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Hilda turned away from the stove. “Did you get anything?” The bakery sometimes sold us day-old bread at a discount, but it was hit-or-miss based on what was available.

Today was a day with bread. Wesley was carrying a sack about half the size of his slight seven-year-old body.

A full sack of bread was a feast as far as we were concerned. Dandelion greens had some nutritional value, Mom promised us, but their broth wasn’t exactly filling. On Sundays we would go down to the Seventh-Day Adventist church, which Mom had joined after Papa died. There was always a big old spread of food after the service, which meant that one meal was guaranteed. But it was only Wednesday; half a week still to go.

Any time we could make do without the government handouts was a good day. It made us feel like the Great Depression hadn’t gotten the best of us. Times were hard for everyone. Didn’t matter, though — it was still an awful feeling not to be able to get by on our own, as we had when Papa was alive.

Back then we’d never heard of welfare. Papa took care of everything. He built our house with his own hands, and Mom’s vegetable garden fed us year-round. We kept chickens for eggs, and our table was always full of good food. The wood walls didn’t creak; they echoed with music and laughter and powerful stories.

Now Mom worked even harder. So did Wilfred. All of us did our part, but with the Depression on, working hard simply wasn’t enough.

“Dinner,” Hilda said.

Mom sat still, pen poised in hand, eyes fixed on her papers. She seemed to be staring straight through the page, thoughtful. Unmoving as we gathered around the table.

“Mom, let’s eat.” I laid my hand on her shoulder. My touch brought her out of whatever thoughts were swirling in her mind.

“What is it, baby?” Mom said, glancing at me. I guessed that she was so caught up in her writing, she hadn’t heard me the first time.

“Dinner’s ready. Looks like it’s going to be a good one,” I added, trying to stay positive and proud, like I knew Mom would want me to.

Mom looked at me, her gaze liquid-soft. “I know, baby. We’re OK.” She wrapped an arm around me, and her strength seeped through me and beyond. The government people wanted us to believe there was something wrong with her. Because she was strong. Because she stood up for what she believed. Times were hard, but she was still Mom, and she refused to let anyone reduce her.

We took our seats around the table. Hilda ladled dandelion greens into our bowls. Yvonne chopped the bread into chunks and slices, then distributed them among us. We prayed over the meal. It was supposed to be a moment to thank God for the nourishment before us, but through my cracked eyelids, the meager offering didn’t look like much to be thankful for. “Lord, may our dinner be filling to our minds, bodies, and souls,” Hilda said, which sounded to me less like a blessing and more like wishful thinking.

The amount of food on the table could be eaten in under five minutes. But we ate slowly, as if the longer we stretched each bite, the more it would become.

The greens were stringy and chewy, but I tried to remind myself to be grateful. Yvonne and Wesley must have spent more than an hour picking them from what was left in our garden.

The bread was crusty, halfway stale. We dipped it in the dandelion broth to soften it. The only sounds were of our occasional chewing. No one talked about anything. We just sat there together. The lack and the hunger floated around us like a cloud, withholding everything — all hope, all satisfaction, every single drop of cleansing rain. There seemed to be no help for the way we were stuck.

We chewed the bland greens dutifully. My mind streamed, full of thoughts; I could feel the government people circling like carrion birds. We were still alive, and yet they circled. Lying in wait.

“What did he say to you?” Philbert wanted to know. It was almost like he could tell what I was thinking. But I didn’t see why he had to bring it up now, here at the table with everyone.

“Same old,” I murmured. “You know.”

“No. He always talks to you,” Philbert added. A little miffed about it, I guess. Him being older and all. He stabbed at the dandelion greens with his fork.

Hilda shot me a look across the table. Why me, I didn’t know. I didn’t start it. I widened my eyes back at her.

I got the message. Had already had it in mind. Mr. Franklin’s visits put everyone out of sorts enough, without rehashing things. Philbert knew better, too.

“All right,” Mom said in a tone of voice that stopped us from fussing at one another. “Tell me about your studies.” She glanced around the table. “Did you learn anything new?”

