It was only four-thirty, but Teddy C had already forgotten about the snack and was demanding dinner. “Where’s the food?” he hollered, pounding his fork and spoon on his table.

“It’ll be here soon!” Gloria called as she helped another oldie to a table.

Dinnertime at Brookside is five o’clock. Two guys in hairnets roll it in on big metal carts from the kitchen. The oldies live for the carts, which hold the dinners and desserts for all thirty folks in the East Wing, and Ma says the exact same thing goes on in the West Wing.

Once the guys from the kitchen leave, the caregivers start handing around dinner plates while the nurses make sure the oldies who get meds take them.

The oldies sit four to a table, facing each other, saying nothing, unless it’s “Where’s the food?” It was creepy at first to see all these old folks looking like a bunch of zombies and then eating like a bunch of zombies, but Ma explained that they don’t talk to each other because they’re concentrating. “It’s everything they’ve got just to get the food in,” she told me. “Take a minute and really watch them, Lincoln. You’ll see.”

So I really watched them, and really watching them is not something I ever want to do again. It’s painful to watch them eat. Their hands shake and they focus on putting food in, and then it takes years for them to swallow and start on the next bite.

There are usually the same four Purple Shirts in the Clubhouse during dinner. There’s Ma, Gloria, and two others named Teena and Carmen. Teena’s more no-nonsense with the oldies than Ma or Gloria, and Carmen’s got a voice like gravel being shoveled. Teena and Carmen don’t pay much attention to me, and I return the favor.

But back to oldies eating.

Gloria’s the one who spends time spooning dinners into the oldies who are really bad off. Their dinners come blended, so what might have been chicken and rice and green beans to begin with winds up being three blobs of mush on a plate.

That’s painful to watch, too, so I don’t, which means I get a lot of homework done during dinnertime. Or, if I’m done with homework, I take out my notebook and work on my stories, which is the best way I know to block out what’s going on around me.

After dinner, there are lots of leftovers. Not after dessert, but Ma says that some things stay the same no matter how old you get.

There’s no Brookside dog, but if there was, he’d be big as a blimp on leftovers. Whole enchiladas and beef patties and chicken strips and biscuits…it’s crazy what gets left on plates. And after dinner, slop, it all goes into the trash.

Ma has said more’n once what a waste it is, but who wants food that’s been sitting at a zombie table? Especially since lots of times there’s one little bite missing. Who’s gonna eat that?

But the same day Kandi followed me, I saw Ma tuck away chicken strips in a plastic bag. Right there in front of God and the Purple Shirts, she slipped chicken and biscuits into a bag and put it in her purse.

Nobody said a thing, but I knew they were all thinkin’ stuff, and I was sure embarrassed. It seemed so pitiful. No kidding Ma’s tight with a dollar, but this I couldn’t believe. And once I got over the shock of what she’d done, my mind started screamin’ in terror.

She’s gonna make me eat used food?!

On the bus ride home, she didn’t say a word about it, so I finally asked, “Why’d you steal that chicken?”

She looked at me like I had holes for brains. “Steal it?”

“Okay, take it.”

She studied me some more, then gave me a strange little look. Like someone at school might do if they were fixin’ to give you a wedgie. “Maybe I’m tired of cooking,” she said.

That did me in. “Ma!” I cried. “No! I ain’t eatin’ zombie chicken! I’ll eat cereal, day and night! You never have to cook again!”

“Zombie chicken,” she said with a look that made me sure my shorts would be up to my ears if we were standing. “And what did I tell you about ‘ain’t’?”

“You make me eat zombie chicken and ‘ain’ts’ are gonna slip out!”

“Hush,” she said, ’cause folks on the bus were staring now, wonderin’ what sort of ma made her boy eat zombie chicken.

After a bit she leaned sideways and whispered, “And you can relax. It ain’t for you.”

She gave me a devilish grin, which made my mind snap like a pea pod, scatterin’ thoughts all around my head.

What was that grin about?

What was she sayin’?

And who was it for, then? We didn’t have a dog, and we didn’t know any, either.

Only one thought made any kind of sense. “No, Ma!” I told her, keeping my voice low. “I won’t let you eat zombie chicken, either!”

She gave me a stern look. “There is nothing wrong with this chicken.”

“Ma, no!”

She opened her purse a bit and sniffed. “Smells delicious, if you ask me.”

“Ma, no!”

She closed her purse and heaved a sigh. “The problem here is that you’ve never been hungry.”

“I’ve been hungry!”

She gave me another stern look. “I’ve seen to it that you have not.”

“But—”

“Hush.”

The bus squealed to a stop, and when the doors flapped open, Ma led the way out, saying good night to the driver and nudging me to do the same when I started down the steps without sayin’ it.

We walked the two blocks home without talking. It was cold out, and dark, and the streets had that scary feel they get when the only folks left on them are the ones with no place to be. I was glad to get to our corner. Glad to see light pouring out of the market.

But instead of going up to our apartment, Ma told me, “Wait right here,” and headed off without me.

“Ma!” I called, ’cause she’d never done that before, and I sure didn’t want to be left on my own with street folks.

“Hush!” she said over her shoulder. Then she went up to a man sitting outside the market and handed him the zombie chicken.

He looked up at her real slow. Like one of the oldies at Brookside might have. Then he raised a hand to take the food and gave Ma a nod.

He’d been there every night since we moved in, and we’ve seen Mr. Noe, the man who runs the market, shoo him away from the door with a broom when he’s sweeping out the place. Mr. Noe doesn’t say a word to him—he just swats at him with the broom like he’s a big pile of dirt.

So sometimes the man sits near the front door, and sometimes he’s up the sidewalk a ways by an old pay phone that’s covered in graffiti. Wherever he sits, though, he always looks the same. He wears a grimy green beanie, an old blue jacket, and gloves with the fingertips ripped out. He sits on a worn wool blanket by a cardboard box with a sign that reads:

2 TOURS

NO HOME

ANYTHING HELPS

I used to think anything helps meant money.

Turns out it also means zombie chicken.