Hungry
By Amy-Willoughy-Burle
She takes her kids to the park to preoccupy them with swing sets and jungle gyms. Tells them, when they ask, “you ate already” like they’re tiny Alzhemiers patients who can be fooled with reassuring words and misdirection. She tried not to go on food stamps, but pride gives way easy to a child’s aching stomach. She remembers the jabs she heard as a child about government cheese and welfare babies. But those words didn’t apply to her then—young, well dressed and fed— unaware of what it meant to be a scavenger.
She gets enough on her little plastic card to last them the most of the month, but those last few days feel pretty thin. She works. She manages to keep the lights on and the rent paid most months but sometimes they spend a few days in the dark. She tells her kids that they’re on adventure—camping in the living room. Candles and ghost stories. Cold beans from the can.
A few times she’s had to barter with the landlord—cleaning his house, mowing the lawn. Once when the whole of the rent went to fixing up her busted Buick, she gave in a bit more than she wanted. She would have cried about it, but there was no need to waste the tears.
When she did cry, she knew how to hide it, how to turn her face and wipe her eyes; how to smile like the mothers who come through her checkout line buying fresh fruit and good meat and whole wheat bread for their children’s lunch sacks. The same women look at her when she drops her kids off at school. The look says she doesn’t care because her children are dressed in Goodwill clothing and the slices of cheese in their white bread sandwiches came wrapped in plastic. She hates the looks from those mothers accusing her, assuming she doesn’t love her kids as much as they do, when perhaps, perhaps, she knows how to love them more. Knows how desperate love can be when there is a chance it could be taken away... (for the rest of the story http://www.amywilloughbyburle.com/shows.html)
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