggs weren’t so bad after all.

  Mom left soon after that. Kate and I watched three more chicks working to crack their eggs. I had to wonder how they knew just what to do. They all hatched the same way without any help from anyone.

  In a few hours, two more chicks had hatched. Their feathers were beginning to dry, soft and fluffy yellow. Kate and I took turns holding them. They smelled like spring. I rubbed their feathers against my cheek.

  Back in the incubator, my chicks were beginning to walk, but they were wobbly. They hopped about on their big-clawed feet and pecked at everything within reach.

  The fourth chick had cracked a line around its egg but it couldn’t seem to get out. After a while, I gently pulled the top of its shell off. The chick was stuck to the shell, but it came loose easily enough.

  Only one of the other eggs was moving. Four hatched out of the fourteen I had left, and maybe one more. There were eggs shells all over the incubator. And the chicks wouldn’t stop peeping. Kate refused to go to her bed so I let her fall asleep beside the incubator. I lay on my bed and stretched out my legs.

  By the time Mom came home I had five chicks. I would have named them, but they kept on moving, and I couldn’t tell which was which. Mom carried Kate to bed, and I went to sleep with the sounds of peeping.

  * * *

  BY THE NEXT DAY THE CHICKS WERE RUNNING, not walking, inside the incubator. I left the unhatched eggs in there, just in case, but I lowered the temperature like the book said to do for the chicks.

  “When will the other chicks hatch?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  Kate and I laughed as we watched the chicks. Mom watched a bit then went for a shower. My chicks pecked at each other’s toes and bits of eggshell.

  “They’re hungry,” Kate said. “Roger, what do baby chicks eat?”

  “Seeds,” I told her, “but they don’t need any yet.” I had read that my chicks didn’t need food or water for two days.

  “What they need is a place to stay.” Mom stuck her head into my room on the way to the shower. She smiled at the chicks in spite of her sharp tone. Then she said, more gently, “If the super finds them we could lose our apartment.”

  Kate looked at me with big eyes. The Building was supposed to be pet-free, although I knew some people snuck in quiet pets, like cats or guinea pigs. Now, new life had hatched inside the Building—inside my apartment. That shouldn’t be bad, but it would be to some.

  “I know,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Roger.” Mom’s voice softened into a whisper.

  She was right. The Building was no place for five grown chickens. Besides, I had nothing to feed them. I could hatch them but I couldn’t feed them. I had to find them a home.

  * * *

  I DIDN’T CARE ABOUT ANYBODY ELSE’S BUSINESS at school that day. Tony could have pinned anything on me and I wouldn’t have minded. My chicks had hatched. What else mattered?

  Yet when I came home from school, I could hear their wild peeping from the hall.

  “That racket is driving me crazy,” Mom said as soon as I got into the apartment. “I had to do something with them.”

  Mom had moved my chicks. The eggs were still in the incubator, along with my five chicks. But the incubator was stuffed into my closet with a long extension cord coming out.

  I couldn’t keep my chicks in the closet. I had to find them a place. Where? Nothing to feed them. Nowhere for them to live. What could I do?

  Just then a knock came at the door. I opened it. Mag Jennings was standing on the faded orange hall carpet in a bright pink winter coat, her arms folded across her chest and a cigarette in her mouth.

  Oh no! I thought. Tony told her about the eggs!

  I tried to fill the whole doorway with my body.

  Mag held her cigarette out between her two fingers. “No pets allowed in the Building,” she said with smoky breath.

  “I, uh…”

  “And don’t tell me you don’t have none ‘cause I can hear them.”

  “Who told you?” I asked.

  “Ferchristsake, no one told me! Anyone can hear them clear down to the elevator!”

  “Oh.”

  Mag shook her head. Some ashes fell onto the rug. “I’ve heard of dogs, cats, and hamsters. But never damn chickens!”

  “I don’t have any place to take them.”

  “Take them to Middledale Farm, ferchristsake! Just get them out of here. Now.”

  She walked away, puffing. I held onto the metal doorframe.

  Middledale Farm. I hadn’t thought of it. Of course a farm would take them.

  * * *

  MIDDLEDALE FARM WAS A KIND OF PETTING ZOO run by the city. Mom used to take Kate there before the support payments stopped and she started working double shifts at the restaurant.

  The guy at the farm looked at me strangely when I walked in. I had an incubator full of chicks peeping and pecking like crazy. He took me to the guy in charge. His name was Frank.

