So we went home. Mom switched on the stereo and went right to work. She was real methodical and practical when there wasn’t a musician to distract her. She sorted out what groceries we had and organized them in the cupboard.
Then she went through all the pockets of her clothes and dug inside the chair and got together all the money we had. It was ten seventy-eight. Then she sat me at the table with her, like I was one of her musicians, and told me how she was going to get us through the month. She explained that if I went to school every day, I’d get the free morning milk and vita-roll, and free hot lunch on my aid ticket. So I’d be mostly okay, even if there wasn’t much for dinner. We’d get through just fine. After all, we were pretty tough, weren’t we? And couldn’t the two of us beat anything if we just stuck together? And were we going to let a month of crummy groceries knock down tough guys like us? All that stuff. But suddenly, in the middle of the pep talk, she got up and knelt by her stereo. She twiddled the knobs, frowning. “Signal’s drifting, or something. Damn, that’s all I need. For this to drop dead on me now.” She tried about three different stations, then snapped it off. “Lousy speakers,” she complained to me. “Everything sounds tinny.”
It had sounded okay to me, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I sat still and watched her take out a pot and run water and take things from the cupboards for dinner.
We had oatmeal for dinner, and toast with peanut butter melting on it. Mom gave me the last of the brown sugar for my oatmeal. “Good grains and protein in this meal,” she said wisely, as if she had planned it rather than scraped together what we had left. I nodded and ate it. It wasn’t so bad. At least it wasn’t macaroni.