Mother said beheading chickens was women’s work, families had to be self-sufficient, and raising and canning vegetables as well as raising and butchering chickens was what women did. World War II had been over for five years, and Victory Gardens were no longer a national push, but Mother was determined to make sure I knew how to manage a household. The day I want to tell you about was when I was nine years old, and Mother said I had to help kill one of the hens out of the coop behind our house before I went to school that morning.
I fed those hens every day, talked to them; I’d named them all. This time she grabbed Rebecca and I screamed.
“If not Rebecca, then you choose. Do you want it to be Alice?” Mother laughed.
I squatted on my heels, bawled, and put my hands over my ears so as not to hear the thwack. Then Mother nudged me with her foot into my part of the job—running after the headless chicken flopping down the alley, spewing blood. It made short hops, tried to fly, and got caught up in the neighbor’s fence where I pulled it down, clinched it under its wings, and walked shuffling and crying back to deposit it into the tub full of scalding water.
My fourteen-year-old brother, Jerry, didn’t have to help with the chickens. He was off with his friends or doing something with Dad.
Mother wiped the hatchet blade clean on her apron, returned it to its sheath, and poked the floating body with a stick as she waited for the water to cool somewhat. She threw the head—its waddles red, beak yellow, eyes open—to Buck, her eager bull terrier, who crunched it down fast and slid his enormous tongue around his chops. Then she sat on a stool, straddled the tub, her skirt riding high on her thighs, fished out the headless body, and proceeded to pluck out feathers.
“Next year,” she said, “you’ll learn how to draw out the insides, separate the gizzard, heart, and liver from the rest of the innards.”
I never learned. In a year’s time, Mother, Buck, and the chicken coop were gone. Aunt Betty bought chickens already drawn at the meat counter.
I thought a lot about beheadings. The World Britannica Encyclopedia said streets ran with blood during the French Revolution. It showed drawings of carts piled high with bodies and baskets full of heads. I wondered whether the workers who cleared the guillotine platform had to run and catch headless bodies.
I wasn’t always under Mother’s thumb that ninth year of my life. Whenever I could, I slipped away to be with my best friend, Roy, who lived next door. He was a year younger and a whole lot smarter than I was. He helped take inventory in his family’s shoe store and used big words, like “felonies” and “misdemeanors.” He said he was going to be a lawyer. We explored the sandstone caves and the sagebrush flats, threw rocks in the Big Ditch and waded into the river south of town. Sometimes we walked along the railroad tracks toward the Reservation, and every time we came to Dry Creek Gorge, we stopped to read the plaque. It told of a vigilante hanging gone bad in 1925. The condemned man had been pushed off the bridge with a rope around his neck. His head popped off and he ran up the embankment, hands tied behind his back.
Roy didn’t go to school the day I’m telling you about, the day before the man took Mother away. I hoped it was because he had a dentist appointment or something else simple, not because he had a headache. Sometimes his head hurt so bad he had to stay in bed. I worried about him. After school that day, I walked home by myself, dreading going into the house and meeting Mother. She could be waiting for me to do chores: dust the buffet, mop the basement stairs, clean the bathtub. Or she could be reading and not want to be disturbed, which was always a good day. Or she could be in one of her spells—a state that Jerry called “la-la-land.” I called it something else. It was a dark, angry place where she was a different person.
When I opened the back door, Mother’s back was to me. She yelled, “Come closer and your head will roll on the floor.” A partially butchered chicken lay on the counter, and Mother wielded a huge knife. She turned but didn’t look at me; her feet apart, her face red, her eyes rolling, she waved and poked that knife at something in front of her. Buck, alert, sat on the floor next to her. Terrified, I crouched against the kitchen wall and inched my way down the hall to my bedroom. Once inside, I closed, locked the door, and took breaths to try to settle down.
All in all, it was going to be okay. Mother would never miss me. I changed out of my school clothes into pants and put out Roy’s and my signal—a blue bandanna that I hung on a nail I’d driven into the window frame. If I saw a blue bandanna in Roy’s window, it meant he could come out to play. A red one meant he couldn’t. I waited.
I hoped he’d want to go to the big sandstone cave. The cottonwood and aspen leaves had turned gold and red, and the sun was warm. It would be a great day for a long bike ride with Queenie, Roy’s black lab, loping behind. We could ride into the sand hills, run into the big cave, and pretend we were being attacked by rustlers or Indians. I liked to take off my shoes and cover my feet with the fine, warm sand, then lie down and sleep in the cave. Roy knew about Mother and that I needed to sleep in the afternoons. He would play fetch with Queenie, while guarding the entrance.
Finally, a blue bandanna appeared.
