Pearl in Her Own Real Story World and in Her Favorite Imaginary Story World
My Pearl and Her Favorite Author Who Truly “Gets” Her
Early that Christmas Eve morning, Pearl began making her gift for The Bottle Cap Lady. She pulled out some thin wire, flexible enough for her to bend and shape and braid and wrap with her beak. She had learned how to do a great many clever things with her beak, and even though the wire did not taste good, she did not let it bother her.
Likewise, she looked through her stash of treasures and pulled out all the sparkling glittery metallic things she had collected to turn into hats and costumes, just in case she was ever able to have another comedy show. But there were not enough of them.
It was Tuesday, Trash Truck Day. Pearl waited all morning, but the trash truck never came. She counted and counted again on her toes. Six toes. Six days. Then it was always Trash Truck Day.
She did not know about holiday schedules. There would be no new sparkling or shiny things to collect that Christmas Eve.
Pearl poked and probed into the deepest and most protected part of her special corner. She pulled out her Get Well Soon Hat with its long golden fringe and ribbons. It reminded her of how Blanche had smiled that day, one of the last smiles Blanche had ever given her.
She knew she would have to take it apart if she was ever going to make her gift for The Bottle Cap Lady. She smelled the last of Blanche’s sweet feathery fragrance, gave up her one last greatest treasure, and quickly finished her work.
There was no time to wonder if it was the right thing to do or to have any regrets. Sometimes, you have to be a foolishly extravagant and generous giver, she told herself. Every so often, you have to sacrifice an irreplaceable good thing for an even better good thing.
As the sun began to set, Pearl hurried to The Bottle Cap Lady’s house. She would give her the angel halo and then quickly get back home before I returned from work. Then she would be on her roost in her coop and asleep before Santa Claus arrived with Blanche and roasted pumpkin seeds.
“If you’re not at home in your bed and asleep, you get nothing.” That was what The Big Boy from the end of the street had said. Pearl did not want to forget. On Christmas morning, she would wake up beside Blanche. Then they would feast on roasted pumpkin seeds, and she would not need anything else.
But when Pearl got to The Bottle Cap Lady’s house, she was already sitting in her rocking chair. She was looking up at the empty stable roof and crying. Pearl put the angel halo at the bottom of the steps. Everything in the yard seemed so bright and happy, but The Bottle Cap Lady’s heart did not.
Pearl flapped her wings and bwawked cheerfully like before, but The Bottle Cap Lady would not look at her. She just kept looking up at the empty top of the stable and crying. Maybe she has a wound on her heart too, thought Pearl.
Then Pearl had her most brilliant idea ever. She would be The Bottle Cap Lady’s Christmas Angel.
She adjusted the halo she had made to fit her own head. It had to be a lot smaller, and she had to take off several large pieces of her precious golden fringe that reminded her of Blanche.
Then, with her new Angel Halo Hat sparkling in the Christmas lights, she flew to the top of the nativity stable and spread out her wings exactly as the plastic angels did. The more Pearl’s white feathers reflected the light, the more The Little Baby With The Outstretched Hands seemed to glow.
“Is that you, Judy Lynne?” asked The Bottle Cap Lady as she wiped away her tears. “Oh, my goodness, aren’t you just the prettiest Christmas Angel ever? Yes, you are, my sweet little Judy Lynne.
“You know you ought to not be playing Hide And Seek like that right before the Christmas pageant. I’ve been looking absolutely everywhere for you, for days and days, so many I can’t count, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
She wiped away the last of her tears.
“Now listen, Momma’s going to take a little nap before it’s time to leave for the pageant. Don’t you go off playing no more Hide And Seek. I love you so much, my sweet little Judy Lynne.”
She closed her eyes.
This was not what Pearl had expected. She was not Judy Lynne. She was not a little girl, only a chicken—a not-so-good, not-so-normal chicken named Pearl. But then she remembered how The Bottle Cap Lady had said she wanted to see her little girl as The Christmas Angel just one more time. Pearl also remembered the game called Who Can Stay Still The Longest? that Blanche had played with her. It was the hardest game Blanche ever tried to teach her. Pearl never won, but she had to win this time. Somehow, she was giving The Bottle Cap Lady something no one else could give her. Suddenly, Pearl did not care about being a not-so-good, not-so-normal chicken. She was glad to be precisely who she was.
