Chapter 3 Summary

"The Jewish Blues" The first part of this chapter is focused on stories about various body-related incidents in Alex's life. The first is of the strange disappearance of Alex's testicles into his body, a situation which makes Alex wonder if he is turning into a girl but which is successfully treated, Alex says, by a series of hormone shots.

The second is of how Alex's mother suffered a sudden and unexpected onset of her period just as she was koshering (removing the blood from) a piece of meat—specifically, how the blood from the meat and the blood issuing from his mother, both staining the floor in the kitchen, have in effect stained Alex's memory. He recalls the humiliation of being sent to the drugstore by his mother for sanitary napkins, how her frequent menstrual troubles "eventually had to be resolved by...