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| Story ID: | 2703 |
| Written by: | Zofia Danute Barisas (bio, contact, other stories) |
| Story type: | Family Memories |
| Writers Conference: | $500 2007 Family Memories Writing Project |
| Location: | Ajijic Jalisco Mx Mexico |
| Year: | 2007 |
| Person: | my father and me |
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Hunger One of the warehouses on the waterfront in Montreal held nothing but wholesale butcher shops. My father used to take me with him when I was fifteen to buy meat in bulk. We lived on a farm and whenever he went to Montreal I went with him. At this warehouse you went up a few steps to wide double doors. Beyond stretched a brightly lit passage, some twenty feet across, that seemed to go on forever. Equally brightly lit butcher shops lined both sides. A layer of fresh sawdust covered the floor. He walked fast. He did everything fast. I followed him down the centre of the aisle in a narrow skirt and a thin sweater on this new body I was still getting used to. Beef carcasses hung from hooks behind glass windows, display cases held slabs of red meat, gutted chickens were piled up near mounds of sausages, whole livers lay in white enamel trays. All these dead animals, quartered and sliced and ground created an atmosphere of suffocating carnality. The butchers came from behind their counters in their blood-stained aprons and stood in the doorways grinning, appraising me. No women went there. Men's eyes and the looks in them. I felt myself burn red. It was as if they knew something. they new what my purpose was, and it made them laugh. They were top dogs to my ripening young girl. It was that coarse. My father rushed on to the far end where he used to buy his meat, oblivious it seemed to what was going on, but seeing my being seen; he never missed anything. And I, wanting him to see me, thought 'look, daddy, they're looking at me, they want me, see, I'm worthy, I'm worth loving.' I was so hungry to be held. No one ever touched me at home. |
