The glazed eye the way it looked up at me and my father folding the head open as if it were a book lifting the top half from the bottom where the butcher had cut it, while the family shouted encouragement and the boys yelled what parts they wanted--"I want the brains! I want the tongue!"--and the girls squealed.

I watched the head come apart. I was surprised as much as I was disgusted. I had never thought of the meat balls or sausage or veal cutlets or pork chops that we regularly ate as parts of a real animal.

There it was in front of me: a goat's head.

My father handed me a jaw bone teeth protruding from a line of blackened meat. When I shook my head and politely said "no thank you," everyone laughed. My father put the jaw bone down on the table and told me to pick it up and eat it. When I refused again he sent me to bed.

I left and the room grew quiet but by the time I was under the sheets the laughter and shouting started up again.