On Oral History
And asking, and peanut butter candy, and gutting chickens
I was twenty-one years old the first time I sat down to ask my grandfather about how his father, Aubrey, was murdered. And I was nervous. These are not things we talk about.
Except that we did. We talked about it. That day, and many days afterward. And I carried that difficult conversation across Evangeline Parish, and beyond, for the next six years—to my aunts and my uncles, to the members of my community, to my father.
In my mission to unbury the devastating details of my family’s past, I’ve learned something that has become critical in my journey towards becoming a writer, a chronicler, a journalist: when people don’t talk about things, sometimes—not always, but sometimes—it is only because they’ve never been asked.
I learned the importance of asking, and of asking now. Memory is perhaps one of the most fickle and untrustworthy things in this world. With every second that passes, it is actively fading into the ether. And it holds everything.
My great grandmother Emily lost her husband in one of the most horrific ways one can imagine. She watched, tied to her bed, as a stranger took him away at knifepoint, then she waited and prayed through ten days of pure chaos that he would come home.
And he didn’t.
She lived a lifetime after that trauma, and by the time I got the chance to know her, she was only ever my sharp-witted, curly headed Mawmaw—who made the most incredible peanut butter candy and let me drink coffee milk in her kitchen. She lived in the suite attached to the back of my grandfather’s house, and in the summer we’d go there almost every day to swim in the pool—running to the back in our swimsuits to quickly kiss her before cannon-balling into the deep end.
She died twenty-three years after her husband was so violently taken from her—in her sleep, in her own bed, surrounded by the people she loves most. I was ten years old, and I never knew. I don’t even think I really understood that she had ever had a husband.
All these years later, I would give anything to ask her about her life. About how she survived. About how someone survives that sort of loss, and all of the losses that came after.
The beautiful thing is that even though I never got the chance—someone else did.
In 1992, four years before I was even born, my Aunt Cindy thought to ask my MawMaw Emily, age 78 at that time, about all that she had been through. She sat down with her in her apartment at my grandfather’s house, and turned on a voice recorder. And she asked her all of the things that I, in 2017, would be dying to know.
And so I have these answers, articulated in that beautiful Old World Cajun accent that has almost entirely died out now that almost no one learns French first anymore, in a voice I haven’t heard since I was a child:
The purpose of my being strong like I have always tried to be was mostly for my children. I didn’t want—God gave me the knowledge and the ability to protect myself from being a misery to my children. I knew that it was hard enough without them having to worry about me … My life is nothing. It’s my people. My family. My family that holds so much to me.
When Aunt Cindy told her, as I longed to, that she’s built a beautiful legacy of survival and strength, I cried alone in my college bedroom listening to MawMaw say, Cindy, if I would die today, I won’t be sad. I am ready. Because I am going to meet them, and they’ll be waiting for me … But now I’m helping with the third generation. And I’m so very happy to do it. I’m grateful that I’m able to do it.
This artifact that is her voice still shakes me, the way it reverberates through the decades. As I went about my own work of reporting and recording, I stowed away those testimonies with a renewed appreciation for the work, and its significance even beyond this book.
So much of what I’ve collected are stories of suffering, some of the most difficult moments in my family members’ lives. But much, much more of it is an assemblage of moments—pieces of the past, tiny memories that have stuck. Clues to who my family is, who my great grandparents, Emily and Aubrey, were.
When I interviewed Uncle Richard (Cindy’s husband) in 2017, I captured yet another piece of the woman who was my MawMaw Emily, lingering in his memory—now to be carried into the future. All these years later, Uncle Richard remembers every detail of how his grandmother would clean a chicken, or a duck—the intricate process that brought forth the Sunday dinners of his childhood.
In writing this book, I’ve done an unbelievable amount of research, and gathered so many fascinating stories about my family history, my cultural heritage, political corruption in Louisiana, the Dixie Mafia, the legacy of Angola Penitentiary—and that’s only scratching the surface.
But Uncle Richard’s account of MawMaw killing, plucking, gutting, and cooking a chicken might be one of my favorite artifacts of all. And in the spirit of Easter, and family, and feasts, I’d love to share it with you.
I’ve transcribed the account below, but I promise that the best way to experience it really is to just listen:
I can tell you how Mawmaw cleaned a chicken to the tee. And I don’t know why, and, and so many people say, ‘Man, why you fightin’ with that so much?’ I don’t know why. I say, “My grandmother taught me how to do it.”
