So exciting! The little girl almost wet her panties with anticipation.
And when she began to call to the chickens in her high, quavering voice as the Grandmother had taught her—CHICK!-chick-chick-chick-chick-CHI-ICK!—chickens came rushing in her direction at once, and made the little girl feel very special—very powerful. It was not ever the case that the little girl felt powerful—nor could the little girl have defined the sensation, at the time—but calling CHICK!-chick-chick-chick-chick-CHI-ICK provoked such a feeling in her, set her heart to pumping and a warm, rich sensation coursing through her veins; the little girl felt very special, and very proud.
Oh, she could see—for she was a quick-witted, smart little girl—that the chickens were oblivious of her, in their greed to devour seed they took not the slightest interest in her or in their surroundings; yet still it seemed to the little girl that the chickens must like her, and knew who she was, for they came so quickly to her, colliding with one another, scolding and fretting, pecking one another in a frenzy to get to the seed the little girl tossed in a wide, wavering circle.
The Grandmother had instructed the little girl to distribute the seed as evenly as she could. You did not want all the chickens rushing together in a tight, compressed spot and injuring themselves. The little girl understood that she had to be fair to all the chickens, not just a few. But the largest and most aggressive chickens rushed and pecked and beat away the others no matter how hard the girl tried.
Of course, Joyce Carol always fed me, specially. In a safe, confined area, by the side of the house. This was Happy Chicken’s special meal, which was served ahead of the general feeding. If other chickens noticed, and ran clucking to this meal, the little girl stamped her feet and shooed them away.
Though he might have been prowling out in the orchard soon there came Mr. Rooster running on his long, sinewy legs. Mr. Rooster could hear the Chick-chick-chick! call from a considerable distance. He pushed through the throng of clucking chickens, knocking the silly hens aside, and gobbled up as much seed as he could from the ground. Sometimes then pausing, looking up with a squint in his yellow eyes, and making a decision—who knows why?—to rush at the little girl and jab her bare knee with his beak.
So quickly this assault came, when it came, the little girl never had time to draw back and escape.
Ohhh! Why was Mr. Rooster so mean!
The little girl was always astonished, the rooster was so mean.
The rooster’s beak was so swift, so sharp, and so mean.
Worse yet, the rooster sometimes chased the little girl, trying to peck her legs. If the Grandmother saw, she shooed the rooster away by flapping her apron at him and cursing him in Hungarian. If the Grandfather saw, he gave the rooster a kick hard enough to lift the indignant bird into the air, squawking and kicking.
It was one of the mysteries of the little girl’s life, why, when the other chickens seemed to like her so much, and her pet chicken adored her, Mr. Rooster continued to be so mean. It did not make sense to the little girl that Mr. Rooster devoured the seed she gave him, then turned on her as if he hated her. Shouldn’t Mr. Rooster be grateful?
The Mother kissed and cuddled her and said, Oh!—that’s just the way roosters are, sweetie!
Plaintively the little girl asked the Grandmother why did the rooster peck her and make her bleed and the Grandmother did not cuddle her but said, with an air of impatience, in her broken, guttural English, Because he is a rooster. You should not always be surprised, how roosters are.
The little girl wandered the farm. The little girl was forbidden to step off the property.
There was the big barn, and there was the silo, and there was the chicken coop, and there were the storage sheds, and there was the barnyard, and there was the backyard, and there were the fields planted in potatoes and corn, and there was the orchard and beyond the orchard a quarter-mile lane back to the Weidenbachs’ farm, where there were dogs that barked and bit and the little girl did not dare to go. In these places chickens wandered, and also Mr. Rooster, in their ceaseless scratching-and-pecking for food, though it was rare to see a chicken in one of the farther fields or in the lane. Happy Chicken only accompanied the little girl if she called him to these places, or carried him snug and firm in her arms.
