Birthday Song

On birthday mornings, I used to wake up to the sound of horrific squealing. Jolted awake by the distinct cries of a pig being ravaged by boiling water. I clasped my ears in order to muffle the sound, but the sharp shrieks pierced through my small hands anyway. Even to a toddler’s ears, the hiss of hot water is unmistakable, let alone the screech of a pig in excruciating pain. Peering out my parents’ window, I saw the poor creature with its neck bound to a post so it couldn’t escape. Its skin folded over the rope. It writhed desperately in its death throes to break free, but the braided nylon only wrapped itself tighter around its throat.

Then I saw my uncles throw bucket upon bucket of the hot water on the helpless animal, it's plump pink flesh flushed. My legs buckled each time the pig did, wrenching in pain as they poured the water over it, dousing the animal in fire. When it felt the blanket of water envelop its body, it sprung violently into the air, flailing its stout legs wildly. Its sweat-beaded snout shot up. Its jaws unhinged to cry. The air hissed louder. Almost louder than the pig’s own squealing. A mist built up around the area as the steam collected in the air, but it didn’t obscure the violence. Not one bit. It couldn’t even see them throwing the buckets from behind it, with its head strapped to the wooden post. After some time, I couldn’t bear to look on anymore; instead, I waited for the shrieking to stop. It was always the same, but each iteration felt abrasively new: the cries would climb until it reached a climax, when the poor animal would shriek its sharpest note, and then a collapse in the cacophony. In the first moments of silence, everything seemed to stop, all movement excruciatingly slowed. The rise and fall of my chest seemed to drag on longer than the tick of the clock. When I sat up to look outside, what was once living agony lied as a heap of steaming pink flesh in the middle of the concrete yard. In retrospect, I guess this was a way of disinfecting the pig as they killed it, but even to small child, there was an evident cruelty in its method.

I picked myself off the bed and shook the sorrow from my nerves. Taking the Squirtle plushie I had slept with in hand, I strode out of my parents’ room, out into the hall, down the stairs. As I stepped out of my house, I found the cats again gathered ‘round the back alley between my grandparents’ house and the concrete fence that separated our property from Tia Tiling’s. I never understood why, when my family was so close with theirs, shards of glass adorned the top of that four foot wall, makeshift spikes to deter intruders. At that age, though, I only really contemplated how colorful they were.

No one really knew to whom the cats belonged, but they mewed as if they were ours. All fourteen of them, mewing faintly, here and there across our property. They gathered around the same time every morning, mewing affectionately, when Tita Lydia would intentionally dish out for them the leftovers from breakfast. I never thought of them as strays, only playmates. The only ones I really had at home. From them I had learned the cycle of life and, more frequently, the harshness of death. Over the years I oversaw (and I use the term loosely) the births of dozens of kittens, springy and wispy with their feathery bodies, their wiry whiskers, and their mini-marble eyes, ones that stared at you with solemn curiosity and fear. And I watched those emotions vanish when I found those same bodies, frail and gaunt and stiff not a couple weeks later. Only one or two survived from each litter. But staring at the cluster that crowded door down the alley, you wouldn’t be able to tell.

Turning toward the courtyard, I met the sight of my father huddled between two of my uncles, squatting in front of a chopping log. He motioned over to me, and as I came closer, what was they were doing became more evident. On the log was a large rooster, its breast bold, and its coat an assemblage of black, brown, and greenish plumes. Its crown was pinned down by my father’s forefinger. My uncles held the rest of the body, its feathers clamped down by fingers. There was a cluelessness in its eyes. No semblance of an idea it knew what was going on. It only clucked, in the same manner as if it was upright, striding along the concrete.

