by WorkOnly
The hatchery was a big, concrete, window-less building in the middle of a beautiful field. Unlike at the poultry factory, we could come and go freely at the hatchery. All we had to do was wash the bottoms of our shoes in soapy water each time we went inside. The sexers wore surgical masks so they wouldn't inhale the dusty down from the baby chicks.
I'd been excited to see all the baby chicks. The workers tolerated me and Sammy as we walked through the sexers' workroom. We got to touch the male chicks, because nobody cared about them. Each one looked different: skinny, fat, all yellow, yellow and brown, big, small.
During the breaks we would sit outside with the sexers. Most of them smoked, and they all seemed tired all the time. Even my father seemed tired, too tired even for me and Sammy. One break we sat next to a young sexer blowing smoke rings. When he finished one cigarette, he would light another. He looked at me and Sammy.
"How'd you kids like to make yourselves helpful?"
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Billy has a guy who comes around just to get his coffee and bring him refreshments. You know who Billy is?"
"No."
"He's the best sexer in Georgia. He won the national competition in Japan before he moved to the States. He can sex twelve hundred chicks an hour with one hundred percent accuracy."
I guessed that was really good. One of the other sexers said, "Billy Morita." He shook his head admiringly.
"How many can you do an hour?" "A thousand, ninety-eight percent accuracy."
Another sexer said, "Hey, yeah, you kids could light our cigarettes and bring us coffee."
I looked to my father to see what he thought, but he was staring into space, in another world. "Okay," I said.
So when they started working again, Sammy and I kept busy bringing them coffee, scratching their backs, lighting their cigarettes in the break room, and so on. Our father saw we were having fun. I could tell once that under his mask he was smiling. Our father was the only one who didn't ask us for anything, but we brought him things anyway. We always brought him coffee when it was the freshest and hottest, and when one of the hatchery assistants bought doughnuts, we saved our father a jelly one, because we knew that was his favorite.
There were several incubators and hatchers where the eggs stayed warm until the chicks were born. When they opened the incubators, we got to look in and see hundreds of thousands of white eggs. The warm air rushed out—the temperature had to stay at around ninety-nine degrees. On another day we got to look into the hatchers and see hundreds of thousands of yellow chicks. As soon as the chicks were born, the sexers hurried to separate the males from the females. The sexers worked for twelve hours in a row, and then they slept while a new batch of eggs warmed. They would wake up a few hours later, when the new batch was born.
The sexers got paid half a penny for each chick. Most of them had gone to school in Chicago or Japan to get this job. Chicken sex-ing was invented in Japan. Then a Japanese man came to Chicago and started a school to teach Japanese Americans how to sex chickens. That's where my father had learned, before he and my mother opened their store. He'd worked at a hatchery before I was born, but the work at that hatchery was seasonal, and once I was born, he needed to make more money.
The inoculators were all white women. They stuck needles full of medicine into the female chickens, so the females wouldn't get sick and die. Angel was kind of the inocula-tors' boss. Angel was a big burly woman with bandages around her ankles because she said standing all day hurt her legs.
The first day we visited, Sammy and I shyly watched her work. Finally, I had to ask her something.
"Does the needle hurt them?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Does it hurt the chicks when you stick the needle into them?"
"Honey, do I look like I can talk to chickens?" I didn't know how to answer that. She softened. "I don't think it hurts them unless you accidentally break their neck. That happens sometimes."
I looked into a garbage can and saw a couple of limp chicks inside. Sammy started to look inside too, but I pulled him away. I couldn't do anything about the chicks, but at least I could protect Sammy from seeing them.
I took him into the back room. Even in there, we could hear the racket from hundreds of thousands of chicks chirping. We watched TV until my eyes hurt. Then I dressed Sammy in his soldier pajamas, and I put on my pajamas with the lace collar that my mother had made for me.
