by J. Anya Kozak

Created on: February 27, 2010   Last Updated: February 22, 2011

Michael

I chose to think of them as farmers, even though they did not live on a farm and they were not farmers.  My reasoning was, if I thought of them as farmers, then I could understand and possibly forgive the terrible trick that they played on us that day. 

They kept talking about the chickens.  “Pete and Oscar are going to kill one tonight for supper.”  “You have to come.” They almost spoke in unison.  I did not believe them.  They were the two youngest of our family and tended toward the dramatic.  “After they chop the head off, the chicken runs around the yard for five minutes.”  “It’s the funniest thing you ever saw.”  Jackie was looking at me with those dark expressive eyes. “How can it run around with no head?”  I asked. “Does it run in a circle?” I added, to see if they were telling the truth.  “No, it runs back and forth like it’s trying to find its head.”  Eugene responded quickly.  Then they both started to laugh, but I noticed that Jackie’s laugh was forced, like there was something she was not telling me.  Albert just stood there listening. He was the oldest of the three and Uncle Oscar’s favorite.  

I was picturing this scene with the chickens, in my head and just as I brushed it off as another one of their stories, I remembered the other backyard.  That area beyond the clothesline and the swings. We liked to pretend that the earth was flat and it was the end of the world.  It dropped down about four feet.  There was a retaining wall that ran almost the full width of the property with three or four stone steps on the right side.  We rarely used the steps.  It was faster to jump down to the next yard into the soft dirt. 

To the left was grandmother’s vegetable garden.  I can still see Aunt Cil sitting on the patio in her black cotton dress, cutting the ends off of the string beans with a small knife and putting them in a metal colander.  We would pick them off the vine, rip off the ends, and eat them right there in the garden.  I didn’t like the taste.  It was like eating the stalk and the root right out of Mother Earth.  If green had a flavor, it would be a raw string bean.

There was a dirt path in the center of the yard, and about twenty paces forward and to the right, was an old shed.  The

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