Free Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales by Ali Wentworth

place on Wednesday, when the whole town would come over to our house at nine o’clock in the evening. My Spanish family had the only television in southern Spain, and Wednesday night was Dallas night. The talk of the stall mucking was what nasty thing J. R. Ewing (pronounced Hera Arra Oowing) was up to. The fifty townspeople would cram into the living room, saddling one another, to get a glimpse of the fourteen-inch black-and-white TV. There would be deafening silence until Linda Gray (whose voice was dubbed by a Hispanic male wrestler) screamed an ultimatum at the stable boy. The room would shake their heads with gasps and tsk s. One great-great-great-grandmother would stand up and, shaking her fists, scream at the actors as if certain she was getting through to them. My favorite moment of the evening was when our dog, Carne, would excrete the most heinous fart imaginable, and my father, without turning to face the canine, would spray generic room deodorizer in the dog’s direction. After a childhood of black-tie dinners for the likes of Lady Bird Johnson, this was what I called a party!
    It was during this summer that I learned that a pet could be your best friend and also your lunch. You could dress them in your doll’s clothes and name them Buttercup or slaughter them over a bloody slab of stone out back. It was really a cultural choice.
    Jose and I were playing our usual game—How many cookies can you cram in your mouth without choking?—when my mother waddled into the kitchen with a chore for me. “Yo necessito pollo por favor.”
    I knew she needed something, but pollo was drawing a blank. “Pollo,” she repeated sternly.
    “Like on horses? With a mallet?” We continued with this Abbott and Costello routine until finally Jose got up and starting clucking around the room. “Ohhh . . . chicken,” I realized. “I’ll go to the market,” I assured her, using my fingers to mime the universal symbol of money. She and Jose looked at me with confusion. And then, like a Vegas bookie, I mimed counting money. She kept shaking her head. Perhaps I could just charge it to their account.
    I walked down the parched road, choking on dust as I made my way into town. And by town, I mean one store of groceries and sundries the size of a New York kitchen run by a cantankerous old lady with no teeth (you know her as the lady who berates the people who live in the TV). I had gone about twenty-five yards when Jose, breathless, beckoned me back. I assumed my mother was adding to the list, maybe fruit roll-ups or coffee Häagen-Dazs. I, like my Spanish family, was now obsessed with all the gifts of the culinary world. I prayed for six meals a day; two hours between feedings felt like starvation and abuse, no matter how many lard balls and chocolate I ate to tide me over.
    I slogged back up the road and followed Jose around the back of the house to an arid field. There was a chicken coop and loose (or as the Californians say, cage-free) hens chortling about. He pointed to one. “Uh-huh,” I said. “Is that your favorite?” He repeatedly pointed to the hen. “What? You want me to name it?” And then Jose made a gesture normally only associated with serial killers and Robert De Niro. He took his two palms and made a snapping noise while he turned them swiftly counterclockwise.
    “KILL IT? Are you out of your fucking mind?” Jose chased the chicken around for ten minutes, occasionally slipping on bird turds, until he snagged it by its ruffled left wing. He placed it in my arms. I don’t know if you’ve ever held a live chicken, but it’s like holding a puppy after it’s drunk ten espressos. Jose placed my hands around the chicken’s neck and then had the audacity to smile. I tried to twist the neck, but it was more of a massage than a proper wrenching; the bird did seem to relax. Finally, Jose, who had reached the breaking point, so to speak, grabbed the chicken, bent it over his knee, and snapped the neck. As easily