The Daughter Read Free Page B

back, the whole population . But that day the Red Cross was supposed to distribute free food. The three of us queued up from eight that morning; I didn’t go to school that day, in fact we didn’t go to school much any more. Mother never went to a food handout, I don’t know why, maybe she was embarrassed. But she gave us permission, as long as we were clean.
    There we were, queuing. Around half past three they announced there wouldn’t be any food distribution. Then all of us, must have been close to 300, kind of shuddered at the same time. Silence. Then we all turned back and broke down the doors to three shops, pushing with our backs. One was a ladies’ drapery that had been closed for a long time. We snatched whatever we could lay our hands on. There were civil servants’ wives, and even Mlle Salome, strutting around dressed to the nines. People were trampling over someone lying on the ground. It was my brother Sotiris; but he wasn’t hurt, he was just lying there letting the people walk all over him while he stuffed something into his mouth. I managed to snatch a can, turns out it was full of that coarse-ground foreign-tasting coffee ; the only kind of coffee we ever had at our house, before the war that is, was the Turkish variety. Like an apparition I see Mlle Salome come sashaying out of the ruined shop just as pleased as punch even though they’d ripped the fur collar off her coat. Always the charmer, she was. She’d looted some cosmetics , some rouge, a box of Tokalon powder and a lipstick, she showed it all to us afterwards. Found out later she was in the Resistance, even if she was from a good family. But what do you expect from an impresario’s sister-in-law after all.
    It was our twenty-seventh day without bread. The coffee was gone too. Mother had been gone all morning and the three of us were huddled in bed together, trying to keep warm, if only we had the pullet to sit on our feet and keep us warm. Poultry give off more heat than people, you know.
    The pullet was a present from Mlle Salome, bless her heart, wherever she might be, even though she never made it to Athens. Broke into somebody’s chicken coop, stole the bird and passed it on to Mother. Boil it and feed your kids the broth, she said, their glands are starting to swell.
    The pullet had bright-coloured feathers and a long neck; a lively bird she was, too. Didn’t have any idea we were in the middle of an Occupation. Ma please let’s not kill her, we begged. All right, we’ll let her grow a little, maybe we’ll get an extra portion. Maybe she’ll even lay an egg or two. But the first eggs we had to eat were when the English marched in to liberate us. So we kept the pullet about six months, tried to feed her, and I even dug up the odd worm: put her out to peck around for weeds and bugs in a vacant lot up the hill. We had to make sure nobody would steal her so the three of us carried her hidden under Sotiris’ overcoat. We had to carry her, it was all she could do to stand up she was so exhausted.
    That day when we get to the vacant lot I put her down to scratch for worms but she flops over on her side and looks up at me, too weak to scratch. I give her water but she can barely drink. Kids, I say, she’s not long for this world, let’s get back home so we can cut her throat before she croaks. But Ma says, No I won’t do it, and later that afternoon the chicken looks me in the eye one last time and drops dead. From hunger. I picked her up; she was heavier dead. You’re not going to bury her? You’re crazy, you think you’re rich or something? Mlle Salome shouts from her balcony when she spies me digging a hole in the yard. She’s still warm, come on, pluck her and boil her! A whole chicken going to waste!
    I go back inside. Saying, Ma, where’s the trowel? My brothers pull back the bed and I dig a hole right in the corner I was saving for my little garden and buried her nice and pretty then we put the bed back, just so. Every