When all the sexers came in to sleep, most of them looked at Sammy and me and smiled the way Lynn smiled at us when she thought we were being delightfully immature and young. One gray-faced old sexer said to me, "Good night, Miss Lacy." He laughed as if he were quite funny. I smiled politely. The grown-ups didn't even change clothes. They just got in their sleeping bags and fell asleep. All of us slept in the same room together. Except for the gray-faced old sexer, no one even said good night to anyone else. I think they were too tired.
My father got to sleep for only four hours before it was time to go back to work. When I saw him getting ready for work, I said, "How come you have to get up now?"
"Because the chickens are ready now," he said.
I went back to sleep. It was storming outside; the hatchery manager had told the sexers that there was a tornado warning. I liked being in a warm room, any warm room, when it stormed. I wished Lynn could be with us. Maybe I would not like the storm so much if I had to lie in a hospital room, even if I was warm and my mother was with me. Just as I was drifting off I heard shouting from the main part of the hatchery. I searched the wall for the light switch but couldn't find it. I couldn't even find the crack from under the door. In a minute, though, I found the door and opened it. Outside was completely dark, but several people were shouting.
"Get a flashlight!" yelled one man.
"Why didn't the backup go on?" said another.
A flashlight came on, and I followed its light to the incubator room. The hatchery manager's face screwed up into one big scrunched-up frown. I saw my father in the dim light and walked over to him. He and the other sexers had taken down their masks. Their room was dark. My father put an arm around me.
"What happened?" I said.
"The power's out, and the backup generator's not working. If the incubators cool off for too long, they may lose part of the hatch."
"You mean the baby chicks will die?"
"Or come out deformed."
"Should I call Mr. Lyndon?" called out a man.
Everyone fell silent.
Finally, the hatchery manager said grimly, "Not yet."
"Who're we going to get to fix the generator at this hour?" Another silence.
The hatchery manager went to a phone, and we could hear him talking softly. After awhile all he was saying was 'Yes, sir," over and over. We all sat in the incubator room so our heat would keep the room warm. Before long we heard a siren in the distance. Then a sheriff entered with the man to frx the backup generator.
"Power's out all over the county," said the sheriff.
My father sent me to bed. I lay next to Sammy in the total darkness. Mr. Lyndon must have been a pretty powerful person to get a man to fix his generator and get a sheriff's escort in the middle of the night. That's what I was thinking about as I fell asleep.
In the morning the storm had ended. I lay in bed until Sammy woke up. That took several hours. I just lay there and thought about every single thing I could think of that had ever happened to me. It was the longest I ever stayed still in my life. I thought about the Chinese lady in Iowa who could take her teeth out, about driving to Georgia, about a boy at school who was kind of cute. I thought about Lynn being sick. For everything in my life, I would ask, Why? Why didn't the Chinese lady have teeth? Probably it was because she didn't brush them enough. I asked myself why we had to move to Georgia. It was because my father needed to work at this hatchery so he could support us better. Why did I kind of like that boy? Because he was kind of cute. And why was Lynnie sick? Why? There was no answer to that.
/>
Later that day I stole a couple of male chickens and set them down in the field. "Be free!" I said. Sammy and I walked across the street, to a pecan grove, and picked up nuts from the ground. Sammy had crazy bizarre teeth like rocks, and he would crack the nutshells so we could eat the insides. I remembered when we first arrived in Georgia and I saw all the mansions and all the fruit and nut trees. I thought almost everything would look beautiful like this pecan grove. I thought that there would be mansions and orchards everywhere and that nuts and fruit would fall down and roll through the streets whenever the wind blew the trees. I thought that maybe at first nobody would like Lynn but that once everybody got to know her, she would be the most popular girl in her class and be homecoming queen someday in high school. And I still thought this might be possible for her.
On Halloween night my parents brought my brother and me to visit her in the hospital. I was dressed as a fairy godmother. I pulled glitter off my dress and threw it over Lynnie and said, "Kira-kira!" She was thin and pale, with circles under her eyes. The glitter fell in a sparkly rain all around her. She smiled.
