Greens

One sunny autumn morning, when I was maybe four or five, Mutti turned to Carmen and said, “Watch Franz. I’ll have to find something green for lunch.”

She called Josefa and me, put on her gloves, even though it was warm outside, grabbed her shopping basket, and left. We hurried after her in the morning sunlight.

Mutti strode along the street of the little village we held our carnival in that week. We passed a big building that may have been the city hall. Long slats of wood were all over it, and they almost hid the big burnt hole in the upper story. People climbed all over the wood, working on the broken bricks.

When the sidewalk ended, Mutti turned into a path marked with grassy ruts. Josefa and I hurried to keep up with her. We tried not to stumble on the uneven ground. The damp grasses left cold streaks on my bare legs.

We reached a small pond, and Mutti stopped. Stinging nettles grew in profusion by the pond, their dark green fleshy leaves crowding out other grasses. Mutti checked her gloves and broke off the smaller nettles, piling them into the basket. Josefa was reaching out to copy Mutti, but Mutti slapped her hand away.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “They’ll sting you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You don’t know anything.”

Josefa kicked my leg. I screamed and hit her. She started crying.

Mutti ignored us.

I ran from my sister, being careful not to touch the nettles. Josefa quit crying, sat in the grass, and played with a dandelion.

When the basket was almost full, Mutti turned toward the meadow on the other side of the path. She picked the dandelion leaves and piled them on top of the nettles. Some of the blooms had turned a gossamer gray and Mutti left them alone. When I picked a gray one and blew on it, the gray dissolved into many tiny parachutes, which floated softly in the breeze.

Josefa and I ran around the meadow, picking dandelions and blowing them, until Mutti yelled at us. We trudged back after her past the bombed out city hall to the grassy commons, where Vati had already put up the back and sides of the shooting gallery in front of our caravan.

Vati stopped working, picked something white from the ground next to the half-erected shooting gallery, and followed us to the caravan home. He held up a dead chicken, his broad hands grasping it firmly by the feet. Its head dangled from under its white, feathered body, wings half-spread. The eyes were closed and its beak stood open. I thought the chicken looked sad.

“I exchanged this for free tickets,” Vati said and smiled.

Mutti put down her basket and clapped her hands.

“We’ll have a feast today,” she said and took the chicken. She shooed Carmen and Franz from the caravan, but left the door open. Franz sat down by the steps and played in the dirt. Josefa and I watched Mutti.

Mutti put the chicken in the wash bowl. Its head dangled over the rim and she tucked that into the bowl too. The feet were sticking straight up. After she heated water on the coal stove she took the chicken outside and poured the boiling water over it. Then she left and let it sit on the caravan steps for a while.

Josefa and I turned to play with Franz who drove an imaginary car through the dirt, making car noises.

When I looked up again, Mutti sat on the steps, plucking the feathers off the chicken. They fell in an untidy heap next to the caravan home’s wheels. When she was done, she cut the belly of the chicken open and dug out the insides.

I watched, eyes and mouths open.

Josefa joined me. “Yuck,” she said.

Mutti pulled out the intestines. “Most of this isn’t good to eat. But the rest will taste great.” She looked at Josefa. “If you don’t want it, we’ll eat it for you.”

“I want it, I want it,” Josefa said, but she sounded doubtful.

Mutti rose and took the chicken inside.

For lunch we had potatoes with green stuff, made from the greens we and Mutti had picked that morning, and parts of the chicken.

Carmen and Josefa each got a foot. Mutti showed them how to strip the scaly skin off the foot and lower leg and eat the meaty gristle from between the bones. I got the head. I cracked it open and ate the brains out of it. It was delicious, much better than the greens we helped Mutti pick.

***

Many years later, in my spacious kitchen in America, I remind Mutti of the chicken head. “I couldn’t eat that now. But then it tasted delicious.”

“I remember,” Mutti says. “We did what we had to. My children never went hungry.” She sighs and helps me finish washing the dishes.