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back of the barn where something, possibly a fox, or a neighbor’s dog, had seized him, shaken him and broken his neck, threw him down and left him for dead. Poor Mr. Rooster!
    Seeing the rooster in the dirt, horribly still, the little girl had cried and cried and cried.
    And several hens, limp and bloody, eyes open and sightless. Flung down in the dirt like trash.
    AND THERE CAME THE time, not long after this, or maybe it had been this time, when Happy Chicken disappeared.
    The girl was stunned and disbelieving and did not cry, at first.
    So frightened, the little girl could not cry.
    For it seemed terrifying to her, that Happy Chicken might be—somehow— gone.
    She’d run screaming to her mother who was upstairs in the farmhouse. The Mother who claimed to have no idea where the little chicken might be. Together they searched in the chicken coop, and in the barn, and out in the fields, and in the pear orchard. Calling Happy Chicken! Happy Chicken! Loudly calling Chick-chick-chick-chick-CHICK!
    Other chickens came running, blinking and clucking. Yellow eyes staring.
    And not one of these was me.
    That morning the Mother had taken the little girl into Lockport to visit with the Other Grandmother, who was her father’s mother, who lived upstairs in a gray clapboard house on Grand Street just across the railroad tracks. The highway that was Transit Road that ran past the little girl’s house became Transit Street inside the Lockport city limits and was but a half-block away from the Other Grandmother’s house.
    The Other Grandmother was named Blanche: but she was also called “Grandma”—like the (Hungarian) grandmother. The little girl tried to understand why this would be so. How could the two persons who were so different, be somehow the same —Grandma?
    The Other Grandmother, who lived in Lockport, was much nicer than the (Hungarian) Grandmother who lived in Millersport. This Grandmother did not smell of grease, or chicken gizzards, or wet chicken feathers, or any other nasty thing, but rather of something pale and creamy like lilies—did this Grandmother wear perfume? Were this Grandmother’s hands soft from hand lotion? The little girl was always welcome to explore the Grandmother’s rooms which included the Grandmother’s bedroom that had such nice things in it—a shiny pink satin bedspread with white flowers, a “dressing table” with three mirrors and a mirror-top, many sweet-smelling jars and small bottles, a hairbrush with soft bristles that did not hurt the little girl’s hair when the Grandmother brushed it.
    Most importantly the Grandmother who was Blanche did not speak angry-sounding guttural words in Hungarian, and would never have raised her voice to scream at anyone; you could not imagine—(the little girl could not imagine!)—this nice Grandmother being cruel to any chicken.
    This was the Grandmother whom Daddy loved—for this Grandmother was Daddy’s mother . The little girl had been told this remarkable fact which she could not comprehend because Daddy was so much taller than the Grandmother it seemed to her silly —that her tall strong Daddy who was so forceful would have a mother.
    This was the Grandmother who read books from the Lockport library, never fewer than three books each week. And these books smelling of the library in plastic covers. And these books smartly stamped in dark green ink L OCKPORT P UBLIC L IBRARY . This Grandmother took the little girl hand in hand into the children’s entrance of the library, to secure a library card for the little girl. For here was the surprise, that would be one of the great, happy surprises of the little girl’s life—“Joyce Carol” was old enough for a children’s library card: six. And she was allowed to take out children’s books,picture books, selected by the little girl herself, from shelves in the library—so many shelves! Such