Save Everything

Mom feeds us gingersnaps and saltines when we get sick to our stomachs, but I never eat any of it. With sweaty palms I nervously stuff the crackers into my pockets, telling myself that I am saving the crumbs for later. Before we moved my grandmother, she would collect food like a pack rat. I’d take her for groceries, and before she was done hiding them, she’d ask me to take her for more. It wasn’t the forgetting that made my stomach churn. It was the smell of rotten heads of lettuce, and the sight of curdled milk, gallons and gallons with expiration dates long past neatly lining her refrigerator. At night she would lock herself in her room with her stockpile of produce and frozen dinners. The next morning she’d scream: “I have no food. I am starving!” We lose everything we try to save. Fear is a shapeless starvation, a hunger born of forgetting. My grandmother survived the atomic bomb, hiding in the Japanese countryside, starving while cities burned alive. Every day during school, the teachers would take the children to pick any living vegetables. They would celebrate Teruko-san’s honesty, never sneaking a bite for herself, always presenting the day’s bounty to her father. Sixty years later she is starving again. I am dizzy. I am sick to my stomach. My hands dive into my pockets, but the crumbs are gone.