The Long Night of White Chickens

by Francisco Goldman

  It was fragile but it was there, that stillness between them that she had spoken about, into which nearly everything could be confided. But in the end, Moya, very little was actually confided into it.

  For one thing, though Moya didn’t know it yet, Flor secretly loved someone else and never really had the time to love Moya instead, though he believes she would have, was beginning to. Which was why, a year later, he found her shadow tugging on his all over Boston and Cambridge, asking, “Why am I a shadow? . . .” Two forlorn, sadly empty, that is, not full enough, shadows . . . Uff!

  This struck him, much later, long after the Long Night of White Chickens, as he again pondered the meanings of “self-knowledge.” Flor and Sylvia wanted the freedom, the security, to be a total mess in the company of the man they might love, a very old-fashioned but entirely permissible desire, especially on nights when both women felt and ended up a mess. So “self-knowledge” had something to do with how they thought a man should respond. The distraction of the chickens saved Moya from the humiliation of taking Flor’s mess so personally that she might never have forgiven him if she’d fully noticed. But the thing with the chickens would have distracted anybody, vos.

  He had already kissed the sweet and sour sauce from her hair, and soon after, her lips, once, twice, three times, bouncing his lips lightly off the plush firmness of hers until the hard tap of her teeth against his made him feel like a man who has been groping in the dark but finally found the switch and thrown it, and the tangy rum and tobacco hot breath rushed in just ahead of her swirling tongue. Her tongue, this was unbelievable. He opened his eyes, saw hers resolutely closed, the glowing penumbra of her lantern and torch—illuminated cheeks just beneath his, her hair blazing coldly all around him. He quickly closed his eyes, returning all his attention to the merrymaking of her tongue in the flooded cavern of her mouth. Soon saliva dribbled wildly off lips, down chins, letting in noisy air as her tongue receded; he gave up his attempt to bring it back, parted; she watched him closely, eyes gleaming, the back of her hand brushed lightly over her chin.

  “Pues sí?” she said after a moment. “Where was I?” She giggled, smiled almost mischievously, a little drunkenly, squinting. She looked down at her glass of rum and asked it, “Pues sí, rum?”

  “No sé,” he said, I don’t know, swallowing.

  A moment later she amazed him, the sudden seriousness in her expression, her hands suddenly on the back of his head, the parting lips speeding towards him. This time they really kissed, vos. Well, hasn’t Moya already told this? It was an almost successful seduction. When it was over, they sat back bunking at each other.

  “Vamos,” let’s go, whispered Moya.

  “. . . Have you been talking to other orphanage people?” she asked.

  “Not like this, claro,” he said, smiling.

  “No, en serio, have you spoken to Jim———?”—she named a gringo who was, of course, on Moya’s already disregarded list. He ran an all-boy orphanage.

  “No,” said Moya.

  She mentioned a few more names.

  “You are the first,” said Moya, his ears burning, as he felt himself growing dizzy with dismay and confusion.

  “Well you really should talk to Jim,” she said. “He’s a pretty good guy, and his orphanage makes mine look like a bedlam. Except I don’t think he likes reporters.”

  Before he knew it, she was confoundingly deep into a discussion of orphanages, slurring some of her words as she described this orphanage versus that orphanage. People said Jim molested his boys, she asked Moya if he’d heard that rumor. Moya certainly had, but said he hadn’t. She said she found it hard to believe since his orphanage was so immaculate and the boys all seemed so happy well as happy as can be expected, trusting and industrious. Jim had such excellent programs, vocational training, workshops with every tool always neatly put away. They even had their own marimba band, hired to play at parties, and excellent teachers, well, he was a great fund-raiser, corporate sponsors in the United States and everywhere, some of the older boys even attended the public university while continuing to live there. And then there was that enlightened nuns’ orphanage in Zona 1 where all the girls were Indians and were taught about their ancestral ways along with Catholicism by these real Mayanist nuns and the girls wore traje instead of uniforms and the nuns never did adoptions. Moya, what a great place, it always made her feel so inferior. But she just had to do some adoptions, it was the only way to finance the orphanage in general and the walk-in malnutrition clinic, where they actually saved lives, and, anyway, it was a great thing sometimes, to be adopted. But try as she might, a certain anarchy pervaded Los Quetzalitos and her children did not test as well scholastically as she wished they would. And you know what she had for vocational training, in one room set aside? A piñata workshop! Yes, her kids made piñatas, though the niñeras ended up doing most of the work. Go ahead, make fun of it, but they’d sold a few! On and on she went, mocking herself for the condition of her orphanage, laughing at herself, because what could one expect, she ran it all by herself didn’t she, and had little funding, and she had always been well organized, but lately things were always slipping her mind, she kept running out of medicines . . .

