The Innocence of Roast Chicken Read online

  And so the morning crawled through the pages of Oupa’s books as I lay full length on the worn old rug …

  ‘Do you want company?’ Oupa’s voice startled me and I realised suddenly that I was starving. ‘Lunch is nearly ready,’ he said, dropping into his armchair and placing his stick by his side. ‘Shall we read while we wait? I don’t have to sit glued to the cricket like the others. As long as I hear the score once in a while, I’m happy.’

  My clumsy, escaping legs held firmly to my body with two thin arms, I nestled on Oupa’s frail lap while he drew out his favourite, placed always within easy reach of his chair.

  ‘No (Oom Schalk Lourens said) you don’t get flowers in the Groot Marico. It is not a bad District for mealies, and I once grew quite good onions in a small garden I made next to the dam. But what you can really call flowers are rare things here. Perhaps it’s the heat. Or the drought …’

  And then there were mealies for lunch, hot mealies eaten off the cob, rubbed first with a lump of farm butter held between the fingers.

  And after lunch – on that long, lethargic farm day – I think we baked. I can remember the baking, and I’m sure it must have been that day.

  The kitchen was hot, with the trapped heat of the afternoon and the coal stove. Ouma stood, damp now, unhesitatingly measuring ingredients into the palm of her hand. She worked fast and practically.

  On a further counter, near the stove, Dora also worked, silently rolling out the marzipan, part of the ritual, but not quite part of the sisterhood around the scrubbed centre table.

  ‘Why don’t you use a recipe like Mom does?’ I asked Ouma, leaning my chin on my upturned hands and my elbows on the table. Mom was perched on a kitchen chair, watching.

  ‘There is no recipe, that’s why. This is the way my mother taught me, and one day your mother …’ This with a sharp, but amused glance at Mom, ‘will teach you the Christmas cake recipe.’

  ‘But then you must teach me, Ma,’ my mom said, gazing earnestly at Ouma. ‘You must measure out the ingredients so I can understand the amounts. You can’t expect me to learn how much to put in by the feel of it.’

  ‘Ag, my kind, you must maar watch: you should have been watching and learning since you were a little thing. But you were never interested in your own traditions or the old ways of your volk. You were a citified child from early on.’

  I glanced sharply up at my mother, and caught Ouma’s quick, floury caress of her cheek – more like a small cuff really – and they smiled at each other. Everything was still OK, but I had to be vigilant. I had to take care of them.

  I heard the skree-bang of the door and the clicking chatter of two of the boys’ wives, as they began to pluck a chicken on the new, metal-rimmed table in the scullery.

  ‘Tea, Dora!’ Ouma’s peremptory request propelled Dora, in her slow side-to-side waddle, over to the coal stove, where a pot of Rooibos (bush tea my mother called it, with a shudder) boiled perennially. She poured for me and Ouma. Before she could reach for another cup, Ouma, who was stretching her back, brushed a damp curl from her forehead and said: ‘Not for Miesies Elaine, Dora. She doesn’t drink it. She’s too Engels for our tea.’

  Dora laughed with her then, in great heaving quivers, as Ouma drew her into the joke. My mother smiled without showing her teeth, her eyes examining the painted nails in her lap.

  Later, as the cool crept over the land, I walked beyond the sweeping lawn to watch the heavy shadows darkening the eastern side of each glistening rock, bush and hillock.

  I walked in a wide sweep, through the silent fragrance of the late afternoon flower beds, and around in a circle to the back of the house.

  As I turned towards the house I caught, on the fringe of my peripheral vision, a flash of white. It was gone by the time I turned. But I knew it was Snowball’s father, I just knew it. At the end of this exactly perfect farm day, it was only fitting.

  I drifted towards the courtyard, wandering around the back of the boys’ room. I was dawdling now, unwilling to go inside to the mundane ‘getting ready for bed’ tasks. I leant against the wall of the room, empty of boys at this time of the evening, and wrote in the dirt with my toe.

  Looking up, I saw a large metal pail just in front of me. Solitary behind the room – most of the other buckets, forks, spades and things were cleared away by this time – it was covered by a grubby mutton cloth.

