The Chicken Factory
Angela Readman
I'm not supposed to know, but I do. There's lots of stuff kids pretend they don't know, to make things fun for grown-ups. It starts with Santa.
'How's he get in?'
'Down the chimney,' Mom said. I looked at our fake fireplace.
Mom put on her white overall like a scientist, tucked her long hair into the little pink cap and fastened her coat before she went to work.
If Mom had a superpower she'd be Turns into Things Woman. Every day she turned into a Woman Who Works at the Chicken Factory, then came home and turned back into Mom. Talking about Santa she turned sparkly. But Santa wasn't just her idea; he was everywhere - at school, at the mall, drinking Coca Cola, asking for change outside the liquor store. Everyone told me he'd come but no one called him a superhero, even though he flew everywhere in one night and knew who was naughty or nice. I wondered what list I'd be on. My brother Sam said I was a dork. He shook his head as Mom dragged me out of supermarkets. She tugged with both hands to get me up from the floor when I made myself stiff and heavy unless I got candy. I made a pile of toys that were busted or boring and let Mom give them away. I couldn't have been any gooder, well, maybe a bit. I could have not picked my nose and wiped it on the wall, but no one saw that so it didn't count.
Mom made Jack help me write a letter. I asked for a trampoline for Christmas and he said not to be stupid. (If my brother was a superhero he'd be Knows Everything Boy. No one would like him; he'd just show up and tell Superman why bumble bees are too big to fly, till he fell out of the sky.) Mom said a trampoline wouldn't fit on the sleigh.
Dad didn't say much; I don't think he liked Santa. When things like the cooker broke he hung around the kitchen watching repair men, his hands round a can for something to do. Sam said Santa wouldn't come this year, since the factory closed and Dad was home all day. I didn't see how that meant I hadn't been good.
It was coming up to Christmas. Mom was ready for work at the chicken factory. There were two hundred girls now she said, stood in line in pink caps and blue gloves, pulling things out of birds. So many people wanted chickens she said. Sam said he heard Christmas is turkey.
'It is,' she said, 'but there's singles, senior's it's too much bird for. Chickens come cheap. There's more birds than girls,' Mom said. She looked at Dad, 'Bet I could get you in, least till New Year.'
Dad opened a can with fingers so wide they hardly fit through the ring.
'I don't wanna be stuck in a pink hat when something better turns up,' he said.
Mom sighed, looked like Turns into Part of the Walls Woman then went to work. Mom didn't think Dad had superpowers anymore, but she used to. He'd say something would turn up and I'd see her change from being Part of the Gas Bill to Woman with Sky in Her Eyes. In comic books some people have powers and can't say. Dad was Knows What Will Happen Man; he always knew for sure things would turn up, like a man who knew a secret about himself.
Me, Sam and Dad sat in front of the TV. A girl ran, chased down a hall. My brother leaned forward in his chair.
'The guy we thought was dead will wake up and save her,' Dad said.
Sam got on the floor, nose pressed to the TV. Dad was right, like always. I used to think he was Makes Stuff Happen Man. Watching a quiz show, he knew the answers. On sitcoms he knew what happened next. 'It'll turn out to be a misunderstanding,' he'd say. Or, 'It won't be him, but an evil twin.' He'd be right.
I started clearing my toys off the floor.
'What's up Little Man?' Dad said, on his way to the kitchen.
'Little man' was a funny thing. The first time he called me it was when a man in a jacket came to the house. The doorbell rang.
'SSssshhh,' Dad whispered, crouching on the floor.
'Why..?'
My brother ducked after Dad and took me with him, placing his hand across my mouth. The doorbell rang again. We waited, bent double, steaming up the windows as the man rattled the door. It went quiet. The man walked away and left the gate open. Then Dad turned to me and said, 'Bet you want some chips little man?' He grinned like just saying it cheered him up.
That's when I knew Dad couldn't make anything happen, not even a bit. He didn't evaporate the unwelcome man with his thoughts. But he did know what was going to happen. He posted applications and said, 'They won't even reply' and the mailbox stayed empty except for pizza menus. He called me Little Man more often. He didn't call my brother anything but his name.
I undid the pieces of the puzzle and put them back in the box.
'Tidying your toys. Christmas coming, trying to get in Santa's good books?' Dad said.
He knew.
'Trampoline,' I said.
Dad took a chair from the table and turned it round to sit on it backwards like he was taming a horse.
'You've been good', he said. He rubbed his hand on his head like a teacher rubs a board clean. He looked at his hands as if he might find Magic Marker words there.
'Little Man,' he said, 'Men can have a man to man talk right?'
I nodded.
'Thing is, a trampoline is big, costs money,' Dad said.
I was about to tell how Grandma said Santa had a workshop where elves made toys: boats and cars, dolls and bears, trampolines.
