My Pillow by Tracy Romoser

----When I was very young, my uncle Ted would play the “lost thumb” game with us. He would arrange his hands in a criss-cross fashion with his right hand positioned over his left hand and his thumbs would meet in the middle. Where his thumbs met, he would drape his right fingers over their intersection. As my sister and I watched he would explain that his thumb had been severed, “Cut off at the joint in a very painful accident.”
----The thing is, he really had lost half of his left thumb. All that remained was a blunt flattened stump where his knuckle ended before a nail should have begun. He never explained what the accident was but my mother told us during a weak moment after a rare glass of homemade wine, that he had lost it, the thumb, in a water skiing accident. I tried to visualize how that could have happened. There were no sharks in the Great Lakes and water skis did not have sharp edges. So I came up with my own ideas that grew out of impossible circumstances. One scenario involved a large goose.
----On weekends, my younger sister and I would visit my Grandpa and Grandma Podolan’s farm just outside of Flint, Michigan. Grandpa and grandma were originally from Czechoslovakia and felt most comfortable when surrounded by bright flowers, mud, potato dumplings, and crucifixes. There were no sheep. But they had cows, chickens, one rooster, and many barn cats. They also had an evil goose named Wilhelmina. None of the other animals had been given names, only Wilhelmina. I remember thinking, “If the other animals had names, they would probably be evil too.” But that was an immature thought at best. The goose was born evil and maybe for that reason alone was given a name.
----My sister and I would often visit my grandma and grandpa in the country with our cousins who were all about the same ages as we were. We would have so much fun together helping our grandparents feed the animals, water the plants and pick berries for the delicate pastries my grandma would make - topped with powdered sugar and sometimes poppy seeds.
----As Grandma fed her chickens she would softly say, “Chick, chick, chick, here chickie, chickie, chickie.” We learned she was deciding which one would serve us best at her dinner table. A hen had to be stout enough to fill the appetites of her hungry husband and her growing grandchildren. The chickens never knew what was in their near future. They never did figure out that when the grand kids appeared, there would always be one less chicken in the coop that night. I remember thinking, “A sheep would know and run away.” But there were no sheep on their farm.
----Whenever our grandpa or grandma were nearby, and by that I mean, within sight or earshot, we never saw Wilhelmina the goose. And maybe it was for that reason that she herself had not appeared at our grandma’s dinner table. It was no secret, my grandma didn’t like Wilhelmina but my grandpa loved the old goose. He had always had geese as a boy. Our grandpa told us that geese are loyal companions and would aggressively protect the land of their owners. He told us that although geese may be evil and territorial, they were also very social which is where the term “gaggle” came from. I think my grandpa made up definitions since I never saw Wilhelmina being anything but overbearing to the other birds. At least as far as birds go.
----Wilhelmina was smart and cunning, an evil mistress for my grandpa. In the village he had grown up in, he had been the boy who herded the geese. (You may laugh, but there really were such boys in Czechoslovakia.) Grandpa often told us that in his childhood, the village geese would enjoy their daily trip to a field rich with wildflowers and clover. He would be paid for herding the village geese. As they returned from the fields to the homes each goose would peel away from the group, one by one, to protect and rule over their respective homes. I remember thinking, “Would a sheep even know which home was his?” There were never sheep in my grandpa’s stories.
----Because my grandpa had geese as a boy, and because my grandma loved him, she allowed Grandpa to keep Wilhelmina on the farm. Wilhelmina became his special companion, much like a young child loves a dog or a toy. In return, Wilhelmina protected and loved him. He was the only person she could love because she had a goose’s heart; small, hard, and unyielding of much affection. She did not like anyone else, and she especially did not care for small children. For that reason, Wilhelmina would usually be locked up in a coop or barn whenever we visited our grandpa and grandma.
----Occasionally, as we parked our car in their driveway, we would hear my grandma yell to us from the side door nearest to our car, “Kids, you’d be better to run into the house. That goose of your grandpa’s is outside!” We would slowly open our car doors, peek our heads outside to make sure the coast was clear, and then we would run for my grandma, bleating like lambs “Do you see her, do you see her?” My grandma would laugh out loud, slap her chaffed hands on the apron of her floral housedress and say, “She’s right behind you!” She never was right behind us, but we would squeal nevertheless.