  Curious, I approached it and lifted the end of the cloth. At first I didn’t recognise them, and I brought my head nearer to see more clearly.

  Their plump fluff was draggled now over skinny pink bodies. There were three in there. Lifeless kittens. I couldn’t see much of two of them, just their ears and heads below the water. But the topmost one was white, almost pure white, with a yellowish patch on its shoulder.

  Their wild, budding lives smothered in a bucket of water. They were dead because, seeing only their silky fur, I had tried to coddle an untamed spirit. They were dead, because of me.

  1966 … Fourteen days to Christmas

  I slipped out early, alone and insubstantial as a ghost, to the dark of the plucking barn. There, among the three barrels of differently graded feathers, I knew I could melt silently into the ethereal comfort of that billowy world. I headed, as I always did, for the drum of the softest down. That morning particularly, I yearned for its muffled balm.

  Squeezing my eyes closed, I blindly gripped the metal edge of the drum and stretched one tentative hand to barely brush the wispy down. Like the gentlest summer breeze, it whispered against my palm.

  I sank my arms into the faint mass, as substanceless as air. They melted up to my disappearing shoulders in the white cumulus. I turned my cheek towards its drowsy drift.

  Furry in its softness, it transformed before my darkened eyes into three rolling kittens. In horror I winced away and grabbed the biting edge of metal. I struggled to hold my eyes closed, fearing to see a metal bucket filled with water.

  Beyond my control, my eyes burst open and the bucket was gone. A half-drum of down, plucked from the secret undersides of dozens of chickens, stood on the packed-earth floor of a barn, lit only by the dim light washed through the open door.

  As sounds returned I heard deep, roiling laughter. I jerked my head up and saw the boys, who had filled the barn with their tangible presence.

  There were six of them I think. In their black gum-boots, they were solid and full of warm, pulsing flesh. Their faces, turned from the door’s pale light, were hard to discern except for the wide whiteness of their teeth. They were filled with unfettered mirth, but I knew, in the humanity that poured warmth into my numbed limbs, there was no mockery in their laughter. Joyful and compassionate, it had taken me into its circle.

  I smiled unwillingly and wished to bury myself in this sympathy, this affection. I flung myself at William, whose features had formed themselves in the gloom.

  ‘Chine.’ Still shuddering with laughter, he caught and balanced me on one strong arm. I could smell woodsmoke and damp overalls and the coffee which had just been brewed in the tin can on the boys’ room fire. Jigging me gently on his arm, he said: ‘You go always in those little feathers. Those feathers are no good. You want feathers to take, I give you big feathers.’

  Bending slightly to the right, he clipped his hand into a second barrel and handed me two straight white quill feathers. The boys all laughed again, happily, and one slapped his leg with a resounding clap on his high rubber boot.

  ‘You come to the cows, Missie. Is no good you sitting all alone here in dark. You come help with milking?’

  I rubbed my cheek against rough blue canvas. ‘Mm,’ I said.

  I watched William’s large boots squelch the damp mud into patterns as we strode to the milking shed. Pale sun glistened on tiny drops of rain.

  ‘It’s a monkey’s wedding, William,’ I said, rousing myself from my symbiotic absorption of his
body’s substance. ‘That’s lucky, you know. It’s raining luck on the farm.’

  ‘Chine,’ he said, a rough chuckle in his throat, eyes gentle.

  ‘Hello, Klara,’ I greeted the black and white cow waiting to be milked. Warming my arms and face against her shifting shoulder, I reached a hand to caress her snuffling nose.

  ‘Do you think cows remember people?’ I asked William.

  ‘Ja, Missie, she know people. She know you. See, she greet you in she’s cow way.’

  I squatted flat-footed, as William did, beside her breathing belly and watched him squeeze long streams of hot milk into a metal pail. I didn’t want to ask about that other metal pail. I didn’t want to know if those gentle, pink-palmed hands had held the struggling kittens under the suffocating water. No one knew I had seen it yesterday.

  And I still couldn’t frame the words to talk about it.

