We Are Taking Only What We Need by Stephanie Powell Watts

Author:Stephanie Powell Watts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

IN THE SOUTH, we eat liver mush. We slice thin grainy rectangles, the thinner the better, into the laps of skillets. The meat sizzles on the grease, becomes lacy as the oil pops through. We eat crisp slices crunchy around the edges, on biscuits, with eggs. There is no liver mush in the North, not the good kind. Scrapple, liver pudding. Not the same thing. We’d come a long way from our last few meals at home. We’d had feasts with multiple courses and breads and salads and soups that my mother’d read about or looked up. Every dinner was a surprise our mother created. I breathed with great relief. Finally, the mother of my dreams. And she seemed happy, too, with her Seven-Up cake and banana-beef stew. Everything was a gift for our delight. We didn’t say delight. But my mother seemed to wait for it, while we picked at saffron mounds and curled our forks under noncountry-fried meats. We should have given our unmitigated delight to her while she still asked for it.

The apartment smelled of the frying liver. I was tempted to fill a skillet with the meat, give each piece no room in the pan. You think you’d get more quicker that way, but it was a fiction. Each piece needed room to flip. Otherwise you’d have a scramble in the bottom of the blackened pan. It took longer this way, but it was worth it. I stood by the stove and admired that Mama took her time with each piece, standing far enough so that the pop of the hot oil couldn’t reach.

“How much longer, Ma?” I asked, and Mama didn’t get mad. Only our second full day in town and she’d gotten a decent job at the A&P. She was in a good mood.

“Three more minutes, maybe,” she said. “Pour some juice while we’re waiting. Don’t spill it,” she said, but there was no irritation in her voice.

“This week I’m working seven to four, but that’s just for training. Next week I’ll get a schedule like everyone else.”

I concentrated on getting the juice in the glasses. Gary would fuss if I got more than he did.

“I could be working any time of the day,” Mama continued. “I’m going to have to rely on you. Okay?”

I knew Mama wanted me to react, to say something, but I wasn’t sure what.

“Who’s gonna keep us then?” I asked finally.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we need to,” she said, putting two pieces on white bread for Gary. She cut the sandwich along the diagonal so he would have a point to hold onto. All of us got our sandwiches and sat in the living room. People I didn’t recognize from other apartments walked past. Car doors slammed, voices wafted from the apartments connected to ours. But we were quiet.

Rockford came on the fuzzy screen. The actor who played him had relatives in the next small town to ours. That’s what they claimed anyway. Rockford had changed his name they said from Bumgarner to Garner, but he was still one of them.

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