a blanket over it and figured we could make a blackbird pie, like in the
nursery rhyme. But we couldn't bring ourselves to kill the bird, and
anyway, it looked too scrawny to eat.
We'd heard of a dish called poke salad, and since a big patch of
pokeweed grew behind our house, Brian and I thought we'd give it a try.
If it was any good, we'd have a whole new supply of food. We first tried
eating the pokeweed raw, but it was awfully bitter, so we boiled it—
singing. "Poke Salad Annie" in anticipation—but it still tasted sour and
stringy, and our tongues itched for days afterward.
One day, hunting for food, we climbed through the window of an
abandoned house. The rooms were tiny, and it had dirt floors, but in the
kitchen we found shelves lined with rows of canned food.
"Bo-nanza!" Brian cried out.
"Feast time!" I said.
The cans were coated with dust and starting to rust, but we figured the
food was still safe to eat, since the whole point of canning was to
preserve. I passed a can of tomatoes to Brian, who took out his
pocketknife. When he punctured the tin, the contents exploded in his
face, covering us with a fizzy brown juice. We tried a few more, but they
exploded, too, and we walked home without having eaten anything, our
shirts and faces stained with rotten tomatoes. When I started sixth
grade, the other kids made fun of Brian and me because we were so
skinny. They called me spider legs, skeleton girl, pipe cleaner, two-by-
four, bony butt, stick woman, bean pole, and giraffe, and they said I
could stay dry in the rain by standing under a telephone wire.
At lunchtime, when other kids unwrapped their sandwiches or bought
their hot meals, Brian and I would get out books and read. Brian told
everyone he had to keep his weight down because he wanted to join the