Miss Thompson didn’t answer. Instead she grabbed me by the top of my arm and yanked me up. “Honest to God!” she cried, “I’ve seen better behavior in a barn full of animals.” Then she dragged me out of the classroom and across the hall to the principal’s office. “We’ll see what Mr. Dixon has to say about this.”
I’m pretty sure Miss Thompson had been waiting for an excuse to take me to the principal’s office ever since I landed in her third-grade class. That lady never liked me. One time I came to school looking extra raggedy, not only because of my Goodwill outfit of a faded yellow T-shirt and high-water jeans, but also because the night before Mama had decided to take out my hair and rebraid it. Only she passed out when she was halfway done. I showed up for school the next morning looking like I was wearing one of those half-man, half-woman costumes, except on one side I was Buckwheat from The Little Rascals, on the other side I was Penny from Good Times. When Miss Thompson saw me walk into her classroom she just stared with her hand covering her open mouth like she’d never witnessed this kind of child abuse. At first I thought she felt bad for me, but when Porsha came in behind me, Miss Thompson said nice and loud, “Don’t you look pretty as a picture, Porsha, It’s nice to see your mama takes such good care of your . . . grooming.” Then she gave me the side eye like it was my fault Mama was a drunk.
In the principal’s office, Miss Thompson went behind the counter and talked to the secretary. The two of them kept looking my way and shaking their heads. Then Miss Thompson went back to her classroom, leaving me sitting on the wooden bench swinging my feet and waiting on Mr. Dixon.
Maybe if he’d asked me why I took the sandwich, things would have been different. Maybe if I’d had a chance to tell Mr. Dixon I was hungry, that I missed Free Breakfast, that Mama didn’t cook anything the night before and all I had for dinner was a few bites of the Jumbo Honey Bun Dre had stolen from the corner store and split three ways with me and Sweetie, things might have turned out another way. But the minute I stepped into his office, it was obvious Mr. Dixon didn’t give a shit about my empty belly. He just wanted to teach me a lesson.
He stared at me from behind his desk. “I’m very disappointed in your behavior,” he said. “This is a very serious offense.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s important that you understand that stealing will not be tolerated.”
“Okay.”
“Not tolerated at all.”
To make sure I was “receiving the message loud and clear,” he told me to stand up, put my hands on his desk, and bend over. Then he took his big wooden paddle and whooped my behind.
“Young lady . . .” SMACK
“At this school . . .” SMACK
“We . . .” SMACK
“Do not . . .” SMACK
“Steal!” SMACK SMACK SMACK
I suppose Mr. Dixon thought this was important information I needed to succeed in life. But bent over his desk with my ass on fire, all I could think about was food.
You learn to live with a lot of bullshit when you’re poor as hell: cockroaches crawling on your toothbrush, no running hot water for a bath, having to pack up all your belongings in trash bags every few months and move because your mama fell behind on the rent. But the one thing I could never get used to was being hungry.
After we left the liquor house and moved to the duplex on Griffin Street, Mama had to take care of us on her own. She didn’t have a job. Instead, she made do on a few hundred dollars in welfare and food stamps every month. But it was never enough. First the gas got cut off, then the electricity. One afternoon Mama made me go across the yard, to the apartment next door, and ask the old lady who lived there if I could plug an extension cord into her electric. That lady looked at me like she didn’t understand what I was asking for. “My mama need it for the TV,” I said, so she’d see it was an emergency. “The Young and the Restless about to come on.” The old lady shook her head, then took the cord from my hand, ran it through her side window and plugged it in. But we still didn’t have any lights. When night fell, we lit a pack of birthday candles and stuck them on the kitchen counter like itty-bitty table lamps. A birthday candle burns for about seven minutes, in case you’re wondering. That’s just enough time to make yourself a no-name ketchup sandwich and take your ass to bed.
Most nights I’d fall asleep thinking about food: Granddaddy’s homemade grits simmering on the stove; the chewy pizza they served every Friday for Free Lunch; Mercedes’s mama’s sandwiches dripping with Miracle Whip. I even dreamed about food I’d never had before, like McDonald’s, which apparently was too high class for us.
“Niggas don’t eat McDonald’s,” Mama said every time a Big Mac commercial came on TV teasing me with pictures of mouthwatering burgers that I could never have. One morning I was watching Mama’s broke-down set and the screen filled with a close-up of a Quarter Pounder. It looked so good, with the drops of water glistening on crispy lettuce leaves, I ran across the room with my mouth open to lick the TV, and damn near electrocuted myself.
As hungry as we were, I can’t say Mama didn’t try. She came up with all kinds of schemes to get us fed. One time she took us to the Curb Market late at night so we could dig through the dumpsters out back looking for anything the vendors had thrown out that wasn’t too rotten to eat. We found an old head of cabbage, some wilted carrots, and a couple of stale loaves of bread. Another time she took me and Sweetie out with her for hours in the blazing sun to collect aluminum cans from the trash people put out by the side of the road. When we were done, we took our trash bags full of cans to Davis Recycling across town. For all our hard work, all we made was fifteen dollars and forty-five cents. It was just enough for Mama to go to the corner store and buy some necessities: two packs of Winston, three quarts of Schlitz Malt Liquor, a package of bologna, a loaf of Sunbeam, a box of Saltine crackers, and two cans of Libby’s potted meat—which is a bunch of cow parts nobody wants to eat ground up to look like the kind of mess you find in your toddler’s diaper when the baby has the flu. The food, the beer, and almost all the cigarettes were gone by the next day.
Mama was sure the recycling man was ripping her off, so she decided to get even. “Lookie here,” she said to me and Sweetie the next week when we were out collecting cans. “Make sure you put some dirt inside.”
“What you mean?” I asked, standing on the side of the road with an empty Colt 45 beer can in my hand.