American Breakfast | صبحانه آمریکای
Excerpt
https://themuseumofamericana.net/2023/09/26/americana-stories-the-food-court-essay/
Farmer John’s breakfast sausage smelled like divorce. As a child, the aroma of all that hot grease in a cast iron pan was both delightful and terrifying.
Mom would pull the tidy pack of sausages from the refrigerator, the little fingers snuggled close to each other beneath a thin sheet of plastic. They were considered a treat because they took time to cook, unlike the instant oatmeal that was served on school days. They also had the distinction of being offered only on the occasional weekend when Baba was out of town and unable to hold up his end of the custody agreement.
As part of the divorce, Mom had moved us to a duplex apartment in North Torrance, an industrial city south of Los Angeles. We never fried pork products in West Los Angeles, where Baba still lived, in the house we all used to share. Baba didn’t eat pork. It was haram, after all. Never mind the strips of bacon that appeared on heavy platters when we were eating out.
Mom placed the sizzling sausages on a plate. A thick, slightly rancid mist clung to the kitchen, like the marine layer of fog that sometimes made it as far as our duplex, close to the Mobil refinery with its sensuous cooling vats and the rectangular block of the Ball aluminum plant.