The carolers from Saint Cyprian’s Church had long stopped serenading from door to door in the alley. Afterwards they shuffled quietly to their homes, and the only sounds heard were the soft pit, pit, pit of the sleet on the tin roofs. Half a block away from the church, seven coloured teenage toughs, caps pulled down halfway over eyes and ears, waited in the shadows of the dance hall. Two of them had wreckers. One had a sledgehammer he’d stolen from Old Man Wilcox’s lumber yard; two had knives, one had several lengths of rope, the other two served as lookouts. They were waiting for the chicken truck.

     In Chinch Alley Doc Sol Schneider sent his wife and children to bed early. He stood at the store front window peeking out, but couldn’t see anything. Some kids had snuffed out the street lamps. When that happened expect anything to be stolen. He didn’t care anymore because he wasn’t going to be in this alley long. He had been born in one ghetto in the old country and had grown up in another in this place and he was not going to have his family live here in this one any longer. 

     He was waiting for the sign of the swinging lantern to let him know that the truck was on its way. He would light a candle as soon as he saw it. The plan was to unload the chickens—he and the driver, Gene Meyer. They had made a deal as always; they would put them in his two big freezers, all five hundred of them, packed in ice. Gene would come back for his later. His wife didn’t have to know anything about this. His small drugstore business was just not taking care of expenses. That was the bottom line. Nobody had any money, not the Jews, the Poles, the Italians, the Irish, the Germans, certainly not the Negroes. 

     His Rachel was soon to deliver another child, their seventh. His son Jacob was due to have his bar mitzvah soon and his oldest daughter was getting married. He wanted to move his aging parents into the Jewish Home. The profit from this venture would send him over. He would have his family out of this rat hole and into something they deserved. 
vCharging four and five times over for inferior medicines to poor people and then stealing food from their mouths and charging them ten times as much interest on the books he kept all of these years had added up. He had given all of these people a “book.” He mimicked them in his thoughts, “Mama say put it on the ‘book,’ papa say put it on the ‘book,’ gramma say put it on the ‘book.’” Everyone was profiting from stealing from the poor people. Even Jews were stealing from Jews. He could not let his neighbor, Jules Epstein in Navy Place, know what he and Gene were doing. Sol became lost in his thoughts and realized much later that the truck had not come. The truck never came. He stayed up all night fraught with worry and anxiety.
vAt sunrise Gene was at his back door, face bruised and swollen, several teeth knocked out and hysterical. Sol hurriedly ushered him in, warning him to be quiet so as not to awaken his family and tended to his wounds.

     “Who could have known?” he asked his partner.

     “Jules.” He replied.

     When the boys got to the leader’s house his Ma and Gramma had the ice ready in big tin tubs and they re-iced the birds again. His Pa was starting to sell half-pints in the rear of the house. Already a line was forming to buy the “hot” chickens. The boys screamed and hollered joyfully as they divided up the cases of chickens between them. It was going to be a big party! Crap games had already started, and the women were preparing the stoves to either fry up the chickens, boil or bake them. Old Man Schneider wouldn’t profit this time!

     Sol fell down on his knees and cried. The Jewish holiday was upon him and he had failed his family. In Navy Place Jules Epstein laughed.

     Big Sue, her giant frame taking up almost all of the space, opened the back door and threw the hot kitchen slop out, hitting a stray dog and sent him yelping and running. Susie watched her as she slammed the chipped bowls on the table for dinner, like she was mad at something. Big Sue was always mad at something, mostly Pa, and taking it out on Susie, little Harry and Annie. Susie nudged them, cautioning them to be quiet because Ma was in a bad mood and that she would backhand them for the slightest thing. Her Gramma stood at the stove stirring the pot full of greens and Pa sat by the stove. 

     Big Sue whirled around to face him. “Why ain’tchu out lookin’ for work? We ain’t got nuthin for Christmas.”
“Why you cain you git one of the Pres’ chickens?” He laughed way down in his whiskey belly until he almost fell off his chair. Gramma stopped stirring. She fought the feeling of taking the hot pot and throwing it in his face. Susie prayed silently for peace in her home, that there would be no fights on Christmas Day. She wanted to get out of the house and go to see her friend.

