Zoetrope: All-Story Extra - Black Chicken by Lea Robertson

BLACK CHICKEN
By Lea Robertson

During lunch I rent a house twenty miles west of Asheville, seven miles south of the school, deep in the hills of the North Carolina Smokies. From the front door the hallway leads straight to a bathroom that smells like cigarettes and toothpaste. Mr. Shotwell, handling the rental for his mother's estate, says he put the bathroom in what had been a pantry, for the aged woman's convenience during her last years. Upstairs the closed rooms are full of summer heat and dust. I strain at a window. It's nailed down and just as well, Mr. Shotwell says. Someone might go off one day and leave them up. The house is full of his mother's belongings, and he's afraid of rain.

When I lived in Connecticut I was a drunk. I'd walk home in the snowy night air from the Spigot Cafe and fall in bed. I'd lie there numb and nauseous. I was a dot on New England, and there were no black lines leading south.

I have moved back to North Carolina, my home state. In Connecticut I was a barmaid. In North Carolina I'm a social worker at a newly constructed juvenile correction center. In simple, old-fashioned terms I'm a guidance counselor at a reform school.

Mr. Shotwell suggests three-fifty for the rent. We stand in the yard of the two-story white farmhouse in grass so green it is almost blue. On the steps begonias grow out of Yuban coffee cans. Decades of plantings by his mother's hands shade the old porch. Parked close enough for me to see the dashboard is Mr. Shotwell's Datsun truck -- it's an economy model with no radio or air-conditioning. The top is down on my Mustang and CDs are spread on the front seat. He settles his pencil-point eyes on my face and lets me rent the house.

On the way back to my job I smoke a joint. Late August and a few dry leaves float through the air and into the open car, and I move as slowly and carefully as the wind that stirs the tops of the tall pines lining the mountain road.

Campbell School is so new that the drive winding through the woods to the top of the hill has not been paved. When I turn off the blacktop, gravel crunches under my radials until I pull to a stop beside the barbed-wire fence.

In my office a lumpy-looking woman with pearly-white skin sits beside my desk. Outside the closed door her son scratches, his little claws reaching under the sill for light. The boy's eyes, when I walked past him, were yellow, his hair beige and curly, his skin the color of coffee and milk. The mother is a psychic by profession. With her oily eyes steady as lanterns she scares people into giving up their secrets.

Of her son she says, "His father is an Indian. Part of the Lost Colony." As she says this I read the words on his record: Father Unknown.

She smells like vinegar -- not dirty but sharp.

"He'll never marry you," she says. Of course, she's referring to a man other than her son. She refers to the secret she reads on my face.

"Oh, please," I say. "Don't break my heart." It's a ploy of psychics to suggest that you're in love with a married man.

"Never mind about me," I say to Mrs. Washington. "We're here to talk about your son."

"You mess with my son," she says. "You diddle with him when he's sleeping. He tells me about it. You're old enough to be his mama."

"Yes," I say, "if I'd given birth at the age of twelve." Then I remember that I am a professional. "Mrs. Washington, your son has psychological problems."

"You look a lot older than me," she says.

There's no scratching around my closed door, no signs of claws reaching under the ledge. Thomas must be asleep, curled up dreaming of being diddled by a woman's hand.

"He has therapy with Dr. Rogers three times a week. Group to teach him social skills. To make him accountable for his actions."

Mrs. Washington eyes me. She knows that either I'm stoned or that I'm in love with a married man. She watches my thoughts as they circle my head but as yet they make no sense to her.

* * *

September. At lunch I drive the hazy roads and listen to the purring of the pines and smoke the finest dope I've ever purchased. I live within three miles of where it is grown -- my closest neighbor, Toad, an antique dealer-refinisher, buys special marijuana seed from Holland. Thoughts cross my mind: I'm on a spiritual path, purifying myself of silly human contact. At least this is the way I prefer to view the situation.

When I pull into my yard Mr. Shotwell is in the back by the tin carport raking up the green nuts under the walnut tree. Rain mists the late afternoon air, but it is warm still and the wet leaves glisten on the ground like polished leather. I pretend not to see my landlord and park my car at the side under the maple and slip into the back door without speaking. I pull a beer from the refrigerator and call my sister in Raleigh.