The little girl placed me on the lowermost limb of a tree, so that I could “roost.” The little girl urged me to try to “fly—like a bird.” But if the little girl nudged me, and I lost my balance on the tree limb, my wings flapped uselessly, and I fell to the ground and did not always land on my feet.
At such a time I picked myself up and tottered away, clucking loudly, complaining like any disgruntled hen, and the little girl hurried after me, saying how sorry she was, and promised not to do it again.
Happy Chicken! Don’t be mad at me, I love you.
(It was taken for granted, it was never contested or wondered at, that our wings were useless. We could “flap” our wings and “fly” for a few feet—even Mr. Rooster could not fly farther than a few yards; though there were wild turkeys, fatter and heavier than Rhode Island Reds, who could manage to “fly” into the higher limbs of a tree, and there “roost.”)
Not just the chicken coop and much of the barnyard but the grassy lawn behind the house—“lawn” was a fancy name given to the patch of rough, short-cropped crabgrass that extended from the barnyard and the driveway to the pear orchard—was mottled with chicken droppings. Runny black-and-white glistening smudges that gradually hardened into little stones and lost their sharp smell.
You would not want to run barefoot in the backyard, in the scrubby grass.
And there was the ugly tree stump along the side of the barn, stained with something dark.
And surrounding the stained block, chicken feathers. Sticky-stained feathers in dark, clotted clumps.
No chickens scratched and pecked in the dirt here. Even Mr. Rooster kept his distance. And the little girl.
Grandma was the one, you know. The one who killed the chickens.
No! I did not know.
Of course you must have known, Joyce. You must have seen—many times …
No. I didn’t know.
I never saw. But …
I never saw.
In later years she would recall little of her Hungarian grandparents. Her mother’s (step) parents. For few snapshots remained of those years. She did know that the Grandfather and the Grandmother were something that was called Hungarian. They’d come on a “big boat” from Budapest years before the little girl was born and so this was not of much interest to the little girl since it had happened long ago. The grandparents seemed to the little girl to be very old. The big-breasted, big-hipped Grandmother had never cut her hair, which was silvery gray streaked and fell past her waist if she let it down from the tight-braided bun. The Grandmother had been eighteen when she’d come to the United States on a boat and at age eighteen it had seemed to her too late for her to learn English, as the Grandfather had learned English well enough to speak in it haltingly and to run his finger haltingly beneath printed words in a newspaper or magazine. The Grandfather was a tall, big-bellied man with scratchy whiskers and rough, calloused fingers that caught in the little girl’s curly hair when he was just teasing.
Worse yet was tickling. When the Grandfather’s breath smelled harsh and fiery like gasoline from the cider he drank out of a crock. But the Mother insisted, Grandpa loves you; if you cry you will make Grandpa feel bad.
The farm was the Grandfather’s farm. Of the farms on the Millersport Highway, it was one of the smallest. Much of the acreage was a pear orchard. Pears were the primary crop of the farm, and eggs were second. The little girl and her parents lived on the Grandfather’s farm upstairs in the house. The little girl understood that the Father was not so happy living there, for the Father had been born in Lockport and preferred the city over the country, absolutely. The Father had tried his hand at farming and “hated” it. The little girl often overheard her parents speak of w
anting to move away, to live in Lockport, where the Father’s mother, who was the little girl’s Other Grandmother, lived. Except years would pass, all the years of their lives would pass, and somehow they did not ever move away.
The Grandfather and the Grandmother were not the Mother’s actual parents but her (step)parents because the Mother had been given to the couple, a long time ago when the Mother had not been a year old.
The Mother had relatives—a mother of her own, who lived some miles away and spoke only Hungarian and refused to see her.
They were all Hungarians: immigrants from the countryside outside Budapest, Hungary. After the Mother’s father had been killed in a drunken fight, the family was so poor, so many children, the Mother had had to be given away to the childless Hungarian couple on the Millersport Highway—there was shame to this, and so it was not spoken of. But it had had to be done.
