Hunger Pains

Coffee Cup

    There were moments when her coffee cup would be empty. But, instead of going inside to make another cup, she would instead light another cigarette if the one she was smoking with her coffee was done. Her coffee was always the same; it would first start off black, but with enough Coffee Mate French Vanilla coffee creamer and sugar, the dark color that once filled her cup suddenly matched its color--light brown. I never heard the end of her constant jokes about being the same color as her coffee or even about how big my breasts were until I was fifteen, but I didn't mind because I was always able to bring up her height. She always claimed to be five foot eight until I turned ten and that number slowly started shrinking. She could have at least been five foot two by the time I was thirteen; towering over her already small frame, placing my elbow on her head and leaning against her like I was the Tower of Pisa. I would always get smacked right in the chest with laughter escaping from my lungs. "Shut the hell up! You may be taller than me, but I can still whoop your ass." 

    The first of the month, my sisters and I always knew that it was time to go grocery shopping (especially my sister, Ariana, because she would always ask to get a bag of Takis to take to school with her the next day) as the four of us squeezed into a tiny, two door Mazda that my mother would later call "Little Shit", we would spend ten to fifteen minutes our our lives driving to the nearest Walmart. One by one we would escape from the tiny monster that was our family vehicle and follow her like we were ducks in a row. The moment we entered into the store, it felt as if everyone's eyes were on us; a short white woman was being closely followed by three black girls. I think everyone was afraid that we would try and jump our own mother for the forty-five cent and the EBT card that was in her purse. But, I don't think she ever realized that some eyes were still wondering her way because it never stopped her from turning around to smack either of us in the mouth when we were playing "only step on the black tiles" when we weren't supposed to or for her to threaten to take us to the bathroom for us to get a butt whoopin'. 

    The first thing my mom would get was her coffee creamer--there were no exceptions to this--because she would always tell us that "this is my breakfast in the morning." It wouldn't matter if the coffee creamer was stored in the very back of the grocery store or if it would be located in the toy aisle, she would always get the creamer first and then continue with the rest of the shopping; sending me and Ariana on our own special mission to fetch the honey ham lunch meat or the two gallons of whole milk. There were times where I would beg her to buy my favorite kind of cereal--Reese's Puff Cereal--and those were the times she would give in and let me grab just one box. Sometimes, I was lucky enough to convince her to let me grab a package of gum because chewing on my nails had become a horrid habit. 

    In the summer months, instead of reaching for a warm fuzzy blanket, she would reach for a sweater or would just go in her pink tank top and blue sweat pants; admiring the warmth that the winter months had kept from her for far too long. 

    "Summer is my favorite season...except when it wants to be hot as hell and there's no air conditioning on or a pool to cool you down. Shit, if I could, I would probably go skinny dipping if it was that hot."

    "T.M.I. mama. T.M.I."

    In the fall months, she would reach for a random sweat shirt--any one that was close enough to the sliding door--and admired the cool breeze that would trickle through the yellow and red leaves. Months before my seventeenth birthday, she found my thick brown book that was given to me as a present for my sixteenth birthday from a mentor who had helped me and another classmate complete our project about racism. I had forgotten all about the book, but when she returned it to me, most of the pages I couldn't recognize. Some were familiar when I flipped through the pages as I was able to recognize the half cursive, half print handwriting that was mine, but as I continued going through the book, most of the pages were filled with colorful drawings of the Madhatter, Twilight, skits of me running for class president, and bits and pieces of her writing to me. One of those pages, my mom described to me how the weather was changing from summer to fall. "Not too hot, not too cold. Just perfect, like you."