I give the elevator button a nudge on my way to the stairs. I’m not expecting much because the elevator’s been down for a week. No biggie. The elevator’s broken about half the time and we’re used to the stairs. Not this time, though. The blue light above the call button flickers and I hear the elevator descend from somewhere above. It bangs against the housing, a hollow boom that echoes in the hallway.
The elevator door slides back a few seconds later to reveal Roberta, whose last name I don’t know. Roberta’s a black woman well into her seventies. She’s been living here longer than any other resident and she knows everyone. I watch her move into a corner when the door opens, pulling her shopping cart along. I’ve also brought my shopping cart, which I wedge against the back of the elevator. Then I ride down with my butt against the door.
In New York, food stamp grants are posted to an account accessed through your Medicaid card. That transforms Medicaid cards into temporary credit cards, dispensing dollars until your allotment runs out. Which it always does. Making the day your card refills a spontaneous holiday.
Some people spread their stamps out over the month, but I’m a splurger. I like to fill the shelves, the refrigerator, the tiny freezer. Never mind that two weeks from now I’ll be cursing myself because there’s no money. I just need to see the cupboards full. I need abundance, no matter how temporary.
“Hey, Carolyn, how you doin’?” Roberta says. “You off to C-Town?”
“Uh-uh, Pathmark.” It’s mere coincidence that our cards are filled on the same day, but we meet fairly often to discuss what’s on sale. Mostly, I look forward to Roberta’s company, though I prefer to do the actual shopping alone. I like to weigh every purchase, to calculate and recalculate. One hundred dollars to last a month. Every gram counts.
“Woman come by askin’ about you.” Roberta’s tone is neutral, her eyes turned away. “Name of Porter. Wanted to know if y’all was trouble, makin’ noise, confrontin’ your neighbors. Wanted to know if y’all have a lot of visitors.”
I nod, but I’m too humiliated to say anything. Roberta’s not familiar with the others because I do all the shopping. But she knows something’s wrong when a healthy, childless woman receives food stamps.
“I told that Ms. Porter, ‘Lady, if this is all you got to do, find another job for yourself and save honest taxpayers the cost of your pension.’”
“What did she say?”
“Nothin’, just laughed fit to burst.” Roberta smiles. “Now there’s a woman don’t take a bluff.”
We linger in front of the building for a few minutes. Discussing what items are on sale in which stores. Roberta’s face is a mass of wrinkles. Her bony frame leans to the left, the result of a small stroke. I watch her finally move away, using her shopping cart for a walker, her left leg dragging. The odds are stacked against Roberta. She’s an old woman, poor all her life, her kids far away. But she keeps going no matter what life throws at her. Like us.
I finally head off in the opposite direction. We’re into August now, with the temperature at ten o’clock already above eighty degrees. I’m sweating before I reach the end of the block. But I don’t mind. With no air conditioner, we’re used to sweating out the summer months. Still, it’s a relief when I step into the air-conditioned Pathmark on Atlantic Avenue. I stop near the entrance for a moment as the sweat evaporates. To my left, I see Crespo, the manager. Crespo sometimes flirts with me, but he’s wasting his time. If I have eyes for anyone, it’s Violetta, who works a cash register.
Today I have eyes only for the chuck roast, which is on sale, $3.25 a pound. With just a few cheap ingredients, you can turn a chuck roast into a pot roast good for a lunch and four dinners. I buy two, four pounds each, $25 in total, a quarter of my stamps. As a general rule, I don’t measure my shopping by time, thirty days until new stamps come through. I measure the month in meals, ninety-three meals in July to be exact. I know I can’t make a hundred dollars produce ninety-three meals, but I can turn a whole chicken into three dinners and four lunches by making chicken stock from the carcass and adding a little rice. Brown rice is a Grand household staple. I buy it in twenty-five-pound bags at a wholesale grocery for about $20. In an emergency, a cup of rice fried up with some onion, peppers, and garlic will pass for lunch. Add an egg, you’ve got dinner.
I take a certain satisfaction from my skill at making do. Even though I have no idea who will eat the dinner.
I wander into the produce section. In truth, except for basics like onions and carrots and celery, we can’t afford fresh fruit or vegetables on the first go-round. Instead, I try to set a few dollars aside from our disability check to buy produce from the city’s many sidewalk vendors, a bag of cherries, a head of cabbage or broccoli, a few peaches. The produce is cheaper and fresher.
I’m completely absorbed, turning over bags of carrots, looking for any sign of rot, when I happen to glance up and see my father at the other end of the produce aisle. Instantly, the lie we’ve been telling each other all these years—the one about only Tina having to relive the past—falls away. My bowels contract, every organ quivering, and I feel an enormous pressure on my chest. For a very long moment, my lungs are completely paralyzed. Nothing has been lost, nothing. The memories, the images swirl around me, circling faster and faster as the words repeat.
To a child, to a child, to a child …