Mom was always teaching us new things, telling us stories that we repeated to one another until we knew them by heart. We could recite passages from Shakespeare and legends about African kingdoms going back thousands of years. We could share facts about the transatlantic slave trade, the largest forced migration of a people in the history of humankind, and about the great military strategist Queen Nzingah, who defended the nation of Angola against Portuguese invaders in a powerful effort to destroy the slave trade entirely. And more recent events, like abolitionist efforts and the many revolts against slavery in the United States.

“I have one,” Yvonne piped up. “How about Frederick Douglass and his
North Star
newspaper that helped free the slaves — I mean, the enslaved Africans?” She briefly told how Douglass’s words had helped change the nation.

Over the meager meal, we took turns repeating the lessons Mom had taught us over the years at this very table. “There’s so much beauty and strength in our history,” she’d say as she’d recite the works of black people who had come before us. “You must be able to read thoughtfully, speak clearly, and understand everything,” she’d tell us, and point to a new page in the dictionary.

Philbert and I talked of Papa’s friend Marcus Garvey and their movement to unite black people in demanding their equal rights. We all chanted one of Garvey’s famous phrases together:
Up, up, you mighty race. You can accomplish what you will.

Mom sat listening, a slight smile on her face. Her expression grew distant at times, the same thinking expression she had worn earlier while she was working. And when we came around to discussing Papa’s work, a fresh shadow crossed her face. I wondered, somewhere deep in me, what Papa would do if he were here. If I concentrated hard enough, I could almost hear his voice:
Malcolm, my son, you can be and do anything you put your mind to.

So why couldn’t I figure out how to help our family?

I sipped the gray-green water gathered in my bowl. Dandelion broth? Not exactly. A surge of desperation growled low in my stomach. There had to be something we could do to get everyone’s mind off the meager supper. The stories offered some distraction, but not enough.

I caught Philbert’s eye across the table. Then I tapped my remaining heel of bread against the side of my bowl. When I let go of it, as if on cue, Philbert reached over and snatched it. Jamming it between his teeth, he tore a huge bite.

“Hey!” I grabbed at his face. “That’s mine.”

In retaliation, I snatched his piece of bread, which was identical to mine — the opposite heel. I bit into it.

Philbert squealed in mock outrage. “That’s mine.”

“It’s mine now,” I mumble-shouted, my mouth jammed with crust.

We gnawed the heels, staring at each other like bulldogs. Reginald’s laugh snapped through the air like a starting pistol. Philbert and I dove dramatically across the table at each other. My fingers at his lips tried to retrieve the remains of my supper. He scratched my face in return. I squealed in response.

We both chewed frantically, trying to down as much bread as we could before the other wrenched any out of our mouths: teeth versus fingers on tough old bread that didn’t want to give in to either. My brothers and sisters laughed, choosing sides and chanting our names.

“Philbert! Philbert!”

“Chew, chew, Malcolm!”

“Boys!” Mom’s tone turned sharp. “What’s this? Stop it, now.” She laid her hands flat on the table and leaned into them. “Sit down,” she ordered us. “And finish your suppers.” Then she fell quiet again.

We turned our heads away from each other, toward her. Philbert, no doubt, thinking the same as me:
That’s it?
Mom, when things were right, would scold us raw for fighting over food. Scold us for not being grateful. For not being civil. For not doing everything we could for the family. That’s the reaction we were expecting. Hoping for, even. To see the spark in her eyes. To feel like things were normal for a minute.

But this time, Mom just shook her head, as though she were too tired to deal with us. “Please, boys,” she added.

“Yes, Mom,” we mumbled. I drew my hands back, coming away with the last morsel of my bread. Victorious, at least technically. Philbert chomped through the rest of his own meal, freshly silent. Sullen.

My plate was nearly empty. My hands. My heart.

Mr. Franklin wanted us to believe that Mom was crazy. Crazy for being too proud to take more welfare handouts. Crazy to let us go hungry during the Depression when what they’re giving free is pork, which we don’t eat. Crazy for standing on her principles: no buying on credit, no giving up her children, no eating of unclean meat.

Across the table, Mom dipped her spoon delicately into her bowl of foraged greens, as though she were eating a gourmet meal. But her forehead was wrinkled. She still looked distracted. Frustrated. Thoughtful.

