Canned Goods

Creative Non-Fiction

I don’t want to. It was fun the first few times, but now it feels wrong. It feels like I’m in trouble when I go. My father yells, “There’s nothing here, so go.”

I cross the street from our apartment to the Denny’s alone. My bald head is cold underneath my neon pink baseball cap. Miss Lavon doesn’t seem happy to see me, but she tells me to sit at the booth closest to the door. I hear her taking orders at tables nearby. She brings me a pancake, a slice of bacon, and a glass of water. She places a hand on my head. It is warm through the baseball cap. I tilt my head until it rests on her hip. I stay like that trying not to cry. She tells me to tell my dad he needs to send me with money from now on. On the TV over the bar, she changes the channel to Saturday morning cartoons.

* * *

You know what’s funny? I have so much trouble buying myself things that when I finally commit to something I feel guilty for spending the money. The only exception to that is I never feel bad or think twice about buying food.

Kimberley, my wife, says she’s never thought about it, but she gets what I mean. I add a box of trail mix snack packs to the Costco shopping cart she pushes. It isn’t for us. The rule is that when we go grocery shopping, we always buy at least one thing to put in the neighborhood food pantry. It is not so much a pantry as it is a bookshelf with glass doors so you can see in. It’s attached to a church that also looks like it might be a school. Next to it is a sign that says TAKE WHAT YOU NEED. GIVE WHAT YOU CAN. The rule is we always buy something for the pantry even if it means putting something else back.

* * *

My father and I are in the empty parking lot of a church in our neighborhood. My father asked me to meet him here after school. The church is two blocks away from Cuyamaca Elementary. When we get to the front of the line my father hands a slip to a man standing behind a grey, plastic folding table.

When I got here, he was already in line with an empty Ralph’s shopping cart. He let me place my backpack in the child’s seat and told me to pick a corner. I placed my hand on the front left corner of the metal cart, and slowly made my way to the front of the line with him like that.

The man behind the table has an Iron Maiden t-shirt on underneath a blue Dickies jacket. He has tattoos on his hands and a grey beard so long he’s braided it. Next to him is a U-Haul full of brown boxes. Another man standing inside the truck tosses a box which the first man catches and sets on the table. He says, “Here you go.”

My father opens the box, and someone behind us groans. The man at the table says, “Hey, man. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Ignoring everyone and still sorting through the box on the table, my father says to whoever might be listening, “I only need enough to get to the first of the month. I’m only taking what I need.” I want to hurry my father. I want to say please let’s go. I don’t want him to give things back.

“C’mon, man,” the bearded tattooed guy says. I am scared of him, but I am scared of my father even more, so I keep quiet. When he hands back a white Entenmann’s cake box I begin to cry. Not loudly. I cry like my sadness is a secret only I can tell myself.

On the walk home my father picks an orange from a tree branch hanging over someone’s fence. He pulls a knife from his pocket and nods his head forward directing me to keep pulling the cart. He asks if I was crying at the church because I am greedy. He says, if something is free, the worst thing you can ever do is take more than you need.

* * *

My mother calls him the angel of bread. He’s an older black man who drives around in a van delivering bags of day-old baked goods. He has grey hair, gold rimmed glasses and is tall like Andre the Giant. He warms cookies wrapped in parchment paper on his dashboard. We can smell the bread before he even opens the door.

We line up at the sliding side door when he comes, mostly the kids, but sometimes the parents. Inside the van loaves of bread and stacks of bagels overflow from wooden milk crates. When it is your turn, he takes a grocery store produce bag and fills it with bagels. Cinnamon-raisin, plain, everything, and sometimes one of the ones that has cheese baked to the top. He also gives you a loaf of French bread.

My mother makes my brother and I share a can of clam chowder. She cuts a slice off the French loaf to place in the soup bowl. She shows us how to press it down at the end to soak up what our spoons can’t get.

At bedtime, after dragging our sleep mats to the living room, my brother and I nibble on bagels as if we snuck Halloween candy into bed. We tear off bits and cheers with them before popping a slightly stale piece into our mouths. I let it linger on my tongue long enough for the saliva in my mouth to soften it, make it fresh again, before chewing.

* * *

Kimberley asks, “So, why trail mix?”

You don’t have to cook it. It’s high in calories. It tastes good. It travels well. Adults and kids like it.

The last thing anyone wants is another can of corn or cut up carrots they can’t even open because they don’t have a can opener. The last thing anyone who’s hungry and asking for help needs is the shit someone else would just as easily throw away or watch expire.

* * *

I’m eighteen, living in the only actual house I’ve ever lived in because the owner takes section 8. My mother is in the hospital after a suicide attempt. Our neighbor, Mateo, lets us use his stove and microwave when our power gets shut off. He lets us store food in his freezer. He brings out his charcoal grill, and we shape hamburger patties from what is left of an 85% lean tube of ground beef from the fridge. Mateo warms his hands over the dying coals after we eat. He says the heat is good for arthritis.

I near-boil a big pot of water on Mateo’s stove and bring it back to our house. My brother and sister dip glass bowls into it and use rags to wash up while the water is still warm. My father has dementia from years of heavy drug use and cannot do much for himself anymore. I wash him first, starting at his hands. I used to watch him do this naked every morning as a boy. He’d let the end of a washcloth lay across his first two fingers, and he would gently rub the cloth onto a bar of soap. Just enough to clean himself with but not so much he would leave soap on his skin after. I remember watching the way he would drag the damp cloth across his body, the way the rag steamed in the cold morning air.

Mateo lets himself in, bringing me a hot cup of orange tea and whiskey. He calls it a digestive. I am not old enough to drink, but close enough to not say anything. I am glad I don’t. It warms me very differently from the grill and the wash water. The warmth starts in my throat and then radiates to my stomach. Behind my eyes gets this humming feeling.

