Cake
by Mira Martin-Parker


White kids don’t go hungry. Or rather, if there are hungry white kids, they don’t live in Newport Beach, on Balboa Island. But my pretty white mother couldn’t seem to get her ass out of bed. Couldn’t seem to pay the rent. Couldn’t seem to do much of anything, except make cups of tea and daydream. Soon, the wealthy Mexican she occasionally saw at poetry readings was going to come and save us. Or the attorney she met one day at a café in Lido Village would finally call and propose marriage. Or perhaps her inheritance would come through and she could run off to France.


I was in the sixth grade, which meant I was in my first year of Jr. High. I had no clothes—just a few stained t-shirts and some ill-fitting pants. There was nothing in our refrigerator, so I couldn’t make myself a lunch. During break I would wander around campus, watching everyone as they laughed and played and gobbled up all sorts of delicious-looking processed food. I remember admiring their lunches—tuna sandwiches on rye, bags of sour cream and onion potato chips, little saltine cracker n’ cheese packages. I felt like a seagull hovering about, waiting to make off with a scrap.


When you’re really hungry you crave sweet things. What I dreamed about most was cake—the little brown and white cellophane wrapped squares they sold in the cafeteria for fifty cents. During class, my mind was preoccupied with thoughts of cream cheese frosting. All I needed was fifty cents. 

Allison Scarpulla
 

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