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.
The turkey Neil had carved was down to wings and the back.
I looked at the platter. Twenty minutes ago it had been piled high. Now there were two wings, the back with the ribs still on it, a drumstick somebody had picked half clean, and a pile of skin and
scraps.
The roast hen on the counter sat whole, waiting on him to carve it. A second bird. I’d done a hen too, because fourteen people is a lot of people and one turkey isn’t enough.
But Neil was in the garage. Nobody had carved the hen.
And holding up an empty plate in his green shirt was my son, Jonah.
He was standing at the end of the counter. In his good green button-up shirt, the one he wears to
church, with the collar sticking up on one side because he did it himself. Holding a plate with nothing on it. Waiting.
He’s nine. He’d been up since six helping me peel potatoes.
Ten pounds of Yukon Golds. He peeled every one. At the kitchen table in his pajamas, with the peeler that’s too big for his hand, while I made the dressing. He was so proud. He kept counting them. “That’s forty-one, Mom. Forty-two.”
Bernadine smiled at him. That sweet smile. The one she uses at church.
“You can have whatever’s left, honey,” she said.
She nodded at the platter. At the wings and the back.
He said, “Okay, Grandma.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t whine. He didn’t look at me.
He just believed her.
He stood there with his plate and looked at the turkey platter, at the wings and the back and the scraps, like he was trying to figure out which part of a picked-over bird was his.
That was the part that went through me like cold water.
Not her taking the food. Not the containers. Not the pie or the pudding or the corners of the dressing.
Him believing her. Him standing there in his church shirt with an empty plate, thinking that’s how it
works. That’s how families are. The grown-ups take the good parts, and you get what’s left.
I’d never once in his life taught him that. And he’d learned it in three seconds at my kitchen counter.
Chapter Two: Fourteen
It was my table, my groceries and my boy, and there was nothing to call anybody about. You just feed the child.
I want to explain that, because people have asked me since. Why I didn’t say something to Neil first.
Why I didn’t take her aside. Why I didn’t make a scene.
You don’t make a scene. There’s nothing to make a scene about. It’s Thanksgiving. It’s his grandmother. Nobody’s breaking any law.
There’s just a hungry boy with an empty plate. And there’s a fix for that.
My name is Molly Schnell. I’m thirty-seven. I work at the Jasper branch of German American Bank, behind the member services desk. I open accounts and close accounts and help people figure out
their statements. I’ve been there eleven years.
Neil works at Kimball. The furniture plant. He’s a supervisor on the line. His dad worked there thirty-four years before him. Half of Dubois County works at Kimball or Jasper Seating or Masterbrand, or
used to.
We live outside Ferdinand, on two acres, in the house Neil grew up in. His folks sold it to us when they moved into town. That was eight years ago.
I’d spent three hundred and ten dollars at the Kroger in Jasper.
I keep the receipt. I keep every receipt. That’s the bank in me.
A twenty-two-pound Butterball. A five-pound roasting hen. Ten pounds of potatoes. Two boxes of
Stove Top I didn’t use, because I make the dressing from scratch, but I always buy two just in case. Celery, onions, sage. Three pounds of butter. Heavy cream. Green beans. French’s onions. Cranberries. Pie crust, because I’m not crazy. Pecans, which cost more than the turkey.
Three hundred and ten dollars and forty-two cents.
Two days cooking for fourteen people.
Tuesday night, the persimmon pudding and the pies. Wednesday, the dressing and the cranberries
and the rolls, which have to rise twice. Thursday, the turkey in at six, the hen at ten, the potatoes and green beans and gravy and everything else in the last frantic hour.
Fourteen people. Neil and me and Jonah. Neil’s mother, Bernadine. His sister, Renee, and her
husband, Doug, and their three kids. His uncle Gary and Aunt Pat. His cousin Lisa and her boyfriend and her little girl.
Fourteen. I counted the chairs three times.
Neil was out in the garage digging out the card table for the kids.
That’s how we always did it. The grown-ups at the big dining room table, with the leaf in. The kids at the card table in the kitchen. Renee’s three. Lisa’s little one. Jonah.
