Hypnotizing Chickens

by Julia Watts

  Chrys laughed. “Yeah, but you’ve got to understand,” she said to Amber. “This is when he was in his heavy cologne phase in high school. The deer pee was a considerable improvement over what he usually wore.”

  Amber giggled. “I bet it was. High school boys stink no matter what. They either smell like too much cologne or like armpits.”

  Chrys refrained from commenting that Amber should know since she had been a high school student fairly recently. “Why don’t we walk out into the yard so we don’t wake Nanny?”

  They settled at the round concrete picnic table in the side yard and drank their beers in silence for a few minutes. Finally Amber asked, “Are you sad cause you broke up with your…friend?”

  “She don’t want to talk about that,” Dustin said.

  “No, it’s okay,” Chrys said. “Yeah, I’m sad…especially since it was more of a being dumped by than a breaking up with kind of situation.”

  “The guy I was with before Dustin dumped me for another girl,” Amber said. “I slashed his tires and smashed in the windshield of his truck.”

  “Wow,” Chrys said, feeling both impressed and disturbed. “You hear that, Dustin? Don’t cross her.” Chrys was far too restrained and rational to slash the tires and smash the windshield of Meredith’s Lexus, but she still knew that doing it would feel awesome.

  “She’s a firecracker,” Dustin said. “It’s ’cause she’s a redhead.”

  Amber rolled her eyes. “Hey, us girls has got to stick up for ourselves. Right, Chrystal?”

  “That’s right.” Chrys tapped her beer can against Amber’s. “Hey, you were drinking wine coolers earlier. I didn’t think you liked beer.”

  “I like beer better than wine coolers,” Amber said. “I just can’t handle the crap I get when I drink beer in front of your nanny. I don’t think she gets that wine coolers have alcohol in them, too. And drinking beer in front of Peyton’s even worse. She always says, ‘Princesses don’t drink beer, Mommy.’”

  “I always knew there was a reason I never wanted to be a princess,” Chrys said.

  Dustin laughed. “Hey, what if all the Disney princesses did get drunk? That would be hilarious.”

  Chrys thought she detected a slight whiff of weed on Dustin’s clothes, which would explain his flight of fancy. “Yeah, well, it’d be pretty hard to walk in glass slippers if you were shit-faced.”

  “Yeah, and like in ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ the beast wouldn’t have to change into a prince,” Dustin said. “Just give Belle a few beers, and he’d look fine the way he was.”

  “Beauty and the Beer Goggles,” Chrys said.

  They were laughing so hard they had to wipe away tears. It had been a long time since Chrys had had a good, long laugh with her brother.

  When the laughter finally died down, Amber said, “That felt good. We don’t laugh like we used to.”

  “Why not?” Chrys said. It was a nosy question, but it was out of her mouth before she could help herself.

  “I don’t know.” Amber looked over at Dustin, then back at Chrys. “Money’s been tight since Dustin lost his job, and in this part of the country the job offers ain’t exactly pouring in.”

  “We ain’t moving,” Dustin said, his voice hard all of a sudden.

  “I didn’t say we was,” Amber said, her voice hardening to match his. “I just said southeastern Kentucky ain’t exactly the job capital of the world.” She sighed and stretched out her legs, dragging her bare toes through the grass. “You know how it is. There’s always something to worry about, and we just want to make sure we do right by Peyton.”

  Chrys nodded. “Sounds like you two have a bad case of grownup-itis.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Dustin said, slamming his beer can on the table for emphasis. “Don’t get me wrong. I love being a daddy. But a lot of being a grownup sucks. I remember when the hardest decision I had to make was whether to buy a cherry Popsicle or a grape one. Now I’m always having to decide something.” He took a swig of PBR. “Hell, if it wasn’t for getting drunk and getting laid, being a grownup wouldn’t hardly be worth it.”

  Chrys found herself thinking of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, though she knew better than to discuss long-dead poets with Dustin. “But isn’t there any time when you’re with Peyton and she’s so innocent and carefree you kind of get the feeling of being a kid again, too?”

  “Sure,” Dustin said. “And it’s good while it lasts. But then I go to the mailbox, and there’s another bill to pay.”

