A Chicken Lives in New Jersey

My grandfather, who lives in suburban New Jersey like the rest of us, recently had a chicken. Her name was Clementina and she was akin to a pet cat. Self-sufficient and a bit of a snoot, she roamed his yard and went about the neighborhood with her head held high as though she had every right to be strutting along the asphalt. I'm going to assume that she died of natural causes, but one never really knows.

As kids, we, too, had a chicken. My father had bought her for us where they slaughter chickens at some place in Jersey City. This is just one of the many inappropriate places my father would take us as children. Horrified, my older sister and I would watch as they’d slice the chickens' heads off with a blade that was built into the counter. Some kids get to go to the zoo; we got to go watch chickens go bye-bye.

However, on one occasion, instead of with the usual, freshly killed chicken, we actually returned home with a live one. Hoping she would provide eggs daily, we kept her in the garage…in a Foodtown shopping carriage my father had stolen and transformed into a coop. My sister named her Chicky. Her full name was Chicky Feathers Joey Bazzarelli because my father let us each pick a name. My little brother contributed the Joey part, and I nearly blew a gasket.

“Chickens are girls,” I said, losing my patience.

Of course, my father told me to leave my brother alone, unless I wanted a schiaffo across my face. So, yes, the name stayed, but I was very annoyed about it. I still think it's totally stupid. I don’t think I need to tell you that, as a child, I had high blood pressure. Anyway, Chicky never laid eggs. No, she gave us something better, something no other pet could: chicken drama.

One afternoon, while we played outside with the garage door open, someone’s unleashed dog made a beeline for Chicky. It knocked over the Foodtown shopping carriage and, Chicky, understandably, went from frazzled to certifiably nuts, flapping and running across the washer and dryer, sort of flying around the garage, fumbling across my father’s tool-strewn workbench to get away from the dog.

Being that we were kids, home alone, and, well, chicken shit, we scrambled inside to call the police.

“There's a dog,” I said. “Loose in our garage,” I said. “It's going to eat our chicken!”
“Is it your dog?” the cop asked.
“No,” I said. “We don’t know whose dog it is.”
“Whose dog is it?” the cop asked.

My blood pressure rising, I didn’t answer for fear that I’d curse and earn myself multiple schiaffi in the process.

“Well, the dog’s probably just hungry,” the cop finally said. “Leave it alone. Let it eat your chicken. It'll run off after that.”
“But the chicken's ALIVE!” I yelled.

Eventually the police showed up, caught the dog, and made us call our father who got in trouble for not having a permit for Chicky. He couldn't have cared less. I remember him telling the police something about a dog’s not being on a leash being “more danger” than a chicken in someone's garage. Not that any of the hunting dogs my father owned over the years even knew what a leash looked like.

Needless to say, Chicky survived the dog chase, and we continued to keep her. Albeit, illegally.

“No worry,” my father said. “They no do nothing.”

Unfortunately, Chicky didn’t last too much longer. Chicky got cancer. Her right eyeball protruded at least an inch due to the tumor growing behind it. When she’d let you, you could feel the clusters of tumors under her wings. She also couldn't poop anymore because there was a tumor growing on her rectum. My father had to use pliers to pull out the feces she struggled to release. It was heartbreaking, watching her suffer like that. She really did suffer.

Then, not long after the first tumor appeared, Chicky died. We came home from school and she was gone. I asked my mother if my father had put her out of her misery. He hadn’t.

Recently, over one of our Saturday family lunches that starts at 2 PM and doesn’t exactly end, I brought up the subject of Chicky.

“Really, Dad?” my sister asked. “You didn't kill her?"
“No,” he insisted. “Justa she's die. By sheself. I find dead.”

It was quiet for a beat.

“You know,” I said. “The one time you should have killed a chicken, you didn’t.”