----On a farm, seasons and time are marked by the change of crops. There are roots that grow under the ground in the fall and winter, new greens that grow on the ground in the spring, and bright fragrant fruit that grows on trees in the summer. In the summer, whenever Wilhelmina was loose we would risk going outside to quickly climb the sanctuary of trees. There we would pretend that the tree’s magical fruit would sustain us if the evil beast threatened us below.
----One day, as we were all perched in the ancient cherry tree, Wilhelmina stepped out from behind the shed that stood between our family tree and our grandparent’s home. Scattered around us like awkwardly hung tinsel were all of the tin-foil pans our grandma hung in her trees to frighten the crows from the ripe fruit. We stared at each other, sending telepathic thoughts of doom, cousin to cousin. Wilhelmina looked up at us and cocked her head to the side to get a clear appraisal of the children in her tree. She stood there, unmoving, unflinching, waiting for us to fall from the sky. With Wilhelmina blocking our escape route, sanctuary could be seen, but was now completely inaccessible.
----So we did the only thing we could do.
----We all started screaming at the top of our lungs.
----My grandma came out of the house with her broomstick to sweep away Wilhelmina, “Shoo, shoo, shoo… you bad goose!” Wilhelmina retreated from my grandma and the cherry tree. We quickly tumbled and slipped down onto the ground only to hear grandma yell, “Kids, kids! Run to the house, I can’t control her!” We sprinted home without looking back, each child clumsily slipping through the back porch storm door. Protected by the glass, we looked back at our grandma as she chased Wilhelmina toward the house, smacking her on the back all the way with the broom. Wilhelmina did not stop until she reached the door and then she alternately rattled the door handle and pecked viciously at the glass in a vain attempt to reach us. Our thrill from the chase was replaced with the sober realization that this goose meant business. She wanted us dead.

----Summer slipped into fall and with the change of the seasons, the opportunity to sustain our lives in fruit trees diminished. We were all quite frightened by Wilhelmina’s antics which had intensified and moved into the realm of attacking any window pane she could reach if she saw a person of small stature on the other side. We could see her large serrated beak and empty eyes as she tap-tap-tap-tap-tapped the sheets of glass. After one of frequent glass pane freak-outs, and there were several episodes that involved breaking glass, I remember asking my mother “Did Uncle Ted’s lost thumb have anything to do with a goose?” I knew a sheep wouldn’t have been responsible; they had nothing close to a serrated beak. I knew this even though there were no sheep on the farm.
----October was always marked by annual weekend chores like canning, preparing the farm for the winter, and making sausages for the annual Sausage Dance at our local Friendship Hall. (You may chuckle, but in our family, the Sausage Dance was as sacred to our grandma as the Super Bowl was to any pigskin loving man.) During all the business of the fall, my grandma had become impatient with my grandpa’s myopic view of Wilhelmina’s role on the farm. She had grown tired of shooing the goose away from her grandchildren time and time again. She wasn’t a young woman anymore and replacing the glass pane on the back porch had become wearisome. “You know, Jon,” she would say, “Goose meat makes a delicious filling in sausages.” My grandpa would just look at us and then back at his wife and then say, “Oh woman, and you children, you all need to be faster than that old goose!” Then he would laugh.
----The Sausage Dance came and went. And with the passing of October there were new plans and preparations for the holiday season. My grandma was fattening up a pig and several chickens. Wine was being made from the concord grapes and there were cucumbers fermenting in the old wine casks in the garage. My grandpa would stick his hands deeply into the old casks, past sprigs of dill and slime, and pull out a handful of softened pickles. He would wipe each pickle off on his work pants and hand them to each of his grandchildren with a big smile on his face. I would eat these slightly slimy, warm green things and smile back at him as I thought of our own crisp and cool store bought Gherkins back in my parents’ city fridge.
----Inside the house my grandma would be preparing kolachke to bake, sauerkraut to can, and dumplings to steam. I remember thinking, “What would goose meat taste like?” Then I would shutter and force the thoughts from my mind in case Wilhelmina could pick up my telepathic broadcasts and play them back in the tangled framework of her fowl, psychotic brain.