"I'm getting tooth implants," she says. "It's like hanging blinds, they put this metal clip into my gum and then go in and hang a tooth on each one."

"Sounds wonderful," I say. My sister is one of those people whose teeth fell out from pregnancy.

"I'm going to look like hell for about a year, but just while I'm home with the girls. I mean, if I had to go to work everyday with a mouth full of cotton and stitches."

"Yeah," I say and through the open kitchen window I can see Mr. Shotwell, still out under the walnut tree. I decide I'd better go out and speak -- good PR in case my pipes freeze when the air turns cold.

"You sure are loud," he says. "I could hear you all the way out here."

"Phone calls," I say.

"It's long distance to call your family?"

"Yeah, they're all here in the state, but it's long distance."

"I figured. Phone bills. Don't know how much money you make. I'm sure it's a good amount."

We both look down and watch the walnuts roll around in a green pile. "My sister taught school," he says. "Retired. Good retirement. You got any awful cases now? Incest, insanity, moral turpitude?"

"Mr. Shotwell, I can't talk about my clients."

"That's good to know. I was just testing you. Now I got to get these damned nuts up. Squirrels are like people -- the more you give them to eat the more they reproduce. Your attic's full of them."

"A few loose squirrels in my attic?" I tap my head. Without smiling he turns his back to me and drags the rake across the wet ground.

At the kitchen counter I roll a joint and sip another beer and wait for Mr. Shotwell to finish his yard work. After putting the rake in the shed, he presses his nose to the window screen and tells me not to be leaving windows open all over the place. He worries about my safety and his mother's possessions.

When his truck leaves the drive, I light the joint and lie on the feather tick of his mother's old bed. I tap the first ashes into a cut-glass candy dish that I pulled from the china cabinet. Seconds and the only reminder of my earthly existence is the mold that rises from the musky bedclothes.

Birds of a feather fly together. Once I had been an adulterer lying in a similar graying bed in someone else's house. But that was Connecticut and this is North Carolina and sometimes I confuse the people from the South with the people from the North.

It's dark and the moon shines through the open window, and Mr. Shotwell's stern and practical ancestors watch me from their portrait hanging above the fireplace. The candy dish on my stomach sends out rays as it moves up and down with my breath. I grab the edge of the quilt and pull it up to my neck, turning the ashes onto the sheets.

In Connecticut I was the only one my roommate trusted to drive her grandmother's 1950 black Buick on the ice-crusted streets of Hartford. Harold's wife was out of town and I borrowed the Buick and drove to his house and smashed my hand through a plate of glass to unlock the door. Upstairs my short, naked love was in bed with a short, naked woman. I believe lots of people in New England are short.

That night Harold glared as he struggled to put his clothes on. I gripped his shoulders and tried to turn him to me. Blood was everywhere. His bare shoulders. The white comforter. The yellow carpet. "You're uncouth," he said. "Maybe down south people carry guns and break into houses. Go back to your own kind."

I look at the portrait of the Shotwells. "Harold," I say, "was unfair in his description. I was not carrying a gun."

But I know that goodness and wisdom are inseparable. The money I spend on clothes, it's a sin, a vanity.

"The worst mistake," Harold liked to say, "derives from the widespread ignorance of filial regression. You never get away from what you are."

I smooth an oily wisp from my forehead. My underarm smells like vegetable soup. I lick my lip and taste the salt from my tears. I know I will be a better person one day.

* * *

Middle October. And the hills are muddy with red and brown trees. The muffler has fallen off my car and it rumbles and vibrates on the narrow roads, shakes the morning mist. Coasting down a hill I let off the gas and there is comfort in the quiet, cool air until I accelerate again.

My car drags into the gravel parking lot of Campbell School, sputters and comes to a halt in the driveway. Mr. Bledsoe, our director, his arms folded across his chest, his mouth a tight line, watches me from the ultra-modern glass entrance.

"Carburetor adjustment," I say and throw up my hands and smile. Obviously, he can't hear me through the glass. The car is in neutral, and I stand at the open door, push with one hand and steer with the other, trying to get a foothold with my flip-flops.

