He groaned in defeat. “Damn you, Poppy.”
* * *
Frank called to me from Ralph’s lawn. “Hey, Poppy, how does a chicken tell the time?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “How?”
Frank elbowed Ralph. “Tell her, Ralph.”
Ralph cleared his throat. “He looks at the cluck.”
“Ha ha. Good one,” I said.
Frank slapped his knees. Ralph wiped his eyes. I said goodbye and kept walking. I wondered how long they took to come up with their joint joke. Then again, what did it matter? They had all the time in the world.
He looks at the cluck.
I wondered if male was always their default.
Sometimes I wondered about their wives. What did they do all day? Cook? Clean? Do the laundry? I liked Frank and Ralph but wondered what gave them the luxury of sitting on their arses all day talking about aigs?
As I got closer to work I worried less about Frank and Ralph’s wives and more about Mr. Chen. I wondered if he’d still be mad about earlier.
I tapped lightly on the back door.
Tum-ti-ti-tum-tum.
The door swung open.
Tum-tum!
I was pretty sure getting bonked twice in the head with a chicken-wing sign was against some kind of workplace health and safety rules, but the grin on Mr. Chen’s face suggested it was all fun and games.
I rubbed my head. “I guess we’re even now?”
He passed me my sign. “Get to work, Poppy Flower.”
Just as he turned his attention back to the deep-fat fryer, two new customers arrived and the telephone started ringing.
“You know, you should get some extra help,” I said. “This job will be the death of you.”
He waved me away. “You worry about your job, Nosy Parker, and I’ll worry about mine.”
I marched up and down Elgin hoping I’d see Miracle again. Halfway through my shift she showed up.
“I told my friends about you,” she said. “Buck wants to meet you so that he can ask why you cross the road.”
I laughed out loud.
“I told you he was funny.”
She was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon narwhal on the front. It said, Always be yourself. Unless you can be a narwhal. Then always be a narwhal.
As she walked alongside me I asked, “Miracle? What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I was hoping for astronaut or prime minister. I got backup dancer.
“Watch this,” she said.
She did a backwards flip on the spot.
“Whoa,” I said. “How did you do that?”
She shrugged. “Practice.”
I stood firmly on my giant chicken feet and imagined flipping backwards. I rocked my hips back and forth and pumped my arms. All I produced was a pathetic little hop. Miracle laughed.
“How do you get the guts?” I said. “To just throw yourself backwards like that?”
“You have to be brave,” she said.
“Well, I’m a chicken,” I said. “So that’s not going to happen.”
We continued our walk. I could feel droplets of sweat rolling from the small of my back to the inside of my underwear. I wondered if there was such a thing as buttcrack deodorant.
Miracle skipped beside me. “Will you come under the bridge tonight?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Don’t come as a chicken, okay? I want you as you.”
I don’t think she knew how beautiful that was.
When we got to Chen Chicken she hugged me. “I have to go home now. Lewis will be taking me under the bridge soon.”
I wanted to know why but thought it best not to ask.
Mr. Chen popped his head out of the shop. “Merry-girl. Come here!”
“Wait,” I said. “You know her?”
He passed her a family pack of chicken wings and fries. “Bring this home. Share with your mother. And don’t ever put a rubber chicken in my deep-fat fryer again.”
I turned to Miracle. “You put a rubber chicken in the deep-fat fryer?”
Miracle hugged him around the waist. “Thank you, Mr. Chen.”
When she disappeared down Elgin Street I said, “How do you know her?”
He looked me up and down. “You always did strike me as a busybody.”
“Always?” I said. “Pfssh! I’ve only known you three weeks.”
He scratched his head. “Really? Feels like an eternity.”
He went into the shop and shut the door behind him.
Busybody or not, I wanted to know Miracle’s story.
And there was only one way to find out.
CHAPTER TWO
Cam was in his room getting dressed for a party. I was in mine watching hidden-camera video of a baby being slapped by its babysitter. It was my new normal, the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Cam begged me to go with him, to the end-of-year bash in the suburbs. But I didn’t want to have fun in a house with no walls. I wanted to stay within the confines of my own and be miserable.
Mom knocked on my door. “Your father and I are going to a movie. Want to come?”
Lying came easy now. “I’m going to a party with Cam.”
“You are?” she said. “That’s nice.”
I stood up, looked in my closet. She looked beyond me, her eyes falling onto my collection of vintage clothes. “You should wear something fun,” she said. “Like you used to.”
It didn’t feel right dressing up, not when babies were being slapped by their babysitters.
I threw a decoy outfit on the bed.
Mom smiled. “Have fun tonight, okay?”
When the door clicked shut I sat back on my bed.
Like you used to. She’d been noticing. She’d be asking questions soon—what was wrong, was everything okay. Cam promised not to tell—she’d only worry. He kept his word. Even when I was at risk of internal organ damage.
I clipped my high-waisted navy sailor shorts with white button accents onto a pants hanger and neatly folded my red-and-white-striped crop top onto a shelf.
Then I got in bed and cried until I was a bag of skin filled with organs and bones.
