by Peg Kehret
“Did it say what you have to do to receive food?” Abby asked. “Do you have to somehow prove that you qualify as low-income or can anyone show up and get free food?”
“It didn’t say,” Lauren said.
“I’ll find out,” Shoeless said. “I’ll go there Saturday morning and ask for something to eat, and if they give it to me we’ll know you don’t have to fill out paperwork.”
“They probably don’t hand out food to kids,” Lauren said.
“Why not?” Shoeless said. “Kids get hungry. We got started on this project because of Sophie and Trudy. I’ll say I’m representing a community service project for the sixth grade at Challenger School.”
I had some misgivings about sending Shoeless to the food bank to represent us, so I suggested that one of us should go with him. “It’s always best to work in pairs,” I said.
“I’ll go,” Abby said.
“Maybe they’ll give us brownies,” Shoeless said. “Or cans of Pepsi.”
“We aren’t accepting any food, even if they offer it,” Abby said. “We’re only going for information, to find out what Sophie’s family needs to do in order to receive food from the food bank.”
“You expect me to give up part of my Saturday if there’s no food involved?” Shoeless said. “No way. I’m a growing boy. I need sustenance.”
“I’ll bring you a muffin,” Abby said.
“Deal,” said Shoeless as he wiggled his ears at her.
The talk of brownies and muffins made me hungry. Usually I bring two snacks to school, one for mid-morning and one for the afternoon. I keep candy bars, cookies, and small bags of chips in my dresser drawer, but that morning I had been so focused on getting the food for Sophie out of the house without Mom noticing it that I had forgotten to pack anything from my goodie drawer.
The clock hands seemed reluctant to pass two, but class finally ended and we were excused. The six of us rushed to the supply closet, grabbed our groceries, and hurried out to the front of the school to meet Chance. Lauren, Abby, Hunter, and Shoeless left their food with Jelly Bean and me, then headed for their respective buses.
I stood at the curb with Jelly Bean, hoping Chance wouldn’t forget. “If your brother doesn’t show up, we’re in trouble,” I said.
“He’ll be here. I texted him as soon as school got out, to remind him.”
“Are you sure he got your text? Did he answer?”
“He got it. That dude can’t go five seconds without checking his phone.”
Less than a minute later, Chance clattered to the curb in a clunker car. He unlocked the trunk, and we hefted all the groceries inside. I climbed in the backseat, while Jelly Bean rode shotgun. Duct tape crisscrossed the window next to me and a wad of stuffing stuck out of a rip in the upholstery.
Since Jelly Bean didn’t introduce me, I said, “Hi, Chance. I’m Emmy.”
“Yo,” said Chance.
“Thanks for doing this.”
“Yep.” Or maybe he said, “Uh.” It was hard to tell. Even though he answered me, Chance kept his eyes on his phone, obviously reading a text message.
“Here’s the address and how to get there,” I said, handing a piece of paper to Jelly Bean. “I printed directions from MapQuest last night.”
Jelly Bean read Sophie’s address out loud.
“It’s near the gravel pit,” I said.
The car belched exhaust fumes as we pulled away from the school. Jelly Bean told Chance when to turn, and Chance must have heard because he followed instructions, but he never spoke again. I felt as if a robot was driving the car. Chance kept glancing at his phone to read text messages. He held the phone in his right hand and, although he kept the back of that hand on the steering wheel, his right thumb skipped across the keyboard as he sent texts.
In my state, it’s not legal to text while you’re driving. It isn’t legal to talk on a cell phone while driving, either, unless you’re wearing a hands-free headset, but I didn’t say anything. Chance was doing us a favor and if we continued to help Sophie, we would need to ask him to drive us again. I didn’t think he would appreciate criticism from the backseat.
Ten minutes later, we turned onto East Sycamore, Sophie’s street. Chance slowed while we watched for number 1135.
