27

True to form, U came home from school and shoved a plastic bag at me which must have contained her school-issued lunch, just like the day before.

“Food,” she said. While handing me her one and only source of nutrition.

I didn’t know what to say as I took it from her. Of course, what I mean is, I didn’t know what to say to try and give it back to her.

If I said something weird, then I could very well end up insulting her. In particular, I wondered if her tantrum the day before after not giving thanks for my meal had more to do with her hunger than anything else. Perhaps she was upset that I wasn’t grateful for the lunch that was originally supposed to be hers. That seemed like a reasonable interpretation.

So I didn’t know what to say in response to her kindness… or whatever it was to her.

I decided not to say anything direct like, “This is yours, so you should eat it.” I made it kind of roundabout, so U wouldn’t see my hidden intentions. I mumbled something about not being very hungry, so I couldn’t eat all that much, and just half would be fine, all in a very soft tone of voice. Since I was lying, I was trying not to give anything away with my volume.

“…”

U said something or other, with a blank expression on her face that I couldn’t quite figure out. But then, before I was even sure that I had convinced her, she came into the closet and started working on the plastic bag. She ran into a bit of difficulty undoing the knot that she had to have tied herself, and ended up slashing the bag open with a knife.

The main dish of that day’s school lunch was rice.

Looking at rice sitting in a plastic bag was very weird, but food is food. It was a resource neither U nor I could afford to pass up.

“Thank you for this meal,” U announced. I repeated after her, and we began sharing rice.

We also shared soup (liquid!) and salad held in other plastic bags. I drank all the milk, though. It had less to do with U having free access to water and more to do with her just not liking milk all that much. When I look back, I remember a good portion of girls not liking milk when I was a kid, too.

The already insufficient portion of food was further halved, so I was hardly satisfied, but I knew U had to feel the same. Just because she was small didn’t mean she had a small appetite. In fact, she was still a growing girl, so not eating was arguably more harmful for her than me. Really, I had no place to complain.

Some might laud me as a hero for what I did, while others might argue that I should have gone further, maybe figured out how to get U to eat all of the lunch. I’m tending more towards the latter here a decade in the future, but at the time, without any insight into U‘s thoughts or actions, I think I did the best I could.

First and foremost was the fact that I had already complained about my hunger. U knew that I wanted food and was hungry. But no matter how you slice it, offering up all of her only meal in return was a bit too extreme of a response. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for her to start by sharing her school lunch with me? She could eat half at school and take the other half home… but no, she opted to give up all of it.

The idea was too dangerous to just write off as goodwill.

There’s a point where extreme goodwill becomes distorted, becomes less about beauty and truth, and starts picking up some really creepy vibes.

It’s when you stop understanding where the goodwill is coming from, and can’t trace back the thought processes behind it. Not understanding something just feels wrong, almost to a personal degree.

And if we’re gonna talk about not understanding what someone is thinking, then U takes the cake easily, more so than anyone I had ever met before or since in the ten years following. There was already the disconnect that she was a child, but beyond that, her values just seemed so disconnected from the general public’s, let alone mine.

So the best I could do with U in that situation was go halfsies. I’m sure that in a way my appetite also prevented me from giving up any more. For all my previous rambling, maybe the whole thing can be written up as my stomach talking. That would make sense, too.

“I am finished eating,” U announced, with me quickly following suit. U stood up in preparation to leave the closet. She had been pointing her knife at me during the entire episode, so tensions had probably been high for the both of us. She probably wanted to beat a hasty retreat to her room.

She once again showed her lack of cleaning skills by failing to pick up the plastic bags. But, given her age, it was also possible that the skill had simply not developed yet.

That conclusion seemed particularly plausible thinking back to the state of the living room.

But while that thought was on my mind, I stopped U. She had almost closed the door and was standing in the hall, but I asked her to wait just a moment. I attempted to sound casual about it, but I think it’s fair to say that attempt flopped.

Because my question directly asked her what was going on with her parents, her mother and father.

I wasn’t deluded into thinking our relationship had deepened over sharing just one meal, but even with that granted, it was far too intrusive a question. I half-expected her to throw another knife at me…

“…”

U tilted her head. I wondered if she didn’t understand me, but my wording had been rather simple, so that didn’t make sense.

Unless she didn’t understand the words “parents”, “mother” and “father”? If that was the case, then I would have to abandon the prospect of ever finding out. That would have been an insurmountable lack of common ground.

“Mommy and Daddy…” U suddenly interjected.

“…are gone.”

She closed the door. I heard the lock click in place.

Gone?

“They went away,” her voice continued from the other side of the door in a quiet tone, as if in emphasis.