Page 1 of This Vicious Hunger

I am no stranger to the intricate rituals of death.

From the age of five I assisted my father in the sepulchre, guiding mourners from the gilded coffin we called the “cradle” to the pyre room below, where tradition dictated that the sisters and wives and mothers and daughters must shear their incense-braided hair to the chin at minimum and toss the rest to the flames.

Upstairs, my father stood by while husbands and fathers and sons and brothers watched to ensure the cradle was engulfed entirely by the fragrant smoke.

From the age of eight I was the one who held and rang the little brass bell, its mournful peal announcing the beginning of the Silence—the multiday vigil held by the women around the freshly cleansed coffin.

I ensured that no word was uttered, no food or drink except for water passed their lips, and any insults upon the house of the departed were reported.

By thirteen, after the death of my mother, it was I, and not my father, who reported the infractions to the fathers and husbands: a sliver of bread for the girl whose twin had died of the influenza, placed between her cracked lips by her own aunt; the pregnant widow who fainted beside the cradle and could only be roused by the dabbing of the syrupy communal wedding wine between her lips; the crone who, having lost her husband and son, in a fit of grief made to return to the pyre room and throw herself into the pit rather than face her remaining life as a widow at the mercy of her son-in-law.

I did not see the punishments, but I took them to my bed every night as if they were my own.

Death was indisputable. At times I both hated and loved these ritual beats, as familiar as my own skin.

Just as there were those whose job it was to pioneer celebration—births and marriages and comings of age—my father always said it was our job as the chaperones of death to defend decorum, honour, and custom.

When my own father died two weeks into my marriage, I returned to the sepulchre and endured these old traditions easily.

I had no desire to speak or eat anyway, wrapped as I was in my grief, and readily accepted the customary three-day vigil commanded by my husband.

Three days of my life to honour my father and his decades of devotion to his craft seemed a fair price.

I cut huge swathes of my braided hair for the fire, sweat pouring from every inch of me as I leaned close over the pit and sacrificed everything I could to the flames—determined that, although my father had no other family, his cradle would not go uncleansed.

Now it is my husband in the cradle upstairs, his body lying in silk-lined gold.

It is not my father speaking the last rites, not his gentle hands that have arranged Aurelio’s limbs and daubed his forehead with sweet perfume.

I am surrounded in this unfamiliar sepulchre by Aurelio’s family, not my own.

They were never really mine. Aurelio’s mother, his five aunts, his seven sisters, countless cousins, and their daughters all embrace their Silence, heads bowed, veils obscuring their unspoken prayers. I watch them bitterly.

Each of their husbands and fathers commanded the customary three days, and two fewer for the young and frail.

Aurelio’s mother volunteered for five and her husband did not argue.

I did not volunteer for any—not that anybody would have listened.

I have been Silent, in their eyes, since the moment my husband died.

No. For my sins, Aurelio commanded me one last time from beyond the gilded cradle. Not three or five, but thirteen days of mourning is his final wish. One to mark every week we were married.

I bear it, as he must have known I would, without complaint.

But I am weak by the end, desperate for a wedge of lemon, a fistful of oily olives with their bitter pits, anything to smother the woodsy tang of frankincense from my too-short hair.

I count each minute beyond death and wonder whether this is what it feels like to be free.