It's been days since I smoked dope, and it's also been a few days since I washed my hair. I'm going through a state of repentance, giving up my evil ways, which include primping and preening, activities whose sole objective is to make me more attractive and tempting. Mr. Bledsoe waits for me and invites me to his office. Surely, he can suspect me of no wrongdoing as I work without complaint. Eternally optimistic about the most dismal incarcerates, I encourage these delinquents to change their lives -- eat vegetables, drink water, read.

"You have a fundamental misunderstanding," Mr. Bledsoe tells me.

I long for conversation. I brighten at the prospect. Maybe he's going to ask me to have lunch with him and discuss behavior mod.

Mr. Bledsoe tells me I was hired because I had been fashionable and energetic. He tells me that he now finds my appearance alarming.

"You think I'm ugly?"

"No," he says, "I was thinking more of your personal grooming."

* * *

In the stinky bathroom I lean over the sink stained green with Crest, lather my hair twice. Rinse three times and rub on some lemon juice. By the light of a 20-watt bulb I apply make-up, extra blush because it is evening. Darker lipstick. Black eyeliner. I wet myself with spray cologne.

"Even if I call begging for a bag," I told Toad weeks ago, "don't give me any. I'm stopping for good."

It's eight and Toad's light is still on when I drive up. He's something of an artist. A hand-lettered sign in Old English script, crackled with bits of green popping from beneath the red surface, stands on the edge of his yard by the mailbox. He antiques furniture and paints on flowers and cherubs, makes everything look French and two hundred years old.

While I inhale he smooths the white sheets on the little bed in the corner. Around the room dressers line the walls, their drawers pulled out and propped against each other, waiting to be painted. Most of the floor is covered with newspaper. Brushes soak in jars on the mantle. There is nowhere to sit but the bed and I feel more like reclining than sitting. He stretches out beside me and his white and green stained fingers slide under my shirt and knead my shoulders. There is no polite conversation, no explaining to me the techniques of a crackled finish.

I nuzzle into his bearded face. "I knew this would happen eventually," he says.

"Yes," I say, "it was inevitable." The room is chilly and he fondles and snuggles against me, our clothes still on. My hand flutters for a moment, softly, between his legs. He reaches for the hand, brings it to his lips. His breath on my fingers is a warm red and orange. I float in reverie and we fall asleep, unscathed.

In the dark of late evening he wakes me and tells me I have to leave because his girlfriend might stop by in the morning.

* * *

The next morning I find Mrs. Washington in my office waiting to offer advice. She says that I am surrounded by negative energy. "For you," she says, "my advice is to throw a black chicken over his house."

I wonder if she's referring to Harold in Connecticut, who broke my heart. Suppose I tried to throw a dead animal over his fashionable cottage and not quite clearing the roof, it rotted and melted during the summer, dripping into and permanently glazing his turn-of-the-Century wood shingles. "A black chicken?" I say.

"Hard to find," she admits, "but a black cat won't do."

"Good. Don't think I could bring myself to kill a cat."

She picks at her nails with a metal file. "Love is in your future," she says. "Just relax."

I can't relax. I can see myself examining the bottom row of Pyrex dishes in the housewares section of K-Mart and when I stand I meet the gaze of a man, his blue eyes afire not with hallucinogens but with the power of God. My common sense will tell me to turn and walk the other way, but he'll get a word in and before I know it, boom, I'm married to a fundamentalist. And everyday for the rest of my life he'll remind me of my wretchedness until I die, not soon enough, of shame.

"Love is all around you," sings Mrs. Washington. "And it's someone you met recently."

I flip through Thomas's folder. I'm pleased with Mrs. Washington's change of heart toward me. She feels like a best friend; an older, earthy sister. I say, "Let's have those tattoos removed from Thomas's hands."

"His hands?" she says. His own mother has not noticed.

"There's `57 Ford on the left, Mrs. Washington, and `57 Chevy on the right. And the sevens are reversed."

After some musing she says, "Yeah, we probably should. If he applies for a job, they might think he can't write. Another thing, on the top part of his arm," she rolls up her sleeve to indicate the spot, "he's got I Love My Mama in capital letters. You think we ought to have that removed?"

