Now, so long after that cold dark February afternoon, I feel the trembling of her hands in my own as I take an envelope, emblazoned with a foreign postage stamp, from my mailbox. Inside is a letter I could never have expected. Suddenly, fifty years slip away, and I am a little girl again.
Zaydie’s butcher shop smelled of sawdust and raw meat mingled with the stench of plucked chicken feathers. As I stood at the meat counter, the odor traveled up my nose, into the back of my throat. I would try my best not to gag right there in the middle of all those Orthodox ladies who were more interested, it appeared, in poking and sniffing between the legs of their chosen fowl than they were in seeing some kid puking all over their sacred soil. Watching all their jubilant examining and inhaling, I began thinking about creating a perfume for those devout doyennes (what else was I going to do while I stood there waiting)? Now, let’s see, what should I call this perfume? Bloody Dust.
Dead center, amidst all that purple piety, could my irreverent sarcasm be a reflection (already—at so young an age) of my questioning of the Almighty?
“Weird,” the kids in school said. Pointing and whispering was as automatic as pledging allegiance in assembly.
Live chickens squawked in a coop at the back of the store; caged captives refusing to be silenced. Along the side wall, dead ones hung on racks by their feet...
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