“There it is,” I said. The stucco building showed only a faint memory of sand-colored paint. It had no carport or assigned parking spaces. We had to park half a block away.
“I’ll wait with the car,” Chance said. “This is the kind of neighborhood where, if you leave your car unguarded for five minutes, your hubcaps get swiped.”
I doubted that anyone would want to steal hubcaps or any other parts from this particular car, but it was good to know that Chance could speak in complete sentences.
“I could wait with the car while you carry the groceries,” Jelly Bean suggested.
Chance did not bother to answer. He gave Jelly Bean a look that made it clear who would be sitting behind the wheel and who would be carting the heavy bags of groceries.
Jelly Bean and I each took two bags out of the trunk and started toward Sophie’s apartment building. The concrete walk leading to the front door buckled in the center where a tree root had snaked beneath it. The offending tree had been cut down, leaving a stump.
“Watch out,” I warned, but Jelly Bean tripped on the uneven sidewalk anyway.
He lurched forward but managed not to fall, or to spill the groceries he carried.
The front door of the building was unlocked. We stepped inside and saw that apartments 1 and 2 were on the first floor, while apartments 3 and 4 were up a full flight of stairs.
“Apartment three,” I said.
Jelly Bean groaned. “Up the stairs?”
“Up the stairs,” I said, and we started climbing.
The air smelled like moldy bread, and the carpet on the stairs had worn so thin that the wood showed through.
We set the bags down in front of Sophie’s door. Odd music that seemed to be mostly drums pulsed from inside apartment 4. I didn’t hear any sounds coming from inside apartment 3, and I wondered if anyone was home.
It took Jelly Bean and me three trips, carrying as much as we could each time, to get all the groceries to Sophie’s door. My legs ached from climbing the stairs with our heavy loads. After the last trip, I knocked on the door but we didn’t wait to see if anyone came. We were halfway down the steps when we heard the door open.
A childish voice squealed, “Mama! Sophie! Look! Look!”
I couldn’t see her, but I knew it had to be Trudy. I had goose bumps on my arms as I heard her joyful cries.
We tiptoed the rest of the way downstairs, and let ourselves out the door.
“That,” said Jelly Bean, “was awesome.”
“She sounded as excited as if we’d left her every toy she’d ever dreamed of.”
“Toys don’t matter much,” Jelly Bean said, “when your stomach is empty.” It wasn’t the kind of comment I usually heard from Jelly Bean. For the first time, I wondered about his family. What was his home like? Was it possible that all of his talk about pizza and being hungry was for real? I had assumed he was only goofing around, pretending to be half starved. He had collected food for Sophie, and his brother had a car. If his family could afford a car for Chance, even a wreck like this one, they must have enough money for food.
Chance was so engrossed in his latest text message that he didn’t notice when we got back to the clunkermobile. Jelly Bean rapped on the car window. Chance unlocked the doors, and we headed home, with me telling Chance how to find my house.
“This is a good project,” Jelly Bean said. “I think we should do it again next week.”
I agreed, and the next day the rest of our group did, too. Lauren got tears in her eyes when I told how excited Trudy had been to discover the bags of food. Everyone voted t
o collect food again, and Jelly Bean said he would ask Chance to drive us to Sophie’s house on Tuesday.
Over the weekend, I put the food project out of my mind, except for Saturday afternoon when Mom said, “Emmy, have you seen those two tote bags that I bought at the Farmer’s Market? I can’t find them anywhere.”
Oops. I should have used paper or plastic bags that Mom wouldn’t miss. “I don’t know where they are,” I replied. That’s true, I told myself. I knew where they were on Thursday afternoon when I left them outside Sophie’s apartment, but I didn’t know for sure where they were now.
On Monday when Mrs. Reed had us meet with our community service groups, Abby and Shoeless reported on their visit to the food bank.
“Sophie’s family doesn’t have to prove that they are low income, but they do have to prove that they live in Cedar Hill,” Abby said. “When they show some ID with their address on it, they’re given a food bank card.”