My parents smiled, but weakly. They were tired. To pay Lynn's medical bills and our new mortgage, my father worked almost constantly When he was home, all he thought about was Lynn. Our whole lives revolved around what Lynn wanted, what was good for Lynn, and what more we could do for Lynn.
Lynn came home the first week of November, on a rainy Saturday. We had decorated her room and put up a streamer that said WELCOME HOME. We'd bought the streamer at a store. It was the same color as Christmas tinsel. In the store it had seemed beautiful, but with Lynn lying in bed so pale and sick, the streamer seemed all wrong. My father took it down silently.
We quickly formed a ritual. Every night after my mother washed Lynn down, the whole family sat in our bedroom while I read to Lynn from the encyclopedia set my father had bought her for her birthday in September. It was used and it wasn't Encyclopaedia Britannica—we couldn't afford that—but Lynn loved it anyway As she always had been, Lynn was obsessed with the ocean, especially the ocean by California. I read anything in the encyclopedia set we could think of that concerned the ocean. She liked to know about everything, from the most peaceful tiny fish to the hungriest shark. Lynn thought it was all fascinating, and so did I. Some nights after I read, she wanted my parents to leave, and she and I talked about the houses we would live in someday by the sea. Our houses would boast huge picture windows, and palm trees would grow in our front yards. Then I would go into the living room and sleep on my cot next to the couch.
Sometimes I played hooky to be with Lynn. I wrote fake excuse letters from my mother to show the teacher, and sometimes when the teacher asked me directly what was wrong with me, I lied and said I'd had a fever the previous day. At home I read the encyclopedia to Lynn or combed her hair or painted her nails. One day she looked very sad and told me she wished she had some glittery pink polish. I didn't have any money, but I walked down to the five-and-ten store. I'd decided to steal Lynn some polish. I'd never stolen anything before, but it couldn't be hard.
When I arrived at the store, nobody was there except a lady at the front cash register. She was reading a magazine.
First I looked around the aisle where they kept bandages and antiseptic. Then I pretended to be interested in tennis shoes a couple of aisles down. Finally, I approached the nail polish. Nobody was in that aisle. This was too easy! I stuck some beautiful pink polish in my pocket and walked calmly out. I smiled as I walked through the door. It had been raining earlier, and a rainbow filled the sky. The sky was beautiful! Suddenly, I felt a hand grab my upper arm. I didn't even turn to look—I wrested my arm away and ran and ran. I kept waiting for someone to catch up with me, but no one ever did. I never looked back.
At home I painted Lynn's nails shimmery pink. She seemed so pleased, I didn't regret what I'd done. But before I got in bed later that night, I hung out the alcove window and looked up and down the street for the sheriff. The street was empty, so I slept peacefully.
The next morning before I left for school, I checked on Lynn. She was sound asleep, but her arms hung outside the blanket. Her nails looked pretty, and she was smiling slightly.
I hated to wake her up, but I had to, to give her her medicine. Eventually, when she got better, maybe some days I would let her slide and not force her to take her medicine. A part of me regretted making her miserable in this way—I think some of her pills made her feel even more awful than she already felt. Some days I think she was really miserable, because she cried a lot. In a way, I'd had to steel my heart to her crying. You need to steel yourself to a lot of things when someone in your family is really sick. I was going to give Lynn every chance to get better no matter how miserable it made her. I shook her awake.
"It's time for your pills!"
"Do I have to?"
"Yes."
She groaned softly as I propped her up. I never even asked her why she groaned, never asked her what exactly hurt when I did that. I didn't even know what made her hurt and what, if anything, made her feel good. All I knew was that my parents were at work, and it was my job to give her some pills.
I waited until she swallowed her water. Then I gently laid her back down. I got Sammy ready for school and called Mrs. Kanagawa, who sat with Lynnie during the days. As I was leaving she'd turned her head a bit and was admiring her pretty nails. I was in a good mood all day and was even able to answer a question during history.