"Does it show when he wears short-sleeve shirts?" I ask and Mrs. Washington shakes her head, meaning she doesn't know.

I wonder if Toad's girlfriend drives a red Camaro and likes to fight. Or would she be the more subtle type, who by the light of a cloudy moon would hurl dead chickens over my house?

"There's this guy," I tell Mrs. Washington. "I almost spent the night with him last night."

"He's in love with you already," she says, "but you scare him. You need a man who wants a strong woman, someone who will let you be in charge. Let's go to the Wrangler together. You know how to two-step? I meet nice men there. Professional men. I'm too far along in my career to date truck drivers." Mrs. Washington has her own call-in talk show. As further evidence of her credentials, she reaches for the phone book and turns to the Yellow Pages and shows me her ad that stresses her experience in police work and finding missing persons.

* * *

Early November. Today a plastic surgeon from Bowman-Grey Medical School will look at some of the students, and Mr. Bledsoe meets me at the door.

"Thank you for fixing up," Mr. Bledsoe whispers to me. He is a new breed of manager for juvenile corrections. He has an MBA from Duke, dresses spiffily, and believes that redemption lies in grooming and exercise. "Teach them to take care of their physical bodies and teach them to dream and I promise, doors will open for them," he has said at staff meetings. Which puts him at loggerheads with the school psychiatrist, a man who believes that underarm deodorants are environmental pollutants. "If these children are honest with themselves," says Dr. Rogers, "what they have to look forward to are years of depression."

This morning Mr. Bledsoe reaches to squeeze my hand in appreciation. At his urging, I've groomed myself to a glow. I'm wearing nylons and heels, a simple black shift with a string of pearls. He ushers me to his office where he introduces me to Dr. Raymond.

A tall man, a handsome man and young, Dr. Raymond, I decide, must be donating his services to this population, both to practice his surgical techniques, and at the same time, do something that could change a young person's life.

I shake the doctor's hand heartily, my face atwitch with a monstrous smile. "I'm a firm believer in cosmetic surgery. You wouldn't believe it. I have students who have tattooed themselves with safety pins and razors, I have a boy with a port wine stain on his cheek. My own nose," I say and turn to the side, "look at it. It's lopsided."

I stop talking when Dr. Raymond places his hands on my face, turns it to one side and then the other. From his pocket he brings up a small light and shines it in my nostrils. I glance at Mr. Bledsoe, who doesn't seem visibly agitated. In fact, he looks rather smug and pleased.

"You," says Dr. Raymond, "have a deviated septum. Most likely total blockage on the left side. It's a simple operation." He taps the end of my nose a few times and watches it spring back into place. "I'd want to reshape the tip, give it a little lift."

Mr. Bledsoe touches my hand reassuringly. "This woman," he says looking into my eyes but speaking to the doctor, "is selfless in her dedication to these students." Translation: Do it for free.

Dr. Raymond pockets his little light. "Most of the time this is covered by insurance."

I gush, spitting a little when I speak. "And thank God it is or else I'd be reciting the true chronicle of the road to Calamity." I have no idea what it means but it sounds dramatic, and I feel it's my duty to say something profound as a show of gratitude.

Despite the fact that Mr. Bledsoe is persnickety and rumored to be gay, I entertain the possibility of being in love with him. It grounds me and keeps me from bubbling over with the excitement I feel for the generous gift I'm about to receive -- free cosmetic surgery. For the rest of the day I comport myself as I imagine a woman married to Mr. Bledsoe would comport herself. It has been my observation that women married to gay men are often staid and conservative. Certainly, I didn't want to subject myself to surgery only to become more self-effacing and rigid. But it would be a small price, an eight-hour day of atonement, for the lifetime of a new nose.

* * *

The last heavy rain takes the leaves off the maples and oaks, and the evergreens look dusty under the cast-iron sky. Visible fumes rise from the oil stove on the living room hearth. It's my only heat since the chimney in the bedroom, stuffed with years of soot and bird nests, poses a fire hazard. All the windows are down and nailed shut, but the air is as cold inside as out.

