That Much

Tuesday night I heard a commotion in the Bracero house. My bedroom window is nearly aligned with its window; the window the hens and rooster use to enter their giant perch. When my daughters and I moved into this house, the Bracero house was forbidden. The people before us had used it as a dump. I have no elegant word for its purpose for the previous tenants, as they had littered it so terribly that not even a spider would burrow in its wet, haunted wood that now smelled of a small child who had been neglected for days.

We decided to brave the task of cleaning up the place. The front half of the house, where the bathroom and kitchen must have been so many years ago, was clean. I told the girls we could use that area to store our camping gear and bikes, but they insisted that we could use the bracero house in its entirety, and so began the day-long journey to clear out the living area; the bedroom of migrant farm workers and their families.

After several hauls to the city dump and several gallons of bleach that we poured on the wooden floor, the room came alive. Spiders and snakes began to appear, and that is when the rooster and hens arrived. We did not own them, nor did we purchase them in some feeble attempt to get in touch with our new lives of living in the country; they just decided to adopt us. They now had a home. The Bracero House.

Every night they would roost on the rafters, huddled together in a row as if they had been waiting years for this new home to be built. It was perfect for them. We boarded up all but two of the windows so the chickens (and my junk) would be protected from the elements, and so was born the greatest chicken coop in all of Lovington's history.

In the mornings I began throwing on an old sweatshirt and rain boots, and traipsing through the back area of my house to unlatch the door to the “chicken coop.” And every morning the hens and their rooster would cluck to let me know that, while they appreciated all of the hospitality, my presence wasn’t wanted long. I would fill up their feeder with chicken scratch that we purchased downtown at a feed store. The owner laughed when I first told him of our adoption, and knew right away that I had always been a city girl. But every month, like clockwork, we drove to his business to purchase food for our new additions. And every month, he would smile and shake his head as he loaded the feed into the trunk of my Toyota Camry.

In the meantime, Aaliyah became quite close to these farm animals. She worried on weekends we were away, and, like the rest of us, enjoyed the sound of the rooster crowing, although he did it very sporadically, and rarely at daylight. He was much like his new family, lacking a schedule and early to rise. Aaliyah took them hay when it was cold and searched for eggs when it was warm. We never found where the hens were laying, but we didn’t care because we always felt like we were just part of the family.

At two o'clock Tuesday morning I heard a loud noise outside my window. I knew that a coyote had finally found the dwelling of our friends. The chickens screamed, but there was nothing I could do. It all happened so quickly that by the time I sat up in bed, the noise had stopped. I plopped back down on my pillow and cursed the circle of life.

The next morning I continued with my regular routine; I took feed and water to the chickens, although I knew, by the strewn feathers, that I was doing so in vain. We drove to school and I simply existed. I said nothing to Aaliyah because I had yet come to terms with the event myself. In the teacher’s lounge, my neighbor asked if I was missing a chicken. He had found one lying on the road that runs beside his house. Everyone made jokes about chickens crossing the road, while I thought to myself that even the most intelligent people have no heart. I silently wondered how I would break the news to Aaliyah.

Aaliyah took the news better than I expected, but I guess subconsciously she knew one would return. And one did. She found a hen waddling in the back area behind our house that same evening. Aaliyah caught her, and found that her foot had been injured. She carefully laid her down and began doing all she knew how to do. She gathered some hay and began building a nest for the hen inside the Bracero house. She then came inside and grabbed the old sweatshirt that I had worn each morning for so many months to nourish this hen and her family. She nursed her, but even with all of her effort, it was just not meant to be.

This morning I stepped outside to take photographs of nature. Sitting on the window of the Bracero house was a lone bird, singing a lovely morning tune. I snapped a picture and walked around to unlatch the door to check on the hen. There she lay on her side on the old sweatshirt that she had seen each morning since the day she moved in. It had become her resting place. I knelt down beside her and wept. Aaliyah had been so brave and carried her around, but I had always been the feeder. Nothing more. So I reached out my hand and stroked her feathers in an attempt to feel what Aaliyah had felt. I apologized for nature’s course, and walked inside to explain to Aaliyah that her hen missed the rest of her family that much.