IN GOD'S COUNTRY

Moreen and mom work up the grocery list over cigarettes and Taster's Choice in the breakfast room. Small black and white set with Good Morning America, small transistor in kitchen plays Luther Vandross and Chaka Khan and Diana Ross, plays softly, trickles amongst talk, the television, the morning. Smoke it swirls up around the brass chandelier and blows out over and around Moreen's thick high afro with black pick stuck in it, handle affixed with large tightly wound black fist. When mom leaves the room Moreen softshoes to cabinet and fills her coffee mug with Chivas. She sees me. She puts two fingers to her lips. Shhh. The Chivas neck clinks on the coffee cup lip. Love me some Dionne Warwick, she says.

She always wants a whole chicken. Lard is white and stiff and Moreen scoops it from its hard plastic bucket marked LARD in red and it goes soft and colorless in the big green enamel fryer. Smells like pork. It pops and cracks as it heats. Moreen quarters the chicken quickly and saves the neck and gizzard and heart and liver on a blue willow saucer. This good, chile, cigarettle dangles from lips. She sips her coffee. Chicken from Claxton Joja she says. You known where dat is? I shake my head no. Never heard none of it myself, she says. Had me that grocee bag, chile. I hand her the brown grocery bag. She crushes it in her big black hands and then smooths it back out.

Moreen shakes flour and corn starch into the bag. She shakes Old Bay and oregano and cayenne pepper into the bag. She tightens the bag end. She shakes it hard. She opens it and shakes salt into the bag. Hand me them drumstick, she says. She drops them in the bag and shakes them, her cigarette granny ash. She opens the bag and takes the drumsticks out and holds them to the fat and slips them in and the grease screams and sizzles and heat rolls up out the fryer and it smells like fried chicken just that instant there, the entire kitchen, even with all the other smells, cigarettes and coffee and the house itself with sweat and flowers and soap and people, it still smells rich and thick of chicken frying.

She softshoes to the cabinet and fills her mug full of Chivas. I can smell it on her when she leans down into my face and says, Chile now you gone do wings n thighs, her eyes big and like micah. I shake the wings and thighs in the bag and put them in the fat and we watch them turn brown and she pulls them from the pot and sets them on the wire rack and dusts them with Old Bay. She looks at me and sees me looking at the chicken and she hands me a drumstick and says, that all you gone get. Its skin cracks when I bite into it and it's spicy and fatty and it makes my lips tingle. She grabs a drumstick too and starts eating and then says, Get me dat presha cooka out the bottom draw, and she put the neck and gizzard and heart and liver in it and pour can Campbells beef broth over it and tighten the lid and set it on. We gone go watch deh pichas, she says. We gone go watch dem while theys cook.

We watch General Hospital and she drinks Chivas and smokes and when it's over she goes into the kitchen and hits the valve and the pressure cooker blows off steam and she waits til it cools and she pulls the guts from the pot and puts them on a plate. Get over heh chile, she says. Moreen shakes hot sauce on them and gives me a piece of gizzard and heart and watches me while I chew them. Dat what dey et in God's country, she says. Streeta gold, sky of blue. She chews meat off the neck and swallows and drags on her cigarette and sips Chivas from the mug.