Every two weeks or so I am publishing an essay from an emerging writer. This week, we are publishing “Whole Animal” by Mia Golia. Mia is a writer living in upstate New York. She began her career at Death + Taxes, Slice Magazine, and Penguin Random House before moving into food service. She's worked as a private cook, Greenmarket vendor, cheesemonger, caterer, and cashier. Her fiction has appeared in Fractured Literary and The Magnolia Review.
I will tell you a story about my body, and you will be forced to believe it or not. This will be an imposition. Is it possible that you will believe my story at certain points? In other moments, you may feel sure that I’m lying, or I’m delusional, or I’m seeking attention, or something else even more sinister might be true about me. Here’s how it starts: my body is amazing. Incredible. It’s gorgeous, actually. Very strong. Sexy. Moderately stretchy. Sort of okay at athletic things like running. Pretty solid endurance. Good immune system. Granted, I have various pains. We might never know for sure whether they’re real or “in my head.”
I’m the cashier at a whole animal butcher shop. You’re the customer. The cow quarter that comes in has excellent marbling. It’s nearly wagyu quality. We don’t need to get into why. Extrapolate. Use your mind. The cow quarter can’t tell you about itself. Connect its luscious fat to its last living day to its grain bucket to its farmer to its farmer’s hunger to the cow’s appetite to its survival instinct to its domestication to its role in agriculture to agriculture’s role in the economy to the economy’s role in global power to global power’s role in your own blood. My sweet little body can’t lift the cow quarter (can yours?), which is why I can’t be a butcher. Sometimes I pick up a knife, and lots of people lose it. Wise-looking old men with white beards glance at my hand holding this knife and murmur, “I’ll wait for the boss.” Perky middle-aged women drool at my softly curving arm beside a bloody blade and cry, “They’re letting you cut now!” Of course not, girlie girl. They don’t let people like me cut. Haven’t you ever reached your hand toward something that no one said was yours?
It’s a death-dominated workplace first, and then a male-dominated one. And I do love my boys. I can tell you all their star signs. They have aching hearts and strange, specific dreams, and songs that make them cry in winter. They touch my cuts and ask where they came from; they ask if I think I’m gonna make it. They walk behind me with their knives and bone saws, and I let them. They are hell-bent on oppressing me, but we still share a common goal. The goal is to process bodies. Bodies are so seductive. Take this pig head: smooth skin, full cheeks. Those will be guanciale, so you can make genuine carbonara pasta. What could happen to a body because of that pasta? Burn your finger in the boiling water, burn your tongue on the sauce, burn your body into another body and let it dissolve into ash, and let the ash blow into the night sky. The cosmos might hold your human essence and beam it into the crown chakra and remind you that everything you hold dear is the dearest that dear could ever be, and you are hammocked by an ever-flowing river of gifts and that is all brought to you by carbonara.
By the way, we do not process deer because it is forbidden by the USDA (game animals).
Now that we’ve stripped the pig head of its cheeks, we have more to use. What shall we do with the teeth? I bestow them upon a handsome dental student. I am always a little scared of him because I wonder how much my imperfect teeth matter to him. The news ticker at the cash register always reads: do you like everything you saw here? Do you like my teeth? Do you like my skin? Doyoulikedoyoulike? (Once there was a man who asked me how much for my eyes. I told him they weren’t for sale, but I understood his confusion.) The dental student tried to barter water flossers to my boss for the pig skull, but it didn’t work out. He still has to pay $15 for them. What on god’s green earth will he do with that skull? He’ll ride around town for a while with its viscous hematoma coating leaking through the paper bag. Maybe he has to get gas for his car or a Mountain Dew Baja Blast. His guilty pleasure, perhaps. It is the 20th Bajaversary this year. The year of a total solar eclipse. Leap year. These are things that matter as the dental student gets home from his travels and extracts the dead pig’s little rotten teeth. The eyes are still in it, so I wonder if he looks into them while he works. You didn’t think dentists just go straight for human teeth, did you? “I felt bad for him,” the dental student laments to me at a future interaction, during which I become even more terrified of not having dental insurance.
Another thing I don’t have is a car. I used to walk home from work, until one day I was stalked for a mile or so and then assaulted on a street corner at five-thirty in the afternoon. I stood still when I heard the footsteps running up behind me. I stared straight ahead at my home half a block away. I spread my legs wide so I didn’t get knocked over when I was tackled. Then I screamed. His palm was warm as it tried to cover my mouth. The moon was a crescent, and his fingers on my neck were thin and weak. The police decided he must have followed me from somewhere else. They debated the severity of my attack. They asked if I was sure I wanted to report it. Nothing could be done because I never saw a face. I reported it to my boys, and they didn’t like that too much. They told me I shouldn’t walk alone, so I made them follow me around for about a week. Every time I went anywhere—like next door to the storeroom or out front to wait for an Uber—I had to call them by flicking their arms or waving my hands at them. Sometimes they forgot why, but they did make a lot of oaths to me about crushing skulls and whatnot. They asked what this guy looked like.
I said, Listen—some guys are just hands.
