She shot back, “You wouldn’t know a good thing even if five hundred pounds of it came and sat on your face!” When she took these dishes to school, other children would tease her about the smell. There were so many ways to cook these: in a broth with ginger and noodles, grilled over charcoal fire, stewed with fresh dill, or the way the child liked them best-baked in the oven with lemongrass and salt. The butcher either threw the stuff away or had it out on display for cheap, so the child’s mother bought bags and bags from him and put them in the fridge. Then he’d hand over a newspaper to the child, who unfolded sheets on the floor, forming a square, and around that square they sat down to have dinner.įor dinner, it was cabbage and chitterlings. When he came home from work, the first thing he always did was kick off his shoes. The child’s father had painted this, but he didn’t paint anymore. That brown bend was supposed to be a bridge, and the blots of red and orange brushed in around it were supposed to be trees. On the wall of the main room was a tiny painting with a brown bend at the centre. The family lived in a small apartment with two rooms.

If the contents were important, a phone call would be made to the home. And as she did with all the other notes that went home with the child, her mother removed the pin and threw it away. The note had been typed out, folded over two times, and pinned to the child’s chest. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. Published by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, in 2020.

How do you pronounce knife