  ‘You want to try?’ Rubbing cream on my palms and fingers, his large hands guided mine and squeezed, tugging my hands downward on the slippery teat. We laughed and I glanced triumphantly up into his smile-wrinkled face.

  ‘You make milk from her, see? Now you can taste.’

  Skimming a tin mug over the foaming surface, he gave me it to gulp the warm, bubbling milk. Rubbing a bare arm across my milky moustache, I said: ‘Thanks, William. I think I’ll go now. I want to see if the new chicks are here yet.’

  ‘New chicks no come yet. They come any day now. Missie must wait.’

  The droplets had stopped, leaving a rain-washed sun to dry the newly-cleansed farm. Nothing stirred in the jewelled bush as my bare feet slapped through clear puddles. Joining the rutted farm road, my toes squeezed deep brown mud between them in its water-formed depressions.

  Spiky clumps of grass held tiny mirrored spots. Passing beneath two leafy pepper trees, I looked up to see a perfect spider’s web caught between two reaching branches. Each perfect strand was highlighted by sun-sparkled droplets. On the side sat its motionless yellow and black spider – I never did know what they were called, those spiders that were everywhere, that trippled on your face if you walked unwarily into a bush-spun web.

  I squelched my bare feet back towards the farmhouse and the chickens. I knew the baby chicks had not yet arrived, but I had in mind to visit the ‘teenager’ chickens.

  Through my farmyard inspection, I think I was reassuring myself that the farm was still there, still together, and that all the things I loved were in their place. In the loamy, cleansed smell of the soil, I wanted to know that all death and ugliness had been washed from every part of my farm and left it refreshed, scattered with the luck of the monkey’s wedding. As omens went, the morning was doing well for me. Two crows had kraak-ed in the gum tree behind the house as I had made my way to the feather barn this morning. From magical, portent-filled discussions with Dora on many mornings spent squatting in the kitchen courtyard I knew that sight of a single crow was ominous. Two crows together were another matter, a sign of good things to come, of happiness returned. The farm was the same, and with each reassuring familiarity, my confidence returned to me in joyous floods.

  Standing on the low, whitewashed wall of the chicken hok, I clung to the thick bars which sprang from the wall and reached up to the overhanging roof. They made me laugh, those scrawny-necked chickens. Even in the heat of midday, they never had the drowsy look of full-grown hens. Squawking and flapping their half-grown wings, they rushed frantically from side to side, following each other in waves of movement.

  I dawdled there for a while, watching their untidily feathered bodies sweep to and fro. Desultorily, I threw a few dry mealie pits into the cage, amused by the flurry of life behind the bars. I always liked to get to know these chickens – I could tell a few of them apart by their markings and feathers. I watched as a black-speckled teenager took the lead again and again in the surges of movement around the cage. And my heart reached out to the small pure-white, who was trampled and squashed at every turn.

  I turned from the chickens and ran out of the luck-sprinkled yard. Through the orchard, my feet slipped and squished in the fallen fruit under the dripping overhang of the trees. The overripe smell was sharp in the freshly-washed morning.

  As I broke through the last of the fruit trees the dogs joined me, roistering in panting bounds. In twin stretched leaps, they pulled ahead, only to stop in tandem, waiting for me to catch up. We passed the swimming place. Ahead of me, Kati’s ears flopped about her face as she lowered her head and shoulders to her straightened front legs, in playful puppy attitude. I ran forward to see what had attracted her and saw both dogs bounding in floppy leaps around a great, hunched bullfrog. The bullfrog was puffed in indignant belligerence.

  I shushed at the dogs’ hysterical barks, laughing at their silliness, and pushed them both away, leaning my weight against their large flanks.

  ‘You can’t bite it, your mouth will froth,’ I said, gasping from running and laughing. I ran from them, calling: ‘Come, Kati, come, Mikey,’ in an animated staccato. Lifting wrinkled, eager faces, they were fooled for the moment into thinking something far more exciting was just ahead.

