Kids Eat Last

I was pulling the second pan of rolls from the oven when I heard her.

“Kids eat last in this family, sweetheart.”

The kitchen was so hot the window over the sink had fogged up. Fourteen people in a three-bedroom ranch house in Dubois County, Indiana, on Thanksgiving Day, with the oven going since five that morning and the furnace kicking on anyway because Neil’s uncle keeps leaving the back door open to smoke.

I set the rolls on the stovetop. Golden on top. Brushed with butter. My grandmother’s recipe.

Then I turned around.

Bernadine stood at my kitchen counter.

Four plastic containers in front of her, lids stacked to the side.

The good kind. The heavy-duty ones from the Gordon Food Service in Evansville, with the snap lids. She brings them to every holiday in a canvas tote bag. Everybody in the family knows about the tote bag.

She was filling them.

White meat, sliced thick. Off the breast of the turkey Neil had carved twenty minutes earlier. The best of it. The slices from right along the bone, where it’s juiciest.

The crusty corners of the dressing. Out of the big pan. Every corner. Four corners, and she’d taken all four, plus a strip along the edge where it gets brown and crispy against the glass.

Two slices of pecan pie and a square of persimmon pudding.

The persimmon pudding was mine. I’d made it Tuesday night, from persimmons Jonah and I picked off the tree behind the Huntingburg library. It’s a southern Indiana thing. If you’re not from here, you don’t know. It’s dark and spicy and dense, almost like a cake, and you eat it with whipped cream.

She’d cut the corner piece. Jonah’s favorite. The one he’d been asking about all week.