  “It’s not our policy to take in animals,” Frank said. He was bald and his forehead wrinkled when he frowned. “This isn’t Animal Services.”

  “I know. I just thought you could take care of them. My dad kind of dropped them off and I don’t have a place for them.”

  He peered at my chicks.

  “Leghorns?”

  “What?”

  “Are they Leghorns?”

  “I don’t know what they are. Some kind of chicken, I guess.”

  Frank laughed. “They’re chickens all right. Come on. Bring them over here.”

  Frank put my chicks in a cage with a light and some mashed seeds and water. He dipped each chick’s beak into the water before he set it down.

  “So it can find the water,” he explained.

  I knew then that Frank would take good care of my chicks.

  * * *

  EVERY FEW DAYS, I VISITED MY FIVE CHICKS at Middledale Farm. Sometimes I brought Kate. Frank moved my chicks in with the others after a while, but I could tell which ones were mine because they were smaller than the rest.

  One day in spring, about two months later, I sat on a wooden chair in the barn, watching all the chickens. The chicks had grown so fast and eaten so much that I couldn’t tell them apart anymore.

  The chair I sat on was old and the paint had worn off into smooth wood. It was too small for me, and a bit uncomfortable, so after a while I got up to sweep the floor with a straw broom. There was a mother pig grunting to her piglets and a few goats in the barn, too. It reeked way worse than the Building, but in a nicer, cleaner way.

  I followed the old tabby cat named Warren outside. The day was warm and sunny, and the snow had melted. A few chickens scratched and pecked at the wet grass while one big rooster bossed them around. Some little kids came and went with their mothers, but I didn’t mind them.

  Soon Frank came striding up the path in his jean overalls and stood beside me. He was carrying the milking pail.

  We leaned on the split-rail fence with his pale elbow and my brown one almost touching. The chickens paraded around in front of us.

  Then Frank said, “I’ve seen you sweeping.”

  “Yeah,” I answered, not sure if I was about to get in trouble for it.

  Frank smiled so I could see his crooked bottom teeth.

  “Thought maybe you’d want a job helping with the animals.”

  He looked back to the chickens. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Only part-time, mind you,” he continued. “Not much pay. But it’s good work.” He wiped his dirty hands on his overalls and put out one hand to sha
ke mine. “What do you say?”

  I thought about it as the sun warmed my back. Frank grinned wider at me, waiting. Then the rooster crowed loud and strong. The chickens clucked back to him. I smiled, squeezed Frank’s hand, and shook it hard.

  “When can I start?”

  Leg Fungus

  Tanya

  Apt. 901

  IN THE SCHOOL CAFETERIA, Jennifer and Selene were talking about how to shear the unwanted hair off their legs. There were rows of us sardined onto benches, stuffing food and sharing gab, and they were talking personal.

  “Shaving dries out my skin like it’s sandpaper,” Jennifer said. She was beside me in the aisle seat, stretching her pale legs out sideways like bait. With her long hair dyed black and her skin powdered white, all she needed was a set of fangs to complete the vampire look.

  “Oh, girlfriend!” Selene flipped her genetically beautiful blond hair away from her carefully made-up face. She gripped Jennifer’s arm with a palsy-walsy squeeze and leaned in as if she were about to reveal her deepest secret. “It burns my skin for days afterward.”

  My stomach churned. How could they even care about this?

  Flynn nodded his head like he understood this crazy talk. Flynn, who had squeezed into our girls’ group somehow and made a space for himself. Probably was after Jennifer, since she and Tony were off again, but he didn’t stand a chance.

  Dad had always said I was too hard on people, but I was hard on myself, too. I didn’t exactly get a genetic goldmine when my DNA map was formed. Oversized breasts that got way too much attention. Mouse brown hair that hung limply from my head and plagued my legs, and an abundance of fat cells that multiplied too freely.

  “My mom gets her legs waxed.” Selene picked up a french fry between two manicured fingers. “She wants me to come too, but you have to let the hair grow long between waxing jobs. Yuck! It looks like the stubble of a man’s beard.” She nipped off the end of the fry.

  Jennifer and Flynn nodded their heads. I munched my beansprout-and-tomato sandwich on organic muesli bread and wondered why leg hair was such a big deal. I shaved mine, but only because it grew in like thick moss on my tree-stump legs. Yet this conversation was beginning to show me just how ridiculous shaving really was. What was the matter with a little leg hair anyway?