Best Food Writing 2014 by Holly Hughes Page B

the electric bill and locked snack foods in a plastic tub in her bedroom to ration them throughout the month. In September, when she first heard rumors of an impending cut, she had taken Tiara to sign up for a food stamp card of her own, thereby increasing the family’s take. Here was one surprising result of a government reduction: one new recipient added to the rolls. “A daughter looking out for her mother,” was how Raphael had explained it, bragging to friends, but Tiara wasless enthused. She chose not to carry the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card in her wallet, believing from personal experience that people who entered into the system tended to rely on it forever. “I’m not wanting to sign over my independence for good,” she said.
    Now, as they walked together up Good Hope Road toward the food bank, they took turns using a cellphone and passed a cigarette back and forth. “I used to apply for jobs at all these places,” Tiara said, pointing out the convenience stores and check-cashing shops that lined the road. She also had tried to improve her job prospects by attending a health-care training program (“medical school,” she called it) and a seminar on Microsoft Word (“a computer diploma”), and yet her last paid work had come five months earlier for a temp agency that had yet to pay her the $170 she was owed.
    â€œI’m grown, and I don’t own nothing,” Tiara said, flicking away the cigarette. “It’s pathetic.”
    â€œPathetic?” Raphael said, rolling the word out of her mouth, considering it. “How you figure that?”
    â€œUs going around, getting things, relying on people who treat us like nothing. I mean, I’m having to ask you for money we don’t have.”
    â€œYou ain’t stealing. You ain’t begging. We’re just surviving, best we can.”
    Tiara flipped up the hood of her sweatshirt and walked ahead.
    â€œSur-viv-ing. You hear me?” Raphael called after her. “We’re getting it while we can.”
    They walked into Bread for the City, where 40 people were crowded into the waiting room, and where the food line was a steady procession toward disappointment. “No more deer meat,” read one sign. “Pick a holiday bag OR a regular bag. You cannot receive both,” read the next. “Only one visit per month,” read another. “Food is intended to last for three days,” read the last notice, right by the counter, where Raphael handed over her number to a volunteer and waited for her bag of food.
    â€œThank you,” she said when the bag came back three minutes later, filled with turkey, applesauce, yams and five cans of greens. Raphael turned away from the counter, doing the math in her head.
    â€œSo that’s three days,” she said to Tiara on their way out the door. “What are we supposed to do about the rest?”
    â€œLady Can Cook”
    For all of her life, Raphael had been counting down to the 8th. It was her most reliable event, a monthly promise that she would have enough to eat when her parents spent their cash on heroin, or when asbestos and carbon monoxide forced her family to move houses three times in a year, or when a series of five “gone again” men fathered her six children and provided a total of $20 in monthly child support. Her life had been a swinging pendulum of uncertainty-of bad health, eviction and the sudden deaths of loved ones. But the 8th had always come, and the federal money had always been deposited on time into her account. “The golden date,” she called it.
    Only once, when she was in her early 30s, had she lived without government assistance. She had moved her children into a two-bedroom apartment near the Southwest waterfront and signed a lease for $925, working as a home health aide during the day and as a prep cook at RFK Stadium at night. “Climbing the ladder,” she said,