*Memory

Sitting at the kitchen window, I must have been about 3 years old as I don’t remember my sister being there. I vaguely remember my cousin Otilla being there. This was before we started calling him David. It was a warm day. I can remember the suns warmth.

I had been told not to look. Who tells a three year old not to look and then leaves them along with their slightly older cousin to eat a sandwich quietly while we can hear chooks squawking and yelling from my father and grandfather?  I know my grandmother is down there as well but I don’t remember where my mother is.

Otilla and I climbed up onto the kitchen sink to see why the chooks were squawking. The window is framed by white net curtains that are tied back to keep them open. The window is open and there is no fly screen on it. If we leaned forwarded we could have both topped down to the garden below. The house was built on a slope so the kitchen window was actually quite high up. I can remember the lay out of the back yard with the chook pen to the left, the fruit trees in the middle and the veggie patch to the right. In front of the fruit trees was a small above ground circular swimming pool. In front of the chook pen was the wood heap and chopping block.

I looked down and saw my father, grandfather and Uncle Lez all standing around the chook pen. My Grandfather is by the chopping block with an axe and he has a chook which he and my father are holding down. Uncle Lez is in the chook pen trying to catch the next chook.

My father grips the chook around its winks with his big butcher’s hands to stop it from flapping it’s wings and escaping. My grandfather has the chooks head in his hands and is pulling it to extend the neck out. He  then brings the axe down and chops the chooks head off. My father tosses the chook into the old swimming pool next to him that is empty of water but I can see other chooks in there also without heads. Most are lying motionless. The one my father has just put in there is moving around madly like it is trying to run but can’t see.

My grandmother is on the other side of the pool. In front of her she has a tall, round, metal pot sitting over a fire that has steam rising out of it. I assume it is full of water. She pulls one of the chooks out of the pool, one that isn’t moving and then holding it by its feet she dunks it into the pot of boiling water and holds it there for just a short while. She then pulled it out of the water and proceeds to pull all of the feathers off the chook. I vaguely remember her putting the handfuls of feathers into a bag.

I mention this scene to my mother, not sure if this memory is real or something I have made up. It seems so ethnic, I can remember the men, my grandfather in a grotty stained singlet and pants, my father and Uncle Lez with their dark hair slicked back and Dayglo shirts on, like something out of a bad 70’s movie. Their skin was brown and they were all very young.

My mother turns to me shocked that I remember this and asks if it traumatised me as it had her which is why she wasn’t there, but she also remembers this day. I don’t remember being upset by it. I don’t remember David being upset. I just remember it almost like a scene out of a movie about someone else’s life, but apparently it is mine and this is my memory and it is real.