Every Bitter Thing

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Dad was always friends with butchers. No matter where we lived—and we lived in a lot of places—Dad found someone to feed his craving for steak. When I was twelve and we lived at 22 Tonawanda Drive, Dad found a Lebanese butcher named Sid who ran the meat market in a small IGA grocery store. But Dad never bought a steak from the display case. He always had Sid show him the choicest sirloin and filet mignon—meat that other shoppers had no idea existed, or so it seemed the first time I accompanied Dad on a buy. Unlike the other shoppers, we walked behind the counter, invited by Sid. He smiled wide and I noticed he was missing a tooth, a canine, on the left side.

I followed Dad, who walked like he knew how everything was to be conducted and would result, into the open freezer. A yellow light bulb hung above us and a sad-colored cement floor was below us. I breathed extra deep, exhaled, and watch a faint cloud of my breath. Sid partly closed the freezer door and walked around the other side of the wooden table in the middle of the freezer. Boxes sat on the table, and from them Sid pulled out huge hunks of meat. This meat, I was certain, never made it out front to the display case. Knowing this exhilarated me, made me feel special, and it was all due to Dad.

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