* * *
It was Christmas Day when I stumbled across the Fans of the Forties forum. I thought I’d found my people. I loved scrolling through the photos of community members in their thrift-store finds, so much so that I decided to post a photo of myself—as Rosie the Riveter. Cam was immediately on board. We spent hours in our little living room, setting up the backdrop with a bright-yellow bedsheet from the Salvation Army store and using various lamps to get the lighting just right. Cam did my makeup and helped pick the outfit. In the spirit of mixing vintage and modern styles I wore a denim shirt tied at the midriff, a pair of skinny jeans, and red Converse sneaker boots. The pose, of course, remained the same. Cam and I loved the result. So did my people on the forum. The comments filled with words like fun, fresh, stunning. They even complimented my body, but not in a way that felt objectifying. They said things like Now there’s a girl who owns her curves. Amazing! and Finally, a Rosie re-creation portraying a classic, healthy body type. Bravo!
I was riding the wave of a social-media high.
A week later, I was drowning.
The message came from a user of the forum: Sorry. Thought you should know. They included a link to a subreddit.
It was called ISeeFatPeople.
My stomach tightened as the page loaded.
There I was. Me, as Rosie the Riveter. Except now, instead of holding a kick-ass fist in the air, I was holding a hamburger. My photo became The Photo. It had a life of its own. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with me.
I wondered who did it. One of “my people” from the forum? A random person who spends all day trolling various websites for people who are not their ideal body weight?
I was so confused.
It was interesting how the addition of the burger had changed the language
used to describe my body from healthy and amazing to gross and disgusting.
Their comments weren’t even that clever.
Rosie the Riveter? More like Rosie the Picnicker.
Somebody ate all the rations.
They called me Hambeast, Monster, Landwhale, Butterbeast.
Being a target hurt.
But what hurt more was that I’d tarnished the image of Rosie the Riveter with my supposedly gross and disgusting body.
* * *
When my room darkened I got out of bed. I pulled a brush through my hair and thought about Miracle. I wondered if she had a computer. I hoped she didn’t.
I pinned my hair back and looked at the bandana that hung on the corner of my mirror.
I remembered Miracle’s words. I want you as you.
I brought the bandana to my nose, breathed the Rosieness in.
I may have been jaded, but Miracle didn’t have to be.
I took a breath and tied the bandana around my head, Rosie style, with the ends tied into a knot on top.
Maybe Miracle would ask me about it and I could tell her about the badass girls of the forties.
I went to Cam’s room and borrowed his Chanel Rouge Allure lipstick. My hand shook as I applied it. For a moment I wished I was getting ready for roller derby. I wanted to pull a pair of short shorts over some fishnets and top it off with a Rosie-inspired polka-dotted crop top. I wanted to pump myself up by watching videos of the Brawlipops’ previous jams, then go to the arena and skate my ass off. But I’d just be pretending. It was best to keep it real—and I had a feeling that under the bridge was as real as it got.
As I walked through the downtown core I sent Cam a text: I’m not home I’m with you. He knew exactly what I meant.
Cam always had my back.
I stood on the Fifth Street bridge wondering what Miracle was doing below. I wondered again why she went there, at nine o’clock at night when she should have been sleeping in bed.
The embankment was steep so I walked on an angle to keep my footing. Miracle jumped up when she saw me. “You came as you!”
Stupidly, crazily, weirdly, my eyes filled with tears. I blinked them away. She put her arms up to be lifted. I wasn’t used to kids. She was heavier than she looked. She wrapped her legs around my waist. Her hair smelled like Johnson’s baby shampoo. A moment later, she was wriggling out of my grasp. “Come meet my friends.”
They were sitting on a concrete platform at the base of the bridge.
“This is Lewis,” she said, plunking into his lap. “My very best pal.”
I liked his hair. It was stubbly on the back and sides, like Miracle had said, but on the top was a slicked-back quiff, jet black with a hint of red dye. He had great bone structure.
She introduced Thumper next. He wasn’t quite one hundred years old but his beard and hair were as white as snow. He looked like Santa, if Santa were skinny with a ponytail and a motorcycle tattoo.
Miracle whispered, “Thumper has arse-ritis.”
I whispered back, “Maybe he should take some ass-pirin.”
The third guy, who I assumed was Buck, said, “Come on over, Chicken Girl.”
He was English. Cam would die. He loved a British accent.
I sat beside him. “Because the light was green.”
He laughed. The others looked confused.
“It’s why she crossed the road,” said Buck.
“Wow,” said Lewis. “A private joke. And they’ve only known each other two minutes.”
Buck moved close to me. His arm was an inch away from mine. I felt a tingling, from the top of my shoulder to the tips of my fingers. I had that surreal chicken feeling. Something was happening but I wasn’t sure what.
Even though it was summer, Lewis built a fire on the concrete platform and put a blanket around Thumper’s shoulders. A spark landed near my foot. It made a loud pop, like the crack of a spine on a new book.
Maybe that’s what this was—a new chapter.
Buck looked at my lips. “That color is brilliant.”