I flinched when it all began. My father drove the knife across the rooster’s throat, slicing open a gape that gushed out chicken’s blood like a faucet. I felt myself swallow a stone. The red liquid leaked out into the plastic container, collecting en masse as readily and as casually as if it were paint to be brushed against the walls of a house. When the liquid left the body, it scarcely had any awareness as to the violent writhing of its former vessel on the chopping block. The process felt uneasy, and yet the pooling of the blood also felt oddly satisfying to watch, almost serene in its silence. When the last of the blood dripped from the open neck, my father motioned me over to him. He positioned me in front of him, dipped the tip of his thumb into the liquid, and drew a bloody cross on my forehead.

Happy Birthday, I thought.

Until my family left for the states, I had never received a necklace as a gift, nor had I any reason to want one. When the news of my family moving abroad spread, friends and family bid their farewells. At my 4th grade Christmas party, the third-grader I’d been wooing from down the hall peered out her classroom door to watch our own grade’s festivities. Her name was Pat Pat and she preferred to write instead of speak. She motioned me over and we met halfway between our rooms. Her lips smiled meekly, the same smile that made her chinky eyes shut in embarrassed ecstasy. Into my hands, she thrust a small paperback notebook with a plastic sleeve stuck between its pages. It was a silver chain.

I recall from a very young age the disgust that overcame my body when those miniscule, metal chain links glided over skin. They always felt either unpleasantly cold or cringingly tepid. Even worse was the way they looked on elderly women and sleazy older men, whose creases and folds would collect sweat and pool them together with the faux precious metal. Perhaps I feared them. Feared anything that wrapped around my delicate throat. I often wore clothes a size larger than my own body; they were comfy and roomy enough for me to retreat into. But the tightness of the metal around the meaty necks of those same sleazy men unnerved me, as if, at any moment, the chains would somehow shrink to choke the life from their greasy throats.

I watched the pig, with its skin stiff and browned, rolling over in the light of the fire beneath him. An expression of deep betrayal was burned into its face. The men had cut its belly open and removed the organs, replacing them with long reeds of citronella, crush cloves of garlic, and salt to cauterize the wound. They had also opened his jaws and thrust a large wooden spike into its gaping maw, where its screams had bellowed from. There was no struggle now, only silence, but I couldn’t tell if that only made the act more uneasy to observe. They’d plunged the pole far into the carcass, stabbing into the swine whenever a blockage was felt, jabbing and thrusting until the rear tore open. I assumed it was normal for a child to witness the impalement of an animal; the only form of sodomy our religion accepted, I suppose. They fastened it onto the wood with fine rope, stronger than the nylon they used to hold it place in life. Taking two to carry it, they hung it over a spit to smoulder, its dead mass weighing the pole down into place. Its snout rested uncomfortable on the slick oak spear, contorted as if it were about to snort. I saw it all transpire in the morning light. Perhaps the reason I didn’t much lechon is because I saw how they plundered the pork.

During a vacation to my maternal grandmother’s house, my cousins and I found a troop of adolescent pigs busily and hungrily squeaking within the confines of a cobblestone pen. The pen wasn’t always filled with noises, so they naturally attracted our attention. One of them, the runt of the litter, proved to be the best by some toddler logic we had woven together. We named him, we played with him from over the pen wall, and we rejoiced in his joyous squeaks and snorts. He was soft and skinny and a peachy pink, with a sincerely satisfied snort. We played house in my grandmother’s front yard, in clear view of the pen and what resided there. We visited him every day while we were there until we had to go home.

Weeks later, we returned for another get-together, some other family member who turned a year older. While my cousins forgot about the handsome pig, I ran to the pen, eager to see the runt. But he wasn’t there. None of the pigs were. The only sound that filled my ears were the chickens that grazed behind my grandmother’s house, but I knew they too would be gone one day. We had lechon that night.

After the spit roast, we gathered to rip apart its bones. I watched the bark peel off the tree in swatches, crisp and brown and sappy with grease. Its meat was the same way inside, filling each spoon with flavor. The pig tasted delicious with rice, but each bite I took was accompanied by a faint squeal. The meat sat in my throat for a moment before I swallowed my guilt.