— a slave named Roxy is forced to pick cotton in suffocating heat without food. No biscuits, no grits, no cornmeal mush. Roxy is being punished. I don’t remember why. The slaves are warned not to share food with her, but one brave soul disobeys. Here’s a tator, Roxy. I know they ain’t feedin’ you right. That slave is nearly beaten to death for his simple act of goodness, for his charity, for his humanity. I knew right then if what the Bible said was true, then Roxy was the Living Christ, and the slave who fed her was a Saint and was going to go straight to Heaven. In 1932 and 1933, Stalin’s Soviet Guard forced Ukraine peasants to turn over their entire food supply — every bit of wheat, barley, oats, and rye. It was an artificial famine. A genocide. Seven million Ukrainians starved to death: 25,000 people a day, dead; one thousand per hour, dead; seventeen every minute, dead. Corpses lined the cobbled streets. The Soviet Guard forced the starving peasants to load the bodies of their friends, their parents, their children into carts and haul them away to be hurled into pits like garbage. The people slowly, painfully, died of hunger. They ate every dog and every cat and every bird that could be found. As the famine raged, human beings ate other human beings. In the province of Poltava, in the spring of 1933, it was rumored that a starving woman ate her children. It is midnight. A young woman with stringy hair and dull eyes shuffles down the grocery aisle. She is a bag of bones. So thin she could swim right out of her blue overalls. She gazes at the bread sticks, bagels, muffins, and cakes. She admires the contents of her shopping cart: diet cola, celery, lettuce. She gazes again at the cakes. Strokes the baby hairs on her cheeks. Her arm drifts to an angel food cake. She stops. Squeezes her eyes shut. Bony fingers grip her cart. Knuckles whiten. How many meals have I shared with her in my dreams? In my dreams we sit at the table. I tempt her. I coax her. Please, oh please, take a bite. She pushes green peas around on her plate, then spears the tiniest pea with her fork and places it in her mouth. She chews for five minutes and she wipes her mouth with her napkin and she rolls it into a moist ball and she looks at me and she smiles. Listen, honey, I say, I know a little something about refusing to eat. Why, when I was a child, my father butchered my pet chicken. She was called Hazelnut and she was my beloved and on the
night that Hazelnut was killed, the sky turned black and a dark wind arose and claps of thunder roared down from the heavens and lightning split the skies and I refused to partake of her flesh and her blood. I stop my sermon and I look at her and I smile. But I see it is too late. She has fallen off her chair and she is crawling away and I hear her chanting you can’t make me, you can’t make me. In 1992 I took Mother with me to Washington, D.C., while I attended the scientific meetings of the Gerontological Society of America. I presented my doctoral research that year, an achievement I wanted Mother to share. It was Mother who made sure I finished high school, who made sure I went to university, who made sure I had this opportunity she was never granted. At the end of each day, Mother and I would meet at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. We’d drink tea and eat shortbread cookies and our dialogue would go like this: Where would you like to have dinner tonight? I ask. Oh, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, she replies. What kind of food would you like? I persist. Oh, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, she says. It doesn’t matter. I wonder if Mother has ever thought she matters. Eventually, I give up. I choose America Restaurant, in Union Station, my favorite D.C. eatery. I love their crab cakes, their macaroni and cheese, their gumbo, their baked potatoes, their sourdough bread, their navy bean soup. We eat at America every night. Two weeks after the trip, my sister Carol phones. It sounds like Mom had a really good time in D.C., she says. Except for the food. What? I ask. Yeah, she said you insisted on eating at the same restaurant every night. My dear friend Dave is dying. We were born the same year; we grew up within an hour’s drive of each other; we’ve been friends since we met at university the year we both turned thirty. Now cancer has consumed him. It started in his kidneys and it traveled to his brain and it attacked his spine. He has had sixteen surgeries. His legs are paralyzed and his bald head is covered with scars. Two rounds of chemicals have done nothing to stop it. None of us can stop it. Tonight, we have brought dinner to Dave at the hospice where he’s lived the last six months. A feast from his favorite restaurant, the New Delhi. Portland 28
Poori, paneer, saffron pilaf, lamb curry, tandoori chicken, gobhi matar. The staff leaves us alone to celebrate what we all know will be our last supper. One hour into our meal, Dave grows tired and he needs more drugs. It takes three of us to carry him from the recliner to his wheelchair and tuck him into bed. His eyelids droop and his speech slurs. God, you guys, that was the best dinner of my life. It’s 1975 and I’m in Kamloops, British Columbia, visiting my sister Carol. Carol has red hair, freckles, and our Grandma Sue’s brown eyes. She is kindhearted and humorous; a hard worker; a heart breaker. She broke Mother and Daddy’s hearts when she dropped out of college, married a cowboy, and moved to a cattle ranch in the British Columbian interior. Now she has given birth to her first child, the first baby in a new generation of my family. Jenny is two weeks old and has red tufts of hair, button eyes, and fat cheeks that dimple when she nurses. She has an impressive appetite. She gurgles and smacks her lips and gulps and burps until her milk-drunk eyes close and she sleeps. Carol smiles, her own milk-drunk eyes closed. Jenny stirs and latches her lips onto Carol’s nipple and slurps noisily. Carol strokes Jenny’s head. She looks at me and she whispers, this is all I’ve ever wanted. I kiss Carol’s freckled cheek and we both lean down and kiss the top of Jenny’s head. Jenny has stopped nursing. She has fallen asleep. Her tummy is full. She is safe and warm in the loving arms of her mama and her auntie. We study the tiny blue veins of her eyelids. We watch her lips pucker and twitch. Jenny smiles. She is dreaming of her mama’s milk. Eat! Live! Love! Television chef Wolfgang Puck proclaims. Chef Puck is a short man with delicate hands and a loud German-accented voice. His choice of a culinary career over the trades cost him the love of his father. His success as a chef and restaurateur cost him the love of his wife. But his studio audience loves him. He whips up their enthusiasm while he whips up chocolate soufflé. Eat, live, love! He booms. His raucous audience joins the chant. Eat, live, love! Eat, live, love! I start chanting along, too. Eat, live, love! I holler back at the television screen. I can’t help myself. Eat, live, love! Eat! Live! Love! n Nina Ramsey is a psychiatric nurse and writer in Seattle.