I had warned her that she might be inviting attack, that her physical presentation was not what it should be, that the Town did not welcome gaudy religious iconography, that she should not cover her face, her hair, that it was imprudent to flaunt her difference. For her funeral, I have wrapped her carefully in the patriotic linens of her town, which, of course, is not this Town. Her family, who could not afford to attend, sent a gift of unknowable flowers with spikes and hideous accusing faces. These I stored in the back of the funeral parlour, and later I crushed their heads and bent their stalks and stuffed them in the trash. I knew some of the facts of what she suffered, living here, but I could not recognize my own Town in her words. I simply could not recognize it.