The Chicken Dance

  “Great! Now he thinks we don’t even love him enough to be here for him.”

  “Shut up, Dick,” my mother said.

  “Okay. Whatever. Fine. Listen,” my father said. “I’m going to leave and stay in a hotel tonight. It’s probably best that Don’s not here. We’ve both been through a lot today and we should probably calm down before we talk to him. I’ll leave work early tomorrow and come here and you and I can talk about what we’re going to do. And when Don gets back from school, we’ll talk to him.”

  “Talk to him about what?” my mother said. “There’s nothing to talk to him about. He’s staying with me and we’re getting out of this God-forsaken town.”

  “Just promise me that you’ll let him spend the night at Leon’s,” my father said.

  “I’m not promising you anything!” my mother screamed.

  “I can’t talk to you like this,” my father said. “I’m leaving. But just know that I’m not scared of you and I’ll fight you on this if I have to.”

  “I hate you!” my mother yelled.

  For the next few minutes I heard noises like stuff was being thrown against a wall and my mother screaming and crying. I wondered if I should go out and talk to her. I was kind of scared, though, that she’d hit me with one of the things that she was throwing or that she’d yell at me about lying about sleeping at Leon’s or that she’d beg me to go and live with her instead of my father. I wasn’t ready to decide, so I just sat by my door and listened to my mother throw things.

  Thirty-Four

  I guess I sat by that door for an hour or so and listened to my mother. I think she was by herself, but I could hear her shouting things like she was fighting with my father. But nobody ever answered her back. I still wrote down the things she said in my notebook even though it wasn’t really a fight with my father.

  At first she just said a lot of curse words, but I didn’t write the exact word down. I just wrote, “curse word,” so the fight my mother was having with herself sounded like this.

  “He can’t take Don away from me!”

  “He forgot his curse word birthday too!”

  “I can be a good mother.”

  “I’m going to be a great curse word mother.”

  “I don’t want to be alone. Curse word. I just don’t want to be alone. Why is this curse word happening to me?”

  Then my mother didn’t say anything for, like, about ten minutes. She didn’t throw anything, either. She just cried. I put down my notebook and stood up and put my hand on the doorknob and twisted it a little. I wanted to go and see my mother. I wanted to tell her to stop crying. So I opened the door, but before I took a step out, my mother started talking again.

  “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I can’t be a good mother. Maybe that’s why Dawn left. That’s why he’s leaving. Because I’m a bad person.”

  After my mother said that, I closed the door and sat back down on the ground. My mother said a few other things that I couldn’t make out so I didn’t write them down. After a while she didn’t say anything at all. I could see out my window that it was starting to get dark outside and I had to go to the bathroom.

  I decided to open my door and walk out into the hallway to see what my mother was doing. It was dark in the living room except for this night-light we kept on all the time. I didn’t see my mother so I walked to the end of the hall and got a better look at the living room. My mother was lying on the beanbag chair and wasn’t moving and looked like she was sleeping.

  I backed out of the living room and went to the bathroom. Then I went into my room, put on my pajamas, and got into my bed.

  When I was lying there, I thought about who I should go and live with. I wondered where my father and I would live if I went with him or where my mother and I would live if I went with her. I wondered if we’d stay in Horse Island and if we did, if we’d have chickens. I didn’t want to leave my chickens and so I thought about running away and living with Dawn in Baton Rouge until my parents sold the house, and then maybe coming back and living with the people who bought it. And then I thought that maybe Dawn could buy the house and the two of us could live here together.

  I don’t know what time I fell asleep, but I know that I kept waking up because I was having dreams about falling and those always really scare me. I guess it was about the third time I woke up that I heard my chickens clucking a lot more than they usually did. I wondered if it was that stray dog again and so I moved to the end of my bed and looked out my window.