“They don’t even have to take ID the first time they go,” Shoeless said. “If someone comes to the food bank and says they are hungry but don’t have any ID, they’re given a one-time voucher so that they can get food right away. Then they’re asked to bring ID the next time.”
“Sophie’s mom might not have a driver’s license,” Lauren said. “That’s what my mom uses for ID.”
“All Sophie’s mom needs is a recent piece of mail addressed to her that shows she lives in Cedar Hill,” Abby said. “It could be the electric bill or the rent bill. Anything that reached her via U.S. Mail will work.”
Riding the bus home on Monday, I told Lauren that I probably wouldn’t collect as much food as I had the first week. “I’m only going to the neighbors I know and I’ve already done nearly all the homes where someone is there after school. I can’t go in the evening without my parents finding out.”
“Why don’t you come to my house and we’ll collect food together?” Lauren asked. “There are lots of homes in my neighborhood where I haven’t gone yet.”
I quickly called Mom and told her I would be at Lauren’s house for a couple of hours. “Be home before it gets dark,” she said. “I’m going to be a little late tonight. I need to do some errands on my way home.”
Lauren and I easily filled two bags each with donated food, including a bag of dry cat food.
“Jelly Bean lives on the next block,” Lauren said. “Let’s ask if we can put this in Chance’s car now, instead of carrying it all to school tomorrow on the bus.”
“Good idea.”
Jelly Bean answered the phone. “I’ll send Chance a text and ask him,” he said, “but I don’t see why not.” He called back a few minutes later to say that would work.
Good, I thought. That removes any possibility of Mom seeing the food and asking about it. One less thing for me to worry about.
Chance wasn’t there when we got to Jelly Bean’s house, so he had us put the food in the garage. “I’ll transfer it to the car tomorrow morning,” he promised.
When I saw Jelly Bean’s house, I quit worrying whether he had enough to eat. His home looked much like mine—a well-kept rambler on a pleasant street.
As Lauren and I walked back to her house, I said, “Jelly Bean’s been really helpful on this project.”
Lauren agreed. “When Mrs. Reed gave us the assignment, I thought he and Shoeless would make it impossible to accomplish anything, but they’ve both been great.”
• • •
The next morning when I opened my goodie drawer to get out my daily snacks, I paused. Nobody had donated treats for Sophie’s family. Lauren and I had collected lots of nutritious food but not one person had given us dessert. Every kid likes something sweet now and then, I thought. I wondered how long it had been since Sophie and Trudy had eaten chocolate.
I got an empty plastic bag and put all the goodies from my drawer in it: two Hershey bars, a box of Gummy Bears, Fritos, some red licorice, and even an unopened bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in red wrappers that I got at half price on the day after Valentine’s Day. I had been saving these for a day when I really craved them.
I looked at the bulging bag of treats, hoping I would not regret giving them all away. I remembered the day I had forgotten to take snacks; I had done fine without them. I could skip them for a week or so.
I carried the bag of goodies to school in my backpack. At both the morning and afternoon recess, when I would usually have eaten a snack, I thought about Sophie and Trudy and how much they would enjoy eating my treats.
When Chance drove up to my school that afternoon, I added my bag of treats to the food we had collected.
The second food delivery was almost identical to the first, except this time after Jelly Bean and I knocked on the door and started down the stairs, we heard the door open and then a girl’s voice called, “Thank you!”
It wasn’t a little kid this time. This voice sounded about the same age as me. She didn’t come to the top of the stairs and try to talk to us, but I knew it must be Sophie.
“You’re welcome!” Jelly Bean called. He kept moving down the stairs, but I said, “I’ll be down in a minute. I’m going to talk to her.” I turned and ran back up the stairs.
A thin girl with thick dark hair had picked up a bag of groceries and started inside with it.
“Wait,” I called.
She stopped, turned, and looked at me.
“Are you Sophie?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I’m . . .”
