Summary

Chapter 2 begins with Marta describing her father's work "dismember[ing]" (21) animals once he and her mother moved to Barren Shoal. These animals were either "too diseased to be disguised and dressed as meat" (21) or were not meant for human consumption at all, such as work horses or stray dogs. The cutters, like Solomon, broke down the animals and the loaders shoveled the remains into vats to be rendered into grease or glue. Everything else was burned in ovens, which produced the area's distinct and repulsive smell.

Marta's brother, Noah, was born in 1914 shortly after her parents' arrival. Marta was born five years later, followed by sister Helen three years after that. The elderly Marta remembers that her grandmother was still in far away Zyrmuny, knitting baby blankets that she would never send to Marta's mother but slept with every night as "the only...