3: 3
3.
"You want me to kill the chicken?" I pointed at myself.
Darlene looked at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "What else? Before I married Xavier's father, I worked in his family's house for half a year. Everybody praised me for being hardworking and thorough."
"You think a lazy woman ever gets a man to want her?"
"It's my birthday today, and I'm in a good mood, so I'll teach you how to kill a chicken."
I looked over at Xavier. He assumed I was about to refuse, rolled his eyes, and his face soured all over again.
"Weren't you the one who kept whining that you wanted to come to my house? My mom's being kind enough to teach you, and you still have to go and upset her?"
I've been terrified of sharp-beaked animals since I was a child. Xavier knew that.
In my last life I begged Xavier for a long time, and he still made me kill the chicken.
He even said his mother making me do it was for my own good, and told me if I couldn't kill a chicken I might as well get out of his family's house.
I was wearing a white dress at the time.
I begged him over and over to let me change into something else, but Xavier's face was pure impatience.
"Aren't you the one who's used to wearing dresses? So what if you kill a chicken in a dress?"
The Simmons family was cruel, and even the chicken they raised was no better. The moment it saw I was scared, it came straight for me.
That big rooster chased me all over the yard. I fell more than once, and my dress got torn to pieces.
In the end the rooster crashed into the ground, and only then did I hack it once and get the thing killed.
The blood came spurting out and splattered across my face. I was so frightened I burst into tears, and out of instinct I turned to Xavier for comfort.
But he shoved me away in disgust and said I was making a fool of myself.
Darlene blamed me too, said I couldn't even do a little thing like this right, that she'd wasted all her good thoughts on me.
And the crowd laughed and laughed, said they'd never seen anyone so stupid, actually getting chased around by a chicken.
Seeing that I hadn't said anything for a while, Xavier gave me a push. "What are you doing? You really want to make my mom angry?"
He nearly knocked me over.
Coming back to myself, I said quietly, "But I'm really clumsy. Do you really want to teach me how to kill a chicken?"
When Darlene saw I wasn't refusing, her face eased a little. She picked up the knife lying nearby and handed it to me. "Go on."
I caught hold of Darlene's hand and asked, puzzled, "But how do I know when it counts as killed?"
Darlene let out a snort of laughter, as if she'd heard the funniest joke in the world. "How? Just let the blood out and that's it."
I nodded like I finally understood. "Then if I don't do it well, you can't blame me for it."
"Fine, I won't blame you."
As I walked toward the chicken coop, the chatter drifted up behind me.
"Isn't that big rooster of the Simmons' fierce as anything?"
"Sure is. Just a few days ago Darlene got pecked by it herself, scared her half to death."
"To kill this rooster today she even called in Grant Lawrence the hog butcher specially. Sending this girl to do it, isn't she deliberately making things hard for her?"
"Ugh, why do you care so much? Still, getting to watch a city miss kill a chicken today, now that's a rare sight."
They had no idea. The rarer sight was still to come.
Darlene said letting the blood out counts as killed, so today I'd let hers out properly.
I flipped the latch open with practiced ease, snatched up the rooster, and carried it over to Darlene like I was showing off.
"Auntie, look, I caught it!"
Darlene was stunned. "You caught it, just like that?"
Thanks to Darlene in my last life, I really did kill plenty of chickens after I married Xavier.
Darlene smoothed the hair at her forehead and gave me a sidelong look.
"Isn't that what work is. If you ask me you're just lazy, and it takes a—"
"Aaah!"
Darlene never finished the sentence before she was screaming.