  “Speaking of bills to pay,” Amber said, getting up from the picnic table. “I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

  “On Saturday? That sucks,” Chrys said.

  “Hey, people want to buy cheap crap on Saturdays, too,” Amber said. “Bring Nanny by after she gets her hair done if she’s up to it. We just got in some of that rose-scented soap she likes.”

  * * *

  Nanny’s beauty salon of choice, Klassy Kuts, was in a trailer on the outskirts of town. Nothing said classy like a hair salon in a trailer, Chrys thought. And spelling “classy” with a “k” really sealed the deal.

  As soon as Chrys helped Nanny through the door, a heavily made-up, black-haired woman who looked like an aging country star said, “Well, look who it is!”

  “You’d think I don’t come here every Saturday of my life,” Nanny muttered to Chrys before saying, “Hidy, Bernice. This here’s my granddaughter Chrystal. She’s staying with me this summer.”

  “Why, Chrystal, I bet you don’t remember me fixing your hair for prom,” Bernice said, her red, gooey lips spreading in a smile.

  Chrys didn’t at first, but then she was able to paint a picture in her mind by aging the woman backward. “Oh, you did, didn’t you? You wove wildflowers into my hair.”

  “That’s why I remembered it,” Bernice said as she helped Nanny get settled in her chair and fastened a pink smock around her. “It was so different from what the other girls wanted back then. They was all about me making their hair as big as it would go.”

  Chrys had been the only girl at prom without an over-teased, over-permed mane. She had also been the only girl there with a gay boy for a date. “That was the eighties, all right,” she said, without remarking that Bernice’s hairstyle still seemed to be residing in that decade.

  Bernice had Nanny leaned back in her chair and was spraying her thin hair. “Now who was it who took you to the prom, Chrystal?”

  It was surreal talking about the prom as though it had happened yesterday. Apparently Bernice’s hair wasn’t the only thing about her stuck in the eighties. “Michael Brown. We lost touch, but I found him on Facebook recently.”

  “That’s who I thought it was,” Bernice said, working the shampoo into a lather. “He lives out in California and does something with computers. He came back here when his daddy died, and he had some feller with him he introduced as his husband. I thought they was gonna have to get a second casket for his mama, too.”

  Chrys felt like she’d just swallowed a handful of ice cubes. “Why is that?”

  “Well, you know,” Bernice said, sounding nervous. Apparently she had sensed the coldness in Chrys’s voice. “People here just ain’t used to things like that. I reckon it’s a good thing you’uns didn’t get married after the prom, huh? You would’ve been in for a surprise.”

  “No danger of that. We were just friends.” She added “still are,” even though her and Michael’s only contact over the past two decades had been to friend one another on Facebook. She knew her defense of Michael had been feeble, but it was the best she could do when she was feeling assailed by homophobia herself and crushed under the weight of what Nanny didn’t know about her.

  Chrys spent the rest of Nanny’s shampoo-and-set appointment pretending to be engrossed in a six-month-old issue of Hair Today magazine. When Nanny emerged from Bernice’s ministrations, she had a cap of curls that reminded Chrys of a poodle in a dog show. “Is there anywhere else you’d like t
o go while we’re out?” Chrys asked. “Amber said they just got in some of the soap you like at Dollar Tree.”

  “I do like that soap,” Nanny said. “It smell likes real roses, not like some of them other soaps.”

  “The ones that smell like a chemist’s idea of what a rose might smell like?” Chrys said. “We’ll go get some, then. I had forgotten how much you love your bath things.” She started the car and headed in the direction of Dollar Tree.

  “We didn’t have running water till I was sixteen years old,” Nanny said. “And we didn’t get a bath but once a week. Ma would get water from the well and heat it up on the coal stove and then pour it in a washtub. Us kids would take turns squatting in the washtub and using the lye soap she’d make every summer. That stuff would get you clean, but it smelled like bleach, and it left your skin as pink as a sunburned pig. The first time I had a real bath in a bathtub with hot running water I thought it felt better than anything else in the world.”

  “I bet it did,” Chrys said.

  “I always wonder about them people that says everything was better in the old days. I like my running water and my electric stove and my TV real good.”