I listened for Mother and hearing nothing slipped out the front door, walked calmly passed Roy’s house to the end of the block, looked around to be sure no one was watching and cut back down the alley to the back of Roy’s house where I crawled through the lilac hedge and darted to the weeping willow, our favorite climbing tree and rendezvous spot. Then I jumped to get ahold of the lowest branch. My feet scaling the trunk, I hoisted my stomach over the branch; then a step here, a grab there, and soon I was twenty feet in the air where I wrapped my body around a strong limb like a sloth.
Roy climbed after me. “I can’t stay long,” he said, “my head hurts awful and Mom doesn’t know I’m out here.”
I looked at his pale face with his eyes squeezed almost shut. I put my hand on his arm. He moved away.
“Let’s play end-of-the-world,” I said. Roy nodded.
We had a great view of the neighborhood. Across the street the postman rang Mrs. Graham’s doorbell and handed her a package. She handed him a letter.
“Why didn’t she just put the letter in the clothespin by her mailbox,” I asked.
“Probably has money in it.”
One time I talked about going all around the neighborhood and stealing the mail set out for the postman. I thought we’d been rich. Roy said we’d be caught when we tried to cash the checks. He was smart about things like that.
Then he started his story about the end of the world. “That postman is an extraterrestrial who is delivering poison to everyone’s mailbox. Once you open an envelope the gas would be released and everyone in the house would keel over dead. We’d be the only survivors in town because we’re safe up high.”
The three Hallett boys came riding their bikes toward the sagebrush flats, probably to play Nazis and GIs in the sagebrush, some of it over six feet tall. The youngest had a balloon tire bike and pumped his legs furiously trying to keep up.
“Here come aliens to deliver messages to their spacecraft parked north of town,” Roy said, but then rested his head on a tree limb. “I have to go. I think I’m going to throw up.” He started to scoot down but called up to me, “you get down from this tree if you start to get sleepy.” He swung off the lowest branch and staggered to his back door.
I worried about Roy as I laid my cheek on a branch watching the youngest brother fall far behind. He should go find his own playmates. I used to follow Jerry, but I didn’t anymore. One time I pedaled behind him and his friends when they were going to the river. He ditched me and I got lost. When I finally got home after dark, he claimed that he didn’t know I was tailing him, but he did.
I got into big trouble with Dad—grounded for a weekend—the worst punishment ever to be cooped up with Mother for two days. Jerry laughed. He didn’t have to be with Mother much. She said Dad would teach him how to be a man. Jerry and Dad did lots of things together—fished, hunted, and on Saturday mornings Jerry was at Dad’s bulk plant. I never went there. Dad said it was no place for a girl. Jerry lorded his special relationship with Dad over me, “I’m going to grow up to be a businessman, but you’re going to be a housewife. You’re going to marry some fat slob who can’t keep a job, and you’ll have to clean all the houses in Littleraven. You’d better learn how to from Mother.” He hooted.
In the weeping willow, I fingered slim leaves. I was getting sleepy under the afternoon sun, but I didn’t want to climb down.
Blind Mr. Bulow came pulling his red wagon full of jars of sauerkraut that he sold door-to-door. He tapped with his white cane up the steps to the door of my house. I became nervous: Mother might answer the door with a butcher knife in her hand, but then I relaxed thinking that Mr. Bulow couldn’t see her if she did. No answer at the door, and Mr. Bulow found the wrought iron railing, felt his way down the steps, and went to the next house.
Jerry pedaled his bike up the alley. He’d do the same thing that I did, go into the kitchen, see Mother, and leave. I bet it wouldn’t be more than thirty seconds before he was out the front door. “One-thousand one, one-thousand two . . .” It was to the count of twenty-eight that he slammed out the front door, went back to the alley, swung his leg over his bike and sped away.
He was going to the clubhouse probably, that old shack he didn’t think anyone except he and his friends knew about, but Roy and I knew about it. We happened on it on the same day we found a cast-off car seat in a clump of willows. I sometimes lay down there in the afternoon and sleep. A few weeks ago, Roy woke me. “Cam wake up. I gotta go home. My head hurts awful.”
He didn’t go to school for the next two days. I was terribly worried. But then he got better.
Roy’s backdoor opened, and he and his mother came out. He looked up, gave me a tight smile. His mother had her arm around his shoulder, supporting him as he staggered and stumbled to the garage. Their Dodge sedan backed out onto the gravel driveway, Roy sitting in front with his eyes squeezed closed. They must be going to the doctor.
I planned to stay in the tree until Dad came home, but the sun was going down, and I was getting cold. I wiped my nose on my sleeve.
A few minutes later, Jerry’s best friend dropped his bike behind the garage. This friend knew about Mother: one time she answered the door naked. He was not about to go to the house; instead, he opened the garage’s man door to check whether Jerry’s bike was there. He shut the door and swung onto his bike, off to the clubhouse too, I supposed.
