Margarita arrived at my house to work, talking as if she were right at home.
I was captivated by how she spoke. She used words in a very special manner. Only God could understand her.
She made adjectives into verbs and verbs into subjectives. Very objective. She liked to make exaggerations with juxtapositions; with syntax she paid her bus fare, groceries and her taxes as well. Any statement that came out of her mouth was truly outstanding, but very far from being comprehensible, outside the reach of any correction: something not seen everyday.
Margarita was a natural alchemist of the true Mexican language. A very wise ignorant.
My first teacher in the art of story-telling with the invention of impossible sentences, but very understandable conjugations. I suffered from a natural "something" that made every maid that we had during my childhood, confess their life stories to me. That was how I was exposed to true, straight-forward stories of "real life", mixed with scorpion mortal stings, children born of spontaneous generation, psycho-magic advices, home remedies from combination of plants, teas, roots and fruits as well as the creation of wonderful amulets. Instructions on how to subdue a husband with a frying pan, ghost legends, powerful prayers to miraculous little saints that not even the Vatican knows of their existence, escapist acts very difficult to execute, love letters and very intimate secrets that I cannot confess because I gave my word I wouldn’t. Under several oaths.
I can tell Margarita's story because she gave me her permission to do so.
One day my mother wrote down in her list that she had to prepare roast chicken to eat.
While she was preparing the poor little chicken that already was very dead, Margarita started telling me about how once she had opened a chickery (chicken market).
“Only to such an ignorant woman that I am, could such a savage idea ever enter her head,” Margarita said.
“I thought it was very easy to kill chickens, but at the hour of the chicharrones (at the hour of the cracklings)*, I got terrorized! “I could not do it! No, no!” “It took a long time before I could catch a chicken... and as soon as I got one between my hands I couldn't twist its neck. “
“And then when I did, I didn't do it correctly and the chicken no longer wanted to die!”
“It rather escaped from between my hands, with its neck hanging to its side.”
“A degeneration running all around the garden! In my fear I started shouting, and the beating of my heart didn't let me reason!” I couldn't think of a thing to do. Until the chicken got tired because it was running for its life, and it fell, like a crazy person. We both got so scared that we almost died together.”
“I immediately went next door to the neighbor's house and I told her why I was so scared.
Then, we returned to my garden and the neighbor took the chicken and held it in her hands, as if nothing happened, and finished breaking the poor bird's neck. And its soul left it. The chicken didn't move any more. And when I saw that it was very dead, I started to cry, because I had hoped that it would live.”
“This is something very natural in humans, when we face death.”
The neighbor said to me:
“Look Margarita, if you want to kill a chicken or any other animal, you must do it without any mercy. Because if there is even a little bit of compassion, they can't die and you hurt them and you hurt yourself, and you are going to suffer under so much pain!”
It took me a long time to learn how to kill chickens.
I cried a lot.
And I couldn't stop hating the day when I got the idea of opening a chickery… and the worst thing was, that I could no longer do anything about it, because I had to do something with all the chickens that I had bought.
So one day I decided to kill them all.” “At the beginning, I started twisting their little necks because I kept having a lot of compassion. Soon afterwards, I cut their heads off with the machete and then I hung them upside down on a clothesline, to bleed, the poor little things!” “I can say that more than once I found that the chicken had escaped, running around without a head! Can you believe me? “Alive, without a head! “Something really horrible, blood everywhere… like hell itself!” “But all that was my fault. Because I kept having a lot of mercy for them. Just enough of invisible compassion that they couldn't die, the innocents, and everything ended in pure, unaffected suffering.”
“We all suffered; I hung a clothesline of tears.”
“The habit of killing everyday started to cool my heart. After a while, I no longer used to twist their necks. I went straight to the machete, grabbed the chicken, held it and zaz!
I cut their head off without any mercy…
And then “take your fresh chicken to eat…
” Margarita would laugh... ha ha ha ! ha ha ha!
That day I didn't eat any roast chicken.
But this taught me a useful lesson: how to end many situations that have caused me countless suffering.
When you realize that you've created a bad habit. When you have an addiction. A tormented situation that suddenly becomes repetitive. A pattern of negative thought that takes over the mind for several days, months or even worse, years! When a friendly relationship becomes a sick relationship. Or any given problem that makes you suffer, I recommend that you remember Margarita's story… and go straight to the machete: grab it, hold it and zaz, cut the head off the problem without mercy!
Just please, don't hurt or kill anybody.
This story is about going to the root of a situation, making the decision and taking action to bring change to your life. And as Margarita said, “well, there's no way to put that chicken’s head back on again!”
“Can you imagine, me, crying for every chicken!
“There's loads of them!”
:)
chicken natta
