Last Friday I interviewed for an artist in residence gig in the St. Louis public schools. I would go in as a poet. It would be awesome. I would inspire the kids and inject color into the dowdy world of public ed in which they’re trapped. Fourth and fifth graders. The littlest ones. The ones who maybe still have a chance?
My idea was to have them write through their experiences of food. Learn sensory description, metaphor, through a subject they can, well, already sink their teeth into. We would explore cultures through cuisine, learn tolerance through looking at how others eat, -- even the “others” in the classrooms with us. Et cetera. I had measures in place for all sorts of negative sides – I’d thought of people having to work so hard that they couldn’t make dinner so the kids were on their own; I thought of a poverty that might limit meals to what comes from the food pantry, or the cheap, deadly diet of the (growing) American poor: lots of refined starches (white bread, fake macaroni and cheese, noodles, hot dogs, sugar). And there is always the kid whose parents are too stoned to care, no matter where you go. I kept all of that in mind.
Five minutes into my pitch the nice woman interviewer stopped me:
“Margaret,” she said, looking immensely pained and apologetic, “I hate to stop you, but….” and she went on to explain that fully 10 percent of the children in our City schools are homeless, and a far larger percent are getting probably their one meal a day from the subsidized lunch program. “A lot of their experiences with food are not good.”
Ten percent? What? How in the hell can that be? What in God’s name are we doing? Are we insane? And where are these children? Why can’t I see them? If they were visible, would we feed them? What kind of place is this, anyway, where we spend money on useless wars and give the wealthy and corporations immense tax breaks while we let little children go hungry??????
I instantly realized that I could not do such a program unless I could afford to feed these kids every time I held class. Which, of course and unfortunately, I cannot even begin to do. Which is a shame, because I still think that the pain they have around food needs addressed, acknowledged, given a light to heal under. But you just can’t ask hungry people to sit around thinking about food!
Ok, so I left crying, feeling like the dumb white lady. The woman I interviewed with couldn’t have been more gracious about it. I felt like a schmuck. I went home and got in bed, let myself sob for all the abandoned (and I mean by us, not just by their parents) children in the world, and for the mothers who have to watch those babies go hungry. All over the world? Yes. And right in my neighborhood. These hungry babies within steps of my door? They are less visible to me than those so very far away.
The next day I came down with a raging mastitis. Seriously. Driving home on the rainy highway after a lovely wedding celebration in the Missouri hills, my left breast just started throbbing. I went home, took off the Angel push-up bra, put on a soft self-bra-ed tank and, well, within a couple of hours I couldn’t even handle having that on, it was so tight on that breast. Finally getting the bright idea to look in the mirror I saw these odd tracings of bright red coming out of my aereola. By Sunday afternoon the underside of that breast, toward my armpit, was red, too, and hot, and soar.
It’s been 15 years since I nursed a baby, and I didn’t even get a full-blown breast infection then. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think that my spirit is rebelling against this idea of all these children I cannot feed.
And my own daughter, too far away.
But the knowledge of the 10 plus the 25-40 percent equals a way too high percentage of hungry children in my town? This is just too much. It’s just too damn much. Where is this that I live? What country is this? Who runs this joint? What do we believe in? Who do I talk to? And where are the TV cameras? And where is the mayor? It’s not like I’m an innocent! I’ve been fighting these fights my whole life! How could I not have known this? Why does my heart not just give up? Mr. President, I know these babies have to say it, Mr. President, why won’t you help us? Really, what do these children think at night as they fall asleep? How alone can a person feel before the only option is to turn to stone? Remember, you mothers, the feeling of milk letting down? Flooding into your nipples, blasting forth at the very thought or cry of your hungry baby? My breasts, my old and empty breasts, both of them, ache like widowed hounds with these thoughts.
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