Mrs. Graham turned on her dining room lights which showed her painted-red walls. Dad said that people painted rooms red only in whore houses, but I thought it took a lot of nerve to paint a wall red. I liked it. I didn’t know what color the walls were in that little house by the railroad tracks because the curtains were closed all the time. Sometimes Roy and I, our pockets full of gravel, climbed the steel ladder on the side of the grain silo that stood close to the little house. When it was dark, we threw gravel onto the roof. Always some man would come out, tucking his shirt into his pants and looking around, but he never saw us up on the silo ladder. We giggled and waited a while before we climbed down.
I wondered what Mother was doing now. Sometimes, after shouting threats, she sat on the floor with her arms around her knees, rocking and talking to herself or to someone or something else. Then in a half hour or so, she’d get up and go back to what she was doing. Sometimes she went to bed after having one of her spells, but not until Dad was home. I couldn’t see anything happening inside the house. Jerry said Mother’s sister died in an insane asylum. He said she had to stay there for five years, wrapped in a straight-jacket and then she died. I didn’t know if it was true. I asked Dad, but he said he’d tell me the whole story when I was older.
I wanted to know more about Mother, maybe understand why she had these spells. Once when we were snapping beans, she said she began hearing voices when she was a teenager. “I liked the voices,” she said, “they warned me about evil creatures who wanted to capture, torture, and kill me. Creatures were everywhere and could look like people I knew. The voices told me how to protect myself.”
I felt sick, stared into the bowl of snapped beans and asked, “Do you hear those voices now?”
“What voices? What are you talking about?”
I didn’t get any further with her. That was the only time she talked about the voices.
I kept watching the house. By now I was shivering.
Finally, Dad drove down the alley and turned his pickup into the garage. He went into the house and flicked on the kitchen lights. Lights came on in other rooms—my room, Jerry’s room—and then went off. The living room lights came on and stayed on. Dad went out the back door, stood in the alley and let out his famous whistle that could be heard all over town. In fact, the mayor said that the town should sell its firehouse siren and get him to whistle for volunteers to come fight the fire.
Jerry must have heard, even if he was inside that clubhouse, because soon he pedaled up the alley with his headlight shining. I thought I’d let him go into the house and get settled before I climbed down. Dad dialed a number and sat on the captain’s chair underneath the wall phone. He talked a long time. He hung up and dialed again. The phone rang inside Roy’s house. Dad was looking for me. He stepped out the back door and whistled, but I didn’t move. Jerry didn’t know about the weeping willow, so I knew no one could find me. Dad and Jerry sat across from each other at the kitchen table, talking. It was pitch black and cold. I felt my way down the tree, branch by branch.
All through dinner Dad stared at Mother who was quiet, looking down, slowly eating fried chicken. Jerry acted like everything was normal. I pushed potatoes around my plate and glanced at Mother and Dad, one at a time. I didn’t eat chicken—ever. After dinner Mother went to bed; Jerry did homework at the dining room table; and Dad helped me with the dishes.
“You know, Cam, your mother isn’t happy unless she’s mad at someone.” He smiled and nudged me with his shoulder. “You don’t need to be afraid. Everything will be all right in the morning.”
I thought about what he was saying. I wanted to tell him that it was more than mad, but I didn’t know how to name it. I said, “Dad, you remember when Mother accused Aunt Betty of following her, and how she thought that Aunt Betty worked for the Communists, and how she was going to turn Mother into the Russians and have her shot.”
He chuckled, “Oh, Punkins, your mom was going through her change-of-life—something you’ll learn about one day. She doesn’t talk that way now.”
“But she’s more than just mad at someone. She listens to voices. She goes away in her head.”
Dad nodded and dried a plate. He didn’t say anything more. I concentrated on scraping out the burned-on crust in the frying pan.
Dad told me not to lock my bedroom door at night. “If there’s a fire, no one could get into your room to get you out.” But I always locked my door and scooted my dresser against it after I heard Mother go to bed. I stayed awake most of the night. I’d know if there was a fire. Nancy Drew mysteries and jigsaw puzzles kept me company as I sat Indian style on the hardwood closet floor under a dim lightbulb with my back against the wall. My dresses hung over my head; my Sunday shoes and buckle-up galoshes were on the floor beside me, and my wool snow pants hung from a hook on the back of the closet door.
On this night, through the wall, I heard Dad talking to Mother, but didn’t hear Mother say anything. Then everything was quiet, until scary sounds began. Dad was a deep sleeper. He didn’t know about the sounds, about Mother’s whispering threats as she roamed around the house, about Buck’s toenails clicking behind her. Buck stopped when Mother stopped; both breathed loudly. Jerry slept hard too.