Mom wasn’t crazy. Our family was broken. Her strength was in keeping us all moving forward and in holding the pieces of our sorrow together, but we were living with shards of it. You never knew when one was going to prick you or how sharp it would be.

Sooner than later, the greens and my final nub of bread were gone. My stomach rumbled on. The ache of it filled my body from toes to ears.

Despite the way I’d misled the welfare man, Philbert and I did a pretty good business trapping and selling meat. We’d catch frogs, rabbits, muskrats — basically whatever creatures happened along our stretch of the creek. We could sell it all to white folks, who apparently would eat just about anything. Maybe that was the secret to always having food on the table: no standards. Mom definitely had standards, and we all kept to them. For instance, I was hungry enough to eat a pig, a rabbit — heck, I’d have eaten a muskrat when things got really bad — but Mom still refused to serve it in the house.

With the money we got selling the meat one afternoon, a few weeks after the government man’s visit, we bought some potatoes and some eggs. I figured Hilda could boil them up nice and they would make a decent dinner. The store guy looked at us a little funny when I laid the money out on the counter. Lately, he was used to us coming around for the welfare parcels. I could see them stacked in the corner, small brown boxes stamped
NOT FOR SALE
, waiting for other families to come along.

Papa would be proud. Tonight we were paying customers. Didn’t even have to put a cent on credit, which Papa used to forbid. Buying on credit was a system created with no way to ever catch up, he’d say.

We stepped outside, me swinging the sack of food. I had it clenched up in my fist real good, though. No way would I drop our dinner.

“They’ve got a nice melon patch over at the Bolls’,” I said.

Philbert nodded. We were always in sync, Philbert and me. Without another word, we changed course. We circled around so that we could come up from the woods side rather than the road side. Mrs. Boll was bound to be inside, cooking up the fresh muskrat we’d sold her, so we might have a clean shot at swiping a couple of melons and not being noticed.

I’d already made up my mind that we weren’t going to crack them open and eat them on the spot. We’d bring them home and let Hilda cut them up for supper. Since we had the bag of what we’d bought, a little extra wouldn’t raise her suspicions. Tonight, the Littles were going to eat like old times.

Behind the Bolls’ property, we crept out of the woods. Tiptoed straight into the melon patch, all viny, with melons ripe for the picking. The melons had grown large and oval. We knocked on their tough green flesh to be sure they hadn’t gone soft, then we scooped up one each and hightailed it back toward the woods.

Hot damn. I had a melon under one arm and a sack of eggs and potatoes in the other hand. It was gonna be one fine supper. I wanted to stick it in the face of the welfare man. We were fine. We were gonna be just fine.

“
You boys, stop right there!
” a woman’s voice rang out behind us.

Of course we didn’t stop. We kept on running, even though I recognized the voice. Mrs. Stockton, one of our neighbors and a friend of Mom’s.

“Malcolm and Philbert Little!” she called as we were scrambling. There was no purpose in running after that point. The jig was up. If we ran, she’d just be on our porch waiting when we got home.

Mrs. Stockton was a beefy, no-nonsense woman in a plain blue skirt and blouse. Her thick shoes shushed her through the grass toward us at a surprising clip. When she reached us, there was a high red in her cheeks from the exertion. Or the anger. Hard to say.

She circled the Bolls’ melon patch as if checking to be sure we hadn’t done any damage. We stood dutifully with our heads bowed, while she muttered woefully about “these niggers and their antics.”

Mrs. Stockton loomed over us finally. “Come with me.” She grabbed each of us by an ear and marched us straight down the road into town. Soon enough, we realized that she was taking us toward the dress shop where Mom worked, sewing clothes in the warehouse.

At the rear entrance, Mrs. Stockton let go of my ear long enough to pound her fist on the door. After a moment, a blond woman, hair knotted atop her head, answered. She wore a thicker, darker smock than the one Mom would come home wearing. She must have been the shop owner or at least the head seamstress.

“Yes?” she said. Her gaze flicked up and down, appraising Mrs. Stockton.

“These niggers were down by the creek causing trouble,” she reported.

“How is that my problem?” the head seamstress asked, appraising us, too.