Her hands were—well you know how her hands were, if you remember ‘em. Her knuckles were, these knuckles were big and full of arthritis, you know, so her hands were like that. But she would actually go in that house … and I’m … before, you know, before she got, before PawPaw died and all that, when she was strong. She was a strong woman, now. Yeah, she’d slap the shit out of me, now. But yeah she’d go in there. They had some pens, with a little room, but 10 or 15 pens they’d put those hens in, and then feed ‘em until they were ready to kill ‘em. And she’d reach in there and grab that hen by the neck and shake it and just knock it on the ground. And let ‘em flop around.
But when we went into that outdoor kitchen, I can remember Tonya at that stove—that same stove—and she would scald those chickens. And she’d, they’d scald ‘em, wet ‘em good like that, then she’d give it to Mawmaw right at the sink, and MawMaw would stand right there by the stove on that end of that sink, and she’d pluck those chickens. She’d pluck ‘em. And pluck everything off of ‘em. And she always had a little pot of water with some rags in it, some rough rags. See that rag over there how it’s rough? And then once she got that chicken, all the feathers off, she’d take that scalded rag like that, and she’d rub those chickens. She’d rub ‘em, and it’d take off all a those little hairs, them little fine fine hairs. And there wasn’t a feather on that chicken! Not even at the end of the wing. You know?
Now people clean ducks, they just cut the wing off and throw ‘em away and … most people. If I’m cooking em, I go over the ducks, I pull out—I pull out every pin feather. MawMaw was like that, if they had pin feathers, every pin feather. And she didn’t have no fingernails—she was like me. But she’d do that and she’d get a knife and she’d put that blade underneath there and pull every one out. And she’d scald ‘em and then she’d put them and let them dry. And then she would pass them over the fire, and burn off all of the little fine—just some fine fine little hairs. And she’d burn that off. And then they’d gut ‘em.
She wouldn’t keep the feet, but on those hens—the pointe-doit—which is the egg sack, you know it’s a sack and it can be about that long, and that’s where the eggs all produced in that hen. She’d take all a that out, and a lot of times, if it was a laying age hen, they’d have the little tiny yella eggs in there. She’d keep all a that. And she would never—when she took that out, she wouldn’t wash it. Because it was inside that chicken, and her chickens were clean, now! Whenever she got the feathers off and it was time to gut ‘em, she’d take her time and she’d cut ‘em, and get those guts out—everything out, without busting a gut or anything. It was like doing surgery on a person. But she’d—And on the roosters, she’d keep the testicles on the rooster. She’d put that in the gravy, all of that would go in the gravy. And that was special special, now. You know, when she’d cook. Yeah. The heart, the gizzard, the livers, the pointe-doit, the testicles on the roosters.
Just really really, she was so intricate with all a that, whether it was a wild duck or a yard chicken, or a yard duck, it was all the same to her, you know? But Mawmaw was at the helm. She was the woman.
Upcoming Appearances:
April 15: I’ll be joining dozens of other Louisiana musicians, visual artists, and speakers for Honest Art Productions’ “Soul Connection” healing arts gathering. By bringing together community organizations and creatives “promoting unity, peace, love, and wellness”—Acadiana storytellers Syd Horn and Olivia Perillo are hoping to inspire “radical change” and “radical care” through creative collaborations. The event will begin at 4 pm at Meche’s Donuts on Willow Street in Lafayette, and will continue on throughout the night with performances of Cajun music, spoken word, comedy, and more. My reading is scheduled for 9:50 pm.
April 22: As part of Baton Rouge’s annual Delta Mouth Literary Festival—hosted by LSU’s English Department, The Southern Review, New Delta Review, and the English Graduate School Association—I’ll be taking part in a reading and Earth Day panel discussion on the topics of Louisiana bodies of water, joined by Louisiana poet Alison Pelegrin and moderated by Dr. Chris Barrett from LSU’s English Department. The panel takes place at noon at the LSU Coastal Ecosystem Design School, and is just one of the festival’s many exciting events, featuring a slate of remarkable writers I’m honored to share space with.
Great story! I remember my grandmother doing the same thing with us helping her pluck the feathers off the chicken! It was indeed an intricate process!
Great story. I remember my mother doing the same thing with our chickens. I remember us butchering hogs and about the only thing we lost was the squeal. My grandkids would die. I remember the kidnapping and murder of Mr. Aubrey like it was yesterday. It was very sad for our community. Hard to understand.