m review — creative non–fiction — tschilper
Tschilper
by Sonja Herbert
It all started in Germany, where I grew up, sometime in 1953. I was seven years old.
I sat on the steps leading to the door of our caravan home, a reading primer on my lap. The late spring sun shone on the grass of the fairgrounds where Papa had parked our caravan. Papa lugged another one of the large pictures from the open pack trailer toward our half–erected merry–go–round. Mickey Mouse grinned at me from the picture and I wished I had a comic book I could look at instead of the boring reading homework the teacher in this town had assigned. I returned to the primer and read another sentence when a shadow fell on my book.
I looked up. A man in the mail carrier's uniform stood in front of the caravan home's steps, regarding me with eyes embedded in a net of wrinkles. I squinted at him. He placed a large box onto the grass and stretched. Soft tweeting noises came from several small holes punched in the box.
"Is this where Margot Francesco lives?" the mailman said.
I nodded. "She's my mother."
"This box is for her, then."
I rose, hurried up the steps, and pulled the door open.
"Mama, the mailman has a box for you."
Mama dropped the spoon in her hand onto the kitchen table and pushed me aside. When she saw the box her dark eyes lit up. She carried it to the kitchen table, where she inspected it, smiling.
My younger sister Josefa crowded beside me and stood on her tip toes, trying to see. Our baby brother Franz climbed onto the converted bus seat by the kitchen table and reached for the box.
Mama moved it out of his reach. "Here they are," she said. "Soon we'll have eggs any time we want them, nice and fresh."
With a knife, she carefully cut the lid open. Inside, buffered by shredded newspaper, eight tiny yellow chicks ambled around, bumping into each other. Thin cheeping sounds floated from their small orange beaks.
"Can we play with them?" Josefa asked.
"No. When they grow up, they'll lay eggs. Then you can eat as many as you want."
Josefa frowned at the chicks. "Oh. That's a long time."
In the evening, Mama encased the box with feather pillows and left it on the kitchen table.
That night I lay in my bunk bed, thinking about the little chicks. I hoped they wouldn't be lonely. When I finally fell asleep I dreamed of chicks toddling around in the kitchen, looking for their mother.
The next morning, before my sisters woke up, I hurried into the kitchen. When Mama took the pillows and the lid off the chickens' box, one of them lay cold and stiff, its little feet sticking straight up. Mama poked it with a pencil and pronounced it dead.
I went to school disappointed and sad. By the time I returned home six chickens were left, and eventually all, except for one, died.
The fluffy yellow survivor made cheeping, liquid sounds as it toddled around in its box.
Papa declared that this chicken needed a name.
"Why not call him Tschilper?" My older sister Carmen suggested.
Gleefully my sisters and I copied the sound the little chicken made. "Tschilp, tschilp," we said.
Little Franz, too, piped in and mimicked the chicken's sounds.
But Mama's face was fierce. "We will not name that chicken," she declared, her black eyes cold and hard. "I want it to contribute to our food supply, not to be a pet."
Papa grinned. "Tschilper it is, then," he said.
Mama huffed, her mouth a thin line of disapproval, but didn't protest. At that moment our little chicken became a pet in everybody's eyes, except Mama's.
One day, with our caravan parked in another small town marketplace, I watched Mama and Papa at breakfast.
"Tschilper is no chicken," Papa declared.
I forgot to eat. No chicken? What else could it be? Maybe it was a duck?
"It's a chicken. Just wait and see," Mama said. Her voice was tight and strained and she wasn't smiling.
Papa laughed, patted Mama on her rear, and left to open the shooting gallery for business.
For days I wondered what Papa had meant, until Carmen told me, "Tschilper can be our pet now. He'll never lay eggs, because he's a boy."
"What do you mean, a boy?" I asked.
"He's a boy chicken, silly. A rooster."
She was right. Tschilper eventually developed into a gorgeous green, brown, and black Bantam rooster with a lovely orange crest and wattle, and Mama never did get her eggs from that experiment.
But she didn't give up. One morning young Tschilper, still in his box for the night, crowed at the break of dawn.
I woke up, slipped out of bed, and wandered into the living room, where Mama and Papa slept on the pull-out sofa.
Mama climbed out from under the feather tick and picked Tschilper from his box. She went through the kitchen with the rooster under her arm, threw him out the door, and returned.
"That darned beast," she muttered. "We should eat it."
I stared at her, biting my lip. Surely she wasn't serious. It wasn't so bad that Tschilper was noisy. I was often noisy too, and she would never eat me. But a deep frown creased her forehead under her disheveled black hair. She rubbed her eyes, saw me and shooed me back to bed.
After that, Tschilper stayed outside, except when we traveled. While Papa pulled our caravan with his old tractor from one little German town to the next for yet another fair, Tschilper stayed in his box, his head under his feathers, and made sleepy sounds. When we didn't travel, he roosted on the axles between the wheels of our caravan home.
Mama had a bag of chicken feed. One morning I followed her as she took a handful, went out and strewed it onto the ground.
She made clucking noises, and as Tschilper ran out from under the caravan, her face softened and she smiled. "Here's your breakfast you crazy bird," she said.
Tschilper looked up from pecking at the kernels and made a soft, half-crowing sound. I thought it was his way of saying, "Thank you."