  I didn’t see a dog, but I saw someone in our yard carrying a flashlight. I wondered if someone was there to steal my chickens, and I got a little nervous. The person didn’t go to the chicken yard, though. They stayed in our yard and pointed the flashlight at the house. The light hit me in my eyes, and I backed away from the window and got under my bed. Then I heard someone at the window whisper, “Don! Don, is that you? It’s me, Dawn.”

  I was a little confused, and it took me a couple of seconds before I got out from under my bed and looked out the window through the screen and saw Dawn. She held the flashlight underneath her face, which was kind of spooky, and then she turned it off and said, “Come outside for a minute. I want to talk to you.”

  I told her to come inside, and she said, “I don’t want to wake Mom and Dad.”

  I told her, “Father isn’t here, and Mother is passed out so she won’t hear you.”

  Dawn tilted her head to the side and asked, “Don, why can’t you come out here?”

  “I can,” I told her, “but I want you to see my room and the blue ribbon I won for the chicken-judging contest at the Dairy Festival.”

  Dawn smiled a little and said, “Okay. Go and open the front door for me.”

  I got out of my bed and walked real quiet to the front door and opened it. There was Dawn standing with her shoes in her hand. She was wearing jeans and a pink tank top, and there were mosquitoes all over her arms and she was swatting them with her free hand. I grabbed her arm, pulled her in, closed the door, and then the two of us tiptoed back toward my bedroom.

  Dawn stopped right before we left the living room and looked at my mother lying on the beanbag chair in the dark. Dawn stared at her for a couple of minutes, and then my mother moved a little and Dawn turned and followed me into my room. After I closed the door and turned the lights on, Dawn bent down and hugged me and kissed me on the forehead, over and over again until I asked, “What are you doing here?”

  She grabbed my head in her hands and looked at me for a few seconds, and then said, “Listen, Don. I need to tell you something. Your name is not Don. It’s Stanley.”

  “I know,” I told her. “Mother and Father changed it when I was little because they didn’t like Stanley anymore because Father had an uncle named Stanley and he gambled a lot.”

  “Well,” Dawn said. “That’s not really true.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Uncle Stanley didn’t gamble a lot?”

  “No,” Dawn said. “You weren’t named after Dad’s uncle. You were named after your father.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Dawn,” I said. “Father’s name isn’t Stanley. It’s Dick and his middle name is Paul.”

  “Don,” Dawn said.

  She didn’t speak for a few seconds and when she finally did, she spoke real soft and it was almost like she was whispering.

  “The man you call dad is not your father.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “That doesn’t make sense. Why is he not my father?”

  After I said it out loud, I thought that maybe I did understand. I thought that maybe my mother had had an affair with a man named Stanley and the man I called “father” all those years wasn’t my father.

  But I was really wrong because then Dawn said, “He’s not your father, Don. Your father’s name is Stanley Sullivan. And the woman you’ve been calling ‘mother’ isn’t your mother.”

  Now that really confused me. I could kind of understand how my father could not be my fath
er, but I didn’t know how my mother couldn’t be my mother. And then I thought maybe I was adopted.

  But I was really wrong that time too because Dawn said, “I’m your mother.”

  In one year, I found out that judging chickens was one of the most important things in Horse Island, that my real name wasn’t Don, that I might have a twin brother named Stanley, that I didn’t have a twin brother named Stanley, that my mother was doing stuff with Mr. Bufford that she shouldn’t be doing, that my sister who I thought was dead was really alive, and that my parents were getting a divorce. I didn’t think anything would ever surprise me again. But I was wrong, because when Dawn told me that she was my mother, I was so surprised, I couldn’t speak. I think I opened my eyes a little wider, and my mouth too, but then one of the mosquitoes that had gotten into the house flew in it and I started coughing. Dawn shook me a little and asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I told her. “A bug flew in my mouth.”

  “You didn’t know, did you?” she said. “That I was your mom, I mean.”

  “I don’t understand,” I told her. “What do you mean?”

