What would little Abru’s inheritance be? The gravesite of a father she would never know, but whose specter would haunt her entire life. The ashes of her mother’s dreams, which she would taste in her own mouth. Her grandmother’s grief, which could manifest itself only as anger, in a harsh word or a quick slap whenever the little girl did something that reminded Ammi of her dead son. Abru’s life would be marked by hunger—an emotional hunger never sated, its roots in a time before her birth. And the physical hunger, the emptiness in her stomach that would feel as real to her as a shoe or a stone.
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