Dirty Chick (18 page)

Peter considered this. “We just have to push. We keep pushing until we get the help he needs.”

“And what if we get kicked out of school? What if they decide they don't have the support for him in mainstream school and they make us send him to special school?”

That was my nightmare. Sending Silas to special school felt like giving up. As long as he was mainstreamed, there was some hope that he might become literate, learn to do basic arithmetic, function in society. Some of those kids in the special school were twelve years old and still learning how to feed themselves. Sending Silas to that place felt as good as declaring, “Oh well. Nice try. You'll be institutionalized for life.”

Perversely, all my worry for Silas made me more involved on the farm. Rebecca and I split up the chores, working together to feed
the hungry animals. I gathered the eggs, and she made sure everyone had fresh water. Not even Jabberwocky or the flesh-eating alpacas could frighten me now. I'd seen my son's eyes empty as his body shook with electric shocks. Compared to that, an angry rooster was a breeze.

November is spring planting season in New Zealand, and Autumn asked if she could seed our top paddock with corn. “It's a fantastic business idea,” she said, grinning merrily at Peter. “We'll get early corn, then we'll sell it all for Christmas.”

It sounded fine to us, and while Autumn and Patrice toiled in the upper paddock, I devoted myself to my goat cheese. Even though she was nursing her own kids, Pearl still gave us about a quart of fresh goat milk each day
.
I had grand plans to start a cheese business, a creamery based on milk from our own herd of goats, who fed on the local bush and made cheese flavored with our local
terroir.

And yet goat's milk cheese seemed trickier than cow's milk. My first attempts at Camembert were edible, but Pearl's curds never turned into goat cheese at all. Instead, I produced a sort of tepid milk vomit, a curdled slurry that felt thick and lumpy but never firm.

“Maybe there's a market for that,” Peter suggested. “Isn't that what advertising is for? To make people want something they never knew they needed? Maybe there's this great, untapped need in the world to drink tepid milk vomit, and you're the woman to fill it.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, then fed my failure to the dogs. Kowhai whimpered and refused to eat it, and this is a dog who considers roadkill a delicacy, second only to the taste of her own poop. I felt a little offended.

I went back to the books, and on the third attempt, I solved the mystery. The American recipe I'd been using called for a specialty
cheese culture with the rennet already included. Since that fancy product isn't available in New Zealand, I'd have to add my own rennet. Three drops of dead cow juice made all the difference, and the next day my milk had firmed into a solid white mass surrounded by a clear and cloudy whey.

“Wow!” Peter marveled, observing my squishy white lumps. “You made cheese!”

“Not yet,” I corrected, scrutinizing my work in progress. “First I have to age it.”

Once I started aging it, my goat cheese grew lots of mold. There was a bright yellow mold that looked as though a child had scribbled on the cheese with a highlighter, and a hot pink mold in a poisonous, festive hue. Then there were the gray fuzzies. I consulted Ricki Carroll's classic
Home Cheese Making
,
and she had plenty to say on the subject. “That mold is called ‘
poil de chat
,'”
she warned, “and you do
not
want it on your cheese.”

“Crap on a stick,” I muttered one morning, rummaging in a drawer for a rag.

“What's wrong with you?” Peter wanted to know.

“I have
poil de chat
.”

“You have what?”

“Cat hair.” I thought about this for a minute. “Although
chatte
is a rude word for vagina, so I guess you could call it pubic hair.”

“Your
cheese
has
pubic hair
?”

“Please.” I held up my hand. “It's
poil de chat
.”

Everything seemed to be falling apart. My cheeses were rotting away in a pile of multihued mush. Silas couldn't be left alone for an instant, because any moment he could have a seizure. Each day, I expected to get a note in the mail politely but firmly informing us that Purua School could no longer meet Silas's medical needs.

Then, one evening, the phone rang. “Antonia?” Sophia's voice came through the receiver. “We need to talk about Silas.”

My heart sank. This was it, the call I'd been dreading. “It's just that Patrice only stays with Silas until two-thirty each day. So there's that last half hour of school where no one's watching him. And if he had a seizure, and hit his head . . .”

Her voice trailed off. I could see where she was going with this. “You need me to start collecting him early, is that it?”

“Yes, I'm afraid so. I just really can't have him out of sight for right now. While we're getting the fits under control.”

So he wasn't kicked out. Not yet. But we both knew there was only one place where Silas would be sure of constant supervision. Short of a hospital, it was the special-needs school.

I heaved a deep sigh. Both our chances at a house had fallen through, we had only two more months on our rental, and after that we didn't have any idea where we'd go. And we still had nineteen animals to care for.

I was reminded on a daily basis precisely how many animals we owned—not just because Rebecca and I were the ones to feed and water them, but because they had now begun to roam free. The fencing on our rental property was breaking down, and the animals just strolled through the gaps. One day, I'd see a calf contentedly munching leaves off a passion fruit vine, and the next I'd see the chickens jabbering and scratching under the trampoline. Becca and I chased them back into their enclosures, using treats and strong language, and they'd escape again. Peter tried to patch the fencing with odd bits of lumber, but it needed a complete overhaul, and that wasn't something we could do for a rental.

The calves and the hens weren't the only ones who went rogue that spring. Moxie and Stripe, nimble since the day they were born,
started leaping on top of our cars. Their jumping was better than their balance: when they landed on a roof, they would skid, hurtling down the windshield and landing in a heap on the car's dented hood. The goats thought this was hilarious, and they jumped on the cars all day, dislodging our license plates and shredding our windshield wipers.

Occasionally the mayhem outside overwhelmed me, and I'd retreat to my bedroom while Becca lay down on her nail bed. Rebecca could lock the door to her sleep-out, but for me it was rarely restful. Either Silas or Miranda would jump on the bed, or a goat would follow me inside and head-butt me gently as I was drifting to sleep. To top it all off, the dog still had her period, and soon the carpet was speckled with droplets of blood, as though we were living with an organic roommate who walked around in the nude and eschewed tampons.

And then Ba fell out of favor, at least as far as most of us were concerned. Peter and I saw him as an overgrown sheep with crusty horn buds and giant testicles, but Rebecca still considered him her baby. Ba must have weighed eighty pounds by now, so it began to look ridiculous when Rebecca sat down and coaxed him onto her lap. Mostly she did this outside in the grass, but one unusually chilly day in November, she invited him inside the living room. Peter was working late, so we'd fed the children early, and I was standing at the sink, getting started on the dishes. Rebecca crooned a lullaby in the giant sheep's ear and lay back on the carpet, allowing Ba to splay across her chest like an obscene, furry baby. Legs spread to make room for his back hooves, she shut her eyes and dozed, stroking his thick white fleece.

This must have been very relaxing for Ba, because he then produced a large, shiny bowel movement on the living room rug.
These were not the darling little lamb berries he'd scattered in his youth, but a generous, rippling sheep turd sitting moistly on the carpet.

Busy with the dishes, I didn't notice a thing until Peter came home. He slammed down his laptop case. “That's
it
,” he roared
.
“Out! Get that thing out of the house! No more sheep inside! And clean up that mess!”

Rebecca complied, but for the next few weeks, Ba remained in disgrace. We decided not to bring him to Calf Club that year. Silas wouldn't be able to compete with him, not now when his mind seemed so tenuous, his language all but gone. So we left Ba in his pen and went out to support the other children.

Calf Club Day fell on a foggy spring morning in November, and all of Purua turned out for the occasion. Karl and Catherine sold sausages and raffle tickets for the school, Patrice made hot coffee and sold cookies from the staff room. Autumn was selling trees for people to plant on the school grounds, and jars of yummy, scrummy honey that the children had harvested from their hives. Nick and Amanda were there, Nick with his digital camera, getting ready to film the animal judging.

Sophia darted around in the role of hostess, making sure the parents had comfortable places to sit and that the children tied up their animals properly. She wore a green paisley tunic in a gossamer Indian silk, and it swirled around her as she walked. “Oh, you're
wonderful
to come after everything that's been happening!” she squeezed my hand when she saw us. “And how are
you
, Silas?” she asked, bending down to his level.

