Hunger by Lindsey Danis

For months, Catherine has craved the sour salt tang of pickled cabbage. She wades through the maze of stands with one hand cradling her belly and the other covering her mouth.

Her husband will eat mashed potatoes and sweet summer corn. He will eat boiled carrots, coated with a slick of salted butter. He will not eat potato salad, or green salad, or anything green. No cabbage, braised with brown sugar and plain white vinegar.

The baby, she thinks, rubbing her belly. When the baby comes, she will have someone to love, someone who won’t leave.

Ripe and rot carry on the wind, mixing with the aroma of baking spice and bread. She breathes in as deep as she dares and heads down the center aisle to the back right corner of the Haymarket.

Max asks how she is doing, spoons a taste of his latest creation. It’s got thyme and apple. Caraway of course, he says, handing her the spoon. His fingers are knobby with age, unexpectedly soft.

She takes the slaw into her mouth and closes her eyes. When she laughs at the unexpected sweetness, the baby kicks and she thinks, my sweet girl. One jar of regular and one of apple, she tells Max. Thank you.

White potatoes, carrots, corn—that’s all her husband will eat, but she adores salad. Catherine haggles for a crisp round lettuce, wilting at the edges but usable. A bunch of carrots, dirt-coated and thin.

As a girl, she would feed carrot greens to her father’s chickens. She would watch them peck and scratch the dirt, daydreaming of the day she would start a new life in the city. 

Thomas, a quiet older man who sells sacks of white onions, makes a show of carrying her bags to the taxi stand. He nestles her bags in the backseat and holds the door while she settles in.

She smiles in gratitude. The door closes softly.

The cabbie refuses to help her with the bags, so she carries them inside.

The stairs are steep and rickety. Catherine tells herself she will pause on the landing and catch her breath, but when she reaches it she can hear Brendan Burke in 2B swearing and breaking things and so she pushes onward, red-cheeked and gasping. She braces against the wall and takes one step, another, another.

If she lived closer to home, she would walk to the fields and pick whatever she craved fresh off the vine. In the evenings, she would sit on the porch and watch storms roll across the valley, ignoring the neighbor boys who came to court her younger sister, Ingrid.

She would have her mother. And Ingrid.

All last year, she tried smiling at her downstairs neighbor, but Mona Burke pursed her lips and looked away.

Catherine sets the groceries in front of their door. It swells in the heat and humidity, and she has an irrational fear of getting stuck in the hallway for hours. She would sooner faint than ask Brendan Burke or his meek wife.

The door gives with a groan, sounding as tired as she feels.

Late afternoon light paints the wall a buttery cream tone. It is the one time of day their prewar walkup looks radiant. She turns the radio to WCRB, the classical station, adjusts the volume so the harpsichord’s tinny pluck drowns out Brendan Burke in 2B, and drinks a glass of cool water.

Just a forkful, she thinks, prying open the sauerkraut.

The cabbage is somewhere between crunchy and tender. The soft woody thyme reminds her of the sagging farmhouse.

Surely her mother will come and see the baby. Surely her daughter will be the bridge she needs to mend that rift.

By the time she hears her husband’s key in the lock, the jar is all but empty. She takes the last bite and rinses the glass under running water.

He enters the kitchen, muttering to himself. What’s that smell? he asks, sniffing.

Catherine holds up the empty jar. It’s nothing. I was hungry.

Her husband goes to the window. He has to pound the sill to pry it free. His face is red and screwed-up; elevenses between the eyes. He brushes past her to the living room where three bay windows front the street.

The apartment is already ripe—third floor, midsummer—and the outside air fills the kitchen with the smell of hot garbage and piss. Can you, she starts, pointing to the window, then gags as the sauerkraut repeats on her. 

The smack of his hands against the living room windows makes her think of Brendan Burke in 2B.

She should be grateful he is not that kind of man, and she is. But this is not what she expected when they met at the dancehall all those years ago.

Catherine goes to the kitchen windows, hating that she is too weak to close them—that she needs to ask him.

Outside, a bus groans to the curb. Passengers disembark. Everyone these days has somewhere to be. On the other side of the city, a banner outside a new development boasts, If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now. Her husband told her about it—a new advertising campaign he admired.

In the alley below, an orange cat inspects the dumpster. He belongs to no one in particular, though now and then one of the neighbors leaves a pile of food. At night, when the baby’s kicking wakes her, his territorial yowling keeps them company.

She leans out the window, watching the dumpster king pick through the discards of their little lives. The baby kicks. She rubs her belly, soothing the child with a promise she does not know how to keep.

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LINDSEY DANIS — Lindsey is a queer, gender expansive writer whose essays have appeared in Longreads, Catapult, and Hobart. Lindsey also runs the queer outdoor travel blog Queer Adventurers and is working on a book about the queer travel experience. 

Art by LINDA HAWKINS — Linda is a self-taught watercolor artist and photographer. She currently resides on the central coast of California where there are a plethora of beautiful sites to inspire her to paint, or to just play outside! Her visual art has appeared in various literary magazines, including Flash Frog, Pithead Chapel, Acropolis Journal, Moss Puppy Mag, Harpy Hybrid Review, and Fish Barrel. She can be found on Twitter: @lindamayhawkins and her website: lindamayhawkins.com.