* * *

Not even a whole year into dating, Kimberley says to me, “The goal is for me to get this next promotion and you can quit to write full time. Let me take care of you.”

The kindest thing you can say to anyone else is, “Let me take care of you.”

She pushes the Costco cart, and she asks if I could buy as much as I want, what else would I add. She leans over, letting both forearms rest on the handle as she pushes. I guide from the front with my hand on a corner.

Powdered milk. That stuff is as good as gold in donation boxes. You mix it with water in an empty milk gallon, and it’s hard to tell the difference. You add it to recipes that call for milk, and it’s almost the same result.

* * *

One Christmas my mother signs us up for adopt-a-family at a church she started going to. The adopting family gives us presents which turn out to be mostly clothes. They also donate boxes of food intended to be a Christmas dinner with a little left over. After my father places the presents under a fake tree the church gave us, we all gather in the kitchen where he has brought the food boxes. He gets out his note pad to take inventory.

My sister, brother and I stand to one side of our kitchen table while my mother slowly takes food out of the donation box. The whole time my dad calls her Vanna White. She takes out a honey ham, and in her best infomercial announcer voice says, “It’s a whole ham!” We cheer. We talk about how the leftovers will make so many sandwiches. My father writes 1xHam.

We do this until the boxes are empty. After my father finishes inventory, we help put food away. This is to be helpful as much as it is to secure things we want for ourselves. I know my brother is going to hide a six-pack bag of powdered donuts somewhere. My sister does the same with a king size Hershey’s bar intended for smores. I tuck a can of Cattle Drive Chili behind cans of sweet corn in a cabinet.

* * *

Kimberley adds a box of tampons to the cart to place in the pantry. It is my turn to say I hadn’t thought of that. She asks me what my sister did when she couldn’t afford them, and I honestly don’t know. Instead of telling her I feel bad for not knowing, I tell her she probably stole them. That’s what I did when I needed stuff. I still do it. There are things now that I refuse to pay for. There are things I will help other people steal if I catch them stealing.

She says, “Oh my god. Shut up. What if someone hears you?”

I am not doing it right now.

She changes the subject by asking if there’s anything else we need before we go. I say, yeah there’s one more thing. She pushes. I guide. Back at the freezer section I grab a frozen lasagna for my brother.

In line waiting to get to the checkout I let her listen to a voicemail from my brother where, for four minutes, he describes how good the cheese is in lasagna. She rolls her eyes and laughs when she gets to the part where he says, “What if the world ends tomorrow and I don’t get to ever have it again?”

* * *

After dropping off the box of trail mix and tampons at the pantry and then our own groceries which consists of a carton of eggs, a bag of avocados, and a tray of chicken breast, we take the box of lasagna to my brother, Rob. Rob has autism and lives with our sister, Emily, her husband and their two small children. It is close enough to dinner time for them that he asks if I can help him make it. He pats me on the shoulder and shouts, “My man,” followed by finger guns.

We pre-heat the oven and unbox the lasagna. He tells me, “Sometimes I like to chew and chew and chew the cheese because it tastes so good, and I don’t want to not taste it anymore.” I tell him he can ask me for lasagna whenever he wants it. He asks if he can share his dinner.

He is careful to place the tray in the oven, and even more careful to take it out. He gets five plates from a cabinet and stacks them on the kitchen counter. He holds an index finger in front of his lips and raises his eyebrows before reaching into the back of the fridge to pull out a can of coke. He tells me he was saving it. He tries to quietly open the can but fails, and the sound draws the attention of our sister’s sons. While I serve portions onto the plates, Rob and his nephews share his can of coke like teenagers sharing a cigarette. A sip and a pass. A sip and a pass.

* * *

On the drive home from my brother and sister’s apartment Kimberley says, “Your brother is so funny, hiding the coke just to share it with his nephews.”

Probably he was saving it to share. I think we were raised to see food as being more valuable than most things, including money. To share food is an act of pure love. The crazy part is that for something that means so much to some people, it is so easy to do.

She turns down the ac and hands me her half full water bottle from which I take a sip. I hand it back leaving my hand in her lap.

* * *

The Christmas we were adopted, my mother and father co-wrote a letter to the family that adopted us. I don’t know if they ever got it. I remember reading her shaky cursive, and his childlike left-handed scratch thinking there was no way they were actually going to send it. As far as I know they did.

Dear donating family,

Thank you for the clothes, the shoes and matching pajamas. Everything fits. Thank you for the ham, the boxed mashed potatoes, the dinner rolls, the two boxes of powdered milk, the bread, the peanut butter, the pasta noodles, the jar of pasta sauce, the fixings for smores, the donuts, the orange soda, the trail mix, the pancake mix, the cake mix, and the cornbread mix. We are unable to afford eggs until the 4^th when our EBT funds replenish, but we look forward to having cake and cornbread.

The excess cans of sweet corn, green beans, carrots, and carrot green bean corn blend were unhelpful. The powdered milk, bread, and peanut butter were a godsend.

I don’t know if the church gives donors a list of things that are helpful. We were never asked. In the future I recommend the previously stated items and ask that you avoid canned veggies. I don’t understand why there are always so much canned veggies at food banks. If you want to include canned goods that are helpful, I recommend tuna, chili, refried and baked beans. Sloppy Joe sauce.

We have a car, so gift cards to gas stations are helpful. We can also use the card inside the station to buy food and snacks. Longs Drugs lets us use gift cards to pay for prescriptions. Think about it for the next family.

We hope you had a beautiful Christmas with your family.

We are forever grateful.