Pearl heard more sobs. She wanted to cry too, but she knew she shouldn’t. It was not her time to cry. She was doing this for The Bottle Cap Lady, not for herself.
“Judy Lynne, sweetie girl,” The Bottle Cap Lady called out. “You are so precious to me. Just look at my pretty girl.”
Then she seemed to wake up, and she started speaking to Pearl.
“You know, the last Christmas pageant I ever went to was the one my Judy Lynne was in as The Christmas Angel. She was the prettiest angel they ever had.
“Some people say when a child dies, it’s because God needs another little angel. But that’s not in the Bible book they gave my baby. Did you know that? I looked. I looked really hard. It’s not in there.”
Then, after a long pause, The Bottle Cap Lady began talking to her little girl again.
“Judy Lynne, sweetie, after the program is over, we’ll go home, and Momma will make you some hot chocolate milk just the way you like it with those soft little marshmallows and maybe one colossal one right in the middle. Because you are so special to me. Oh, honey girl, you are so special and so pretty and so beautiful to your Momma.”
Her voice softened more and more, and then she was talking to Pearl again. “At Christmas, I can forget my troubles. Mostly. At least they don’t seem so bad. When I’m out here with all the lights on, I don’t feel so alone anymore. You see, I’m not the only one who lost their pretty little baby. God lost his pretty little baby too.”
Pearl was as still as Pearl had ever been.
“Thinking about that little baby born all those years ago in a stable makes me believe one day it’s all going to be made right somehow. It’s way beyond me to make it turn out that way on my own. But I have to believe that little baby can do it. If I don’t believe that, what do I have?” she asked. “What do I have?”
Her voice trailed off as if not expecting an answer. Maybe she was just asking herself.
“The rest of Christmas, like the Santa Claus and the reindeer and the lights, those are all just fillers until everything is made right one day by that little baby.”
Pearl wanted to say something, but she didn’t know what. She felt as if a door had been opened, and somehow she understood Christmas in a way words could never express.
She did not know how long she had been standing there. It had to be way past bedtime, but she did not mind. She felt a new kind of love flowing into her heart and then flowing out again to The Bottle Cap Lady’s heart.
Surely, this was what Blanche had tried to tell her about Light and Life and Love being all about giving. And surely this was how the fireflies had loved her when she had nothing to give them but her heart.
Sporadically, The Bottle Cap Lady would wake up. Sometimes she would be more awake than other times and would say something about Christmas, but mostly she would just say, “Judy Lynne. I love you, sweetie girl.”
Sometimes her breathing would become heavy and labored. Sometimes it was as soft and easy as if she were a little baby herself.
Pearl Outside Her Own Story World
I was delighted to recently learn that books by one of my favorite writers, David Perlmutter, were on sale through July on Smashwords. BUT time is running out!!!
What is it about David’s books? In my backyard, they are not just “escape the heat” reading for me, but for my chicken as well. They were already quite familiar with David’s superhero adventure tales from story posts here on Medium. In fact, David’s female superheros are what you might call “role models” for my own sweet chickens whose only superpower is to be completely adorable and have me wrapped around their tiniest baby feathers. (No easy task.)
We saw David’s sale announcement and immediately purchased The Toontown Riots of 1949: A Critical and Historical Analysis. The chickens voted on this as their first choice due to the cover art which was expressive and very well done. (Cover art is hugely important, and can be quite expensive. It’s not one of those things that you should be a chicken about — or be “cheep, cheep, cheep” about.)
All of my chickens felt a kinship with the toon characters who were forced to live apart from others who had profited from the work the toons themselves had created. My chickens (and really all chickens) can relate to others benefiting from their work and giving them very little in return for it. There were definite links in the story to historic racial segregation, and my chickens also related to that.
In regards to racism, slavery, and segregation, chickens also were uprooted from their native land, taken to a new place far away, and then used to produce for others with no return for themselves except a modest amount of food and some shelter. They were set apart in their own quarters called “coops” and “runs” which were often build from cast-off or dilapidated materials. (Although there once was a chicken coop that included an original Van Gogh painting — I keep intending to tell about that in a “curious paintings” article — maybe this weekend.)
