Wheatley

I miss my family.

There were four kids in my family, and each of us was uniquely miserable, in our own, sad way.

We lived in a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by corn fields, an old graveyard, and a closed down elementary school which would later be purchased by the predominant settlers of the region - German-speaking Mexican Mennonites. (Mennonites use electricity, but they force their women to wear head scarves and skirts - and that is the entirety of my cultural knowledge.) The previous owners of our house had been Mennonites, with eight children living at home, three of whom were blind. They were leaving the country for unknown reasons, and we purchased the house at a bargain price.

Our yard was large and overgrown, and out back there were the remnants of a chicken coop. A sole, starved rooster showed up, bristling with neglect and rage, days after we’d moved in - we figured the previous owners had abandoned him. We named him “Pox.” Every time we got off the school bus, he would try to gouge out our eyes with his talons. A swift boot kick to his chest would usually send him flying far enough that you could get inside the door.

Our uncle shot him, several months later, and we watched him erupt in a plume of feathers before falling to the ground, dead. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if Pox might have been nicer if we’d bothered to feed or water him. I guess we’ll never know.

On the bus ride home, Mennonite kids would tell stories of hanging hens upside-down and slitting their necks to drain the blood. We’d just buried Pox in the ground. His remains are next to those of our family dog (backed over by a car), our next family dog (run down by a transport truck), and countless family cats who have died of various ailments.

Also living on the property was a thriving family of barn swallows, making their residence in our garage and occasionally dive-bombing cats and small children, and a large possum named Herbert who would sometimes sneak in at night to our back kitchen (which didn’t have a door), where he would steal from our bags of cat food.

An oil excavation team moved in across the street, housed in trailers, in the months between the ninth and tenth grade. The constant construction and three second thud of metal on metal machinery was a metronome against the sweltering heat and our collective boredom, until finally, in October, construction was finished and we found ourselves neighbours to a functioning oil well.

That year my brother moved in with a friend, then our father, and eventually joined the army, to be stationed in rural Alberta, and rural Manitoba, and rural former-Yugoslavia - all considered a step-up. My step-brother played musical houses between his mother and father, neither of whom particularly cared, before making friends in Toronto who were willing to take him in.

My sister remained at home while we ran in our respective directions, but she’s older now, and ready - for dorm rooms, hours away by car. All the cats I knew growing up have died, and the family dogs I loved have all gone the way of Pox the rooster. So there’s nothing much to miss, except a big white house with bad insulation in the middle of a corn field - and I never liked that house to begin with.