I never intended, nor dreamed to never see, smell, hear, hold, feed the person I birthed as long as we both had breath in our bodies. But, I also think my ancestors also never intended estrangement to be knitted into our heritage.

My first memory of being sentimental about fried chicken is my grandmother asking me to pluck feathers from chicken wings early as fuck one childhood summer morning. Chicken wings that had been defrosted by allowing only a part of the huge bag from the butcher’s box to sit in water in the sink for a few hours that morning. After rinsing the thawed meat, some went into a baking dish with her secret amalgalm of spices + onions and covered with aluminum foil for the oven. I watched and assisted as she folded the remaining wingtips behind the drums, and dropped them in her prized big, yellow Tupperware bowl. The sentimentality I have for that damn yellow bowl reinforced the moments spent. Those diligently folded triangles of flesh and bone was shaken with intentional grace within a plastic Shop ‘n Save grocery store bag. That bag initially carried food to supplement our freezer and pantry stocks with perishables purchased with pennies. Pennies that were few and far between bills, summer break hunger, and raising grandchildren. Plastic grocery bags that the grandkids would race to peer into, hoping for a last minute blessing of a name brand cereal… was now brimming with flour, spices, salt, pepper, and chicken wings. The same bags were used as small trash bin liners, storage for haircare supplies, lunchtotes, and shower caps. Thinking of her now, I think of the parallel between my grandmother, and many of us who are held by the efforts of our ancestors:

All I could think about as she shook the wings, was the smell you have to acclimate to as we stood and waited at Don’s Meat Market/Soulard Market for our number to be called. Most of our meat came from butcher counters. Waiting for our number meant mentally preparing to help my grandparents load the “butcher box” into the basket, and then into the trunk of the barely functional late 70s Oldsmobile Cutlass. To watch other people buy all kinds of cuts we could not afford, was confusing and enfuriating. We spent a few hundred on buying a whole sections of animals to just get through the summer. And the whole meat queue would happen again in the winter. If we were really good, my grandmother would buy us a box of Otter Pops if they were on sale. She would try to slide them in the midst of all of the boxes and butcher paper for camoflauge. But, they were always uncovered as we unloaded everything from the car. Or, as they made their way into the big deep freezer in the dining room corner. So my brain was simultaneously recalling smell, emotions, efforts, and rewards just from the sound and sight of chicken being dredged in a grocery bag.

After they were doused, she had me put four heaping cooking spoons of shortening into the deep cast iron skillet on the front left eye of the stove. She turned on the gas burner, and I stood there and watched her in awe. The way she took a little bit of seasoned dredge and threw it into the grease to check frying temperature. The way she ensured each piece was laid symmetrically in the skillet. The way the grease level increased to cover all of the wings in the pan just right as she laid the last piece. I still believe that she was magic. Just to know the right amounts of things at the right time, despite what is standard… magic. It is the smell of cayenne, paprika, Lawry’s seasoning salt, and some other stuff I aint devulging here…that still puts me in a bittersweet place. She would let me watch the skillet while she went to the bathroom, or let me help her clean up. This assignment of tasks in the kitchen affirmed me in a larger family that did not know how to love a kid like me. I think at times I was there in that kitchen for moments that humanized my grandmother to me. She was not just my grandmother. She stepped in for my birth mother when the State was attemping to stamp us out.

This early morning assault on my hunger centers was soothed with grits, eggs and pan cooked bacon in the oven. I still think about what time she had to be up, or if she even slept to have breakfast and dinner knocked out for all of us before 7 am. It was my grandparents, two older siblings, a younger sibling, me, and at times at least two to four cousins at the house in the summer... and often times another relative who was navigating “hard times”. Free Breakfast and Lunch programs served at our church along with vacation bible school (VBS) kept us fed and “out of harm’s way” for the most part. But there would be no VBS, red and white checkered paper lunch trays, or little cardboard milk and juice that day. Just early morning food preparation guising historical and present-day pain, poverty, and grief.

Six chicken wings with drums and tips fried to a perfect golden crisp were wrapped in aluminum foil and placed in a labeled brown paper bag with napkins from Arby’s. My grandfather picked up two sets the “5 for $5” roast beef sandwich deal as a treat for the grandkids the week prior. First of the month blessing. Five dollars used to feed five mouths for a meal. Five dollars was a quarter tank of gas to get my aging caretakers to their much need healthcare appointments. We always had a drawer of condiments, utentils, and napkins. I now take that as a hallmark of poverty, that is now marketed as “sustainable practices”. My grandmother, and I got into the car and my grandfather drove us to a “rural correctional facility” AKA prison where my uncle was due to Reagan and his Hollywood Hoe-Down henchmen and women. At one point, my grandmother’s eldest and youngest sons would be at the same facility. And only a few times would she bring one, or a few of the grandchildren along for the long drive. I still am grateful for her choosing to take me, regardless. Whether the act was intentional or due to situational necessity, it is a life memory education I needed.

To sit in that car, with that smell, holding complex memories and feelings, with family on the way to see family that would never be able to escape the shackles of a biased and manufactured justice system…as a child is still perplexing for me as an adult. I think part of the reason I am so pissed off and turned off by Hattie B’s and any other White Southerner appropriating and profitting off of fried chicken wings, drums, thighs is because of what memories it holds for me and the grief-filled history of its’ respite for Black bodies. I do not believe that White Southerners specifically can carry a banner of success using food that is steeped in beatings, blood, and breaking free of a country that categorized my ancestors as chattel. We were considered commodities, just like the meats we processed, prepared for colonialists. We were given wings, that now racism and classism use to fly banners of appropriation for capitalism’s sake. And classism via capitalism says that what was scraps and trash for the slave, the service workers on trains, care packages for long car trips where Black bodies could not just pull over for a bite…look at the price of wings versus breasts on a chicken carcass. Look at the price of oxtails. Look that the price and profit concerning anything of popularity that came from my ancestors’ poverty and abuse. The love of chicken tropes/criticisms are done to us daily, but I am being “too much” by passing on Hattie B’s? On Chik-Fil-A? On Popeye’s? On KFC? I fully understand that poor, White Southerners endured suffering on the account of this multi-layered fuckery we call “Southern Hospitality”, but I am not going to make concessions. The national dish of England is Chicken Tikka Masala…but again, I am not going unpack why that is PEAK COLONIALIST, CAPITALIST, RACIST, PATRIACHAL bullshit. And why y’all will give grace to people who deny grief for personal profit, but deny grace to people who give grief for personal liberation?

And now as I sit and reflect on this curse of estrangement, I see my uncles treated as commodities, despite their humanity. I see my grandmother attempting to relay love despite grief, separation and weariness. I see an all too familiar presence in my bones. To be separated in a way that exhausts hope because there are layers of intricacies within present systems of existence that maintain the distance. To believe in a place beyond this where reconciliation is inevitable.