  Moya listened, distraught, feeling increasingly confused by her now. Why this, now? She seemed to be talking on and on out of some need that he could not fathom, in a tone of voice deliberate and alarmingly false, without conviction or even charm.

  Earlier the Fo Lu Shu II, both inside and outside in the dining patio, had been almost full, but now Moya and Flor were the only customers. Inside, framed by the arched scarlet dragon, the Chinese family that owned and managed the Fo Lu Shu II sat at a large table, dining from heaping platters. Chapín waiters were desultorily cleaning up, folding white tablecloths, filling botdes of soy sauce. The fried wontons had long been finished off and the rum was gone too, there remained only the lime-clouded inches of liquid in their glasses. La colita, mused Moya—while she speechified on—“the little tail” is the name for those few inches of watery alcohol left in a glass but it’s a name for a woman’s nalgas too, her ass, also culito, though this type of colita or culito de la culita doesn’t have to be and preferably isn’t little; the poetry of the common man, what a culture, vos.

  Flor was very quietly sobbing now, her face in her hands. Moya had no idea why. Why?

  “Qué, mi amor? Qué?” he babbled.

  “No no no, it’s not you. I’m, I don’t know what’s come over me, it’s not that bad an orphanage . . . I should get going.”

  “It sounds to me as if you do very well, everything considered,” said Moya, lamely, for he felt sure it was not her orphanage that she was actually crying over. “I’m sure your children are as happy as could be. You take them to movies, I’ve seen you. A little anarchy, so what?”

  “I don’t just adopt my kids to anyone, you know,” she said firmly. Then she stared at him, pouting, until she lunged back into speech, “I look for great parents!”

  “Maybe someday those children will come back, like you did,” he said. “Educated, determined—”

  “Angry!” she interrupted. “I was extremely angry at what I found here, that’s why.”

  “Angry, claro,” he repeated. “They will come back and do wonderful things, like you did.”

  “No no no, that’s not it, hardly. I just want them to have a chance to be—” and she sighed heavily—“they have a chance to become North American, Swedish, French, whatever, but for a lot of them, I think it will be how they come to terms with what happened here that . . . Ach! You know what I mean? For this, parents are important. If there is any poetry in my life, Moya, it’s in the way I decide who gets to be the parents. No matter what else, I think I’m better at that than anybody!”

  “A secret army of memories, sent out into the world!” he said, hopefully.

  But she didn’t even smile. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No! No I am not!”

  He kissed
the backs of her hands, and then her startling palms. She let him, but that was all.

  “So I’m OK, verdad?”

  “You are the most wonderful.”

  “Because what you believe counts. I can’t be like an entire order of enlightened nuns, but, if not for me, where would my kids be? Out on the street? In a state orphanage, God forbid? Working as someone else’s servant? Dead?”

  “Mija, you don’t need to prove yourself to me. Let’s go somewhere,” he said. “Let’s go dancing,” though he hated to dance, hated the way other men, often packing pistols, always cut in on whoever Moya was dancing with, and then they were always much better dancers than he.

  “Why don’t you come with us next time we go to the beach? I take them every week or two.”

  “Claro!” Why was she going on like this?

  “I guess they won’t serve us any more rum. Maybe we should go somewhere else.”

  “Whatever you want, reina . . .”

  He tried to kiss her again, but she turned her head away, blinking rapidly.

