Our neighbor, Mrs. Rohring was in her seventies, and a feistier lady I’d never known. All the other kids on the block were afraid of her, but I secretly liked her. My mom had said she had lived alone in the house since the death of her husband some fifteen years before. She was short, spry, and her temper was infamous in the neighborhood, but she and I had always gotten along. The number of times she had yelled at kids to get off her lawn and stay away from her prized roses was beyond count.
If a ball landed in Mrs. Rohring’s yard, I was always nominated to go get it. I had always been polite and just asked nicely for the return of the wayward toy, and she had always returned the lost items to me.
That pizza box called to me as I stood there, and the mere thought of it going to waste made me almost dizzy. I looked around guiltily. There was no one in sight, and my stomach growled again, demanding food.
I looked around one more time to see if anyone was watching. Still seeing no one, I grabbed the box and ran back home with my prize.
That pizza was one of the best-tasting things I’d ever eaten in my entire life. I devoured two pieces before my brain began to catch up with me. I’d looked longingly at the remaining pieces and my rational side tried to convince me that I should save some of it for the next day. After all, I had no idea when I would get more food. My stomach argued with my brain that the pizza would spoil soon in this heat, so I might as well eat it all anyway. My stomach won. I lay on my bed that night, stuffed full to bursting for the first time in weeks, and I slept soundly.
The next day, revivified, I tried to find someone to pay me for work. I made a couple of dollars for tearing down some cardboard boxes for one of the nearby businesses, but it hadn’t been enough to buy a substantial amount of food. I’d learned quickly that candy and sugary treats didn’t keep me full for very long. When I bought food, I tried to focus on items that were filling and would keep for a while without refrigeration, such as bread, cheese, boiled eggs, jerky.
One evening, several weeks after my parents had disappeared, I came home to find an eviction notice on the front door. I couldn’t understand everything on the pages, but it was clear that I had thirty days to find another place to live.
It was early evening, seven or eight o’clock I’d guess, because I didn’t have a watch or a clock to tell the time. Shadows were getting longer, and I had been looking forward to the date on my calendar when I thought school was supposed to start. I knew they gave free lunches to us at school, so I was hoping I could continue to find odd jobs until then. The thought of the once-despised school lunches made my mouth water.
I was using the last of the sunlight to read just a few more pages of a book I’d borrowed from the library before it got too dark to see. The battery on my rechargeable flashlight wasn’t working as well as it had at first, and I needed to save it for emergency bathroom breaks in the middle of the night.
I’d been to the library that day and found out from the librarian that I had missed my own birthday. I’d hidden in the bathroom for a while after she told me the date, tears streaming down my face as I sobbed. I couldn’t believe my parents had missed my birthday.
I tried to cheer myself up by borrowing a book that had been my favorite story forever. It was about a kid who played drums to send messages for dragons. I’d always loved the character, because he was bullied a lot by the other kids at his school. I identified with him even more that summer, because the other kids in the neighborhood had started picking on me when they saw me.
They had started teasing me because I never played with them anymore. They said I was stuck up, and thought I was too good to spend time with them. Fuck, I didn’t exactly havetimeto play after spending the day trying to find work that would let me buy food. Even on the rare days when I had a full stomach, I was usually too tired to play, worn out by physical labor. So, they had stopped asking, and started bullying.
My clothes were looking ragged. I had been out of soap for a while but even before that, I hadn’t had much luck trying to wash my clothes in the bathtub. The kids had started calling me names and telling me I smelled. One of them had seen my belt was missing and started calling me a bum. I’d run home. I knew better than to listen to bullies, but it still stung.
I was flipping through the last pages of my book when Mrs. Rohring had come out her back door and stood glaring at me across the lawn.
“You there! Boy!” She hollered at me from across the driveway.
“Me?” I asked, looking around nervously.
“Yes! You! Come here!” She demanded.
I swallowed anxiously and put my book down. It didn’t even occur to me to ignore her or try to run away. My parents had ingrained in me a respect for my elders, so despite my trepidation, I got to my feet and walked across the drive.
“Yes, ma’am?” I asked as I stood at the bottom of the stairs leading up to her back porch. Her gimlet eyes looked me up and down, and I flushed slightly. I knew I didn’t look the greatest.
My skin was brown and peeling in spots from a sunburn I’d gotten the week before while mowing a yard. My brown hair was shaggy, and far longer than my mother had ever let it get. I hadn’t had much success when I tried to wash my clothes in the cold water of my bathtub, so they were pretty dirty despite the fact I kept rotating through them.
“What’s your name, boy,” she demanded.
“Kaine, Mrs. Rohring. Kaine Monroe.” I answered.
“Okay, Kaine Monroe. Take this to the trash can, if you please,” she said, stuffing two bags into my hands and nodding toward the street where the trash cans sat.
I looked at the bags. They were white bags, almost see through. I could see in one what seemed to be regular trash. In the other, I saw carryout boxes like you get at restaurants. That bag was warm on my arm, like the food had just been cooked.
I looked up at her in surprise.
“You’re throwing this away?” I squeaked. My mouth watered reflexively, and I swallowed hard, hoping she couldn’t hear my stomach growling.
“I never did like spaghetti,” she said crossly. I could smell garlic and other wonderful odors wafting from the warm bag.
“Go on now! Git!” she growled, turning her back on me and going back inside her house, then slamming the door shut behind her.
I stood there for a moment, confused. Mrs. Rohring hadn’t spoken to me in months. Now, she was giving me orders?
Part of me wanted to just leave the bags right there on her porch, but I knew I wouldn’t. I walked back toward my house, tugging the two bags with me. We had a number of lilac bushes that grew along the drive, so I was shielded from view of her house when I walked behind them. The bag with the delicious smelling food in it I stashed on my back porch. I figured that with the plants giving me cover, no one would be able to see if I’d kept one of the bags.
