The Night Sister

Sylvie might be able to entrance the chickens and the whole rest of the world, but Rose Slater was immune to her sister’s charms. That didn’t mean Sylvie didn’t try.

Uncle Fenton had given Sylvie a book—Mastering the Art and Science of Hypnotism—for Christmas, and she’d studied it cover to cover, underlining passages and making notes in the margins. Fenton had thought that she could use some of the techniques on the birds, but Sylvie had taken it further, insisting on practicing on Rose.

“Keep your eyes on my finger; feel yourself getting sleepier, sleepier still. I’m going to count backward from ten; when I get to one, you’ll be fast asleep, but you’ll hear every word I say.”

It never worked, really, but Rose pretended. She followed Sylvie’s finger, lowered her eyelids, spoke and moved as if she was in a trance state. She said goofy things, clucked like a chicken, did whatever Sylvie commanded. It was great fun, fooling her sister, letting Sylvie think she was in control. Rose loved knowing that she had the power to ruin the game, to pop open her eyes and confess that she’d been faking all along. And there would be Sylvie, the clever daughter, the beautiful, graceful girl, waving her dumb finger through the air for nothing.

Rose herself was just the opposite of Sylvie: awkward and thick-limbed, with dark, easily tangled hair. She was the kind of kid people glanced right over, a short and clumsy shadow lurking behind Sylvie and occasionally sticking out her tongue when she was sure no one could see.

As Sylvie and Matilda hammed it up for the audience, Rose busied herself setting up the next act: Petunia was a Barred Rock who Rose had taught to balance on a metal roller skate as it was pulled across the stage on a string. The best part was her costume—a little gingham dress and a pillbox hat that Rose bobby-pinned to her feathers.

“We’re on, girl,” Rose whispered to the hen, giving her a good-luck stroke. She grabbed a handful of raisins from the Sun-Maid box and went to work, leading Petunia across the stage as the skate’s metal wheels rattled.

Uncle Fenton whistled appreciatively. He was not actually their uncle, but a distant cousin of Daddy’s and much younger: he’d just turned nineteen. He was wearing his usual outfit—a stained white T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve, blue work pants and heavy black boots. In his back pocket he always kept a thin paperback book, something he’d picked up at the five-and-dime: science fiction or crime, sometimes a Western. Uncle Fenton was Daddy’s helper, the fix-it man at the motel, and he lived in a trailer behind the house that Daddy helped him pay for. When Fenton wasn’t reading, repairing something, or cutting the grass, he was building himself a motorcycle out of parts he’d been collecting. Sometimes the girls would go help him, and he’d promise that once he got it running he’d take them for a ride—maybe even add on a sidecar, so they could all three go.

Now they got Sunshine, a big, glossy black hen, from the cage behind the back curtain, and all three birds were dancing, moving back and forth, spinning in carefully choreographed circles, banging into each other clumsily, while the girls led them on with raisins; all the chickens wore hats and silk scarves.