  I understood what she meant because it explained a lot. It explained why my parents didn’t want me to see my birth certificate and why they were always keeping secrets from me. I guess when I said I didn’t understand, I meant I didn’t understand why she’d left me.

  So then I asked her, “Why did you leave me? Did I cry too much? Or were you mad I didn’t look like you?”

  “No, Don,” she said.

  Then she grabbed me and hugged me and started crying.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave you, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t stand living with them anymore because they made my life hell. If they weren’t fighting, she was making me dance and he was ignoring me. When I got pregnant with you, I was fifteen, and stupid, and didn’t have any money. I knew I couldn’t tell them about you because they’d make my life miserable. So I went to Grandma’s in Texarkana to have you. At first I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but then the nurse said she’d give you a good home.”

  “What nurse?” I asked.

  “Grandma was blind and dying so she had a nurse who lived with her,” Dawn told me. “She said she was going to keep you and take care of you. I don’t know why she gave you to Mom and Dad. I guess she got scared. Please don’t hate me. I’ve thought about you so many times.”

  I kind of understood why she left me because she was really young and didn’t have any money and was scared that my mother and father would get mad at her. But I didn’t understand why she didn’t come and get me after she grew up and got a job. So I asked, “Why didn’t you come and get me or visit me when you grew up and got a job?”

  “I didn’t know where you were,” she said. “I figured Grandma was dead and I didn’t know how to find the nurse. Please don’t hate me, Stanley.”

  I kind of understood that and I didn’t hate her for leaving me and I told her that. But then I started thinking about how she’d called me Stanley and I thought about how she’d told me that I was named after my father and I wondered where he was.

  So I asked her, “Where is my father?”

  Dawn stuck her tongue out of her mouth a little and moved it around her lips and then said, “I don’t know. I never told him about you. I didn’t love him. I was young and stupid.”

  “But when women get pregnant,” I said, “they get big stomachs. Didn’t everyone see that you had a big stomach?”

  “I didn’t have a big stomach,” Dawn said. “I guess it’s because I was so young and because I was dancing all the time and I never put on that much weight. You were a small baby. You were so cute. It was so hard to leave you and the biggest mistake I ever made. But, listen, I want to make it up to you. I want you to come with me and I’ll take care of you. We’ll leave this place right now and I promise I’ll be a good mom.”

  I couldn’t believe that Dawn wanted me to go and live with her. I thought that maybe she and I could move to California and be a real family like the Brady Bunch. Only without the five other kids, father, and the maid. That sounded a lot cooler than living with my mother or father, because a bunch of people on TV lived in California but none lived in Horse Island or Lafayette. I kind of figured that I’d miss my mother and father, but I didn’t want to have to choose between them and if I chose Dawn, I wouldn’t have to.

  Besides that, though, Dawn seemed really nice, and like she’d be a good mom and ask me how my day at school went and take me to the circus and remember my birthday. So I decided that I would leave with Dawn, but before I said yes, I asked, “Can I bring my favorite chicken, KC?”

  She laughed and then said, “If you think a chicken named KC wants to come with you, then yes. Bring him.”

  “KC is a her,” I told Dawn, and she said, “Oh. Well, you can bring her.”

  I didn’t think my mother or father would let me keep KC and so I decided that I would go with Dawn. So I pulled my suitcase down from the top shelf of my closet and put it on the floor and started packing. I packed my blue ribbon from the Dairy Festival, some clothes, and my Standard of Perfection book. Dawn sat on my bed and watched and asked, “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Light brown,” I said. “The same color as the Brown Leghorn, my favorite breed of chickens.”

  “Mine’s red,” Dawn said. “What’s your favorite food?”

  I told her, “Ice cream,” and then she asked, “Flavor?” I said, “Chocolate,” and she said, “That’s my favorite flavor too.”

  She lifted her feet off of the ground a little and then said, “So tell me about this chicken, KC.”