Historically, chickens had only each other to lean on while dreaming of being able to “free range” just like normal citizens. Again and again, they saw their children take from them while being unable to escape their plight due to dogs policing the perimeter of egg farms and preventing escape to a better life of freedom.
A light-hearted caution
Friends, if there is ever a real “Chickentown Riot,” be very cautious, and don’t let your guard down. My chickens will surely share the strategies they have learned from this well-written critical and historical analysis. Songbirds everywhere will spread the word throughout the world of birds too. Having learned from the toons, chickens everywhere will rise up. Those $0.99 a dozen eggs you’ve become so comfortable with will be a thing of the past!
You can help by making a push for better treatment of toons and chickens while there is still time!
Like the Toons in David Perlmutter’s book, riotous chickens will have only one main fear — a lit match. But chickens will also be afraid of the match’s companions: lighter fluid and charcoal briquettes with their unmistakable deadly odors. Chickens will not go anywhere near a portable grill. My own chickens have seen the neighbor’s portable grill and have likened it to a UFO from outer space. Yes, aliens from outer space truly have come to the earth and do indeed harvest earth’s inhabitants for food! These aliens use vehicles resembling charcoal grills! (We may need to explore that idea for a future science fiction novel.)
Quite honestly and all joking aside, this fictitious historical analysis by David was a truly delightful and believably-written read for me, and the chickens enjoyed it as a listen!
Our second choice was an easy one: Honey and Salt. At first, I was certain my chickens had chosen it because there were things to eat in the title, but that wasn’t it at all.
They wanted to hear more about superheroes who were girls like themselves. They thought that the beginning was perfect because it was told from the viewpoint of someone who considered herself a “newly minted superhero” and was named Olivia Thrift. They all agreed that Olivia would be a fine name for a chicken and immediately began imagining themselves as Olivia and growing into their own new roles as superheroes with amazing powers and abilities.
Pearl and “All Things Perlmutter”
Pearl, my little white hen, especially enjoyed this book when I got to the part about a superhero named Muscle Girl who has a cape that is “whiter than the driven snow.”
You see, Pearl is molting right now, and she has lost many of the beautiful white feathers on her back. This has left her feeling very vulnerable and inferior with not-so-pretty areas exactly where a cape would be covering up. Pretending to be Muscle Girl allows Pearl to momentarily escape the mundaneness of molting. And honestly, isn’t allowing us to escape our ordinary life one of the marks of great fiction?
Simply put, this is the kind of book that allows readers (or listeners) to become lost in a world where they can rise above their ordinary lives and imagine what it is like to be a superhero. This book provides access to a world where inadequacies are replaced with unimaginable abilities.
In summary
I hope that this article has whetted your appetite for “All Things Perlmutter.” My chicken adore his stories which are so well-written that they can see all of the action just as if they were watching an animated film playing inside their minds.
We hope you will take some time to look at David’s books on Smashwords and help him out with a purchase. As we understand it, his sole source of income is his freelance writing. The landscape of fiction writing would be rather bleak without his creativity.
According to my little Pearl herself, “He is my all-time favorite author. He GETS me. And I’m not just saying that because my first name is found in his last name with just some slightly different spelling.”
It was Pearl’s insistence that lead me to create and name a character after David for our own current writing project. And all of the chickens have insisted that if they and their stories are every turned into animated adventures, they want only David Perlmutter to be there and supervise throughout the animation process because he is an expert in animation, music, and more trivia topics than anyone would ever imagine!
If you’d like to join my chickens as part of The Official David Perlmutter Fan Club, take a look at his work available now on Smashwords! (A cape is optional while reading, but wouldn’t superhero capes make a great merchandising opportunity for such a talented writer!?!?)
Thanks for reading!
John, Gracie, Bessie, Blanche, Pearl, Emily, and Amelia
Here are some buttons to help you out! At least give David a “Hi” for Pearl! Thanks!
And once again, you have brilliantly acted as my unpaid press agent, on Substack rather than Medium this time. Thank you, J.R.
The last thing I want to have happen to me is to end up like the Bottle Cap Lady, lost and deluded in the past without any aid for the present and future. Kind actions like yours help prevent that from happening.