It's my week for breakfast duty. At five-thirty I sit and watch them lift drippy oatmeal in dull spoons to their opened mouths. The boy across from me lets spit dribble down his chin.

"Young man," I say, "wipe your mouth before I write you up."

"Fuck you," he says. But then he slurps and the string pops back between his lips.

Last night for the first time in our lying down together, stoned, Toad and I made love. We went to bed with our clothes on, undressed under the covers and before he fell asleep he talked about Betty Jo, his girlfriend. If she knew about me, he's sure she'd commit suicide.

Even though I began my work day at five this morning, it will be seven tonight before I can leave. Sleet and rain fall all day on the sidewalks that wind through the school grounds. The street lamps turn steely blue in the darkness and illuminate the mist that floats to the ground. In the parking lot I open the door of my frost-covered car and the dashboard casts a weak glow on the black interior. It's not a good car for these slick roads and I brake all the way down the steep hill.

Fear and cold slow my movement. Each held breath becomes a gauzy snowman when I exhale, and since I'm on my way to spy on someone, each curve and dark dip on the narrow thread of blacktop portends a plummet into icy ravines. I park behind a stand of pines a quarter-mile from Toad's house. I start walking through the stubble of the cut field that separates us. My eyes water and I blink to recover my sight but the tears turn to ice flowers that twinkle and sting. Toad gains majestic qualities as I sneak up on his house. There's no whistle in the wind. The only sound is the crunch of my step and the sound of my heavy breathing. I'm close enough to see a bag of cat food on his porch.

Screech of his screen door and he's out in the yellow light. He takes the last draws on a cigarette and flicks the butt across the yard. He calls kitty and then the sound of the hard food being poured into the bowls. When they're finished eating, before he goes to bed, Toad will let them in the house to sleep by the fire.

The fresh air does me good. I drive home and sit by the living room heater and call my sister. "The metal discs are in," she says. She seems unreasonably perky. In the background I hear spoons hit cereal bowls, the noise of a late night talk show. "The girls are doing fine," she says. "They watch TV. They make their own meals." My nieces are three and five. It's eleven o'clock at night.

I tell her that I'm thinking of having my nose done, and she says the obvious thing: "What's wrong with your nose?" She follows with a warning. "Watch General Hospital. Everybody, even the chief of detectives, looks like Michael Jackson. Personally, I think a big, slightly asymmetrical schnozz adds character."

Big and slightly asymmetrical. My mind is made up. "Not much," I say, "just a little lift on the tip."

"I don't know why you'd want to do it . . . "

"For the same reason you want teeth."

"To chew?"

"Do you know where I can get a black chicken? Small, bantam-weight, easy to handle."

"Frozen free range. You can get them at any specialty store but they taste a little gamy to me . . . "

"Free range chickens are black?"

"They're not very big. You know how the ones in the grocery store have all that breast meat . . . well, that's from hormone injections."

"I want a chicken with feathers. But I'm not going to need it until after the surgery."

"Why are you so worried about your nose? Teeth are the most important thing."

"Yeah," I say, "especially if you don't have any, and since I do, I can move on to other issues."

* * *

After the injection I slide from the gurney to the operating table. My heart softens with the drugs and no space separates me from the nurses who pat my hand and ask me, for the tenth time, if I've had anything to eat or drink since midnight. When I lie beneath the big light my eyes enter the souls of these nursemaids.

Dr. Raymond presses the metal splint he has glued to my nose. His voice comes from far away. "I'm very pleased," he says. "It turned out perfectly." Later he says, "How do you feel?" I turn nauseous and spit into a plastic pan shaped like a kidney. The bile is bitter and dark brown. Dr. Raymond says it's the blood I swallowed during surgery. "You're doing great," he says.

* * *

"You look different."

I'm on top, barely moving. Toad can't take his eyes off my face. Paint fumes sting my small, symmetrical nose and make my eyes water.

He puts his hands behind his head. "I might have to tell Betty Jo about us. It'll probably kill her." He arches a little and I moan.

"Oh yeah," I say and start moving a little faster.

"Slow down," he says. "Gotta make it last."

