Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Whenever Audre or her mother cooks, they grind spices in her mother’s special mortar that she brought from her West Indian homeland. It is of a foreign wood and carved with fruit and is among one of Audre’s most favorite things that her mother owns. The inside of the mortar and the bottom of the pestle are worn into “a layer of velvet” (72). Audre loves pounding herbs, and as a result, her favorite dish is souse: meat marinated in a blend of pounded spices. Audre rarely gets to choose a meal, but when she does, it is always souse: “That way, I knew I would get to use my mother’s mortar, and this in itself was more treat for me than any of the forbidden foods” (73). Audre would always carefully collect, peel or slice, and grind all of the herbs in a kind of ritual. Her mother would usually reprimand her for taking too long, and Audre would scuttle off to get the meat: “The last day I ever pounded seasoning for souse was in the summer of my fifteenth year” (74).

Audre spends the summer in doctor’s offices, instead of with her friends, as her mother is worried because she hasn’t yet begun menstruating, although she never speaks explicitly about this subject with Audre.