White Chicken Feather “This is exactly what it looks like: a white chicken feather. I plucked it out myself and stuck it under the band of a blue hat that has long since disintegrated. But this, I kept.” ‡ 1945. Locorotondo, Italy. Revisiting my childhood is like standing at the shores of a turbulent sea: achingly beautiful and dangerous — the thunderclap of breakers, the foamlicks of crests, the way swells undulate, graceful as pregnant women, the boil of froth through sand in a rip tide. And I, who never learned to swim, long to submerge myself in those pristine days when miracles were possible, when everyone still loved me. On New Year’s Day, upon awakening, Mamma looked out the window and saw a white horse. “What great fortune,” she said, almost fainting with pleasure. She was pregnant with Daniela, the last of the children. “This one,” she said, stroking her abdomen, “will be lovable and polite; she’ll seek pleasure and be religiously inclined.
