The day I cut the chicken’s head off the sky shone like a busted knee slick with blood. It was late September, and the rot of leaves was just beginning to spread its musk to the end of the tiny hairs in my nose; I was sneezing and rubbing my eyes of an itch that would never leave.

The chicken was dying too slowly. It was a terrible thing to watch. She had, two days earlier, been attacked through the fence by some sharp-clawed creature. Her side was bare, feathers spread around the scene of the crime, and her raw flesh was fresh with blood that never seemed to clot. When we realized the other chickens were feeding on her flesh, intoxicated by the smell of the blood of their own, we separated her from the brood. We fed her by hand, brought her water. She brightened at first, and blood stopped seeping through her pores. But, in spite of our efforts on the third day her neck fell to the ground. The others sensed her weakening and broke through the barrier of old hay bales. When we saw her next, her side was stripped and the ribbons of skin dragged in the dirt.

Why we had a brood of chickens in the middle of Simsbury, in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, was not a question any of us could answer. It was his doing, his project, his play. It was another thing that bore the mark of the man who left the family to sink in the mud, beneath bleeding skies. But, we tended the chickens, collected the eggs, weeded the gardens, harvested the vegetables like dutiful farm hands. We didn’t know how to stop. Although we did what we needed, we did nothing more. The gardens were unruly, the grass thatched and disheveled. It was with little emotion that we discussed the fate of the tortured chicken the afternoon we learned she wouldn’t heal.

The chickens used to have names. In the time when I was young enough to be acutely embarrassed by the unusual cackling hens in my backyard, when I was glad I knew no boys other than the boring neighborhood specimen because it would have mortified me to have to explain the chicken coup, the smell of sun-warmed chicken shit, even the taste of fresh organic eggs, when I was young enough to still play alone in the woods, but old enough to read and understand books I had to hide from my parents, there was a chicken named Martha. Martha was in love with my father and followed him around dutifully. She was named after my mother, who was committed to latter, but wasn’t clear about her position on the former. When my father weeded the garden, Martha was behind him pulling worms from the black dirt. When he chopped firewood, she perched on the fence and watched, one eye fixed on him. When my father climbed a ladder to fix the roof on the shed, she taught herself to do the same, half hopping, half flying, her claws scratching each rung. Martha died in the mouth of a fox in early winter. We buried her body on the edge of the woods, just to the right of the path that I was never allowed to follow to its end.

These many years later, we women alone were faced with another dying chicken, the first situation of its kind since he left. We discussed our options that late smmer afternoon amongst buzzing flies and blood-hungry screeching hens. The dying chicken panted and flapped her wing slightly on the side of her body that wasn’t destroyed.



My father had taken every sharp and functional killing implement. What was left was a dull axe that wouldn’t have easily worked its way through a tender steak. I picked it up. The weight of it was much greater than it should have been. I felt like I was wrestling it from him, taking back something I never wanted in the first place, ripping from his hands a thing that had been forced upon me.

I gripped the handle of the axe and rejected the impulse to feel his hurt. I twisted my hand along the splintered wood and savored the pain because it was my own. I tightened the muscles in my hands, forearms, biceps, chest and stomach, and forced the offering of guilt away. I would no longer care for that which hurt me. I would no longer carry the weight of his failure, no longer make excuses to him for him. The first blow fell hard. The limp chicken, struggling softly at my feet, avoided the rust-flecked axe and I nearly caught my own foot. I twisted myself away, dancing with the axe, as only a woman’s body can, and repositioned it over my head, poised to deal the deathblow. I let it fall again. This time it sunk into the flesh, though not through. I wrestled the blade from the soft earth that so willingly accepted the blow, and let it fall again, faster now, finding the rhythm. The bird couldn’t scream, but flapped her good wing. I lifted the axe two more times. Her head rolled away, her body moved in the dirt, confused and searching. I dropped the axe and jumped away from the writhing creature and dull weapon. The sun was sinking. The unkempt gardens glowed red. My sister held me as we watched the wing tremble its last tremble. My mother put her arms lightly around us both, and, under the blood sky, we laughed for what felt like the first time.

Gathering stones and sand, we built up the chicken fence on all sides and went in the house to make dinner, or take a shower, or cry tears that belonged to no one but us. The sun rose clear the next morning, as if nothing had happened under that red sky the day before. The axe, still rusty and dull, lies clean in the shed. The dying chicken’s body has long since become the dirt that holds a vibrant bed of weeds just outside of the garden.