when Mamman took us out to get chicken

**this is my very first thing that I'm posting on this, so bear with me.  I'll get better, I promise.  And please, please review!!!!

--when Mamman took us out to get chicken--


              When Mamman took us out to get chicken, the power was out.  I had just gotten out of the shower when it happened, and the absence of the use of the ceiling fan in the humid heat of the monsoon had immediately put me in an awful mood.  My surliness only got worse as the day wore on and the power failed to return.  Finally my mother pushed my brother and I outside and told us that we were going to the market with Mamman to buy chicken, with the promise that by the time we returned, the power would be back.

         And so the three of us, clad in waterproof BATA sandals and our thinnest, most comfortable cotton clothes, set out.  Neither Sanjay nor I had ever been to buy fresh chicken before, we were used to being able to stop in Wal-Mart or Hy-Vee and dropping a pack of cleaned, skinned chicken breast into the cart and be done with it, just like that.

         Mamman got us an auto-rickshaw and we crowded in.  The driver started the engine without so much as looking back at us.  The rickshaw began to vibrate, and the small carving of Ganesha began to shake and rattle around on its spot on the tiny dashboard.  “Evidetthekka?” asked the driver.
         “Where to?”

         Mamman told him.

         The ride wasn’t very long, but it certainly felt like it took forever.  The sun was still hidden behind the heavy curtain of monsoon, but the curtain seemed to extend past the sun today, and hung over us in a damp, hot sheet of air.  As we neared the market—and it was easy to tell, because of the crowded, putrid smell that had gotten caught in the heat—the number of flies in the rickshaw seemed to multiply.

         When the rickshaw finally grumbled to a stop, we stepped out into the heat.  Mamman paid the driver while Sanjay and I looked around.  We were somewhere near the beach, and the salt was in the air and sticking to our sweaty brown skins.  Flies buzzed around, and there were so many of them that soon I didn’t know whether the incessant noise was coming from them or my own ears. 

                Mamman grabbed our hands and told us not to let go, in case we got lost.  Then he lead us into the heart of It all, where the smell and the heat mingled together with the noise of a thousand strangers buying and cutting and selling fresh meat.  Mamman lead the way, and stopped occasionally to chat with friends of his that we didn’t know.  When he mentioned that we lived in America, thought, they would smile at us in an impressive way.

         I didn’t know how much time had passed; Mamman’s conversations took forever but in the hurried frenzy of the market, time seemed to pass quickly.  We finally came to a stop at a rough looking wooden stall-type thing.  There was a large, burly man with a big belly and tired expression sitting outside it.  When we came to a stop he rose immediately, and the beads of sweat that had pooled on his brow when he’d been sitting trickled down his face.  He beckoned us inside.  “Va, va.”

         “Come, please.”

         When he turned around I noticed that the back of his cotton shirt was soaked through completely, and I followed him into the little place very reluctantly. 

         The back wall—if you could call it a wall, because it was merely a collection of wooden boards nailed together—was covered in thin-wired cages.  The cages were separate, and stacked one upon the other, so that it made up a sort of mesh tower.  Inside the cages were chickens.  Live, squaking, and pecking, they were stuffed in, most of them by two or three or four per cage.

         When we came in, the started clucking—in fright, I thought—and for a moment the whole place was showered in multi-colored feathers that settled softly to the floor, mingling easily with the dirty layer of feathers that already littered it.

         The frenzy did not cease.  The chickens poked their sharp beaks through the spaces in the mesh and pecked at one another, angry and scared.  Sanjay jumped right over to the cages and stared at them unreservedly, and I mimicked him.  The chickens were definitely more interesting than watching Mamman haggle with the sweaty man.

         Sanjay poked his finger through a hole in a cage and stroked the feathers of a large brown one.  Neither Mamman nor the man noticed, but I didn’t copy my brother this time.  I stared up at the stacks and stacks of chickens, reaching high above my head.  The scared me with the raucousness.  Sanjay kept stroking the one chicken, and his fingers sometimes disappeared underneath it’s thick layer of feathers, slipping in and out of visibility.  The brown hen seemed to be slightly calmer than the others, and sat almost still under my brother’s fingers.  Her beady eyes twitched in her small head, focusing on things I couldn’t see.  Suddenly, her gaze fixed on me.  She couldn’t se my brother; he was out of her range of view.  Her sharp look scared me even more, staring at me over her lethal beak.  When she didn’t look away, I sent her a feeble smile.  She cocked her head sideways and gave a clucking warble.

         Suddenly Mamman and the man turned to us, and the man cried out, “Ay! Ay!  Ithe endenna chayenne?!”

         “Hey!  What are you doing?”

         Sanjay pulled out his hand, startled.  The chicken jerked around and gave another cluck.  The man glared at Sanjay.  I backed away.  Then Mamman said, “Athe ore nalathonnu annello.  Nammakke athine edekka.”

         That looks like a good one.  We’ll take that one.”

         The man grunted and shuffled forward.  From his expression, I gathered that Mamman had gotten the better end of the deal.  I felt sorry for the man. 

         He opened the latch on the brown hen’s cage and she gave a loud squawk. The other chickens began flitting and clucking nervously.

         After that, most of it was a blur of shock.  I don’t remember the man taking the chicken out, but I remember my younger brother’s face as the man raised his dull silver butcher’s knife (I don’t quite remember where this came from, either) and brought it down on the hen’s neck.  He then took the head and the body, each in either hand, and threw them down into a large tin barrel that resembled a trashcan.

         The man didn’t even blink. I couldn’t move; my muscles seemed to have frozen in place.

         The barrel thrashed and shook, and the tin intensified each frenzied bump.  Mamman was paying the man.  When the barrel stopped thrashing, the man reached in and retrieved the body of the hen. 

         Its soft brown feathers were bloody now, and it looked nothing like the bird in whose feathers my brother’s hand had been buried in not ten minutes ago.

         The man then drew out the head, and its grisly face and cloudy eyes looked directly at me.  I flinched then and felt the shivers chase up and down my spine.  The man looked over at my sudden movement and chuckled at the look on my face, but he seemed to understand.  The man chopped the chicken’s body into large, meaty pieces, and wrapped it all up in a newspaper, and tied it up in twine.  He threw the head away.  Mamman took the package and lead us out of the place, and back out of the market.  He only stopped to talk to one other person, and catching our expressions, he didn’t stay long.

         The auto-rickshaw ride back was both faster and slower than the last one.  This time, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the newspaper package in Mamman’s hands.  It bounced along in sync with the rickshaw.  I felt sick.

         When we cam home, the power was back on.  I went into the bedroom and read a cheesy romance novel for a long time.  By seven o’clock, I could smell the spicy chicken curry that was simmering in the kitchen.  The scent was permeating the entire house.

         When it got so that I couldn’t stand it anymore, I took my book outside to the veranda.  It didn’t help much, and my book was so clichéd and predictable that I could hardly concentrate on that, either.  I walked around to where the kitchen door was open.  The dumping ground across the way from it was littered with brown feathers, and a cat was slinking through it, sniffing curiously.  I walked back around and sat on the veranda until it was dark.  Then I went to bed and slept until morning, when all the smell was gone.