[Inez] Preparing for lunch

Yesterday I sat on the back step while Patty prepared chicken for lunch. She had a whole chicken, butterflied and minus organs in a bag. First she laid all the pieces on the left side of the pila and began to cut it into individual servings. Thigh, breast, drumstick -- each one a swift chop and a little wiggle with the knife. We talked about types of meat. She told me that some people raise rabbits here, but she doesn't like the meat. I told her my favorite is duck. She said it smells too much like duck for her. She asked me if I had had venado. "Venado?" I repeated back to her, my incomprehension on my face. "Bambi," she said. "Oh..." I wrinkled my nose. I don't like how it smells, I told her. She explained to me that you have to take guayaba leaves and cut them up really small, rub them all over the meat. Then rub it with lime. That takes away the smell, but it still tastes delicious. "Sabe rico," she told me, smiling.

With the chicken cut into manageable pieces, she began to cut off the fat. Cut, cut, cut, the little yellow blobs going into their own bag. Patty told me about one time during the war, they had gone to rescue a couple of orphans. It was night time, and they fell into a trap -- a large hole in the ground. My eyes went big, picturing a tiger in a hole standing on top of the palm leaves that had previously covered it. "We didn't carry armas, but we always carried a spoon or a fork. All night we dug into the side so there was a little space for us to hide ourselves. The next day, some soldiers came by. They passed a light over the hole to see if anyone was in there. We told the children to be very quiet and we held still." Thank God they weren't babies, I thought to myself, remembering their stories yesterday of mothers accidentally suffocating their babies as they held their hands over their mouths to keep them quiet. If one baby had cried everyone would have been killed. After the military passed by the mothers were left with the realization that their infants were dead in their laps.

"After two days in the trap we heard someone else come up to the hole. 'Is anyone in there?' we heard. 'You don't have to be afraid, we're here in peace.' 'Ah,' we said, 'are you blue or green?'" [Colors belonging to the military and to the police.] " 'Neither,' they said, 'we're red.'" [FMLN -- the guerrillas.] Patty today, cutting the fat off the pieces of chicken. I put the collected fat into the hanging grocery bag that collects the leftover food scraps they would prefer the stray cats not get into. She told me that the guerrilleros took them and the children to their camp. First they gave them a little bit of water. The guerrilleros had three monkeys with them, she said. They went to prepare some food for them and the children. In the distance they heard the monkeys screaming. "I wonder what's going on with those monkeys," they thought to themselves. Then the monkeys were quiet and they shrugged it off. Eventually the guerrilleros came back with soup for them. It was mostly vegetables but had some meat in it too, and they ate it gladly. Later on they went to the creek to wash the dishes and there on the bank of the creek they saw the heads of the monkeys, their skin, and everything. "We had eaten the monkeys," Patty told me, with a face of pure disgust.

She rinsed the chicken again and then rubbed it thoroughly with lime. She told me about another time they were en el campo and a woman brought them some rice with little pieces of meat in it. Patty said that she was very hungry, but the meat didn't smell right. She ate only the rice and a tortilla and avoided the meat completely. Another madre was there with her and asked her, "Aren't you going to eat the meat?" "No," Patty said, "It doesn't smell right." "Oh, in that case I'll eat it," said the other woman, and she ate it all. Afterwards the woman who had served them the food asked them if they had liked it, "Oh yes," Patty told her, "it was delicious." It turns out the meat they had been fed was snake meat. Another look of disgust from Patty.

A few stray pieces of fat -- cut, cut. "The chickens here are like us," she told me, "small and skinny." We both laughed. She rinsed the lime off of it and put it into una olla. "If you go to the super, though, they're a lot bigger." I said "Yeah, but they're full of chemicals and hormones. Even though they're smaller, I'd rather have this chicken that is natural." "That's true," she said, "that's true."