     Earlier that day with more snow threatening, a motorcade eased slowly to a stop in front of Mr. Epstein’s store. A few men got out first, touching their hats hesitantly to the women and then shaking hands with some of the men. They walked down into the street, darting in and out. 

     Then the rest of the entourage, three women, waited as one of the men opened up the car doors and stood nervously by as they lifted their skirts and were helped out. The last, a tall slim woman greeted the head of the welcoming committee, Reverend and Mrs. Turner. She kept peering up and down the alley looking for a special stoop. She saw it, the cleanest in the alley. On her way to the special stoop she passed by the circle of girls chanting and laughed at the girls, clapping her own hands at them.
vThe circle of girls, dressed in their finest, church shoes polished, faces greased, and hair just braided, were clapping, chanting and stamping.
 

“A chick’n in every pot, pot, pot,
A chick’n in every pot.
Don’ have no chick’n,
Don’ have a whole lot, lot, lot
Ifn all you have is a goose, goose, goose
I’ll take a goose, goose, goose,
Gon’ gimme a guinea, guinea, guinea?
I’ll take a guinea, guinea, guinea.
Gon’ gimme a duck, duck, duck?
I’ll take a duck, duck, duck.
Naw, naw—they stop and say this slowly—don’ wan’ no goose, goose, goose, don’ wan’ no guinea
guinea, guinea, don’ wan’ no duck, duck, duck—whispering
Louder—Gimme a chick’n, chick’n, chick’n,” (the girls take turns going around in the circle flapping their arms like a chicken.)
“In my pot, pot, pot” (all of them strut off single file into the small group of their neighbors clucking like hens.)
“So my Mama can get it hot, hot, hot,
Lord knows she can keep it hot, hot, hot!
In that pot, pot, pot!”

     MaMary had kept Mookie in the house all morning cleaning and wiping and sweeping and rearranging the old worn out furniture and hiding stuff. The place was a spotless as a shack could be. Despite the cold weather she was perspiring under her arms and beads of sweat were running down her face. Little spots were forming over top her lip. She was also mad. Why was she doing all this for that white woman? I don’t care if it is the President’s wife, Mookie thought. She’ll never come to this alley, much less to this house. I may as well be out there singing with my friends. They can’t do it right no way without me. Wonder if they went to Susie’s street to leave any chickens? I want to get outta here and take Susie her gift.

     And what was MaMary doing? She had the Christmas turkey in the oven roasting, cressie greens simmering, and the rolls had risen for the second time. An apple pie cooled on the makeshift sideboard that her sons had set up for her first thing they did when they came in from the country. She had the nerve to put a cloth on the rickety table and her best silver there, brought up from her home. Mookie’s uncles had gone to the waterfront to get some fresh fish. They already had salt herring and oysters for Christmas morning breakfast. A live tree was in the corner leaning against the wall and MaMary had promised her that she could decorate it all by herself. And she had. Strings of popcorn and nuts and tiny pieces of tinsel.

     Was MaMary crazy, Mookie thought? All the time she was smiling to herself and humming. Humming, humming, humming. So proud. Proud, for what and of what? They still lived in a rotten house. As soon as MaMary had come to take care of her she had started patching up the house. A house that wasn’t even theirs. That humming was buzzing straight up through the top of her head and Mookie wanted to take the broom and hit her grandmother with it. She wanted to get outside. She wanted to see her friend Susie, but MaMary wouldn’t let her out of the house.

     “Your Mama didn’t teach you nuthin’ ‘bout housework, honey, what you been doing all this time?”
“Don wan those chickens,” MaMary thought to herself. “Don know how long they been dead. I’m used to killin my own chickens, don care if they is on ice.” She was smiling and humming when the knock came. MaMary patted her hair, smoothed her apron and went to answer the door. 

© 2000 Elizabeth Allen Stokes All rights reserved.