My Gentle Barn Read Free

around her head. The neighborhood gang of rogue boys had found her before I did.
    “It’s all your fault!” I yelled that evening as my mom hurried around the kitchen preparing dinner. “You’re the one who’s making all my animals die.”
    “Don’t you talk to your mother that way,” my father called from the living room. A moment later he appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “You apologize right now.”
    “You keep sending them away and making them die!”
    “That’s it. Out you go,” my father said, and he grabbed my arm and ushered me out the back door and locked it after me.
    It was freezing outside and nearly dark.
    “You’ll see,” I shouted at the locked door, my breath making white puffs in the air. “When I grow up I’ll have a huge place full of animals and I’ll show the world how beautiful they are!” I would heal all their hurts and they would heal mine, and anyone who was lonely could come be with us and be healed too.
    Bursting with anger and tears, I ran around to the side of the house, where the big sliding glass window glowed orange with the warmth inside. I could see my dad laughing with my mom, then my little brothers running into the dining room and sitting at the table.
I hate them
, I thought.
I hate my family
. I bent down and pushed the icy snow aside until I found a rock small enough to fit in my hand but heavy enough to break glass. I lifted the rock up and took aim, but then something stopped me. And that something was this thought:
They’re not worth it
.
    I dropped my hand and the rock fell back into the snow. Those people inside were a family I lived with, but clearly I was not a part of them. I was not a part of the orange, warm glow. I was not a part of thelaughter and joy. I was alone, on the outside looking in, and I would need to figure out how to live this life without their love.

    I made a decision when I was eleven that proved to my parents yet again what an odd child I was, and it pushed me even further from the center of my family’s warmth. I came home one day from school very upset. There had been a chicken at school who had sat trembling in a cat carrier in the corner of the room as the screaming kids ran around playing. I knelt down next to the carrier and glanced around, hoping the teachers wouldn’t mind, then I gently brought the terrified chicken out and cradled her in my lap. “It’s OK, girl. You’re all right.” As I petted her and told her how beautiful she was and reassured her that she was safe, she finally began to settle down.
    But soon the principal came in shouting, “Don’t pet that chicken!” She ran over to me and whisked the hen out of my arms. “We’ve got to get it to the slaughterhouse.” She stuffed the chicken back in the cat carrier and rushed out of the room with her. In that moment my whole world changed, for I suddenly understood that it wasn’t a coincidence that
chicken and rice
had the same word in it as
chicken that clucks
.
    At dinner that night, still upset, I announced my decision. “I’m not going to eat animals anymore.”
    “OK, dear,” my mom said. “Now, please eat your chicken soup. It’s getting cold.”
    “Didn’t you just hear me? I’m not going to eat the chicken soup. I don’t want to eat animals anymore.”
    “It’s not an animal. It’s soup,” my dad said, and my brothers started giggling.
    “It
was
an animal, and I’m not eating them anymore.”
    My mom sighed. “Fine. But I’m not going to make you anything special.”
    “OK,” I said. I would make do with pasta and lettuce.
    After a couple of weeks, my parents realized I was actually serious about this, and they started panicking. “You’re not going to get enough protein,” they said. “You’re going to get sick, and you’re not going to grow.”
    If being short was the price to pay for not eating my friends, so be it.

    When I was fourteen—still not eating meat and getting quite tall—my dad announced we were