At four I was low to the ground, down with squashed lettuce leaves, oozing tomatoes, where the rotten-vegetable smell was the strongest. My tiny fingers curled around the grid of the two-wheeled cart my parents dragged through the North End’s Haymarket, filled with vegetables stashed in paper bags. The wheels whirred in puddles of slime, splashing my rubber boots. I tromped through clods of sawdust soaked with the blood of beheaded animals hung out of my sight, following the damp-paper-bag smell, the cart my connection to my parents, my assurance they were there in the crowd of raucous, Italian-yelling vendors.
Charlotte Crowder lives and writes on the coast of Maine. She has published short fiction and a picture book, “A Fine Orange Bucket.” Find Charlotte online at www.storiesbycharlotte.com.