'Thing with Christmas is it's parents who buy the toys and money's not what it used to be. I know you've been good. I'd love to get you that trampoline, but sometimes things aren't how they're supposed to be. See?'
I looked at Dad with his head in his hands. I saw the lines round his eyes like ones I heard someone in a commercial call crow's-feet. Those Lines round Dad's eyes looked like some big old bird had been dancing on him all day long.
'Mom lied?'
'Not really', Dad said, 'they told a story that wasn't true. When you had that dream, there was no burglar when I turned on the light right?'
I shook my head.
'But you were still frightened, that was real. When Grandma talks about Santa there's no man in a suit, but Christmas, the feeling's what they're getting at, is true. You understand?'
I wasn't sure I did, but I knew the lie wasn't the same as when Sam told me liquorice whips were made from the tongues of ants. I looked at Dad's chicken danced eyes and knew he was giving me the truth like it was all he had.
'Let Mom and Grandma believe. Just ask for something smaller, OK? It'll make them happy. You're a big boy now. I can't give you everything.'
He lifted me up on his shoulders; from there I could see everything. He held my feet and carried me round the house with my arms reaching for the ceiling.
'Who needs a goddamn trampoline?' Dad whooped.
That's the first thing I knew I wasn't supposed to know. Once I asked Grandma why boys pee standing and girls don't, and she said girls were ladies. 'Lazy?' I said. She tucked her lips away like I was being cute, but I honestly hadn't heard. Then she made a thing about making cookies till my mouth was too full of chocolate chips for questions to fit. You can tell when you know what you're not supposed to, grown up's give you candy or tell you to tidy your room. Knowing keeps you busy.
But I do know, I watch. I see things I'm not supposed to know. One thing is Dad. I heard Mom ask again about the chicken factory.
'That place'll kill you,' he said.
She should've listened, but she made herself into Kitchen Woman, pulling food out the larder, opening packets. Then she put on her cap, quickly turned into Chicken Factory Woman again and left. Mom stopped working at the chicken factory not long after. A big rash appeared on her arms; everyday it got redder and redder and puffy as a strawberry getting ready to be picked. The rash grew in splodges and red dots. She changed the detergent and threw away the soap. She scratched like she told me not to when I had chicken pox, then went to the doctors when she could stand it no more. It was the chickens he said, an 'allergic reaction' to feathers or the rubber gloves. Dad was right. The chicken factory turned Mom into a walking blotch.
We ate dinner. I talked about the tree-house my friend's Dad was building. Sam pinched me so hard I couldn't remember what I was about to say. He lifted his plate and handed me mine to take to the kitchen. He whispered like a boiling kettle.
'Don't say stuff like that doofus, Mom's scared about money- you can't keep asking for stuff.'
'I wasn't asking. I was just telling about the tree-house.'
'You think the stuff to build it grows on trees?'
I was pretty sure timber was from trees, but I didn't say anything. Money was another thing we weren't supposed to know about. But we did. I knew more all the time.
One day I had this feeling something was going to happen. Beneath the sound of kids walking home from school, honking cars and mowers, I heard an ambulance and knew it was going to our Street. I thought of the old lady who inched down her path reading the ground like a newspaper. She was crinkly and brown as a used paper bag, her whole face rippled when she smiled at Dad raking her lawn. That lady, I thought, has slipped on the path and is lying under the tree with her eyes closed. When we got home an ambulance was parked and men were lifting her in.
Dad was round back, telling a joke to a couple of guys. They were all grinning - Dad the most, popping away and coming back with three beer cans, shiny as bullets in the sun. The guys gave him papers to sign. One guy drove away in Dad's truck, the other got in his car. Dad watched them leave, then turned and said, 'Let's build a tree-house Little Man.'
When Mom came home Dad's hammer tapping like a woodpecker stopped. I sat in my room and stared at the remote, concentrating on moving it by just thinking. I looked at it so long Sam said 'What you looking at Dork?' he picked it up and threw it at me.
Later, Mom was crying; we weren't supposed to know. We weren't supposed to hear her over the wrestling turned up real loud on the TV.
'They're having a fight because Dad hasn't got a job,' Sam said.
I tiptoed to the top of the stairs, listening, but Sam lay in his bed as if his sheets were made of lead.
'Something will turn up,' Dad said.
'When? You wait, make dumb jokes with repo men!'
'What was I supposed to do? They just got a job to do, same as everyone else. Honey, don't worry; we don't need that truck anyhow. You just gotta have a little faith.'
The next morning Mom made pancakes and fussed with my hair. I fidgeted in my chair. Why didn't she believe Dad? If he said something would turn up it would. I wanted to tell her but I wasn't supposed to know about the fighting. The rash on Mom's arms had gone, only a pinky bit inside her elbows showed she was ever Chicken Factory Woman. She rolled up her sleeves, spread a newspaper on the table and circled ads with a red pen.
