Free Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz Page B

been away, the house and the farm had become hers.
    I knew exactly what was in the kitchen, since I'd taken each dish at the door. There was white bread, brown bread and pumpernickel. There was hot potato salad, cold potato salad, scalloped potatoes and sweet potatoes. There was venison, corned beef, a ham, a turkey, two chickens and a duck. There was tongue, pork sausage, white sausage, blood sausage and braunschweiger. There were hard rolls and sweet rolls, cherry preserves, cauliflower in cream, leeks in cream, creamed corn, sugared carrots, sauerkraut, pickled beets, apple pie, pumpkin pie and tapioca pudding. The door of the icebox would hardly close and bowls and plates hung precariously over the edges of the kitchen table and covered the counter and the seat of every chair. A dozen pears, a rhubarb pie and a jar of tomatoes had found their way into the front room and three cheeses and a tin of molasses cookies congregated on my mother's daybed in the back.
    “Can I make anyone a sandwich?” I asked.
    “Oh, throw it all away!” Mathilda cried. “How can you stand to look at it?”
    She ran upstairs, sobbing, and Rudy and Ruth and I stood not looking at each other.
    “I bet Ruth is hungry, aren't you, honey?”
    But Mathilda's behavior had upset her. She burst into tears and followed her mother.
    “Eat something, Rudy,” I said. “No point in letting it go to waste.”
    My father disapproved of wasting food. He sucked marrow from bones. He ate skin and tendons and gristle, and he expected us to do the same. We were not allowed to “spoil our supper” by eating between meals but once, when I was seven, I was so hungry I opened the icebox. Just looking at some food, I thought, might ease my stomach. In a back corner, behind the meat and the butter, there was a little cup of something thick, rich and white. A week or two before, my mother had made a vanilla custard that was so sweet and creamy I had licked my spoon until all I could taste was the silver. Could this portion have been forgotten? And if it had been forgotten, who would notice if I took just one little bite?
    I reached deep into the cool interior, slid my finger gently along the smooth surface and carried a tiny ridge of the whiteness back to my mouth. But as soon as my tongue touched my finger I knew it wasn't custard. It was something terrible—slimy and disgusting. I wiped my tongue on my sleeve and turned to go out to the pump to wash my hands. My father was standing in the doorway.
    “What are you doing in the icebox?”
    It was impossible to lie to my father. “I thought it was some custard, but it's gone bad or something.”
    “Your mother wouldn't keep bad food in the icebox,” he said, reaching around me to pull the cup of white stuff out.
    I had nothing to say to this. It was true that she was very careful, but it was also true that custard tasted awful.
    “What have I told you about eating between meals?”
    “It's wrong.”
    “How do you know your mother isn't planning to use this custard?” He frowned at the gully my finger had made.
    “She forgot about it.”
    He looked at me sharply. He hated lying. Maybe she hadn't forgotten it. How did I know?
    “You thought you'd just take it. Is that right? Steal it and spoil your supper. Stick your finger in it so it's no good to anyone else.”
    It was difficult to tell which of these he thought the worst offense. He was shaking the cup under my nose now. I turned my face away.
    “No, I …” But what he said was true. I tried a different tack. “I was hungry.”
    He sighed. “You have to learn to control yourself, Amanda. Do you see me stealing food out of the icebox, spoiling my appetite so I can't eat my good supper?”
    “No, Papa.”
    He slammed the cup down at my place at the table. Then he crossed to the drawer and took out a spoon and banged that down beside the cup. “You want this? You eat it. Now.”
    Even had it tasted good, I wouldn't have wanted it any longer. The