The Night Sister

“And now for the grand finale,” Sylvie announced. “I will use the power of hypnosis to put all three chickens to sleep. I need absolute quiet from the audience. Watch, and you will be amazed.”


Rose held Matilda and Petunia firmly in place next to one another. Sylvie held Sunshine down with her left hand; with her right, she used a white stick (she called it her “magic chicken wand”) to twirl circles in the air in front of them, then drew lines on the ground, a straight line drawn again and again in front of each hen. The birds watched the white stick, eyes focused on the line it made in the dirt, and gradually relaxed, holding perfectly still. One by one, Sylvie picked the birds up and flipped them onto their backs, where they lay with their eyes closed, feet in the air. The crowd oohed and aahed. Sylvie gave a proud smile, then snapped her fingers and said in a loud voice, “Awaken!” All three birds jumped up, righted themselves, and ran wild.

“Tah-dah,” she said, taking a long, deep bow, chicken wand still clutched in her right hand.

Mama looked down and picked at the hem of her dress, pulling a thread loose. But Daddy banged his hands together and gave the girls an enthusiastic grin. Uncle Fenton laughed out loud, slapping his knees. The young newlyweds applauded politely, then headed back down to their room. The housewife from New Jersey reached over and took her husband’s hand, and he looked at her and smiled a can-you-believe-this smile. Their wedding rings glinted in the sun. The little girl turned to her brother and said, “We need to get some chickens when we get home.” The parents laughed.

“Good show, girls,” Daddy said. He pulled the little notebook from his pocket and jotted down something. Daddy was always getting wonderful ideas—ideas that would make money, make the motel bigger and better and more efficient; ideas that could change the world.

“I’ll go start dinner,” said Mama, her wary eye on the hen in Sylvie’s arms. Mama was not a big fan of the chickens. She thought they were dirty and not all that bright, and sometimes worried out loud about the diseases the girls might catch from them, like salmonella. Secretly, Rose wondered how you could get a sickness from a chicken that would turn you into a fish, and what exactly would happen—would you grow gills? Scales? Not be able to breathe on land?

“It’s my paper night,” Mama reminded them. Every Thursday, after dinner, the girls had to clean up the kitchen and get their own selves off to bed, so Daddy could watch the office while Mama had her newspaper meeting. She and some of the members of the Ladies Club of London put out a weekly paper—The London Town Crier—full of news, recipes, and advertisements. Mama was the editor, and each Thursday night they planned the next week’s issue.

Sylvie wandered over to Lucy the cow’s pen, and let the guest kids pet Petunia while Daddy talked to their father, the two men huddled close, smoking. They were talking about the highways being built all over, how soon there would be one running right by London, going from White River Junction all the way up to the Canadian border. Daddy shook his head, said in a low voice, “It’s no good for this town. No one will come through on Route 6 anymore.”

The boy who was petting Petunia moved closer, so that the toes of his Keds were practically touching Sylvie’s sandals. His hand brushed hers, and she smiled.

“How do you do it?” he asked. “Hypnotize the chickens?”

“It takes a lot of practice,” Sylvie told him.

“Can you hypnotize people?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I do it to my sister all the time.”

“Will you do me?” His eyes glistened, his whole body thrumming with excitement at the possibility.

“I don’t know,” Sylvie said. “Maybe.”

The boy’s little sister was reaching through the cedar fence rails to pet Lucy. Nailed to the fence was a sign Daddy had painted:

LUCY, THE STATE COW, WAS BORN IN THE FALL OF 1943. IF YOU LOOK ON HER LEFT SIDE, YOU WILL SEE SHE HAS A SPOT IN THE SHAPE OF THE GREAT STATE OF VERMONT.