Excerpt from We Must Not Think of Ourselves by Lauren Grodstein, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"You still carve dinosaurs?" I asked.

He shrugged. "They weren't dinosaurs." He peeled the bark off the stick with long strokes; the bark curled in light-brown rings on the table. I finished up with my chicken feet and put them in a pot, turned on the tap: mercifully, water.

"How did you get this stuff, anyway?"

"I traded for them. A pair of candlesticks. I think they were bronze. Or gold. A golden color, anyway."

"Where did you find bronze candlesticks?"

"People die here all the time," he said. "They leave a lot of stuff behind."

"And you just take it?"

"I don't just take it," he said. "I turn it into food."

The water filled the pot—drip, drip, drip—and I wondered if I had scaled the feet correctly, and if I would be able to find the oil to fry them later, or if I would just eat them as they were, pale and bony. I had eaten all sorts of sludge these past months, grateful for every bite: potato-peel soup, beet-top soup, jarred, salted cabbage. And then, occasionally, I celebrated—with illegal chicken or eggs from the proceeds of a pair of Kasia's shoes, illegal white flour from the sale of our old vinyl records.

"You scavenge," I said.

"I guess that's the word."

"Yes," I said. And then, for some reason, I repeated it in English: "Scavenge. You are a scavenger."

"Scavenger," Filip repeated in English, his voice resonant and deep. "It's a nice-sounding word."

We were quiet again. I watched Filip whittle his stick into something fine and sharp-looking.

"What's happening in here?" Pani Lescovec, Filip's mother, bustling in in her housecoat. "Filip, you found chicken? How on earth?" She was damp from sweat, had been cleaning the hallway we shared with three other apartments, where the children played and sometimes slept. Her graying hair stood up in loose curls around her broad face.

"Just chicken feet, Eema."

"Chicken feet—that's not nothing. Where did you get them? How did you get outside?"

"I was careful."

"Were you?"

"I always am."

"Oh, how I worry about you," she said, hugging him close. Pressed against his mother's side, Filip looked like a young child again. "My smart boy."

"I just sold four feet to Pan Paskow. Five zloty," he said, proud of his dealmaking.

"And what are you doing with them, Pan Paskow? Boiling?" She peered into my pot. "They're not properly peeled."

"I was going to fry them next," I said apologetically; in our household, it was known that Pani Lescovec was the most assiduous and talented cook.

"My son risked his life for these!" she said from her position at the stove. "You should treat them with respect."

"Eema, come on. I didn't risk my life."

"You did!"

"I'm sorry, Pani Lescovec," I said, with as much deference as I could muster. "You know I'm not much of a cook."

Assuaged, she used a slotted spoon to pull the feet out of the water and onto a plate. She blew on them to cool them, and then started pulling off the skin and reserving it on a towel (How long would it be until we had to start selling our kitchen supplies? How long until we no longer had towels, plates, slotted spoons, chicken feet?)

"I'll fry this skin for you," she said. "It will taste something like gribenes. Do you know gribenes? I need an onion. Is it possible we have an onion?"

"I'll go find you one, Eema," said Filip.

"No, it's not worth it. I don't want you to go outside."

"It'll take five minutes."

"Make it three minutes. It's getting dark," she said as Filip hurried out of the kitchen. "I have enough stress as it is."

But she was smiling. The thought of an onion, fried chicken skin, a somewhat proper meal.

She returned the chicken feet to the pot and set it back to boil on the rickety stove. Watching her put me in mind of my own mother a million years before: the ease at the stove, the ritual, unthinking nature of her movements. "You know what would really be wonderful? A carrot," she said dreamily. "Two carrots. And maybe some celery. And some noodles. And, of course, a real chicken."

Excerpted from We Must Not Think of Ourselves by Lauren Grodstein. Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Grodstein. Excerpted by permission of Algonquin Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.