Kids Eat Last
I was pulling the second pan of rolls from the oven when I heard her.
“Kids eat last in this family, sweetheart.”
The kitchen was so hot the window over the sink had fogged up. Fourteen people in a three-bedroom ranch house in Dubois County, Indiana, on Thanksgiving Day, with the oven going since five that morning and the furnace kicking on anyway because Neil’s uncle keeps leaving the back door open to smoke.
I set the rolls on the stovetop. Golden on top. Brushed with butter. My grandmother’s recipe.
Then I turned around.
Bernadine stood at my kitchen counter.
Four plastic containers in front of her, lids stacked to the side.
The good kind. The heavy-duty ones from the Gordon Food Service in Evansville, with the snap lids. She brings them to every holiday in a canvas tote bag. Everybody in the family knows about the tote bag.
She was filling them.
White meat, sliced thick. Off the breast of the turkey Neil had carved twenty minutes earlier. The best of it. The slices from right along the bone, where it’s juiciest.
The crusty corners of the dressing. Out of the big pan. Every corner. Four corners, and she’d taken all four, plus a strip along the edge where it gets brown and crispy against the glass.
Two slices of pecan pie and a square of persimmon pudding.
The persimmon pudding was mine. I’d made it Tuesday night, from persimmons Jonah and I picked off the tree behind the Huntingburg library. It’s a southern Indiana thing. If you’re not from here, you don’t know. It’s dark and spicy and dense, almost like a cake, and you eat it with whipped cream.
She’d cut the corner piece. Jonah’s favorite. The one he’d been asking about all week.
The turkey Neil had carved was down to wings and the back.
I looked at the platter. Twenty minutes ago it had been piled high. Now there were two wings, the back with the ribs still on it, a drumstick somebody had picked half clean, and a pile of skin and scraps.
The roast hen on the counter sat whole, waiting on him to carve it. A second bird. I’d done a hen too, because fourteen people is a lot of people and one turkey isn’t enough.
But Neil was in the garage. Nobody had carved the hen.
And holding up an empty plate in his green shirt was my son, Jonah.
He was standing at the end of the counter. In his good green button-up shirt, the one he wears to church, with the collar sticking up on one side because he did it himself. Holding a plate with nothing on it. Waiting.
He’s nine. He’d been up since six helping me peel potatoes.
Ten pounds of Yukon Golds. He peeled every one. At the kitchen table in his pajamas, with the peeler that’s too big for his hand, while I made the dressing. He was so proud. He kept counting them. “That’s forty-one, Mom. Forty-two.”
Bernadine smiled at him. That sweet smile. The one she uses at church.
“You can have whatever’s left, honey,” she said.
She nodded at the platter. At the wings and the back.
He said, “Okay, Grandma.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t whine. He didn’t look at me.
He just believed her.
He stood there with his plate and looked at the turkey platter, at the wings and the back and the scraps, like he was trying to figure out which part of a picked-over bird was his.
That was the part that went through me like cold water.
Not her taking the food. Not the containers. Not the pie or the pudding or the corners of the dressing.
Him believing her. Him standing there in his church shirt with an empty plate, thinking that’s how it works. That’s how families are. The grown-ups take the good parts, and you get what’s left.
I’d never once in his life taught him that. And he’d learned it in three seconds at my kitchen counter.
Chapter Two: Fourteen
It was my table, my groceries and my boy, and there was nothing to call anybody about. You just feed the child.
I want to explain that, because people have asked me since. Why I didn’t say something to Neil first. Why I didn’t take her aside. Why I didn’t make a scene.
You don’t make a scene. There’s nothing to make a scene about. It’s Thanksgiving. It’s his grandmother. Nobody’s breaking any law.
There’s just a hungry boy with an empty plate. And there’s a fix for that.
My name is Molly Schnell. I’m thirty-seven. I work at the Jasper branch of German American Bank, behind the member services desk. I open accounts and close accounts and help people figure out their statements. I’ve been there eleven years.
Neil works at Kimball. The furniture plant. He’s a supervisor on the line. His dad worked there thirty-four years before him. Half of Dubois County works at Kimball or Jasper Seating or Masterbrand, or used to.
We live outside Ferdinand, on two acres, in the house Neil grew up in. His folks sold it to us when they moved into town. That was eight years ago.
I’d spent three hundred and ten dollars at the Kroger in Jasper.
I keep the receipt. I keep every receipt. That’s the bank in me.
A twenty-two-pound Butterball. A five-pound roasting hen. Ten pounds of potatoes. Two boxes of Stove Top I didn’t use, because I make the dressing from scratch, but I always buy two just in case. Celery, onions, sage. Three pounds of butter. Heavy cream. Green beans. French’s onions. Cranberries. Pie crust, because I’m not crazy. Pecans, which cost more than the turkey.
Three hundred and ten dollars and forty-two cents.
Two days cooking for fourteen people.
Tuesday night, the persimmon pudding and the pies. Wednesday, the dressing and the cranberries and the rolls, which have to rise twice. Thursday, the turkey in at six, the hen at ten, the potatoes and green beans and gravy and everything else in the last frantic hour.
Fourteen people. Neil and me and Jonah. Neil’s mother, Bernadine. His sister, Renee, and her husband, Doug, and their three kids. His uncle Gary and Aunt Pat. His cousin Lisa and her boyfriend and her little girl.
Fourteen. I counted the chairs three times. 