Easter 1956

By the time I was 4 years old we had moved four times. Our latest house in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, was a white clapboard two-bedroom ranch with an attached garage. It sat on a half acre, towards the front of the property. In the backyard was a kid’s paradise: huge oak with swing, sandbox, brick wading pool, patio with built-in BBQ pit and hopscotch board painted in blue on the cement terrace.

It was a custom in those days down South for roadside stands to sell chicks and ducklings tinted pastel hues for Easter. On Good Friday evening my father, arriving home after his week away as a traveling salesman for a national lock company brought a duckling with him in a small waxed cardboard box. Tiny, blue and downy, it occupied a hastily constructed pen he made of chicken wire. We named the duckling Blue.

It was very early dawn of Easter morning when my brother Jerry, age 7, awakened me in my bed in the room we shared. “Come with me.” I got up and followed him. Passing the closed door of our parents’ bedroom my ears began to burn slightly. I followed Jerry out the kitchen door and down the three steps into the backyard. There was the pen with Blue nestled down on the bare ground asleep. Jerry removed the stick holding the makeshift door closed and motioned me to step inside. The duckling awoke. Bending over he picked it up and grasping the bird’s bill in his right hand and its body in his left deftly twisted its neck. Soundlessly it went limp. “I’ll kill you too if you tell Mom and Dad.” He tossed the carcass on the ground. He turned to leave. I crouched down and with my right forefinger stroked the softness of Blue’s crumpled discarded body. “C’mon!” Inhaling deeply I memorized the scent of the dark rich dampness of the moist soil. I stood and followed him back inside. I got back into bed but lay there not sleeping. The small tight pink plastic curlers in my hair itched and I scratched deeply into my scalp. Soon I felt a wetness. Blood. I sucked my fingers hard, the warm liquid tasting rusty on my tongue. The burning in my ears subsided and I fell into a light doze.

The sounds of our mother in the kitchen starting her day making coffee and opening and shutting doors and drawers drifted into our room. At breakfast Dad announced the duckling was dead — a dog had gotten to it. Dad had buried Blue and taken down the pen.

Before leaving for church the family — Mom, Dad, Dad’s older sister, dear gentle beloved Aunt Frances, Jerry and I — posed for black and white pictures in our Easter finery.

Two photos remain in my family album.

In one there is myself, with my abundant Shirley Temple curls, awkwardly twisted as I adjust the jacket of my simple A-line matching linen coat and dress. I stand on the left of a poised and pleasantly smiling Aunt Frances, Audrey Hepburn elegant in a mid-calf black sheath and black pumps, with her simple bobbed and banged black hair. Jerry stands on her right, handsome in his dark sports jacket over light trousers, his hands in his pants pockets, in a casual relaxed stance, smiling his engaging one-dimpled smile.

In the other, my mother stands beaming beatifically in her shiny floral sheath dress, her shoulders draped with the fashionable dead fox, its hinged jaw clasping the end of its tail and its dangling tiny paws hanging over her copious breasts. I am on her left with her extended right hand clasped in both of mine as I press my lips into it. Jerry stands in a near identical pose as with Aunt Frances, but with no smile. He stares off into the distance, solemn, his face clouded.

As I sat in the wooden pew and listened to the 1,000+ year old story of Jesus’ resurrection I thought of the blue feathered creature existing...where? I studied the cherry red, lemon yellow, deep ocean blue stained glass arched window seeing only the rich colors and not the figures depicted. What was this thing called Death? Suddenly it came to me: Death was the end of life. Blue had been alive. Bright brown eyes, a small chest rising and falling, orange flat webbed feet. Now Blue was...not here. Dead.

I looked at my Daddy, his handsome profile. A bone chill shot through me. Would Daddy ever...? My ears began to burn...and burn...and burn.

Barbara Dickenson

18 March 2018

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