Wallstrait

The cows were my responsibility before school. Mama woke me up each morning two hours before dawn, my window still an inky eye of night. It was a hushed affair, my father still snoring in the feather bed with its handmade wooden frame, unpainted. We crept through the house like it wasn’t our own, our faces glazed and foggy from sleep. She would lead me out the door, in the cold, jackets over our pajamas and our eyes still blinking. We never spoke, only a few grunts from her when I was doing something wrong, a silent nod when I did something right.

 

It was to make things easier for my father, who was growing sorer by the day. And to teach me manual labor, is what Mama always said. The barn was where the cows slept. She would lead me through the fields towards it, our nighties getting soaked and brown from the dew. The vague, sketched-out light we had from pre-dawn was sucked from our vision when we went into the barn. Complete darkness. Only the sound of dry, hard feet shuffling in hay and warm huffs let us know that the cows were there. She would stand back and watch as I milked each cow, rousing them from sleep and standing their weak legs upright, my tugging at their udders the only sound in that wide, black field of early morning. The milk would fall into the bucket in thin streams, and my hands would always grow sore by the fifth or sixth cow. That was another reason I was to milk the cows each morning: my hands were too delicate. Like two small birds, she would say with disdain. They needed conditioning, leathering up. I started milking cows in the second grade, and by the fifth grade she had turned my hands into small replicas of my father’s.

 

After each cow was milked dry, I took the pails to the kitchen. We always ended up getting about three or four pails worth of milk. It was for my own good that I took each one without help, and Mama watched, leaning against the rotting wooden posts. By the time I heaved the pails inside, her face was more visible. The gray light that comes just before sunrise would filter through, making her look like a hazy statue leaning against those posts. She watched me with eyes like glinting stones in a river, my body wavering under the weight of the buckets, one in each hand.

 

At wash-up Mama would sit in a small stool beside my bath, her large figure overpowering it. This was the best part of the morning, when real sunlight came. It spilled through the little grubby window and lit up my bathwater like a glittering nugget of gold. She would sit and say nothing for the few minutes I spent in the water, her face an expression of blank allowance. Then, always without warning, she’d reach into the water and unplug the drain. Dutifully, I’d stand and dry myself as she left the room. Our routine was so airtight that it left no room for words, only the rawest form of muscle memory. We could do it if we were blind, if we were cloaked in shadow.

 

Next breakfast came. This was when my father woke, rising from sleep in a storm of grumbles and yawns. He’d walk into the kitchen saying something like Good Mornin’ and would head straight for the water Mama had boiling to make his cup of coffee. Our coffee was very meager and cheaply made, but it was the most sacred part of my father’s day. I wasn’t to speak to Daddy while he had his coffee, Mama would tell me. So, breakfast was silent, too. I never met my father’s eyes at breakfast, only acknowledged the shift in the atmosphere of our home when his massive presence took up space in the room. I watched his hands while he stabbed and scooped at watery eggs and thin toast. Sometimes his fingers trembled like tree limbs shook by wind. Mama cooked and cleaned the entire time. I figured she didn’t get to sitting down and having a bite for herself until I left for school.

 

When the school bus came, she watched me from the front door. She’d lean against it, arms folded over her wide stomach. Despite my wash-up, I always felt I could never scrub the scent of dairy and manure off. It was embedded in my scalp, my fingernails. As I walked to the bus each morning, I felt Mama’s stone eyes resting on my back. Taking my seat, I’d see her face through the window, silent and watching.

 

—

 

When I was twelve years old, my job changed.

 

It was a spring morning. By this point my body had become accustomed to waking itself up before sunrise, and Mama no longer had to come to my bedside to fetch me. But that morning she did. I was startled to see her, a gray ghost at the foot of my bed, shaking my calves. This morning I’m teaching you something different, she said.

 

Still paralyzed from sleep, I could only dimly nod. She left, giving me a privacy I had earned only through age. I had gained the morsel of trust that allowed me to undress without her eyes on me, or to bathe alone without her fearing that I would fill the tub more than halfway. 

 

I found her waiting by the door, coat and boots already on. It was early April, still bitter cold before sunlight. She led me out to the field I knew so well. It was a different field at this hour, different than the one it was in daylight. Under cover of darkness the grass brushed against our legs like snakes, the stars above us like tiny fires blazing silently millions of miles away. I had found a kind of peace in this ritual, although it tired me. It was a time without words, without thought. A small piece of my day in which our bodies could move while our minds still dreamed, still swimming in a subconscious pool. Yet this morning she led me past the barn, the vast dark ship full of the soft, dull animals I had come to know and love. I wondered if she was adding another chore on top of the milking. Maybe that was why she had woken me even earlier. Maybe she would take me to the woods to chop trees. Or to the well. But we were heading towards the small metal building that sat low and ominous in the farthest corner of our land. I knew what happened in that little metal house.

 

No, I had started to say as we approached the front of the metal house. Everything outside was black, and I could barely make out the faint gray outline of that sagging little building. There was a beaten-up slat of metal attached as a sliding door, and through its gaps an oily yellow light beamed and flickered. Inside I could hear the hot, deep breaths of a large animal. Mama had turned to face me then.

 

Can’t afford those fancy stunners that they invented over there in Germany, she’d said. I felt a large pit deepening within my stomach. Know they say it’s more humane, Mama had gone on, but we just can’t afford that. Not these days. Got to do it the old-fashioned way.

 

She slid open the metal door. It made a monstrous screeching sound that I had heard all my life, from afar, in the safety of the house. Now the sound was facing me like a wide red mouth. Inside was a large cow. It was older. I could tell by the watery quality of her eyes, by how slight her figure was.

 

She can’t make milk no more, Mama said. There was a single lantern hanging from a hook on the ceiling, and sharp objects on the wall gleamed like yellow eyes in the lantern light. I felt numb down to my toes. My mother walked past me silently, peeled a funny-looking knife off the wall. It had a vicious-looking thickness and curve to it. My mother held it like it was simply an extension of her hand. She looked like the hook-handed pirates I used to read about in storybooks.

 

Time you learned, she said.

 

I backed away.

 

You take the cleaver clean across her neck, not too thin, get it in deep enough so she’s out right away.

 

I felt a pale sickness run through me like ice water. My mother held the cleaver out to me. The inside of the metal house smelled thick with blood. I was lightheaded. The blade winked at me in the night air. Take it, she said. Her face was hard, pooled in the dim lantern light. There had been a deep and twisted sense of wrongness in my stomach. I felt that that wasn’t supposed to be me, that this life wasn’t meant to be mine.

 

I don’t know how long that moment lasted. My mother might have shouted, become frustrated. Time stretched out like sinew, and then in a quick few seconds lapsed back into real speed. My mother took the cleaver to the cow’s neck with the ease of a violinist taking their bow to string. The animal made a strangled bleating sound, the only sound in the world. I kept my eyes to the ground and saw the blood come out in a dark red sheet on the dirt. She walked past me and placed the cleaver heavily into my palm.

 

Tomorrow, she said.

​

​

—

​

​

Georgia Witt is an eighteen-year-old writer based in Jacksonville, Florida. She primarily writes short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction.