any little Morsel BESS WINTER
When she had no food left in the house and no more will to eat, Helen cannibalized her manuscripts. She started with the recipes: Aunt Florence’s Blue Ribbon Bundt Cake, Golda Meir’s Chicken Soup, Bacon Bite Cornbread. These she had published, some time ago, in the Ladies’ Home Journal. Now they were carbon copies slid out of old manila hanging files that had stoicized in her filing cabinet since 1969. Her first attempts were primitive. She cut the recipes apart with kitchen scissors, separated each ingredient into its own neat strip, and masticated them until they were pulpy and warm. Then she swallowed, each sharp directive and thick noun meeting inside her until she’d pulped the recipe into a gluey gruel and cooked it in her pickled old stomach as in a cauldron. She survived like this, for a time. And when she didn’t eat words, she read them: every page of the New York Times, from the headlines to the classifieds to the crosswords, which she filled out in ink. Her daughter phoned long distance out of a sense of duty or guilt. She asked, flat-voiced, what are you eating? Checkerboard Square Clam Crunch, said Helen, voice heavy with phlegm. She double-folded the newspaper in her lap, filled in another space in the crossword. Tomato Stuffed with Perfection Salad, HamburgerBess Winter
111
