Undressing the Turkey
by Albert DiBartolomeo

Purchased unfrozen some days earlier, the turkey has been sitting in the bottom of our refrigerator like some alien blastocyst cut short in its gestation. Nearby is a litter of already boiled sweet potatoes appearing as though they might migrate toward the turkey and suckle from it. There's a "pop up" button in the turkey's breast like a Purple Heart and thin blood has leaked from the turkey into the pan in which it sits.

Among the jars of mayonnaise, the salad dressing, the peanut butter and jelly, even the suddenly discovered furry thing that used to be actual human food, the turkey looks incongruous, the center element in some practical joke. Wrapped in plastic that hugs it as snugly as Spandex, the turkey resembles a slightly misshapen cannonball. I imagine it being shot from a piece of ordnance during the Civil War.

I stoop down and take the bird from the shelf, carefully, since it's large enough to rupture a spinal disc. I take the bird to the already scrubbed kitchen sink and plunk it down. Once, a turkey of similar proportions—when have they not been monstrous?—slipped from my hands and struck the floor with a sound only flesh hitting an immovable surface can make. It did not go boink. This resulted in 15 minutes of additional ablutions, which I did not reveal to my guests.

Although I can tell where the thighs and scrawny wings are, the turkey, still in its snug plastic, seems at this point never to have been animate, a living organism. But when I slit the plastic, the turkey acquires some semblance of life, if only because it becomes a wrestling opponent that I have been called upon to subdue.

Although quite dead, the bird is formidable. And not just because it's heavy and slippery; I must do things to it that make me want to become a strict vegetarian or at least to flee to some distraction out of the house. I'm talking about the actual cleaning of the bird, the chore that I have gotten up early from bed to do, which acquaints me with turkey anatomy more intimately than I'd care to experience. My ministrations seem gynecological and I'm almost embarrassed to have my hands go where they must. But the menu calls for roasted turkey, and although the bird has been decapitated, plucked and gutted, there is still some final preparation necessary before my wife takes over.

I peel back the loose skin at the turkey's neither ends and extract its once vital organs and neck, and set these on a plate. I recognize the heart and the liver, whose texture and color are like nothing else I know, but after many years of cleaning turkeys I still don't know what the other items are that fall under the category of "giblets." Kidneys? Spleen? Pancreas? It's a mystery. I do understand that the giblets are edible, that they are used to make the gravy, that they are given to the yard cats as a special treat when all the guests have left, but beyond that I'm clueless.

With the giblets and neck removed, I now clean the turkey in earnest. There are always bits of I'm not sure what clinging to the bird's interior, and removing them is tedious. It helps to have "Madame Butterfly" or Motown playing at high volume, but with the hour still early and uncomfortable about waking my neighbors, I do my work in silence. Or I sing a little myself. But this is a distraction that, my hands deep in the cavity of a 20-pound carcass, I cannot maintain. Really, I am closer to weeping than to any of the joy that holidays bring.

When through nitpicking the turkey's insides, I wash down the bird as if it's been exposed to plutonium dust. After rinsing off the dimpled skin, I lift the bird clear of the sink, risking back spasms, so that the turkey can drain completely. I hold the turkey beneath the wingpits not unlike a child. After flip-flopping it around in the sink for the last half hour, I now handle the bird with care, even affection. We've come a sort of detente, the bird and me.

I place the turkey in the roasting pan, where I pat it down with paper towels. The transit to the oven will not take place for some hours, after the turkey has been covered with butter and stuffed, so I return it to the refrigerator. In the middle of the afternoon it will resemble something from a Norman Rockwell painting. And then we'll eat it.