WHEN I WOKE UP EARLY the next day I ripped the bandage from my thumb, unsealing the penny I’d pressed against my knife cut all night.
I dressed quickly. They needed a whole day to slaughter the pig and I was afraid I’d miss the most important part. I grabbed a Pop-Tart and ran through the lane. I reached my father’s truck just in time to hear the hydraulics hissing as the dumper lifted higher and the hinged door swung open. The animal rolled a bit, then slid along the bed of the dumper, before dropping through the tailgate onto the rough gravel. It was still alive.
It lay motionless for five seconds—I counted—before it kicked its trotters in tandem. I jumped back. Its hind and front legs were bound, its mouth held tight with twine. There was snot stringing from its twitching snout. They hauled the pig into the cool shade of Uncle David’s garage. A few of the neighbours gathered round, nodding their approval. My father had chosen this day because everyone was home—the first Monday of August was always a holiday.
“A nice pig!” Senhor Batista wheezed as he prodded it with his boot. He was Senhora Gloria’s second husband and Agnes’s stepfather. He looked like Ichabod Crane. Only he had a hole just underneath his Adam’s apple, the result of some kind of neck or throat cancer. He took a drag on his cigarette and blew the small puffs of smoke through the hole.
The men standing together formed a fence. I had always wanted to be part of a slaughter but I was beginning to feel queasy. Blood trickled from the pig’s mouth, mixing with the sand and grit. My father wiped his neck with a handkerchief.
“Agora, lift him up. Make him go on top of the mesa.”
My father, especially when tired or drunk, would mix Portuguese with English. I looked away. I could tell by its breathing the pig was exhausted.
My uncles were dressed in their rubber boots and plaid shirts. On a count of three—um, dois, três—four men lifted the pig off the floor and onto an old barn table. Later, the same table, scoured with hot water and bleach, would be properly set for the first meal. But the bleach and the hot water, and the way my aunt and mother would rub off the germs of shitted trotters and pig slobber and bloodstains, couldn’t erase what it was that we raised to our mouths. I wiggled my fingers in my pocket and touched a stick of Juicy Fruit, warm and mushy. I peeled the silver wrapper off, put it in my mouth, and chewed. I breathed in the gum’s smell with relief.
The pig continued to struggle, letting out high-pitched squeals. My uncles took up their positions along the pig’s haunches and pressed their weight against its rough skin. An invisible force pulled me toward the pig, and before I knew it I had climbed onto the table and found myself sitting on top of the pig’s hind leg. My father held the animal in a headlock. He looked at me and I straightened my back and made myself taller. I glanced around me, trying not to look at its snout, trying hard not to meet the pig’s eye. Shoulders and torsos leaned in on me. I bit my lower lip so that the men wouldn’t see it quiver. Stupid. The heels of my hands pushed down harder onto the pig’s flesh.
My father pulled up his sleeve. Uncle Clemente placed the blade under the pig’s throat. I stared at the men outside in the morning sun watching the slaughter.
Swish!
The pig’s muscles tensed, its squeal stretched into a cry. Out in the laneway, the men were laughing among themselves. I was looking for Manny and Ricky when I saw a face I had never seen before. He stood in the laneway with the others, but he didn’t belong. He was younger than all the rest, maybe twenty or so. His blue eyes looked at me sitting atop the pig. He smiled, and I thought he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen, more handsome than the Marlboro Man or any of the actors or singers my sister had cut out of Tiger Beat and plastered on her bedroom walls. I turned away, pretending I had to swipe my snot on my shoulder.
Blood dripped into the bottom of the bucket. The pig’s breathing grew softer, and then it hissed and stopped. I dared to look again, but the blue-eyed man was gone.
I slid off the pig and slunk to the corner of the garage, wiping my hands on my shorts, trying to clean away the scratchy feeling of the pig’s skin. My uncles looped the rope over the rafters and pulled the pig up off the table by its hind legs. The I-beam creaked with the pig’s spinning weight. Uncle Clemente kicked the large pail under the carcass. His cigarette rested on the corner of his lip, the ash arched longer than the cigarette.
My mother and Aunt Edite came into the garage, carrying a bucket of steaming water between them. Aunt Edite wore a gypsy skirt and an almost see-through shirt. Her ankles were strapped with the ties of her espadrilles, the same kind my sister wanted but my mother forbade. Edite’s arms were bare and tanned. Her streaked hair was tied up with a silk scarf.
“Come inside,” my mother ordered.
I began to move in her direction. I was stopped by a splash. I turned to catch my father swinging back the empty bucket as the pig swayed in the air, encased in a swirl of steam.
“He’s staying!” my father shouted. “Is a man’s work!”
My mother stopped at the door to look back at me. I puffed up. “I’m okay,” I said, loud enough for my father to hear. I walked back to the men, who had stopped what they were doing. I ripped the knife from my uncle Clemente’s hand. I reached up and scraped the blade down the pig’s haunches.
“Força! Mais força!” My uncle Clemente pressed my hand, instructing me to apply more pressure against the pig’s skin. I saw my mother go inside.
Aunt Edite remained at the garage doorway. She pulled out a cigarette pack from her skirt’s pocket. She tapped the bottom of the pack two times, then drew a cigarette out with her lips. It was a dare. Uncle Clemente took the knife from my hand and wiped it on his jeans. The smoke from Edite’s cigarette made everything hazy like in a dream sequence on TV. All eyes were fixed on Edite. When it was clear she wasn’t going to leave, Uncle Clemente reached out and cut an even wider slash into the pig’s throat. Now the blood streamed like a faucet into the plastic pail. Edite did not flinch. She took a long drag of her cigarette.
My uncle David drew the full bucket to the side, blood sloshing out, staining the concrete, while Clemente placed a large plastic drum under the pig. I could feel my father’s hands on my shoulders. His hands were large and sun dark, and their backs were covered with golden hair. A gentle squeeze was my cue to look up. Uncle Clemente raised the knife over his head before plunging it into the pig’s belly, exposing the inches of white fatty layers that opened like flowers as the intestines tumbled into the pail, blue and purple and milky. The stench of pig shit and gases wafted across the garage and dug into my hair and clothes and throat. I started to breathe through my mouth.
Edite stood at the door and let the smoke curl out of her nostrils. She tossed her cigarette butt on the ground and pressed the toe of her shoe into it before disappearing through the door.
My father picked up a cup filled to the brim with wine. He took a drink and passed it around. The men all drank and mumbled prayers of thanks as they made the sign of the cross. My father offered me what remained in the cup. I took a sip, but I couldn’t throw it down the back of my throat the way the men did. They waited for me to finish it off, one big gulp was all it would take.
“Filho, bring this stuff to the hole I dig outside.” My father pointed to the jumble of guts. They’d bury the guts in the big hole beside Uncle David’s fig tree and between the rows of peppers. It was good fertilizer, my father would say. He watched me stumble toward the open door then spew the Pop-Tart I had that morning onto the garage floor. I could imagine my uncles rolling their eyes, another thing to hose down on what was already a busy day. I could hear the men laughing in the laneway. Another hit of nausea pushed up my throat. I tried hard to hold it down, but the vomit poured onto the floor. I took a few steps, held on to the jamb, and bent over into the laneway, the sour gush pushing at my throat. I tipped my face up to the sun and my knees went soft. Blue eyes grew large as they swooped down on me. I felt hands grab hold of me under my arms, my face smothered in a chest, as everything turned black.