could use the bathroom, and if no one was in the kitchen, I'd grab
something out of the refrigerator or cupboard and take it into the
bathroom and eat it there, always making a point of flushing the toilet
before leaving.
Brian was scavenging, too. One day I discovered him upchucking behind
our house. I wanted to know how he could be spewing like that when we
hadn't eaten in days. He told me he had broken into a neighbor's house
and stolen a gallon jar of pickles. The neighbor had caught him, but
instead of reporting him to the cops, he made Brian eat the entire jarful
as punishment. I had to swear I wouldn't tell Dad.
A couple of months after Dad lost his job, he came home with a bag of
groceries: a can of corn, a half gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, two tins of
deviled ham, a sack of sugar, and a stick of margarine. The can of corn
disappeared within minutes. Somebody in the family had stolen it, and
no one except the thief knew who. But Dad was too busy making
deviled-ham sandwiches to launch an investigation. We ate our fill that
night, washing down the sandwiches with big glasses of milk. When I
got back from school the next day, I found Lori in the kitchen eating
something out of a cup with a spoon. I looked in the refrigerator. There
was nothing inside but a half-gone stick of margarine.
"Lori, what are you eating?"
"Margarine," she said.
I wrinkled my nose. "Really?"
"Yeah," she said. "Mix it with sugar. Tastes just like frosting."
I made some. It didn't taste like frosting. It was sort of crunchy, because
the sugar didn't dissolve, and it was greasy and left a filmy coat in my
mouth. But I ate it all anyway.