When I got home, my mother was already there for some reason. She was talking to a white woman I had never seen. As soon as I walked through the doorway, the woman said, "That's her."
My mother bowed a slight bow to the woman and said, "I'm very sorry." She reached into her wallet. "Let me pay for it."
The woman took a dollar from her. "Will she be punished?"
"Yes, she certainly will."
The woman nodded. She walked out, glaring at me along the way. Right before she walked out, she said, "Shame on you!"
As soon as the woman left, my mother burst into tears. "My family is falling apart," she cried out. She ran out of the room.
I felt guilty then. I immediately went to my work area in the alcove and started to do my homework. When Silly's mother or uncle could drive her, she would come over for a couple of hours in the afternoons and help me with my homework. Like my sister, Silly was a straight-A student. I was doing even worse than usual at school that semester, and they were already talking about holding me back if I didn't improve.
Tonight I was supposed to write a book report on The Call of the Wild. It was my most favorite book I ever read, so I thought the report would be easy. The question we were supposed to answer in our report was: What is the theme of The Call of the Wild? What was the theme? I could never figure out exactly what "theme" meant. I wrote down that the theme was that dogs were loyal to good people. Furthermore, I wrote, dogs are good pets to own because of their loyalty. Loyalty is the theme. That is a fine theme. What else? In Alaska you need a dog to pull your sled. This proves that dogs and man were meant to befriends. This is another theme of The Call of the Wild.
Then I walked with Sam over to our former apartment to watch TV with Mrs. Muramoto. We watched until bedtime and returned home. When we came through the door, my mother was waiting. "Your father is in the kitchen. He wants to talk to you."
This was a very bad sign. He had never given me a talk. Lynn, of course, used to give me big talks. And my mother had given me a talk earlier that year, about what would happen when I started menstruating. And the vice principal had recently given me a talk about how if you got on the wrong track in grade school, you might never get off and you would end up either in a terrible job or else married to someone with a terrible job.
I sat down at our table in the kitchen. My father, reading the newspaper, ignored me at first. I examined a chip on our yellow Formica table. Our chairs were green. A neighbor had given us the table, and our uncle had given us the chairs. Nothing
in our house matched.
My father set his paper down and looked at me. "Lynn does have anemia," he said. "But she also has lymphoma, and it's very serious." He seemed to be thinking hard. "Tomorrow I want you to go to the store and apologize for stealing that nail polish."
"Okay."
"I know you're a good girl," he said. "I've always known that. But sometimes I like to see it, just to remind me. You think you could remind me of that a little more often?"
"Yes. What's lymphoma?"
"It's a very bad disease. But your sister's going to get better. Now that we have the house, she's happier."
I went to the bedroom. Lynn was sleeping, as usual. I looked up "lymphoma" in the dictionary. It took me fifteen minutes just to figure out how to spell it. The dictionary said: Any of the various malignant tumors that arise in the lymph nodes or in other lymphoid tissue. Then I looked up "malignant" in the dictionary. It said: Threatening to life; virulent: a malignant disease. Tending to metastasize; cancerous. Used of a tumor.
And that was how I found out Lynn might die.
I turned to her and stared. As she slept she looked a lot like she'd looked when she was well. I still thought she was beautiful, and so was her hair. But I couldn't help noticing that her hair and skin were not as beautiful as they once had been, and she seemed thin.
The manager of the dime store was a small, balding man who gestured a lot with his hands. After I apologized to him, he lectured me about the black sheep of his family. I think I was just about the most lectured-to girl in Georgia at that point.
The black sheep in the manager's family was named Oscar, and he had been in and out of reform school as a teenager and in and out of jail as a grown-up. The manager showed me a mug shot of Oscar. He said that Oscar had started out on his life of crime by going on a shoplifting spree when he was my age. This talk was kind of a surprise to me. I doubted I would ever go to jail, so that part of the lecture didn't scare me. But I wondered whether I could end up the black sheep of my family. We didn't really have a black sheep. In other words, the job was open.