Death of a Goat Nita Noveno I am still young and they are old, these dark, Filipino men. I am at the window. Minutes earlier I was standing outside watching them take the goat to our swing set (or was it the jittery pig?) It is a late spring day, perhaps it is early summer. The temperature is mild, warm even for this time of year, somewhere in the high 60’s. The men are speaking in Ilocano, my father is one of these men. They have low, defined voices. They say things and laugh. They wear short sleeves. I watch them from the porch. My sister does too. We don’t like what is going to happen. They take the white goat with a rope tied around its neck and bring it to our swing set. There’s a fire starting at my father’s makeshift outdoor grill. He built it himself out of lean tree limbs and twining, flat boards for a thin roof. No walls. A U-shaped cement fireplace on the ground, behind it a mound of earth covered with moss and short hemlock and pine trees. There’s coal in the fireplace and an iron grill over the crude cement structure that holds in the coal. The goat is baa-ing. It scared me for the week that we’ve owned it. One time it escapes from its rope and is wandering around our car. I’m terrified of it. I run inside the car and wait for it to leave or for someone to find me and take the goat away. The men have put a huge silver bowl on the ground near the orange and red swing set and my father has a butcher knife in his hand. He sharpens it. My sister and I know what is going to happen. We can’t stop it from happening. I don’t think we ever tried. Before they were always pigs. Their squealing was like listening to a human scream. We can’t take it. Now, it’s the goat. The goat I’m scared of. Now, I’m scared for it. I go inside the house. We go inside the house as the men continue speaking in Ilocano and laughing and maybe even drinking. I notice the sky briefly and Uncle Pete who is the largest of the men. He has a cigar in the corner of his mouth. They’re all cigar smokers. Uncle Pete has a raspy voice. He likes to take our noses in between his fingers and put them in his pocket. I’m inside now, my bare feet on our shag carpet that’s a mix of browns and rusts. The walls are faux paneling. There are wooden ornaments of dancers in mid-dance called the Tinikling hanging on the wall. The curtains are a gold color. There are sheer curtains behind those curtains. I look through the window at the men. My mother and other women are in the kitchen cooking, preparing a big Filipino meal… rice, lumpia, pancit. It smells like garlic, oil, fried foods, onion, soy sauce. My sister goes to the fridge to get something to drink. I’m making this part up like the small details of the food, but these things did exist in my past, in similar, if not exact, moments. It’s time. My sister and I go to our parents’ bedroom. We don’t want to hear the inevitable. Our parents’ room has a red carpet, not shag, but slightly textured. There’s a dark brown back board/bookshelf at the head of my parents’ queen-sized bed with their books in it. My mother is reading a paperback entitled Coma. We’ve seen the movie. It scared me this movie, all those lifeless bodies. I remember the lead actress, Genevieve Beaujould’s full lips, her horrifying discovery of the bodies, and her escape. Our escape is in our parents’ room. There’s a large statue of the Virgin Mary on a large clothing shelf that my father made. It is made of particle board and its sliding doors are made of a ridged plastic. The Virgin Mary is in a light blue robe and has on a white head covering. She looks gentle, compassionate, a slight smile on her face. There is a small brown serpent at her feet. I don’t like this serpent. Sometimes this statue gives me the creeps. My sister and I are now at my father’s closet. His suits hang there—suits from the 40’s and 50’s. Fully-padded shoulders, gray, speckled material. Sharp and gangster-like. His trousers are baggy and stylish, complimenting his lean body. We kneel in the closet now because we hear the inevitable happen. We cover our ears, but really it’s inescapable. The smell of fried food and warmth is comforting, but only for a fleeting moment. The bleating sound cuts sharply, enters through the walls of the house, enters our parents’ bedroom. We have our hands over our ears, but we can still hear it. We can even see it. Blood pouring from the animal’s neck like a beautiful, red waterfall into the silver bowl. In a few hours, it will make itself onto our kitchen table, brown, charred, smelling as pungent as the taste of its meat. Its blood becomes a thick, dark soup. I never drink it.