Dark chickens have thick blood and they are strong

It was on a Saturday morning when a black bull came running down the street. He was a big bull, running furiously on the cobblestone street in front of my house. There was a large group of people chasing the bull. They were screaming, laughing and carrying sticks in their hands. The bull was alone running from them. I could see that he was tired and scared. There was dribble coming out of his mouth and sometimes he would slide on the stones. He would lose balance, but soon he would start running again. His hooves on the stone were loud.

If the bull falls down he will get hurt, I thought. Sometimes the stones that cover the street can be sharp. I hoped he could run away from those people without falling.

Once I kicked at one of those sharp stones and it cut the head of my big toe. The head of my toe opened like a lid and the thick blood ran out.

I shivered at the thought of the bull falling down and cutting himself.

The bull ran until I lost sight of him.

-Dad, where is the bull?

-Dad, what were those people doing?

-They want to get the bull to kill him.

-Why? I asked

-To eat him.

-How do they kill a bull?

-They tie his legs with a rope. Then they hit his head with a big hammer so he becomes unconscious. Then they make a cut on his neck. The bull will bleed until he dies. They will hang him by his legs and make a long cut on his belly. They will skin him and they will cut him into pieces.

Then they will sell his meat at the butcher shop. This is how we get your beef. Can you see?

I looked for the bull but I could not see him. I stood on my tip-toes, I tried to see further, but he was gone.

We went back home and by then the street was quiet.

Earlier that morning Mom had brought home a black chicken. It was the blackest chicken I had ever seen. Her face and her feet were also black. Her feathers were so black that they became blue and sometimes green. The chicken was constantly changing color from black to green, from green to blue and then back to black.

I was always scared of the chickens, but this one was even more scared than I was. She kept me in her sight, but she never met my gaze. She was looking around nervously, trying to escape, but she couldn't. Her legs were tied with a yellow rope that didn't allow her to run.

Mom said that because it was a cloudy day, it would be an ideal day to cook a chicken with bloody sauce.

Chicken with bloody sauce is a chicken cooked in her own blood. Bloody sauce is dark brown and black chickens are the best for this kind of sauce.

Mom said it is good for me to eat chicken with bloody sauce. She said:-You will see how smart and strong you will become.

What will I see? What will I see when I will be smart and strong?

Mom wasn't afraid of the chicken and I guess she didn't even notice how afraid the little animal was. She held the chicken by her wings with one hand and a knife with the other one.

Mom immobilized the chicken on the floor by stepping on her wings with one foot and with the other she held the chicken's legs. The chicken didn't say anything. Dark chickens have thick blood and they are strong.

The chicken was still when mom cut her throat. The blood came out in one intense outpour. The chicken started shaking, she got weaker and started dying. Mom looked at the blood that she was gathering in a bowl and said: -Look how beautiful this blood is.

The chicken stayed a long time dying when Mom said:-Don't feel sorry for the chicken. If you feel sorry, she will not die.

I didn't want to feel sorry for the chicken, but why not if she was dying?

Finally she died and Mom undid the rope. By then, the chicken's legs were too rigid to run.

Mom poured hot water on the chicken and started taking out the feathers. I liked to help do this. The feathers came out easily and it was a good moment for me to choose some feathers I wanted to keep. I kept the darkest blue and green ones. I washed the feathers and put them to
dry in the sun. Later I would put one or two in a jar filled with water, pretending that it was an aquarium with dark fishes.

Mom, without being sorry, opened the chicken's belly and started removing everything she found. Lungs, kidney, liver, intestines and a heart. Sometimes she would find one egg and would say:

-Oh, if I knew she had eggs inside, I would not have killed her.

A chicken is not so different. She is also made of a heart, two legs, lungs and also lots of feathers put together.

The bloody sauce was boiled. The chicken was cooked. I always got the little pieces. A little wing, little ribs, or a neck.

To eat a neck takes time. So many little bones and so little meat. You must suck every bone. A neck is bones between some meat. You break one bone and get a little piece of meat and you break another one to get some more. When you break all the bones you find a white soft line inside that is the spine. You suck the bones a little bit harder and the spine comes out and you eat it.

Another time, Mom would give me a chicken's head. It was a skull without eyes or beak. The head was a little ball, made of soft bones, covered with a thin layer of meat. To eat a head you also have to keep breaking and sucking bones. The skull bones hold the chicken's brain
that is full of wonders. That's why the chicken walks all day long, cackles and sometimes tries to fly.

The chicken's brain is small, gray and tender. You have to break all the bones, suck it harder and when you realize, it is already in your mouth, slowly going inside of you. You don't even need to chew it, it melts.

Mom said:-Clean your dish and you will see. You will grow up stronger. You will see what I mean.

Last night in a dream I saw it. I was huge. I had long legs and long arms. I couldn't see myself as a whole. I could see only parts of myself and it was even difficult to see them. It was like the parts didn't make part of anything. It was like the parts of me were another thing.
Inside we are bigger, taller, wider and deeper. I was crowded by countless things. I saw fish swimming. I saw cows and a black bull running around, not knowing where to go. There were also birds, thousands of them. Sometimes I thought I had only birds inside of me, but no, there were other things, too. There were things that didn't show themselves to me and there were things that I could not see. Sometimes, through the darkness, I could feel the touch of plants. They were green and they were many, all kinds.

The smell changed as the wind changed. It could be sweet, sour and bitter.

The wind came again and I heard a noise. I tried to raise my head to look for my feet, but my head didn't move. But I could see. My knees were two rocks and behind them I had bushes growing everywhere.

I could see the bushes growing, becoming trees and then blooming in white flowers. The white flowers becoming little green oranges. The oranges growing in size and changing their color, little by little.

The wind came again, a little bit stronger and threw all the oranges to the floor.

My feet? Where are my feet? My feet, I don't have them anymore. Now I have only mud, roots, worms and stones. My feet, I couldn't touch them. I had become too big and my feet were somewhere far away from my hands.

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Geraldo Valério is a writer and illustrator. His work has been featured in Hip Mama Magazine and Spork. His favorite reading includes The Collected Clothes by Elizabeth Bishop and anything written by the Brazilian writers João Guimarães Rosa, Clarice Lispector and Adélia Prado. He also loves children's books. Geraldo Valério lives in Portland, Oregon, where he calls home for now.