One night, not long after, I mistook the sound of my neighbor opening his driveway gate for a criminal. I leapt from my bathtub and stalked around my apartment naked with my kitchen knife. But it was only Craig, whose name might be Greg, who smokes on the front porch and once had a dog named Cuddles. So I cried and poured a glass of wine. Made it to the tub, where my cat was waiting. She fell into the water and also cried, and then we both watched a female celebrity livestream a karaoke session and felt pretty okay. We kept the knife on the toilet seat. I thought about how the day I was assaulted on a street corner had been a terrible day at work. The boys kept insinuating that I was stupid, and drinking beer without me, and guessing my weight. I was so angry that day. So angry I couldn’t listen to music, couldn’t put on the news, couldn’t call up a friend, couldn’t hear anything except the footsteps behind me. It was the perfect day to fight a man over my body. My body, that also wishes to seize what isn’t its.
An old writer came in once and looked around. He whispered to me, “It’s kind of a macho place? But in this day and age, I’m sure…” I leaned back, put my hands on my hips and told him, “I can hold my own,” which surprised him. We talked a bit about sex work and saints (he was pro both), and I gave him my email. Every time I asked him a question about himself, like, “Are you Italian?” or “What do you think will win Best Picture at the Oscars this year?” he would crinkle his eyes at me, point his finger, and suggest that I was only asking such a thing for my own gain. Why are you asking? What does the animal of you want with my meat?
Most people know nothing about whole animal butchery. They only know it is important. It could help them raise their babies right, or detox from heavy metals, or convince their children to come home more. A woman snaps a shot of a pig’s head with a skinning knife stuck out of its forehead. We all know these kinds of images cause great excitement on social media. They are an urgent and heroic return to the abandoned values of the past that made humanity great. And how about you? Do you believe that something so alluring as a well-tied leg of lamb could reestablish the entire social standing of a couple hosting a dinner party? Do you believe that a single strip steak could be enough to convince a woman to give her body and its luscious universe of love to a man? Have you ever tried to use something like this, like pure flesh, to get somewhere new, to fill yourself up with everything you’ve dreamt of in the quivering suspension of night?
A paupiette is a classic French product consisting of a fist-sized ball of ground meat encased in a thin slice of rolled meat, and perhaps caul fat, which is the lace-like fat that surrounds internal organs. Laborious and beautiful, they evoke elegance even when they are raw, like a single, intricate flower. We rarely make them. When my boss, several times a week, says to me, “We need to make paupiettes,” he is speaking in code. He is telling me to discover, by any means possible, the name of the customer I am helping. He is telling me to strike up a conversation with the most reticent old man, who will eventually (once I cajole him with my endless stream of kindness and patience) inform me of his first name (which will be John) and his last name (which will be charming), a tone of formality and pride in his voice. He will be surprised that I cared. He will tell me which is the best Buffalo Wild Wings location in town, and how many good times he had there. He will tell me, in a hushed voice, after he learns that I am married, that I am still gorgeous to him. He will ask, How much for those pretty eyes? And I will take his money with blood beneath my fingernails, because when you butcher the whole animal, there is always blood everywhere.
These eyes are not for sale. These eyes know a ribeye from a strip from a tenderloin from a mock tender from a heart of shoulder from a heart of sirloin from a top sirloin from a bottom round from an eye round from a ribeye, but they don’t know—are these the hands? Are these the fingers? Is this the face I never saw? And will I ever see you again?
I know about your body. The whole animal of it. I know that every week you buy one pork chop, and you used to buy three. I know your spine was crushed by a freight elevator; your son got two concussions last week; your inner ear is malfunctioning; your wife hasn’t cuddled with you since 2014; and ever since you got Covid you can’t eat food that’s been vacuum-sealed. I know exactly how you look when you are ready to consume. I mimic you across the counter; I move in tandem with your body like a mirror, but I am no mirror. I am the butcher, watching you. You tell me everything there is to tell. I trim the fat of your marbled, endless tales and find the musculature of your story. I cut it open and portion it out. I see you enter my shop and I find you fabulous; I find you rich and prime. I am only here for you. Did you know that I grew up as a vegetarian? I still don’t even eat that much meat. But I’ve been able to crush a hard nut open with my bare hands since I was eight years old.
I fall asleep some nights thinking about how I’ll get it right. How I’ll go anywhere in the future, but I won’t do it the way I have been. I can go anywhere when I wear sturdier clothes and walk on the smart side of the street and don’t gaze all around me, crooked fool-like, but walk straight with power. It’s so obvious, I tell myself—it’s so silly, really. A mistake can be corrected. But then I remember my body. I think I told you about it. I think I said it was gorgeous. Oopsie. Did you believe me? I think it doesn’t matter. Since I believe it’s gorgeous, I insist on dressing it with jewels and soft powder paint; straps as delicate as thin linguine; and adorable puppy socks. I will never be this sturdy stockade of impenetrable body.
While we attempt to surpass it; to overcome, deny, exalt it beyond reason; misuse, disabuse; renege upon its promise; simplify it, complicate it; or become its slave and its holy savior; there is nothing we can do but use the body. The body is useful. The hand may be used to hold a knife. The arm may be used to apply force. As it becomes divided, the parts of the body become objects of value. Expensive, coveted, necessary. Manipulated to create identity and meaning. The whole animal in front of us will take time to break down. The first step is to reach out and touch it.
just amazing...didn't plan on reading this but couldn't stop.
This was an enthralling essay- I couldn’t stop reading. It was beautifully written with such a clear voice, I feel like I know the author on some level now.