The little girl knew virtually nothing of this. The little girl could not conceive of a time before herself any more than Happy Chicken could conceive of such a time.
The little girl ran away to hide sometimes. When the adults were speaking sharply to one another. When the Grandfather cursed in Hungarian, and the Grandmother cursed in Hungarian.
The little girl was breathless and frightened often but why the little girl would not recall.
The little girl often took me with her. Happy Chicken in the little girl’s arms, held tight.
My quivering body. My quick-beating heart. Smooth, warm beautiful chicken feathers! The little girl held me and whispered to me where we were hiding in the old silo beside the barn, which wasn’t used so much any longer now that the farm didn’t have cows or pigs or horses. Smells were strong inside the silo, like something that has fermented, or rotted. The little girl’s mother warned her never to play in the silo, it was dangerous inside the silo. The smells can choke you. If corncobs fall onto you, you might suffocate. But the little girl brought me with her to hide in the silo, for the little girl did not believe that anything bad could happen to her.
Except the little girl began more frequently to observe that if a chicken weakened, or fell sick, or had lost feathers, other chickens turned on her. So quickly—who could understand why? Even Happy Chicken sometimes pecked at another, weaker chicken—the little girl scolded, and carried me away.
No, no, Happy Chicken—that is bad.
We did not know why we did this. Happy Chicken did not know.
It was like laying eggs. Like releasing a hot little dollop of excrement from the anus, something that happened.
Hearing a commotion in the barnyard, the little girl ran to see what was happening, always anxious that the wounded hen might be me—but this did not happen.
Though sometimes my beak was glistening with blood, and when the little girl called me, I did not seem to hear. Peck peck peck is the action of the beak, like a great wave that sweeps over you, and cannot be resisted.
The little girl grew up, and grew away, but never forgot her Happy Chicken.
The little girl forgot much else, but not Happy Chicken.
The little girl became an adult woman, and at the sight of chickens she felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, sharp as pain. Especially red-feathered chickens. And roosters! Her eyes mist over, her heart beats quick enough to hurt. So happy then. So long ago …
Still, she would claim she’d never seen a chicken slaughtered. Never seen a single one of the Rhode Island Reds seized by the legs, struggling fiercely, more fiercely than any human being might struggle, thrown down onto the chopping block to be decapitated with a single swift blow of the blood-stained ax, wielded by a muscled arm.
It was the Grandmother’s arm, usually. For the Grandmother was the chicken slaughterer.
Which the girl had not seen. The girl had not seen.
The girl did recall a time when Grandfather was not so big bellied and confident as he’d been. When the Grandfather began to cough all the time. And to cough up blood. The Grandfather no longer teased the little girl, or caused her to run from him crying as she’d run from Mr. Rooster. The little girl stared in horror as the Grandfather coughed, coughed, coughed, doubled over in pain, scarcely able to breathe. The Grandfather would scrape phlegm up from his throat, with great effort, and spit it into a rag. And the little girl would want to hide her face, this was so terrible to see.
It was explained that the Grandfather was sick with something in his lungs. Steel filings, it was said, from the foundry in Tonawanda. The Grandfather had hated his factory job in Tonawanda but the Grandfather had had to work there, to support the farm. For the farm would not support itself and the people who lived on it.
Selling eggs, sitting out by the roadside. Sitting, dreaming, waiting for a vehicle to slow to a stop. Customers.
How much? One dozen?
Oh that’s too much. I can get them cheaper just up the road.
Always there were eggs for sale. And, at the end of the summer, pears in bushel baskets. Sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes. Apples, cherries. Pumpkins.
With a faint sensation of anxiety the little girl would recall sitting at the roadside at the front of the house behind a narrow bench. When sometimes the Mother had to go inside for a short while and the little girl was left alone at the roadside.
Hoping that no one would stop. Hoping not to see a vehicle slow down and park on the shoulder of the highway.
