Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger by Lisa Donovan

Author:Lisa Donovan [Donovan, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

9

HUNGER

Cornmeal

JOHN, JOSEPH, AND I MOVED to Nashville at the end of the summer in 2002. We rented a house off 12th Avenue South, a neighborhood that was built around a large park immortalizing a significant Civil War battle and was, when we arrived, known for prostitution and drug deals, and as a scouting location for Harmony Korine movie extras. That neighborhood looks a lot like a wealthy suburb now, fancy shops with fifty-five-dollar tea towels that say “Bless Your Heart” and restaurant chains selling fifteen-dollar tacos with very suspect ingredients like ancho mayo sauce or green chili tapenade that only white suburbanites who don’t know any better will pay for. Bless their hearts.

When we lived there, though, it was still the place where broke musicians and songwriters and artists rented from people who owned property they were praying would pay off someday. The houses were nice and affordable, the landlords were patient and gracious. John set up a studio in the basement and worked several odd jobs hanging art at local museums or in the airport or making frames at a frame shop. Joseph started day care at a co-op where I felt connected and where he felt comfortable, and I started my job teaching art history, fundamental 2D art, and photography. I wrote artist features for a zine out of Brooklyn and every once in a while art reviews for local shows in Nashville.

We ate a lot of black beans, couscous bought in bulk, and sautéed spinach—a lot of it. I was too busy figuring out that teaching at an obnoxiously wealthy and very conservative high school was not my cup of tea to be engaged in any real cooking, much less baking. So we continued being skinny and hungry, but not out of sadness or grief. We were happy and eager. At night we would put Joseph to bed together, reading Harry Potter or stories from an old Native American folklore book that John had from graduate school, and then I would sing him songs, the songs I had been singing to him his whole life, in a room we decorated with Batman and Bob the Builder paraphernalia. Then John and I would have tea on the couch, while Sonny slept between us, and we would talk about art and books and the work we wanted to do, how we never wanted to retire but how we wanted to build a life where we could wake up in the morning, have coffee with each other, go to our respective corners in the house—him to a studio and me to a writer’s desk—and just work, meeting again for lunch and then later for wine.

This was our simple dream. We would listen to Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue or Beck’s Sea Change or Yo La Tengo’s Summer Sun while we planned and schemed about the kind of world we knew we could finally build together, all while my son slept safely in a room I paid for, with my own money, from my own hard work.

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