It was a kick-ass opening line.
I gave him a quick once-over. His white T-shirt and jeans looked as if they’d just been pressed, and his suede desert boots were spotless. His permanently flushed cheeks gave him a wholesome, outdoorsy look, like he’d walked straight out of a print ad for high-end outerwear. I was so taken with his appearance I said, “You don’t look like you live under a bridge.”
He laughed. “I wasn’t aware homelessness had a particular look.”
“It’s just that you look really nice,” I said. “You smell nice too.”
“What about the rest of us?” said Lewis. “Do we look homeless?”
He looked nice too—in an edgier way. I liked the way he cuffed his jeans over his red Converse. I was about to tell him that when Miracle brought her T-shirt to her nose. “Do I smell? I hope I don’t smell.”
I wanted to back up—to the prologue. I wanted to be standing on the bridge wondering about Miracle below.
“Just so you know,” said Lewis, “only half of us are homeless.”
I wondered which half.
“And some of us,” said Thumper, “are homeless by choice.”
I was confused. “Why would anyone be homeless by choice?”
Miracle looked confused too. “Why do you look like that, Poppy?”
“Like what?”
“Like there’s a stink under your nose.”
Thumper smiled. His eyes were as blue as Cam’s Sea the Point nail polish. He said, “Some people like to live in the outdoors because they don’t like to be tied down.”
I said, “But being tied down keeps you from drifting away.”
The others looked at me as if it was an odd thing to say, but Thumper said, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Miracle sat back in Lewis’s lap. She held Gilbert in her fist and sucked her thumb. The fingers of her other hand stroked the shaved bits on the side of Lewis’s head.
We listened to Thumper’s stories. He told us about his travels, how he’d lived in yurts and houseboats and caravans. He said no matter how far he traveled, or where he was, he called each place home. He said he connected with each and every person he met, no matter how wild and crazy they were. He said their songs and stories were like medicine and he gulped them down, every last drop. Because that’s what it’s all about, he said. Connections.
Maybe, I thought, Thumper could be a portal, out of the darkness and into something new. I’d jump in with two feet and I’d never look back. I could see the world through his skinny Santa eyes and close the chicken ones forever.
At eleven o’clock, everyone moved from the center of the platform to their spots along the perimeter. Lewis settled Thumper under a blanket, then moved farther along and settled Miracle into a hot-pink sleeping bag. He lay down beside her.
I moved with Buck to his spot near the embankment.
He nudged me with his elbow. “Want some?”
I looked down. There was a joint on his palm.
Chapter one had come to an end and a new one was just beginning.
I glanced over at the others. “It’s just a bit of weed,” said Buck. “It’ll take you away from whatever you’re running from.”
I frowned. “I’m not running from anything.” At least I didn’t think I was.
He lit the joint and passed it to me.
I wanted to see how chapter two played out so I took it.
I tried to look cool holding it. He said, “First time?”
I nodded.
“It’s okay, darlin’. We can take it slow.”
He put it between his lips and took a long, deep inhale, then he put it between mine. I didn’t even cough.
“You’re a good student,” he said.
“You’re a good teacher.”
When the joint was gone he stood up. “I need a wee. Back in a tick.”
I looked around. Thumper waved me over.
“Watch yoursel
f with Prince Charming,” he whispered. “Before you know it, you’ll have no brain cells.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a bit of weed.”
I nodded at the book that lay in his lap. “You read the Bible?”
He smiled. “I wrote the bible.”
He opened it up. Handwritten pages were taped over the originals.
I laughed. “You might go to hell for that.”
“I’m not worried,” he said. “Jesus loves the hell out of everyone.”
I reached down and flipped through the pages. “You rewrote the whole thing?”
He grinned. “The old one was too open to interpretation.” Then he tucked his bible into a leather satchel. “Go on,” he said. “Back to your prince. He’ll be back in a minute.”
When Buck returned he settled in close. “Hungry?”
He reached into his messenger bag and passed me a banana. I started to peel it the normal way, from the stem, but he took it back.
“Do it the monkey way.”
He turned it upside-down, peeled it from the nubby end.
“Now you’ve got a handle,” he said, holding the stem.
I smiled. “Say banana.”
“Why?”
“Just say it.”
“Ba-naw-naw.”
Adorable.
“Are you taking the mick?”
“I like the way you talk, that’s all.”
People say Brits have bad teeth. His were perfect.
After we ate, he slipped into his sleeping bag. He opened the flap for me to join him.
I wanted things to feel surreal again so I could blame what I was about to do on a dreamlike state. But suddenly, things felt very real.
I kicked off my shoes and got in beside him.
The ground felt hard beneath my head. He put out his arm. I laid my head on it.
“I have a headache,” I whispered.
He kissed my forehead. I could feel his warmth. I was sleepy and tingly all at the same time.
“I’m sorry for saying that you smelled nice,” I said, “as if being homeless meant that you shouldn’t. It was very hobophobic of me.”
He laughed. “I prefer the term tramp, thank you very much.”
Chicken Girl Page 3