  Finally she said, “I don’t know, it’s nothing . . . It’s not you . . . I just felt so vulnerable all of a sudden. I feel, I don’t know . . . all surface, cold, like everything is on the surface.”

  “Surface? Superficial?” asked Moya, defensively. “Because of me, vos?”

  “No, on my skin, in my nerves. As if my nerves are all there is.” She shivered, and began to put her sweater on, wrestling with it. Her cheeks sparkled dimly with dried, wiped tears. She looked tired. Even her hair looked tired.

  Moya heard clucking and looked up, saw three Indian men rapidly pass by, in straw cowboy hats, each carrying live white chickens by the feet in both hands. They carried the chickens through the dining patio and into the restaurant. Moments later, the men came back empty-handed. They went out through the front gates and then seconds later came back, hurrying by again, carrying chickens. From outside, on the other side of the wall, he heard the racket of a henhouse.

  Flor laughed sharply. She drank the little bit of colita left in her glass. And Moya felt himself sunk in gloom, because they weren’t going to even kiss anymore, he could tell—maybe never again. He couldn’t bring himself to smile when she looked at him.

  “Chicken delivery, obviously,” she said. “Laying in the week’s supply. Guess that’s why they’re letting us sit here.”

  “Poor chickens,” said Moya, exhausted, his head feeling heavy with drink and the sullenness of dashed and bewildered hopes.

  She lit her final cigarette. Already the hurrying men had made several more trips out through the gates, and then back in, carrying chickens.

  “I’m sure Frank Perdue doesn’t carry all his chickens to his slaughterhouse one by one. But everything gets done here in some stupid, slow, and inevitably cruel way, doesn’t it?”

  “Two by two,” said Moya.

  “Of course chickens always remind me of my childhood,” she said. “Well, for obvious reasons, you know? My father raised them though only for the eggs. You’re upset.”

  “No, mi amor!”

  “Oh, you are. Don’t worry about it, Moyyyya. I think maybe it was just hearing my own voice in my ears all night. You know? It was scary in a way, kind of awful, playing along with you like that. Pretending to tell you everything. I ended up feeling all on the surface.”

  “All on the surface,” he repeated, still confused and even angered by the phrase. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh no! Don’t be, I’ve made a new friend, I’m sure. I really like you, Moya. I’m sure when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll realize it’s been an important night. Because it had a kind of coherence anyway, and it was fun. Like I got back in touch with something that is. . . perhaps not so useful to me. I’ve never been very good at explaining myself anyway, perhaps it’s best to just let these matters rest. Perhaps. Let’s go see what they’re doing.”

  She stumbled a bit, getting up. Her white pants were nearly transparent with damp from so many hours of sitting. He could see the outline of her panties until she plucked the fabric loose. Resting her hands on her hips, she arched her spine. She looked at him self-consciously, with unsure glittering black eyes, the pert lips twitching a bit, as if unsure whether to smile. But she did, and put out her hand, pulled him stiffly to his feet, and turned her back on him to watch the three men passing rapidly by, the hard soles of their mud-caked boots slapping the tiles, chickens dangling upside down from each of their fists, white wings partially extended and jerkily bouncing.

  “But what do you mean you pretended to go along?” he asked, still baffled. “Pretended to go along with what?”

  But Flor ignored him. She was standing at the front gates, looking out at the sidewalk, the two pickup trucks parked there, resonating with chicken noise. It, or something, made her laugh again, and with an awkward little step she turned and headed into the restaurant. Moya followed her through the dining room, past the staring waiters and Chinamen, into the kitchen. There, the entire floor of that cramped, reeking, damp, otherwise gray and dank kitchen, every inch was crammed with live, dumb, white, red-eyed chickens. Barefoot kitchen girls, Indians in shapeless gray smocks, were already at work, one of them wading through chickens, picking them up one at a time and snapping their necks, while another two stood over metal washtubs, plucking dead chickens.

  It was a strangely arresting and riveting sight, and for that reason alone Moya forever referred to the night on which he met Flor as the Long Night of White Chickens.

  But that long night was almost over now. Flor and Moya watched the feathery slaughter for only a minute or so, and then she turned to him with an odd smile. “They can’t kill the chickens first before bringing them over here?”

