Lunch Money
Isaiah is eight and in the second grade. All he had for breakfast this morning was nothing because his mom leaves for her job in the meat processing plant at 6:00 a.m., and his older sister gets him up at 8:00 a.m., but she doesn't cook breakfast, and there's no food in the kitchen except some candy corn left over from Halloween and a couple of beers that Dave, his mom's boyfriend, left in the fridge. Isaiah already knows he doesn’t like beer. Oh, yeh, there's a box of Hamburger Helper, but no hamburger meat. Sometimes the lady next door gives him a peanut butter sandwich, but not today. (Twenty years from now, when he remembers this time, it will occur to Isaiah that she probably gave up her lunch for him.) There is also a half-empty jug of milk next to the beer, but it smells bad.
Later, in class, the teacher is saying something about fractions, but he can’t listen because he is acutely aware that the growling in his stomach seems louder than her voice. It's almost lunch time. Not that he cares, because he didn't bring anything, and he doesn't have any money for the cafeteria. He wanders into the cafeteria anyway, because if Miss Kate is working today, she might slip him a cookie, and sometimes he finds unopened juice boxes other kids have discarded.
Just inside the cafeteria door, the cork board that usually displays the week’s menu pinned next to flyers for upcoming school events has been replaced with a large, framed poster. At the top of the poster are the words, “The Ten Commandments.” It seems to be a list of rules. Experience has taught him that the teachers are serious about following rules, so Isaiah reads it carefully, sounding out the longer words.
Principal Johnson walks into the dining hall and smiles when he sees the boy intently studying the poster. “It’s great to see young people learning,” he says, in that speechifying way he has. He pats Isaiah on the head and asks, as he always does, “Any questions?”
Isaiah points to a sentence on the poster. “What’s adultery?” he asks.
The principal’s cheeks turn pink. “Ah, it’s complicated,” he says. He clears his throat, then reaches into his pocket and hands the boy a dollar. “Treat yourself to dessert,” he suggests, although he probably knows that Isaiah is one of the kids who doesn’t usually eat in the cafeteria.
Isaiah chooses a slice of apple pie. It looks flat and a bit soggy, but it’s more appealing than the gray pudding, and only costs 75 cents. Miss Kate puts a little milk box on his tray at no charge. There are only ten minutes left before lunchtime ends, so he eats quickly. On the way back to class, he walks past the list of new rules and wonders for a moment if taking the juice boxes counts as stealing. He thinks probably not, because nobody else wanted them.
~