  They raced after me and stopped in a joint skidding motion in front of my leaping legs. Sniffing the air, they half turned back towards the frog. But by then it had disappeared towards the swimming place. Mikey scrambled back to sniff madly about him before giving up and running in high puppy bounds back to Kati and me.

  Walking now, I could see as far as the bank of prickly pears which lined the tumbledown fence on the hill just beyond the boys’ houses. I was making for the valley between the farm’s two smooth hillocks – the Forest. A place of mystery, of silence, of beauty, of adventure. A place to imagine magic, to play spy games, to climb monkey ropes, or just to moon in the dappled shade.

  I shaded my eyes with my right hand, held by a glint of movement on the hill. Her willowy, upright walk poised, one of the wives appeared from the huts. The sun was caught once on the metal bath she balanced on her head, her hand stretched up to steady it. I watched as she crossed to the thick bank of prickly pears, and saw her swing the bath to the ground.

  I changed direction then. I could go to the Forest later. Suddenly, above everything, I wanted to feel a prickly pear’s pipped green juice on my chin. My favourite of all fruits, this reminder of the farm, this bringer of Christmas, held summer in its flesh.

  The dogs followed me up the gentle slope, but ran ahead to bound and bark at the woman, who stopped and backed against the fence. Yelling at them, I slapped at their rumps.

  ‘Naughty dogs. Stop that. Don’t you dare bark at her. It’s OK,’ I told her. ‘They’re just being naughty. They’d never bite anyone.’

  The woman stood unspeaking, her eyes on the dogs. Pushing and biting at each other’s ears, Kati and Mikey tumbled down the hill, racing and rolling with each other. Only then did she step forward and, still without a word, spread sacks on the dampened dust.

  I squatted, watching her movements. In her blanketed grace she confidently gripped the thorned fruit between its prickled clusters and deftly plucked it from the cactus. Each was dropped, rolling on to the spread sacking. Lifting her small metal knife from the sacks, I let my other hand hover and choose one of the fruits. As I’d so often seen adults do, I stretched my palm to hold it between thumb and forefinger, top to bottom. I managed the grip, but my hand was not quite large enough to clear the barbed skin.

  I started and dropped the fruit as I felt my palm brush a thorny cluster. Rubbing a finger over the grubby palm, I could feel the bristle already embedded. I brought my sore palm to my mouth, nibbling and biting to staunch the invisible irritation.

  Looking up, I saw the woman’s eyes, large under her red scarf, watching me. Nimbly, she squatted beside me, her long feet dry and calloused. She smelt of fires and eucalyptus, which I’d seen the women use as a remedy and preventive measure against colds. She had very long
fingers, rough and spindly. Spider-like, her hands spread and covered the fruit with the sacking, rubbing and chafing the worst of the prickly hairs from each blanketed shape. Unwrapping, she held one as I had tried to and, with three quick slashes of her knife, split the skin top to bottom in three places. Popping the small green egg-shape from the skin, she gestured it towards me, and smiled for the first time.

  Slippery and cool, it touched my hand, and I no longer cared about the elusive pricking in my palm. I bit into the many-pipped flesh. It had the sweetness of summer sunlight.

  I sat there for some time savouring the taste of the farm. As the sun warmed the grass, it awoke the hay-like smells in the spiky clusters and the sharp scent of khakibos. The insects began their high, keening accompaniment to the day, while in the low, spreading thorn tree overhead, the Christmas beetles sang their zee-ee chorus. Birds signalled the end of the rain. My simple favourite, joining in then on that warm, cleansed morning, was the plain grey dove, whose cor-cor cor-cor tucked me into the enveloping safety of the farm.

  Eventually the woman completed her picking and rubbing and, uncoiling her long legs, balanced the nearly-full bath on her head. Still without a word, she started down the hill, weaving around the stalked aloes. Lithe and light on her feet, she walked steadily, ignoring the distraction of two white butterflies which danced and circled just before her eyes.

  The lush, life-giving centre of the farm, the Forest was nestled between the two rounded mounds which sheltered the farmhouse. The cleft was scented by the dark, dusky smell of fallen vegetation, thick and foetid underfoot.