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An excerpt from a novel that I am working on painfully slowly.
The chicken was caught quickly and after removing its head, she drained it into a basin and set the blood aside. She sat down under a tree and began to prep the chicken for the pot. Carefully removing the feathers and setting them aside to be dried and used in stuffing pillows, Mai�s fingers moved quickly-- the sure steady movements of someone who had done this chore many, many times.
She allowed her fingers to do the work, and her mind to wander away from the sweatiness of the yard, the clang and crash of the kitchen and the hum of the conversation that would surely carry on well into the night.
She thought of the day she had at school--the long trek on the bus, the loudness of the girls as they giggled around her. The boys she had only recently noticed leaning up against the side of the whitewashed walls, flicking eyes at the girls who huddled in circles in the school yard.
She thought of the fashions that the girls wore now, the shortness of the skirts, the flare of colours, the sheen of the fabrics. She rubbed her girlfriend Angela�s shirt between her fingers as they talked and she remembered thinking that it would be easy enough to make on her own. When she had a moment, she would do just that, she vowed.
Turning the chicken over, she plunged back into her reverie, the prickly featherless skin, scratching her arm as she cradled it closer to get at the feathers underneath. As her hand cupped the rounded portion of the chicken�s body, her hand tingled with the remembrance of the long hours she spent on the basketball court.
She was the team�s point guard but she knew that by the end of next year she could be captain. It was only matter of time before the senior who was currently captain would graduate or leave school and then she would step into her place. She tried to be humble but it was difficult to hide the ease with which she moved with the ball, the grace of her stride, the swoosh of the baskets. And her natural leadership made it easy to lead her team-mates to the championship tournament they would come to at the end of the season. She would propel them to that glory and then they would see for certain that she was the true captain of the school basketball team.
She sighed and slumped against the tree, thinking of the possibility. It was only a moment that she allowed herself that repose, then jumping up she hung the now-bloody apron near the water shed to be washed off and brought the chicken in to her mother. Without a glance up or a word of thanks, her mother took the chicken and turned to the chopping block. As she left the room, she could hear the steady *clock, clock, clock* of the cleaver hitting the ironwood block.
10:52 a.m. - 2004-12-15
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