There are things I like about Toad. His quietness, it leaves room for me to think. The way we fit together. Sometimes I like the smell of paint.

He whispers, "You move too fast." He's a big man and I can't help but wonder if he would lie to me for the benefit of his sexual pleasure. But I'm a suspicious woman, a jealous and competitive woman. I'm capable of violence.

* * *

Mrs. Washington winks at me. Her son Thomas, rehabilitated, though his only crime had been truancy and hitching rides to western states, will soon be released. His total transformation will take place on his sixteenth birthday, the age at which a child can quit school without being considered delinquent. The momentous day is 72 hours away.

"How's love?" Mrs. Washington says knowingly. She grins like a house cat who wants one final spasm from the tired mouse. My mind floods with complicated drama. I tighten my lips. I ignore her. I shuffle papers and shiver, pretending to look for something, but merely taking the time to berate myself for smoking a joint after lunch. I distract myself by multiplying 24 hours by seven days and subtracting twelve-hour increments. When I reach zero she's still here, waiting for kudos.

"I told you, didn't I?" She sucks in her cheeks and raises her brow to accentuate her sage-like qualities. "Was I wrong? You're in love."

"No. I am not."

"Whether you like it or not, it's true. He's the one. You slept with him last night, didn't you? His aura is all mixed in with yours. Not a bad mix either, maybe just a little muddy here and there." Mrs. Washington frames my head and shoulders with a square made with her thumbs and index fingers.

She advertises herself as a Doctor of Love. Engraved cards, tastefully simple. She presented me with one when she came in. Now my finger reads the raised letters and catastrophic scenes from the future play across my closed lids. "Psychometry," she says. "You know you're psychic, don't you? But in a raw form. A very raw form. It has taken me years to perfect my ability."

"Are you related to Toad?" I blurt the words and it sounds like an indictment, but I take it as a brilliant manifestation of my latent psychic potential. I saw it all in a nanosecond. Mrs. Washington and Toad work together -- she predicts love, he professes love and I, the previously lonely woman, starts funneling my paycheck to the Love Doctor for weekly and soon daily advice. How soon -- a year, six months -- would they abandon me on a dirt road and drive off in my car, their laughter spilling into the night as Toad hangs his head out the window for one last taunt.

"Toad!" Mrs. Washington grabs a stitch in her midriff. She doubles over and when she comes up, her face is purple with stifled glee. "Toad! He dates my sister, Betty Jo."

"Betty Jo, your sister?"

"Honey, he gets around. I would a thought you had more sense than to, oh Lord. She wipes tears from the corners of her eyes and straightens the lapels on her jacket. "I'm a professional," she says. "Not a word of this I'll breathe to anybody. Betty Jo in particular."

"If you're such a hotshot, why didn't you know it was Toad?"

"Listen, I'm a psychic. I see energy. I don't see telephone numbers, home addresses, or names on birth certificates. And anybody that tells you that they can, they're lying. Believe me, I been doing this long enough to know."

"So," I say pleasantly, "how's Betty Jo doing?" What I want to know is her age, education, occupation, style of dress, and approximate height and weight.

"Betty Jo used to be married," says Mrs. Washington. "But not to Toad. A Cajun from Louisiana who trained hunting dogs. Couldn't understand much of what he said and he added red pepper flakes to everything he cooked. Mean son of a bitch. My daddy would a creamed his case the first day we met him but, hell, we didn't know half of what he was saying."

"Sometimes it's better that way . . . "

"He's in prison for shooting at Federal agents."

"Betty Jo must like wild men."

"You'd have to ask Betty Jo that." Mrs. Washington smiles. Not anything evil, just amused. "Toad's lazy."

"Laid-back would be a more accurate -- "

"As I was saying, Toad's lazy. His whole family's a bunch of layabouts. No great harm in that. To each his own. Personally, I prefer men who . . . " Stumped for words, Mrs. Washington stops to think.

"What kind of man would you prefer?" I say, "You want someone who leaves for work at the crack of dawn and comes back after sunset, tired and self-righteous because the rest of the world doesn't work as hard as he does?"