  I closed my suitcase and then said, “I got her from the Dairy Festival. She was in this glass box and she played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the piano whenever you put a quarter in, and after she was finished, some feed fell out. She’s okay now, because I took care of her, but when I found her, she had a bunch of missing feathers, and I could tell she was sad because she was stuck in that box all alone. Her name was Henrietta when I found her, but I changed it to KC because, when I brought her home and put her in the yard with all the other chickens, she stood in front of them and let them know that she was new, and she was small, but she wasn’t going to let them boss her around, because you know chickens have a pecking order and try to see who’s the strongest, and even though she wasn’t the strongest, she made them think she was by flapping her wings, and it was almost like she was dancing. So I called her KC, because he used to dance in front of the Sunshine Band, and sometimes he wore an Indian costume with feathers and he kind of looked like a chicken.”

  I think it was the longest I had ever spoken without stopping. It was because I loved talking about KC and how she could have died if I’d left her in that box. Dawn looked at me like she didn’t understand and then her eyes filled up with water. She put her hands on her face and then passed them through her hair, and her bangs stuck up kind of like a rooster’s comb.

  I thought she looked really pretty, then. Even though she had my mother’s eyes, I could tell she was different from her. I don’t think my mother could have kicked that drunk man in the privates the way Dawn did. It was kind of like Dawn was a rooster and didn’t need anybody to protect her, but my mother was a young hen and couldn’t take care of herself. Then I started thinking about how if I left with Dawn or went with my father, that my mother would be alone. She was kind of like KC in a way, and trapped in a glass box, and if she had feathers, they would be all gone or dirty and they’d probably stay that way until someone took her out of that box. I thought about how much she’d cried earlier and how she thought she was a bad person because Dawn left her and my father was going to leave her.

  And that made me think about how Dawn had left me. Even though I wasn’t mad at her because she left, I kind of wished that she hadn’t. Because I felt like it was my fault that she had to run away and couldn’t finish high school or go to
college or do any other stuff that she might have wanted to do and instead had to dance for a living. I didn’t like feeling that way and I didn’t want my mother to feel that way because I left.

  So I told Dawn, “I don’t know if I can go.”

  She got up from the bed and said, “What? Why? Do you hate me? Do you hate me because I left you?”

  I told her, “No. I don’t hate you,” and she said, “Please don’t hate me. Please don’t.”

  She started crying again, and then fell to her knees and hugged me, and I said, “I don’t hate you. I love you. Even though I just met you, I love you.”

  It started to rain really hard and Dawn and I both looked out my window for a couple of seconds like we didn’t recognize the sound of the drops hitting the ground. Then Dawn cried harder, and then I started crying.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I told Dawn. “Mother and Father are getting a divorce and Father wants me to go with him and Mother thinks I’m staying with her and I thought it was going to be hard to choose between them and then you showed up and now it’s even harder because I really want to go with you, but you’re a rooster and Mother’s a weak hen and she needs someone to take care of her and I don’t want her to think she’s a bad person.”

  Dawn let me go and looked me in the eyes and said, “What? They’re getting a divorce?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I just found out yesterday.”

  “Well,” Dawn said. “Good! Those two should never have been together in the first place. They ruined my life and I’m sure they were about to ruin yours.”

  I knew that things weren’t always like I wanted them to be, but I never thought that my life was ruined. And then I just didn’t want to think about anything or have to choose anything. I wanted to sing a KC and the Sunshine Band song and just forget about everything that was going on. Then I started thinking about that day I won that KC and the Sunshine Band greatest hits album and how I’d won it. It was because the Magic Number was 33 and my mother had bought thirty-three dollars worth of groceries. And then I started thinking about how Mr. Bufford had decided that thirty-three was going to be the Magic Number. He had put a chicken on a board with numbers on it and whichever number the chicken used the bathroom on was the Magic Number. And that’s when I got an idea.