Hilaria (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hommefatale) wrote2012-03-17 06:34 pm
hommefatale) wrote2012-03-17 06:34 pm
Entry tags:
Lunch
Lunch
On rainy days at Marin Elementary School, teachers would jam thousands of short, damp, sweaty bodies together in the cafeteria, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. There were no tables, so we sat in groups on the floor, learning against walls if we were lucky. I remember sweating through my wool turtleneck and being too embarrassed to take off my raincoat. Once, I sat with George Shen, and other people I had down forever but had never really talked to. George Shen, always quiet, would later star in a show he didn’t know I was watching--all of middle and high school, I would see him in his house, a block from my own, yelling at his parents, walking the groceries in silently with his grandmother. This rainy day, though, we were together by virtue of sitting close to one another, and equals by virtue of being in the same grade, if not the same class.
There are no surprises for me in my soggy brown lunch bag, for I packed the lunch myself that morning. I pulled out the four iced oatmeal cookies immediately, without thinking. I saw the crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich and reacted viscerally, pushing the opening of the bag away from my eyes.
I remember how happy my mom had been, showing me the little tin construction that looked like a big cookie cutter. “It’s for sandwiches,” she told me, smiling. She pressed it into the sandwich, showing me how, making it look like a soft pie made of white bread. I was happy too, at first, before I realized that the sandwich cutter would push all the chunky peanut butter and blackberry jelly to the center of the bread, making the filling thick, coagulated, and impossible to swallow. I made that sandwich with that sandwich cutter every morning with the full knowledge that I was never going to eat it.
After the cookies and on a good day, I would eat the Cheez-its or the Goldfish. Sometimes I would throw in an apple or a banana as a dark private joke. The mess of clear Ziploc bags in front of me made me think of Isa Guardalabene’s pink plastic bento box with vague envy. I could not muster pointed jealousy over something as disgusting as food.
If I had no chips or crackers, lunch was over. If it was raining, as it was that day, I was caught in the middle of the gaping, slobbering mouths, surrounded on all sides by warm, rank school lunches. Boiled chicken in thick, almost clear gravy. Salty mashed potatoes dropped on a beige plastic tray from a height with an ice cream scoop. Stale bread with cheese bubbles and tiny perfect chewy cubes, called pepperoni pizza. I could hear the chatter of my friends, but more than that I could hear the squeaky scrape of plastic utensils, the wet smack of chewing, the guttural, vomitous sound of someone gulping down milk. I tried not to breathe, but in the hot room and the omnipresent sounds, I couldn’t find the strength. I felt like I was being slowly steamed, could feel the moist sweat under my armpits cutting into me and boiling me alive. By the end of the lunch period I was as lucid as overcooked broccoli, soggy and mushy and tasteless in my mouth.
On rainy days at Marin Elementary School, teachers would jam thousands of short, damp, sweaty bodies together in the cafeteria, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. There were no tables, so we sat in groups on the floor, learning against walls if we were lucky. I remember sweating through my wool turtleneck and being too embarrassed to take off my raincoat. Once, I sat with George Shen, and other people I had down forever but had never really talked to. George Shen, always quiet, would later star in a show he didn’t know I was watching--all of middle and high school, I would see him in his house, a block from my own, yelling at his parents, walking the groceries in silently with his grandmother. This rainy day, though, we were together by virtue of sitting close to one another, and equals by virtue of being in the same grade, if not the same class.
There are no surprises for me in my soggy brown lunch bag, for I packed the lunch myself that morning. I pulled out the four iced oatmeal cookies immediately, without thinking. I saw the crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich and reacted viscerally, pushing the opening of the bag away from my eyes.
I remember how happy my mom had been, showing me the little tin construction that looked like a big cookie cutter. “It’s for sandwiches,” she told me, smiling. She pressed it into the sandwich, showing me how, making it look like a soft pie made of white bread. I was happy too, at first, before I realized that the sandwich cutter would push all the chunky peanut butter and blackberry jelly to the center of the bread, making the filling thick, coagulated, and impossible to swallow. I made that sandwich with that sandwich cutter every morning with the full knowledge that I was never going to eat it.
After the cookies and on a good day, I would eat the Cheez-its or the Goldfish. Sometimes I would throw in an apple or a banana as a dark private joke. The mess of clear Ziploc bags in front of me made me think of Isa Guardalabene’s pink plastic bento box with vague envy. I could not muster pointed jealousy over something as disgusting as food.
If I had no chips or crackers, lunch was over. If it was raining, as it was that day, I was caught in the middle of the gaping, slobbering mouths, surrounded on all sides by warm, rank school lunches. Boiled chicken in thick, almost clear gravy. Salty mashed potatoes dropped on a beige plastic tray from a height with an ice cream scoop. Stale bread with cheese bubbles and tiny perfect chewy cubes, called pepperoni pizza. I could hear the chatter of my friends, but more than that I could hear the squeaky scrape of plastic utensils, the wet smack of chewing, the guttural, vomitous sound of someone gulping down milk. I tried not to breathe, but in the hot room and the omnipresent sounds, I couldn’t find the strength. I felt like I was being slowly steamed, could feel the moist sweat under my armpits cutting into me and boiling me alive. By the end of the lunch period I was as lucid as overcooked broccoli, soggy and mushy and tasteless in my mouth.