It was a time when I was very young, either just before starting school or just after, I really don't remember. David, my little brother was walking and talking, but he was still a baby; a time before my brother became my responsibility. It's kind of like looking through a small window, this is how I hold this fragment of memory. The when and where's and why are all gone...only a small pain to look through.
What town in California, I don't know. I remember the small trailer-house we pulled behind our old green pickup truck. What had happened, I can only guess. My dad could have been drunk, and he and my mom were fighting. She knew enough to run. Where does one go for safe with two little kids, no money, and no one to turn to?
I remember being handed a single slice of white bread with a ladle of blackbeans in it. A bend-over blackbean sandwich. I had to walk fast to keep up with my mom, who was carrying David. I remember how hard it was to eat that sandwich while walking so fast. It was the best thing I had ever eaten. I was so hungry and the thought of dropping any beans made my uneasiness even greater. To be so hungry, and to have to wolf down something that tasted so good, and the thought of loosing any of it, because there wasn't enough to start with.
All three of us hurried down some street not knowing where we were going, just running away from him, the situation, something. We hadn't run far and I remember standing outside a church, mom urging me to finish the last few bites of my tightly held sandwich. Two big bites, a mouth full, and having to swallow it down, cuz we had to get inside that church fast.
There was shame attached to that bend-over bean sandwich, other people, normal people, didn't eat bean sandwiches. Those people in that church was better than we were. We were poor and in trouble with no place to go. We sat in the back so as not to be seen, less than, needy, alone, hungry and afraid. No help came. I don't remember leaving that church. All I saw in there were people better off than we were.
Time went on, we went on, I guess back to the trailer and my dad, or someplace else, I don't remember. I do remember the feeling of needing help...rescued, no one came to the rescue, not even God. It always made me sad, then mad. My mother, my little brother and how sad for that hungery, frightened little girl, me. It was hard to believe those church people with their words of, "Jesue loves you, yes he does..." and "Jesus saves all the little children of the world".
Time moves on, it gets better, then worse, then better again, just moving on and on, over and over. Like a wolfed down bend-over blackbean sandwich; it tastes wonderful but you're left hungry because it wasn't enough, and you wish you had eaten it slower, or better yet, had another one.
Yes, life is like a bend-over blackbean sandwich...at least it is to me.