----One day in November, an Indian summer day marked by a temperate climate and skies bluer than a Robin’s egg, I had convinced all my cousins and my sister, to bravely go outside and play in the playhouse. We had a plan: the oldest cousins, two lanky boys a few years older than the rest of us, would flank the perimeter; the youngest would remain safely inside the center of our group; and the cousin closest to my age and I would be the runners, we would scope the area for enemy insurgents, namely, the goose. We all walked solemnly to the door, single file, with clear instructions to scream bloody murder if one of us saw Wilhelmina. We were confident that our little plan would keep us safe. The walk across the back yard to the playhouse, our fortress, would be uneventful. Once inside the playhouse, we knew we could last for days on the bushel of apples my sister would be carrying. We walked like a herd of sheep across the yard; half a dozen children clustered and wound tightly together in the middle, with a few scattered ahead leading the way. This is what I thought we looked like, but I couldn’t be sure since there were no sheep on the farm.
----Of course we were doomed. We were young and naïve, innocent to the ways of survival. None of us had an impressive wingspan, we had no feathers, and not one of us had anything comparable to the sheer, raw, animal power that we would encounter on that warm Indian summer day. Unknown to us, the predator had already locked us into her sights as we stepped onto the lawn. As soon as we were geographically mid-voyage, Wilhelmina charged at us from behind our very destination, known from that day on as the Place-of-Fear (or POF, for those of us who knew how to abbreviate). We had no time to scream, my sister dropped her precious cargo of life-sustaining apples and we all scattered. I was left alone, frozen in space and staring at Wilhelmina. She honked and spread her massive wings. I did nothing. She beat her wings up and down as she bore down on me.
----But then, as quickly as she appeared, she had passed me.
----As I spun around in slow motion I saw who she had chosen as her target; my little cousin Steffi. Steffi was no more than three-years-old and wore only a T-shirt over her cloth diaper. This white diaper served as a bright flag and was exactly what Wilhelmina was aiming for as she beat her wings over the frightened little girl. I watched as Steffi went down, screaming dramatically as the goose pecked and pecked away at the puffy white cloth that held, what surely must have been measured in pounds, the resulting action of the attack. Steffi had provided, through no plan of her own, the best defense anyone of us could have ever prepared. And as Wilhelmina’s senses were assaulted, she became disoriented and stepped back for one brief moment. A moment forever frozen in my mind like some fantastical fairy tale illustration in no book ever published; as we all watched - the full impact of my grandma’s shovel connected with the cranium of Wilhelmina’s feathered skull. Before any of us could see the result to the blow, we were whisked away by my grandpa into the safety of the house.
----That Thanksgiving at my grandma’s dinner table, we all watched as my father entered with a pair of lovely, golden roasted chickens on a platter, ready for carving. Directly behind him stepped my grandpa, a solemn look on his face, holding a much larger platter on top of which surely must have been a turkey. But there were no turkeys on the farm.
----I asked, “Who brought a turkey?”
----My grandma smiled and said, “Surely, you know who this is.”
----My other cousins piped in with the same question, “Who brought the turkey?”
----“You Jon, you tell them.”
----My grandpa looked at all of us slowly and said, “This children…” he said with a somber look on his face. “Is what a cooked goose looks like.”
----Of course it was Wilhelmina, but even then, we all began to cry.
----On Christmas morning, my grandma passed around the first round of presents to all her grandchildren. We ripped into our presents. The gifts were all the same size and presented in the same wrapping paper. As I opened my gift I found a small white pillow, appropriate for a doll, with my name embroidered and surrounded by bright flowers on the scalloped edges of the cotton pillowcase. As we all looked at our little pillows, my grandma said, “You might not have liked Wilhelmina, but she was a useful goose.”
----You know how some people have a special blanket or toy? They might carry it with them whenever they leave their home. Often, they will sleep with their special blanket or toy. Some people may have a special thumb. A thumb is easy to remember because it’s attached to you. You never have to worry about losing a thumb, unless you’re my uncle Ted. There may have been a woolen blanket for me to love and cherish, but I got a pillow instead. There was no wool to weave. There were never any sheep on my grandparents’ farm.