by Jerilee Wei

Created on: May 26, 2008

Sometime near dawn, Daisy slipped loose of Vern's nightlong bear hug and hauled her swollen self out of the bed. This heroic act was one of self-preservation. Watching the sun come up were precious moments, even if it was accomplished while hand scrubbing his only work uniform in an old horse trough. They were cherished moments of solitude, hopefully lasting long enough for a sweet dream of a better life, while praying that a mere dream, would be enough to get her through another impoverished day. Indeed, these moments were not to be wasted and lost by sleeping late.

Her morning accomplishment had become so routine, that her squeaking exit off the metal bed frame, no longer woke her husband. Moreover, to her way of thinking, on this chilly January morning, it didn't matter if her baby was due yesterday, chores still had to be done. The chickens still needed to be fed, the eggs still needed to be collected, and she needed to get her younger brothers ready for school.

After building a fire in the Majestic cook stove, twenty-two year old Daisy padded barefoot across the dirt floor of the two room wooden frame. Dirty feet went hand-in-hand with the life they had come to live. Poor they were, like most folks in 1932, she supposed. The chilly winter morning didn't need the missing window to seep inside. Just about every corner of their rental, had a view of the outside where the joints of the walls should have, but didn't meet. More often than not, in usually blistering hot Arizona, keeping the cold out wasn't the problem. Keeping the outside out was the bigger problem, due to the realities of a large populations of scorpions, who preferred to wander in and out at will.

Noticing that the water trough was covered with a thin layer of ice, Daisy hurried across the yard to gather up Andy, her pet rooster and his eight hens. Andy and his harem were more than pets. They represented security. Eggs were food and egg money bought other food to feed a hungry husband and two boys. Sometimes the eggs represented the only food in a given day.

Now fully awake, Daisy remembered chickens don't tolerate the cold well. As expected, she found all of the hens huddled in conference, not contently in their nests tending to the business of laying eggs. She knew she had to act quickly. Her makeshift Arizona chicken coop was draftier than the "should have been condemned" shack of its inhabitants. Suddenly, her heart leaped in alarm as she realized her rooster was missing. She called out, "Andy,

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