School Lunch, Part 2

Inside the cafeteria, there was almost the same order that persisted in the classroom. We could talk and mess around a little, but we weren’t supposed to raise our voices. One day Neal Treadwell stood behind me in line and told me to look down inside my blouse and spell attic. Dumb me. I did it. A T T I C. Neal laughed out loud while I turned red. I think he was born knowing stuff like that. Of course, I couldn’t slug him or even yell at him, or I’d get in trouble.

I didn’t always eat in the cafeteria. Sometimes I brought my lunch from home in the standard brown paper bag, my sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper with my mother’s neat way of folding the paper and twisting the ends.

I remember wanting a lunch pail, the kind with the round lid and thermos that some of the other kids had. I never got one like that, and if I had one at all, which I don’t remember, it wasn’t the kind I wanted. Not quite. You never got quite what you wanted. I think our parents lived by a code. “Don’t ever get your kids exactly what they ask for. It’s good for their character.”

In sixth grade I worked as cashier in the cafeteria, so I got to know the cooks. They called me Bette because I looked like Bette Davis, which they said was a good thing. Sometimes I went to the other side of the cafeteria and worked at the window, selling ice cream cups with their flat wooden spoons. Five cents for ice cream or a fudgesicle or a bag of peanuts or milk in a carton.

That whole year I got my lunch free, which was also a good thing. I could eat early, no on-duty teacher watching. And I gladly gave up recess for the prestige of being cashier. It meant I was smart. It also allowed me to engage in small talk with teachers, which made me feel smart and was more fun than volleyball or four square.