Maja Trochimczyk USA
Slicing the Bread Her mother’s hunger. One huge pot
of hot water
with some
chopped weeds –komesa, lebioda– she taught her to recognize their leaves, just in case – plus a spoonful of flour for flavor. Lunch for twenty people crammed into a two-bedroom house. The spring was the worst–flowers, birdsong, and nothing to eat.
You had to wait for the rye and potatoes to grow. The pantry was empty. She was hungry. Always hungry. She ate raw wheat sometimes. Too green, The kernels she chewed –still milky –made her
sick. Thirty years after the war, her mother stashed paper bags with sliced,
dried bread on top shelves in her Warsaw kitchen. Twenty, thirty bags… enough food for a month.
Don’t ever
throw any bread away,
her mother said.
Remember, war
is hunger. Every week, her mother ate
dziad soup – fit for a beggar, made with crumbled wheat
buns, stale sourdough loaves, pieces of dark rye soaked in hot tea with honey. She liked it. She wanted to remember
its taste.
© Copyright, 2014,
Maja Trochimczyk. |