"Well, somebody -- "

"Or do you want somebody like Toad who'd plump the sofa pillows and have a nice little meal waiting for you?" I've not seen any evidence that Toad is domesticated in this way. I am simply avenging his name and would have kept on except for the veil of soulful defeat that falls across Mrs. Washington's face.

"I'm tired of being poor," she says softly and with the way my heart sinks with her words, I know that she means it.

I feel like a bully. I open my desk drawer and make a show of scratching around, pretending to hunt for something important. I try first one pen, then another, bearing down so hard that the point leaves deep indentations on the white release form but not the slightest sign of ink.

"Realistically," I say, "what do you think Thomas will do when he gets out?"

"Hang around the house. Eat. Sleep, until he decides to take off again."

I fold my hands. I'll fill out the forms later when I have a pen. For vocational objective I'll write Welder. In the narrative section I'll say that Thomas will receive counseling monthly to monitor his progress at the A.C. Dowd School of Industrial Arts.

"What about medication?" says Mrs. Washington.

"For what?" I ask. "Do you think it will keep Thomas from running away?"

"For me. I've been thinking about it for me. That maybe if I didn't scream at him so much, he'd do a whole lot better. One of my sisters, she said she just didn't know how mean and hateful she'd been with her kids till she started taking Prozac. But I don't know, I'm afraid it'll screw up my psychic facilities."

"Facilities . . . sounds like a room."

"It is a room. Top of the stairs, right front. I dream that it's spooked and I'm afraid to go in there. But I go in anyway and start fixing it up." Mrs. Washington describes old wallpaper, fireplaces, window frames, doors that lead onto treacherous porches and into secret closets. I'm about to tell her that I have similar dreams but stop when someone knocks on my office door.

Mr. Bledsoe enters head down and shuffles through the pay envelopes looking for my name. "Here we go," he says as he slips mine out of the stack and hands it to me without looking up.

Mrs. Washington says in a sultry voice, "You got one for me?"

Mr. Bledsoe turns and does a double-take, as if unaware of her presence. "Mrs. Washington." He clears his throat. "Life is quite simple, you know. In order to receive one of these," he waves the envelopes, "one must first have a job."

Mrs. Washington closes her eyes and feigns a trance. "Someone close to you will die soon. It will take you years to recover. There may even be a nervous breakdown, bankruptcy --"

"And people pay her for this," Mr. Bledsoe says and quickly leaves.

Mrs. Washington waits a few moments after the door has clicked shut before opening her eyes.

"You were kidding? Weren't you?"

She gives a nonchalant shrug. She guards her dignity with canine instincts.

I take a deep breath. I say, "You want to hear something funny? I've fantasized about marrying Mr. Bledsoe."

"Bledsoe?" She frowns. "He's gay."

"That's my point."

"What?"

"Have you ever told Thomas anything about his father?"

"Absolutely not. And it's none of your business either. And if you're saying Thomas is gay, you're crazy."

"Mrs. Washington, I'm not saying Thomas is gay. I'm saying that I never knew my father."

She stares at me, and the indignation drains from her face. "You were illegitimate."

"Yes . . ."

" . . . and your mama wouldn't tell you anything about your daddy. I wish I'd a known that when I was telling you to throw a black chicken over Toad's house. Hell, if I'd a known it was Toad I would a told you to forget about it anyway."

"Back then I think it was Harold, a married man in Connecticut. It's always somebody. No man escapes my attention."

Without much interest she says, "Hmm."

I ask, "Why do you think Thomas runs away?"

"You don't know half the places that boy's been . . ."

A paved path runs beside my office window. The air is cold but bright and Mr. Bledsoe, a few pay envelopes still in hand, strides by. Mrs. Washington turns away when she catches a glimpse of him. She says she's almost sure that Thomas once made it all the way to California. Her voice quavers and she smiles. She says she doesn't think I'll be living in Mr. Shotwell's house much longer.

Five o'clock and Mrs. Washington leaves and I'm left alone in the office, too tired to move. Twilight is sliding into night and silhouettes bob along the path going to and then returning from dinner. It takes me a while to decide what to do. I'll stand and gather my things, and if it's not too late, I'll stop by the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. But for now, I want to keep sitting. I want to imagine a house where all the windows open.