  Chrys was driving through downtown, such as it was—Needham and Son Funeral Home, the Dixie Dog Diner advertising a two-for-one chili bun special, Miller’s Florist, a law office and dark, empty storefronts that in Chrys’s memory housed the Rexall drugstore and Newberry’s five-and-dime. The streets were empty. “I bet you can remember when downtown was livelier on a Saturday,” she said.

  “Oh, law, yes,” Nanny said. “There used to be a show here, and there was a soda fountain at the Rexall where I’d always get a chocolate milkshake. The stores stayed open late, and the streets was full of people. But that was before the mines closed.”

  Now most businesses were out near the Walmart by the interstate exit: a Sonic, a Jiffy Lube, a Huddle House, a Burger King. Chrys pulled into the parking lot of the Dollar Tree which occupied a spot in a sad little strip mall between a Little Caesar’s and a tanning salon called Tanfastic.

  “Hey, Nanny!” Amber called from her station behind the cash register as soon as they walked into the harshly lit store. “Chrystal, there’s a wheelchair you’uns can use if she wants to look around.”

  As Chrys helped her into the wheelchair, Nanny said, “I always feel like a baby in a stroller in these things.”

  “Well, there are worse ways to feel, I guess.” Chrys understood that Nanny didn’t want to feel helpless. Still, it seemed like it might be pleasant to be pushed around every once in a while like a baby taking in the sights.

  She wheeled Nanny through the aisles of off-brand, made-in-China crap: plastic toys that would no doubt break upon being removed from the packaging, figurines of ill-proportioned praying children, boxes of cereal with the same color scheme as the mainstream brands but with names like Oat Circles and Fruit Rings.

  “Soap’s up this aisle,” Nanny said.

  In the toiletries aisle was a sun-bronzed woman with wheat-colored hair pulled back in a braid. Something about the braid and the athletic body reminded Chrys of a picture of Artemis in the mythology book she’d repeatedly checked out of the library as a child. She felt a flip in her stomach she couldn’t explain. But then the woman turned, smiled, and said, “Mrs. Simcox! Chrys!”

  So the reason for the stomach flip had been recognition. The wheat-colored hair, the tanned, athletic body. Of course. “Hi, Dee,” Chrys said.

  “You ain’t gonna make me get up out of this chair and stretch, are you?” Nanny said.

  Dee laughed. “Nope. I’m off duty today, just hunting for bargains. Do you know there’s a catalog that sells this brand of soap for twenty-four ninety-five a box? This is a deal.”

  “We came for soap, too,” Chrys said. “Nanny likes the rose kind.”

  “Me, too,” Dee said, “but the lavender’s my favorite.”

  Chrys’s mind sailed into a flight of fancy—what if there was a subtext to Dee’s statement? Lavender—the soft, mysterious flower, color, and scent—was a code for lesbianism when it could not be spoken of openly. Idiot girl, Chrys chided herself. You’re not exchanging coded flirtations with the likes of Natalie Barney and Renee Vivien on the Left Bank in the twenties. You’re in a Dollar Tree in southeastern Kentucky talking to your nanny’s physical therapist about soap.

  “Lavender’s nice,” Chrys said stupidly as she grabbed three bars of the rose soap for Nanny.

  “Here,” Dee said, pressing a bar of the lavender into Chrys’s hand. “Mrs. Simcox should try the lavender, too.”

  “Well, I ain’t afraid to try something new,” Nanny said.

  Any thought that there had been a subtext to Dee’s mention of lavender had just been eradicated. Either that, or Dee and Nanny were flirting with each other.

  “Well, we’ll see you Thursday,” Chrys said, wheeling Nanny around a little too fast.

  At the checkout counter, Amber said, “Are you all right, Chrystal? You look all flushed.”

  “Just a hot day, I guess,” Chrys said.

  “Well, it ain’t hot in here,” Amber said. She was wearing green eye shadow to match her green Dollar Tree shirt. “The manager keeps the AC cranked so high you could hang meat in here.”

  Once Chrys got Nanny in the car and slid into the driver’s seat, a little smile sprung to her face. So she had a little crush. A futile crush, but a crush nonetheless. Futile though it was, a crush was still good news. It meant that even though Meredith had hurt her, she hadn’t killed her.