She interrupted, smiling at me. “I know who you are. You’re my secret friend.”
I laughed. “I’m Emmy,” I told her.
“Thank you for bringing us food,” she said.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Ten.” She paused, and then added, “I know. You’re supposed to be eighteen to enter Dunbar’s Dream Contest, but I hoped whoever picks the winning entries wouldn’t care. Or I thought maybe the judge would be a wealthy philanthropist who would choose to help us even if I didn’t win the contest.”
“Instead of a wealthy philanthropist, you got me,” I said, “and my classmates.”
“Hey,” said Sophie. “I’ll take you any time. The food you left last time was awesome. My family would be really hungry without you.”
“There’s a food bank in the Cedar Hill Community Center,” I told her. “They’re open every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from ten until two. Your mom can get food for your family there. Tell her to take some identification with her.”
Sophie frowned. “What kind of identification?”
“Anything that shows her name and that you live here. It can be a bill that’s addressed to her at this address.”
“When she’s well enough to go there, I’ll tell her,” Sophie said, but something about the way she said it made me think it wouldn’t happen. I wondered if it was hard for her to talk about her family’s situation.
“What grade are you in?” I asked.
“Fifth. You?”
“Sixth. I go to Challenger School.”
“How’d you get my contest entry?”
“My mom works at Dunbar’s. She helps judge the contest.”
“Did she get my thank-you letter?”
A cold, hard lump formed in the back of my throat. I swallowed. “I’m not sure,” I said. I hope not, I thought. Mom and I had talked about Sophie’s entry, so if Dunbar’s got a thank-you note from Sophie, Mom would figure out that I had disobeyed her instructions about fulfilling a request, which meant I would be in a heap of trouble.
“I’m sorry I can’t ask you to come in,” Sophie said. “Mama’s feeling worse and she’s asleep. Trudy’s taking a nap, too.”
“I can’t stay, anyway. My friend’s brother drove me here, and he’s waiting to drive me home.”
As we talked, a small scrawny black cat padded toward
us. He sat beside Sophie and began licking one paw and washing his whiskers.
“This is Midnight,” Sophie said. “I found him eating a piece of a chicken leg that somebody had dropped near the Dumpster behind our building.”
I leaned down to pet Midnight, who pushed his head against my hand and purred.
“I made a Found Cat sign,” Sophie said, “but nobody claimed him, so he stayed with me.” She scooped the little cat into her arms, and he snuggled against her, purring. “He is a very intelligent cat, and he thanks you for bringing him food and a toy.”
“He’s beautiful,” I said.
“I was afraid Mama wouldn’t let me keep him because we have to share our food with him, but when she saw how happy he makes me—and Trudy, too—she said he could stay.”
“I’ll try to bring more cat food next time,” I said. “Do you need cat litter, too?”
“I use regular dirt, in an old dishpan. Midnight is a good boy and uses his pan.”
She bent her head over the cat, who purred even louder.
“Why don’t you write down your phone number for me?” I said. “I could call during spring break, to see if you need anything. I can give you my number, too. Just be sure to talk to me, not my mom.”
“We don’t have a phone. It got disconnected when we couldn’t pay the bill.”
“What about e-mail?” As soon as I asked, I realized what a dumb question it was. If you can’t afford a phone, you don’t have Internet access, either.
“No computer,” Sophie said.
“I’ll figure out a way to get in touch with you,” I said.
“Thank you for helping us,” Sophie said. “Mama was on the verge of moving to Mexico, even though we don’t want to do that. Her parents are there—my grandparents.”
It surprised me that Sophie had close family. Why didn’t they help?
She must have read my mind. “My grandparents are poor themselves,” she said, “and can’t send us money, but they offer a home if we go to live with them.” Her dark eyes looked fierce. “I am an American girl, and so is Trudy. We were born here, and we should stay here.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But if Mama does not get well soon and find work again, we will have to leave.”