  Moya shrugged.

  “We used to have live chickens delivered to the orphanage, to the kitchen of course, but I put a stop to that, it really isn’t so much more expensive to get them plucked and cleaned, you know. I really have to be going,” she said. “Are you going to stay and watch until they’re done or something?”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “Flor, what’s wrong? Why are you angry with me?”

  “But I’m not,” she said, and, while the kitchen girls watched them with looks of quiet astonishment, Flor kissed him hard and briefly on the lips and said, “Call me, OK?”

  “Yes, claro, but—”

  “Thanks for everything.” And she turned and walked briskly out of the kitchen, through the patio where the paper lanterns had just been extinguished, and out into the street, where her Los Quetzalitos van was parked, though Moya had not yet seen it, since he had arrived first, and had waited for her at their table.

  Flabbergasted, Moya shyly, meekly followed—But she was gone. He couldn’t believe that he wasn’t getting a ride home, though she had paid the rum and wonton tab. He couldn’t believe the rudeness of her not offering him a ride home, though he guessed it had simply slipped her mind. He walked out through the front gates, past the two chicken-shit-reeking, now empty pickups, and looked down the otherwise deserted, tree-bowered, walled street. Not far from here, Roger had betrayed Moya atop that fence. He decided to walk the two long, empty, darkened blocks to Avenida La Reforma, where at this hour the ruleteros, the poor people’s bus vans, were still running. He couldn’t afford a taxi from one of the hotels.

  A week later he did in fact accompany Flor and a vanload of orphans to the beach at Puerto San José. There, she later told him, she decided she really did like him a lot. It was his attentiveness to the smaller children as they strayed from the shaded cabanas onto the heat-searing black sand and there cried and screamed, paralyzed by their burning feet. Moya kept jumping up, darting over the coal hot midday sand, carrying children back into the shade. He was not ordinarily attentive to children, but the absurdity of the routine had captivated him. That night he slept with her for the first time, in the orphanage, in her bed—after she had chased out the brood of little girls who had been waiting for her there while Moya stood in the
yard, under her window and small balcony, listening to Flor promising the whining and protesting little girls that they would only have to sleep away from her this one night. And it was true, Moya would not return to that bed for another two months, though he persisted in trying. Then they were lovers for five weeks, before she broke off with him again, saying it was over once and for all. Three weeks later, when he had felt sure he was on the verge of winning her back again, she was murdered.

  Of course much that Moya never knew about was going on in her life throughout those months. Eventually she had even told him, rather vaguely, in a mood of defiant lassitude, about the incident in which Colonel Malespín had tried to blackmail her, driving her briefly into hiding. But it was also during that time, apparently, according to Roger, that she was breaking up with a man she deeply loved, who would not leave his wife for her. Moya didn’t know Flor had another lover. But his mind is not so original: more than occasionally his vanity, his highest hopes, his embarrassing certainties were overruled by his suspicions. He voiced these more than once, over the phone, on those occasions when she agreed to meet him for dinner, those times when he impulsively dropped by the orphanage without calling ahead, once bringing a gift of Hotel Biltmore Maya envelopes. She said, variously, that no, she did not, that it was none of his business, that oh, come on, it’s not that, and once she said, “No one else to speak of, but even if there was, come on, we’ve only made love once. Oh, I just can’t handle a relationship right now, Moya. Please, just be my friend for a while.”

  Moya remembers that first morning, after he woke up in Flor de Mayo’s bed:

  “Every stroke,” she said sleepily, sweetly, “feels like another, another piece of a fable, a fable that just goes on and on.”

  “Like another word in a fable, mi amor?”

  “If a fable has to be made of words, pues sí . . .”

  She was not referring to his pigeon, which now rested, salty and encrusted, wings folded, but to his hands, one of which was stroking her back and shoulders, the other stroking her nalgas as he held her against him. The room was warm with sunlight and love, and his touches, all the touches that were making up this one long prolongation of a sensual morning, every stroke felt to her like another “piece of a fable.”