When you eat soup every night, thoughts of bread get you through.
Bowl after worn plastic bowl of unfocused ingredients floated before me in a strained broth. Corn, carrots, cabbage, and whatever else could be found were softened in water and flavored with animal fat. We had soup on the reservation every day, sometimes twice. The overworked broth was even further weakened by the knowledge that my mother worked in a factory and had money for Beefaroni. She said that eating Beefaroni would be rude, with Billie and her kids eating soup. I thought about sleeping on the floor while Billie’s family slept on beds and couldn’t understand.
My bread craving grew.
Cold mornings, I spooned cornmeal mush into my mouth, thankful for at least something warm that was not soup. Warm and solid, the mush was sweetened with a trace of syrup. Still, mush was mush, and nowhere near as solid as bread. Bread was what I wanted.