The day came when Tschilper didn't make as much noise as usual and didn't want to leave his perch under the caravan home. The next day he didn't crow and didn't want to move.
In the late afternoon, Mama tramped out to where Papa worked on the tractor. I sat on the ground behind the large tractor wheel, writing my newly learned letters in the dirt with a stick.
"Tschilper is sick," Mama said.
"Maybe it's just a chicken cold," Papa said.
"What can we do?"
"Why don't we wait a few days? He might just recover."
Papa grinned at Mama. "And, we can always eat him," he said.
My heart skipped a beat. Surely he was just teasing Mama? He couldn't really mean that.
But Mama said, "We sure could use the meat. All I got from that order of chicks is expenses. And an unwanted pet. We didn't even get any eggs. But we can't just stand by and watch him suffer."
Serious again, Papa said, "I'll ask the local farmers. Maybe they know what to do."
"If we can't help him we need to put him out of his misery. Whatever chicken sickness he has shouldn't affect the meat."
"Let's wait," Papa said.
"All right."
Mama's footsteps receded.
I snuck away, afraid to let my parents know I had overheard their conversation. Later that evening I told Carmen that Mama wanted us to eat Tschilper. Carmen's eyes grew wide and her hand flew to her mouth.
"I don't believe you," she said and stalked off.
The next day Mama told Carmen to watch us and stay in the caravan home. She hurried out toward Papa. We children crowded around the open caravan home's door. We couldn't hear what they said, but things didn't bode well. Mama stood with her feet apart and her hands on her hips, and Papa frowned and shook his head.
Eventually Mama returned, pulled the large pot from under the gas stove and poured water into it from the canister in the corner.
"What are you doing?" Carmen asked.
Mama placed the pot on a burner and frowned at her. "Shut up," she said.
Outside, Papa strode toward the pack trailer and returned with an axe. He disappeared behind the caravan home.
I glanced at Carmen. She bit her lip, her eyes wide and fearful. She glanced at Mama, then back at me. I blinked because my eyes suddenly burned and I felt like crying.
"Is Papa going to kill Tschilper?" Carmen whispered to me.
Mama turned from the stove. "Tschilper isn't a pet," she said. "And besides, he's sick. He would just die by himself. This way he'll provide a good meal for us."
Carmen sobbed and ran into the living room. Josefa and I followed her. Together we huddled in a heap on the sofa and covered our ears, so we wouldn't hear Tschilper cry.
I understood that we didn't always have much to eat, but in this case I thought we should go hungry. We shouldn't make a meal out of a friend. But Mama insisted he was just meat. In my seven-year-old mind, Mama never made mistakes. Maybe I was stupid for thinking about Tschilper as a friend, but when I peered at Carmen, I knew she felt the same.
Papa clumped up the caravan steps, holding a dead rooster by its feet. I glanced at him and buried my face in my arms. This wasn't right, in spite of what Mama said.
Mama poured the hot water over the dead rooster and plucked a fistful of brown feathers. We children rose as one and ran past her from the caravan home. We hid behind the pack trailer, hoping Mama wouldn't find us and make us help.
We had fried chicken for lunch that day.
Mama called us to come to eat, and we pretended not to hear. Eventually she found us behind the other caravan trailers, marched us home, and made us sit around the kitchen table. She placed a piece of chicken in front of each of us.
We folded our arms and stared at our plates. Even little Franz, who always ate everything, refused to take a bite.
"Eat, you brats," Mama said. "We don't have such good food all the time."
No one answered. I had no appetite, and I'm sure none of my siblings wanted to eat that day. We stared at the chicken and kept our mouths pressed shut.
Papa, who always ate so much, took a spoonful of mashed potatoes and pushed his plate away.
"I'm not hungry," he said, got up from the table, and went outside to tinker with some part of the merry-go-round.
Mama pressed her lips together.
"You eat Tschilper, Mama," Carmen ventured.
I expected Mama to get mad, but she just stared at my sister.
"I have a stomachache," Mama said in a small voice. She picked up her and Papa's untouched plates. "Go on out and play, then. Go, go," she said and shooed us from the caravan home.
The remains of Tschilper disappeared, without any of us having eaten a bite of him.
That evening, when Mama washed little Franz to get him ready for bed, we three girls sat crowded together on the converted bus seat, waiting our turn at the washbowl. None of us spoke. The kitchen was unnaturally quiet.
Mama glanced at us, then back at Franz, whose face she wiped with a washrag.
She said, "It's just as well we didn't eat Tschilper."
She paused. I bit my lip. Carmen fiddled with a strand of her hair, and Josefa sucked on her finger.
Mama straightened and stared at us. "What's the matter with you all? Are you sick?"
Carmen shook her head.
"Well then," Mama said. "Josefa, go wash." She turned, little Franz on her hip, and said, "Maybe we'll get another pet for you all, real soon. A real pet."
I felt better, knowing Mama accepted my feelings, but I didn't want another pet.
Not until Papa bought something black and white and very wiggly from a local kid a few weeks later. But that is another story.
Sonja Herbert of Hillsboro, Oregon.
"Tschilper" is an M Review 2006 Creative Non–Fiction Finalist.
Sonja Herbert wrote a biographical novel about her mother hiding in a circus during the Holocaust, which is now looking for publication. She is also the author of several award–winning published stories. This story is part of her almost finished memoir.