I sat wondering what my superpower was, feeling there must be something special about me. I didn't have super strength coz I could hardly lift Dad's hammer, but maybe I could read people's minds or know the future. I just had to have a superpower, I could feel it. Sometimes I looked at Dad and knew he was sad. I knew Mom was worried, even when she was just Wiping the Floor Woman like always.
Mom got a letter. She read it a hundred times, folded it up, put it in her pocket, then got it out and read it again. She raked through the closet for skirts and shoes. She came home one day with her hair short. She was turning into Got a Job in an Office Woman (there was no cool name for it.)
'Things will be better,' she said to Dad, 'but we're not out of the woods.'
Dad started to say something, but she left the room taking her chicken factory hat with her and tossing it in the trash.
Works in an Office Woman didn't look like Mom. She got up early, put out cereal, then put on her office clothes and got the bus to work. After a while she started getting a ride home from a 'widower from accounts'. I hadn't heard her ask Dad about the chicken factory or say Denny's was recruiting for a while. She was busy wearing shoes with heels that went clack clack when she walked, pressing skirts. Sometimes she tuned the radio in the kitchen to a station with some woman warbling in a funny language. She stood back and just listened like a Woman Who Can Go Places just by thinking about them. Then she remembered where she was.
We sat at the table and ate. Sam went on about his new friend Clarke. His Dad was a doctor with a cabin at the lake.
'There's a building site over the highway,' Dad said. 'I'll talk to them, see if they need me.'
Mom didn't change into Eyes Full of Sky Woman like she used to. Even when Dad came home dirty, said he'd been dry-walling and laid twenty dollar bills on the counter in front of her. I wanted to say I knew he would make things OK. He could have been flying in the sky and plucking cats out of trees, using his powers for good, but Mom never knew.
'Clarke's Dad said I can go fishing with them and stay in the cabin. Can I go?' asked Sam.
I glared, but Sam didn't care.
'Hey, why don't we all go fishing next weekend?' Dad said.
'Mom, can I go with Clarke?' asked Sam.
'I'll phone his parents,' she said.
'No problem,' Dad said. He didn't sound sad or angry, but I wished he had a name for my brother then, so he could say something that cheered him up just to say.
Dad went round back to the tree-house that was more tree than house. It was only a floor, but when I looked up I could see the gang planks that were still just planks. He climbed a ladder with a plank in his hand. I watched him until the sky split into blue and pink go-faster stripes and Mom called me for bed. Mom didn't look like Office Woman or Chicken factory Girl. She was still Mom, but in a Chinese robe, her hair soft and damp as she tucked me in, the faint smell of perfume Office Woman sprayed on in the mornings lingering. I listened to Dad's hammer tap me to sleep.
Dad was in the tree-house when I went to school. When I came home he was still there with screws between his lips and a screwdriver in his belt.
'Hey Little Man, you wanna help? Put that bag of screws on the steps.'
I lay the screws on the bottom run of the ladder. He squeezed the drill trigger and made it whiz. I watched as the sun worked its way round from the side of the house to the back. The air was cooling. The skin on my arms was getting bumps like chickens when a car pulled up on the street. We listened to the engine purring: Mom getting dropped off from work.
Dad put down his drill in the tree-house and looked through the branches towards the street. We listened for the car door and the important sounding clack of Mom's heels on the sidewalk, but it didn't come. Sometimes, I looked out the window and saw Mom talking to the man who dropped her off from work, tilting her head the way next door's dog listened for his owner coming home. She'd become Woman with a Smile, Woman Laughing Like a Light Switched On, before she opened the car door and came inside. Dad stood in the tree-house looking through the leaves, listening to the car engine as Mom didn't get out straight away. He looked like a man who could see for miles.
I put my hands carefully on the ladder, but he wasn't looking. He parted the branches and looked out towards the car in the street.
'I should have took a job at the damn chicken factory,' he said.
He said this so quietly I didn't know if he was talking to me, but I wanted to say something anyway. I wanted to say I knew about superpowers, how he made me think I knew mine. I remembered what he'd said about faith and didn't know what it meant then, but I did now. It was Santa, and Jesus, and Dad, and superpowers that hadn't been tried. Someone on a talk-show said it was a leap. I wanted to tell him but all I could get was a jumble of stuff I wasn't supposed to know and stuff I couldn't explain. Instead I climbed the ladders to reach the platform of the tree-house. I looked down. Then I looked up at the branches of the tree. I saw the sky swirling with superpowers. I held one arm out in front of me and took a leap off the platform to fly.
Angela Readman