  “Look at you grinning like a possum,” Nanny said. “What’s got you so tickled?”

  “Just glad to be alive.”

  “You think you’re glad now—just wait till you’re my age.”

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Chrys pulled out of their parking spot. She was getting better at maneuvering the giant Oldsmobile. “Let’s go over to Sonic and get a big chocolate milkshake.”

  Now Nanny was grinning. “Law, I ain’t had a milkshake in years.”

  Chrys patted Nanny’s arm. “Well, that’s a problem we can fix right now.”

  Chapter Nine

  Going into the end of her second week staying with Nanny, Chrys had settled into a comfortable routine. She prepared simple meals, kept Nanny clean (a task which had gotten much easier thanks to the installation of a handicapped-friendly shower stall in the bathroom), and kept her company. She grocery shopped and picked up prescriptions at the Walmart pharmacy. Much to her relief, taking Nanny to church didn’t fall into her range of duties. Her mom had showed up on Sunday morning, with Peyton in a frilly pink dress, to take Nanny to Piney Creek Free Will Baptist. “Now you’re welcome to come with us,” Mom had said to the still pajama-clad Chrys. “But I know you’ve got your own church in Knoxville that does things kinda different.”

  “Kinda different” was an understatement. On the dozen or so Sundays per year Chrys managed to get there, she attended the East Tennessee Unitarian Universalist Church, an institution that was about as different from the Free Will Baptist as two places calling themselves a church could be. Chrys figured her mom and Nanny would be just as horrified by the UU flower communions and touchy-feely musings-disguised-as-sermons as she was by Baptist hellfire and brimstone. She was happy to let her mom tend to Nanny’s spirit while she had the more comfortable duty of tending to Nanny’s body.

  Physical therapy was today, and Chrys was embarrassed to admit that she’d spent the past twenty-four hours anticipating Dee’s visit. Never mind that Dee wasn’t really coming to visit Chrys or to make any kind of social call at all. She knew she was being silly but figured that as long as she was aware of her own silliness, it was all right. When she found herself applying a touch of foundation and mascara before physical therapy time, she called herself a silly bitch.

  When the knock came at the door, Chrys opened it to find Dee accompanied by a red hen that was pecking at her tennis shoes. “I don’t know why,” Dee said, “but this gal�
�s been following me ever since I got out of my car.”

  Before Chrys could think of a witty reply, the hen sauntered into the house as if Chrys were her personal butler. Chrys leaned down to grab her and instantly remembered a farm fact she had forgotten: when chickens don’t want to be caught, they’re fast. The hen hung a quick right into the kitchen, her chickeny toenails clicking on the linoleum.

  “Tinkerbell!” Nanny hollered from her recliner. “What in the sam hill are you doing in the house?”

  “The chicken’s name is Tinkerbell?” Dee asked, following Chrys into the kitchen.

  “My niece named her,” Chrys said, trying to sneak up on Tinkerbell, who stood, cocking her head quizzically, by the refrigerator. Once Chrys got in grabbing distance, the hen took off like a shot. Dee dove forward like a baseball player trying for a difficult catch, stretched out her arms, and nabbed Tinkerbell, who squawked in surprise.

  “Okay, that was pretty amazing,” Chrys said, laughing.

  Dee pulled herself to standing, holding Tinkerbell under one arm like a football. “I’ve played a lot of softball. I never knew those skills would come in handy for chicken chasing, though.”

  Softball. She played softball and liked lavender. Chrys told her overactive brain to shut up. “Here, let me get the door so we can escort Tinkerbell out.”

  As Dee bent to put Tinkerbell down outside, she said, “Oh, shit!” and then “Excuse my language if you heard that, Mrs. Simcox.”

  Dee’s exclamation had been quite literal. A splatter of chicken droppings decorated her forest green uniform shirt.

  “I’m sorry,” Chrys said. “I didn’t know Tinkerbell intended to leave you with a parting gift. May I loan you a T-shirt?”

  “Yes, please.”

  They returned to the living room to find Nanny wiping her eyes from laughing. “I swear, girls,” she said. “That was funnier than anything I’ve seen on the TV in years.”