“Bus,” he replied.

“Yes, you do love the bus, don't you, dear?” She patted his head affectionately. “And did you raise an animal this year, Silas?”

“Bah . . . mmmm,” Silas said.

“That's right, kid. Our lamb's name is Ba.” To Sophia, I explained. “We thought it was a name he'd be able to pronounce.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she murmured distractedly. “Now I must go see about the cake auction . . .” She whirled away just as Rebecca approached, Miranda in tow.

“Mama!” Miranda announced. “I'm hungry! Can I have a sausage?”

“Sure,” I nodded, heading over to the barbecue. I bought sausages slathered in sugary tomato sauce for both the kids. I got one for myself, too, with ketchup and a bright yellow mustard I hadn't seen since childhood.

“Want a fizzy drink?” Karl grunted, and I fished out a cold Coca-Cola from the cooler.

“Sorry, they didn't have anything vegetarian,” I told Rebecca, handing out sausages to the kids.

“That's all right.” She shook her head. “Patrice gave me a piece of cake when we got here.”

“All the lambs are tied up on the fence!” Miranda announced, finishing her sausage. “Come and see, Mama! It's really cool!”

I went back with them to check it out. All the young animals were tethered at the far side of the playing field: eight or ten sheep, a large doe-eyed Jersey calf, and a small gray goat named Cole. Rebecca was inspecting the competition, shaking her head in disappointment.

“Ba would have
wasted
these lambs,” she whispered. “He would have won, hands-down. I can't believe we didn't bring him.”

“I'm sure you're right,” I told her soothingly.

The judging began, each child asked to line up with the animal they'd raised themselves. Maria's husband, John, was the chief
judge. Wearing a stiff button-down shirt and holding a clipboard, he appraised all the animals with professional detachment. John was one of the real farmers, and he wasn't about to cut these kids any slack.

We stood in the audience, watching the judging. The younger students were leading their animals through an obstacle course, and Amanda's daughter Amelia seemed to be struggling. Her lamb sat down halfway through, his head hanging stubbornly low. Amelia pulled with all her might, but Blake was bigger than she was. He wasn't about to budge. Tensing his jaw, John made a note on his clipboard.

“G'day.” Lish sidled up to me, Skin beside her. He nodded his head and winked, then raised his hand to Peter.

“Hey, you guys.” I grinned. “Thought you'd be out there with the animals, Skin. Looks like Amelia could use a little help.”

He held up his other hand then, wincing. “Put a fencing wire through my thumb,” he told us. “Bit sore an' that.” He grinned, his brown eyes shining in that weathered face.

Peter looked concerned. “Did you go to the hospital?”

Lish rolled her eyes and grimaced, but Skin just shook his head. “Went to Emergency, but they took too long. Bloody doctors. Buggered off home, gave it a yank with a pair of pliers.”

“But what if it gets infected?”

Lish threw up her hands. “I keep trying to tell him. But will he listen to me? No, he will not.”

“Nah.” Skin batted away Miranda, who'd started charging him in the thighs. “She'll be right. Just pour on a bit of meths, good as new.” He nodded at me.

“What's meths?” Peter whispered.

“Paint thinner,” I said.

Lish touched my arm. “Heard yous had a problem with Silas. I'm off in the afternoons. Only work till two. I been looking after him, that last half an hour.”

“But”—I stammered—“Really? I can't . . . I mean, we can't afford to pay you.”

Silas pulled on my hand. “
Toit
,” he announced.

Lish waved me away. “Don't need pay. We have fun together! I throw him a ball, make him run for it. Tire him out. Eh, Silas?” She gave him a high five and nudged me in the ribs. “That's what mums need.”

“Toit!” Silas repeated. “Toit!
Toit!
”

“Mama,” Miranda said softly. “I think Silas needs to go to the toilet.”

“We're going,” I told Silas. Then I turned back to Lish. “Well,” I said cautiously, “I mean—thank you. He'll be able to stay in school the whole day, then.”