5
Emergency MeetingThe loss of Yudel's fingers and its many consequences necessitated an emergency meeting on the patio. The family, of course, did not tell Yudel and Fern that it was an emergency. The patio, a thin strip of broken concrete between the back of my grandparents' house and their garage, was usually reserved for Sundays and American holidays. They never met on a Jewish Holiday, save Sukkoth. Above and around it hung electric lines, phone lines, and clotheslines, sagging with the weight of memories and underwear. An occasional shard of peeled paint would float down from one of the surrounding apartment buildings as if descending from the heavens. My mother always considered those motes an omen, but of what she never said.
A curtain of dust in the garage could be seen when th