In the dark early morning, I listened to Mother and Buck creeping around the house. They were in the kitchen. Mother hissed. Then they came to my door and the doorknob rattled. They went away. Then they went into the living room. Then nothing. It was quiet for a long time. Then . . . then . . . three thwacks. Buck barked. Then nothing. I leaned back against the wall, listening, holding my breath and letting it out. When it came, it was a horrifying wail—I hear that wail in my head even now. Dad howled—no words, just a loud, horrible cry, like nothing I’ve heard since. Then all kinds of sounds—Mother screaming, running in her bare feet, Buck barking, Dad beating something with his fists —a counter or a wall—Dad slamming a body down. It had to be Mother. Mother crying—then other sounds I couldn’t sort out.
My doorknob rattled and Dad shouted, “Cam, are you okay?”
I squeaked out a “yes.”
“Just stay there, Cam. Don’t come out.”
Buck scratched at the back door. Then came sirens, and I went to my window. A blinking light on the sheriff’s white pickup and a spinning red and blue ambulance light rushed toward the house. I pulled a big sweater over my pajama top. Voices from a police radio pierced the dead black night. Buck barked in the backyard. Neighbors stood on the sidewalk with coats over their pajamas. I wondered whether Roy was awake but didn’t see lights on in his house. People were in the living room, talking. The front door must have been propped open. I didn’t hear it open and close. I stared into the deep night.
The porch light flipped on, and I saw Mother walk with a big man in loose blue pants and a V-necked blue top. He held her by her elbow. Mother looked straight ahead, her chin thrust forward. She walked stiffly as if marching. She wore her best, smart suit, her good Sunday shoes and patterned hose with the seams perfectly straight up her calves. The man helped Mother into the back seat of a white sedan.
Almost immediately after, Dad walked beside a stretcher until it was loaded into the ambulance. Black straps held the hard plastic tight over a body. It was Jerry. His foot stuck out the hem of his pajama pants. Dad followed the ambulance and the sheriff’s car in his pickup. Neighbors on the street turned away and shuffled toward their houses.
Although people were still in the living room talking and Buck was still barking, I felt hollow, all alone, until Aunt Betty’s voice asked me to let her in. I pushed the dresser aside and opened the door. Aunt Betty pulled me through the door and hugged me. She told me to put some underwear and clothes into a paper sack she was holding. She put her hand over my eyes and led me down the hall, passed Jerry’s room, through the living room, and through the front door. We got into her car and she drove to her house where I climbed into my cousin Howie’s bed—he was away at college.
I wanted to talk with Roy the next day, but when I called, his mom said that they were taking him to Denver where he’d have surgery to remove a brain tumor. Aunt Betty let me call the Denver hospital every day, but Roy was too sick to talk on the phone—ever. I talked to his mom a lot. She was always saying she was sorry about what happened at our house, but I didn’t want to talk to her about that. I wanted her to say that Roy was getting better, but she never did. One day, about four months later when I called, the nurse said that Roy’s room had been vacated, that he was no longer a patient at the hospital. No, he hadn’t checked out, but that’s all she could tell me. That’s when I really felt alone. I sat still for hours.
I quit talking for almost a year. I did my school work; I listened, but I didn’t talk. Mother went to an institution. Buck to a rancher.
Dad and I tried to live together in the house, but we couldn’t. He went into Jerry’s room—now empty of bed, dresser, posters, and comic books. He moaned and pounded his fist on the walls. We ate at the hotel restaurant. This was before McDonalds came to town. He asked me, one time, why I hadn’t talked to him more, why I didn’t say something if I knew enough to lock my door. I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t make him feel worse than he did already. I looked down and fiddled with the metal button on my jean jacket.
Finally, Dad gave up, said he couldn’t be a good dad for me if I wouldn’t talk to him. He moved me in with Aunt Betty, sold his business, left town, and never came back to Littleraven.
Roy’s mom and dad split up. I knew how they felt. They couldn’t stand to look at each other without Roy. They sold their house, and I never climbed the weeping willow again. The kids at school didn’t talk to me, and the teachers just glanced at me. I never had to answer questions. I daydreamed all through middle school and high school. I closed my eyes and imagined what Aunt Betty didn’t let me see—bloody knee prints on the floor, bloody paw prints, blood-splattered walls, Jerry’s headless body.
I’m fifty-years-old now, still live with Aunt Betty who’s in a wheelchair, have a home-based business as a bookkeeper for clients who don’t mind my odd hours. They bring me their checkbooks, receipts, and invoices in shoe boxes, and I give them back manila files and financial statements. Every afternoon I go to sleep and wake up when it gets dark, go to my work room, push a filing cabinet against the door, do my work, and listen to the sounds of the night.
Celeste Colgan is a Wyoming native, a writer, and researcher living in southeast Wyoming. Her work has appeared in Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers. You can find her at celestecolgan@gmail.com
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