I remember at ten or eleven years old when I was going to Robert Fulton Elementary School. The days were so tiring because I got up every morning hungry. I had five brothers and two sisters. We’d all look into empty cabinets, hoping that our mother had bought something during the night. It was wishful thinking. Our father, a Navy man, would drink all the money up so by mid-month we’d be a starving family. My mother would take the bus to other-land, a place foreign to us, to clean someone’s house for pennies. With that money Mother would buy oatmeal, rice and beans. Once in a while she’d treat us with hamburger meat, mixing the beans and rice, adding a special Southern-style seasoning. We’d eat good about twice a month. Mother would never talk about her work. She only cared about feeding her children. I could see disdain in my mother’s eyes each time my father came home drunk, pockets empty. But Mother loved Father. She’d never leave him, only fight his wastefulness.
Once in a while at school, I’d look into the cafeteria–face agog–staring at the trays full of food. My mind going back to the pictures I lusted over in newspapers and magazines, wondering what those beautiful cheeseburgers tasted like. My stomach would hurt all the time, until I just got used to it. I wouldn’t play as much, knowing that too much exertion would bring on hunger and weaken me. My studies suffered and my concentration lacked in this constant struggle of wanting. I forgot about all other materialistic lures, like fine clothes and fancy toys, not caring about having to wear the same clothes two or three times a week, or never having a bicycle to ride. It wasn’t until 14 or 15 did I realize I could do something about being hungry. I searched for work. Push-mowers cut grass. Brooms swept parking lots. Newspaper subscriptions were sold door-to-door. Donuts and sodas were stuffed inside. At first I cured only my hunger. But my conscience forced my brothers, sisters and mother into my mind. I worked hard for pennies, only to do the opposite of what most little boys did. I didn’t go into my mother’s purse, seeking the loose change she may have forgotten. I put dollars and cents into her change purse when she asked me to get her purse for her. Mother knew what I was doing, but I felt the excitement each time she opened her little black change purse, gave me a few quarters, writing a note to Mr. Meshack, asking him to sell me a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes. This was my favorite chore, to appease my mother’s taste for tobacco.She’d sit on the old green recliner, smoking a cigarette, and ask me to rub her feet or scratch her itching scalp. I knew it was her only pleasure in the world in those dark days of poverty, so I gladly did these things for my mother.
Juan Haines is an inmate at San Quentin State Prison. He is Managing Editor of the San Quentin News and works as a jailhouse attorney. (Photo by Peter Merts)