Some of the anxiety was over chickens, which made their blind-seeming way down the driveway, to the highway. Chickens oblivious of vehicles speeding by on the road, only a few yards from where they scratched and pecked in the dirt.
Carefully the little girl watched to see that no chickens drifted out onto the road. The little girl knew, though she wasn’t altogether certain how she knew, for she’d never seen, that from time to time chickens had been killed on the road.
It was one of the constant anxieties of the little girl’s life that Happy Chicken might be hit on the highway, for the little girl could not watch me all of the time.
Each morning running outside breathless and eager to call to me—Happy! Happy Chicken!
And I came running, out of the coop, or out of the barn, or out of a patch of grass beside the back door, hurrying on my scrawny chicken legs to be stroked and petted.
The laughter was kindly, and yet cruel.
Of course you ate chicken when you were a little girl, Joyce! You ate everything we ate.
No. She didn’t think so.
You’d have had to eat whatever was served. Whatever everybody else was eating. You wouldn’t have been allowed to not eat anything on the table.
No! This was not true.
You hated fatty meat, and you hated things like gizzards, but you ate chicken white meat. Of course you did.
No. That was—that was not true …
Children ate what they were given in those days. Children ate, or went hungry. Your father would have spanked the daylights out of you if you’d tried to refuse chicken, or anything that your mother or grandmother prepared.
But no. She did not believe this.
It’s true—she does remember her Hungarian grandmother preparing noodles in the kitchen. Wide swaths of soft-floury ghost-white dough on the circular kitchen table, which was covered in oilcloth, and over the oilcloth strips of waxed paper. She recalls her grandmother, a heavyset woman with hair plaited and fastened tight against her head, wielding a long, sharp-glittering knife, rapidly cutting dough into thin strips of noodle. The surprise was, sometimes you could see a pleading girl’s face inside the soft, flaccid old-woman face. And the little girl remembers something, an object, pale skinned, headless, in a large pan simmering on the stove, the surface of the liquid bubbling with yellow fat.
You loved chicken noodle soup! You don’t remember?
She hides her eyes. She hides her face. She is sickened, that terrible smell of wet feathers, plucked-pale chicken flesh.
Protesting, I had nothing to do with that.
Trying to
recall in a sudden panic—what had happened to her pet chicken she’d loved so?
Our memories are what remains on a wall that has been washed down. Old billboards advertising MAIL POUCH TOBACCO, in shreds. The faintest letters remaining that, even as you stare at them, fade. The Hungarian grandfather who’d been so gruff, so loud, so confident, and had so loved his little granddaughter he’d been unable to keep his calloused fingers out of her curls, had died at the age of fifty-three, his lungs riddled with steel filings from the foundry in Tonawanda. When he’d died, the Catholic priest said, It was his time. It was John Bush’s time. The Hungarian grandmother lived for many years afterward and never learned to speak English, still less to read English. The Grandmother died in a nursing home in Lockport to which the granddaughter was never once taken, nor was the grand-daughter told the name of the nursing home or its specific location.
What happened to me? What happened to Happy Chicken?
Oh, the little girl did not know!
The little girl did not know. Just that one terrible day—Happy Chicken was not there.
She mouths the words aloud: “Happy Chicken.”
There is something about the very word “happy” that is unnerving. Happy happy happy happy.
A terrible word. A terrifying word. Hap-py.
Waking in the night, tangled in bedsheets, shivering in such fright you’d think she was about to misstep and fall into an abyss.
Happy. Hap-py. We were so hap-py …
In the cold terror of the night she counts her dead. Like a rosary counting her dead. The Grandfather who died first and after whom the door was opened, that Death might come through to seize them all. The Grandmother who died somewhere far away, though close by. The Mother who died of a stroke when she was in her mideighties, overnight. The Father who died over several years, also in his mideighties, in the new twenty-first century, shrinking, baffled, and yet alert, in yearning wonderment.
Menagerie Page 22