Except the card table was buried in the back of the garage under the Christmas decorations and Neil’s deer stand. He’d gone out to find it ten minutes before.
Everybody else was already seated at the big table.
I could see them through the doorway from the kitchen. Gary at the end, already reaching for the rolls. Pat beside him with her reading glasses on her head. Renee and Doug. Lisa and her boyfriend, whose name I couldn’t remember. The kids hovering behind the chairs.
Bernadine’s chair at the head of the table was empty. She’d come into the kitchen to “help.”
Bernadine is sixty-six. She’s lived in Dubois County her whole life. She was born in Ireland, Indiana, a little German Catholic town ten miles north, the ninth of eleven children.
She buried Neil’s dad three years ago.
Clifford Schnell. Cliff. A big, quiet man with hands like baseball mitts and a laugh that shook the windows. Thirty-four years at Kimball, then retired, then gone. A heart attack. In his recliner. On
Thanksgiving Day, 2022.
Before supper. While the turkey was resting.
I knew she ate most suppers alone.
She lives by herself now in a little brick ranch on Jackson Street in Jasper, a block from St. Joseph’s. She goes to the eight o’clock Mass every morning. She plays euchre with the ladies from church on Tuesdays. She volunteers at the Dubois County Museum on Saturdays.
The rest of the time, she’s alone.
I didn’t know about her freezer yet.
Chapter Three: Not at My Table
I set the rolls down.
I took off my oven mitts. The red ones, with the burn marks. I laid them on the counter next to the stove.
Nobody in the dining room had noticed anything yet. Gary was telling a story about a buck he saw on the road to Birdseye. Renee was cutting up her youngest’s food. The football game was on in the living room with the sound down.
I walked to the counter.
Bernadine was fitting the lid on the container with the pie. She looked up at me. She smiled.
“I’m just getting a little to take home, Molly,” she said. “Since there’s so much. You don’t mind.”
It wasn’t a question.
I picked up the first container.
The one with the turkey. The white meat, sliced thick. I held it in my hand. It was warm.
Then I picked up the first lid and held it out to her.
She looked at it. Confused. Then she took it.
She took it. People do. When you hold something out to somebody, they take it. It’s instinct. You
don’t even think.
Then the second lid.
I took it off the stack. I held it out. She took it.
The third.
She took it.
The fourth.
She took it.
She was standing there by my kitchen counter holding four plastic lids against her navy cardigan. All four of them, stacked. She didn’t know what to do with her hands.
I turned to Jonah.
“Hold your plate up, bud.”
He held it up. He didn’t understand either. He looked at me with his big brown eyes, Neil’s eyes, and
held up his empty plate.
I took the fork out of the container. Bernadine’s fork. And I put two good slices of turkey on his plate. The thick ones, from right along the bone.
Then the dressing he loves best. The crusty corner. The one with the brown edges on two sides.
Then a scoop of mashed potatoes from the pot on the stove. His potatoes. The ones he peeled. With a puddle of gravy in the middle.
Green beans. Cranberry sauce. A roll, warm out of the oven, with butter.
And a square of pudding on the edge, because I knew he’d eat that first.
“Go sit down and eat while it’s hot,” I said.
He looked at his plate. Then up at me. Then at his grandmother.
“At the big table?” he asked.
“At the big table,” I said. “In Grandma’s chair. She’s busy.”
He walked out of the kitchen into the dining room with his plate. Very carefully. Holding it with both hands so nothing would slide off.
He sat down at the head of the table. In Bernadine’s chair. He picked up his fork.
He ate the persimmon pudding first.
I looked up, and the whole room had gone quiet.
I hadn’t noticed it happening. But somewhere between the second lid and the third, the talking at
the dining room table had stopped. Gary had stopped his deer story. Renee had stopped cutting. Lisa’s boyfriend was holding a roll halfway to his mouth.
Everybody was looking through the kitchen doorway.
Bernadine stood by the counter in her navy cardigan, holding four lids.
Her mouth was open.
Everybody at that table was looking at her.
I didn’t feel proud.
I want to be honest about that. People think I must have felt triumphant. Like I won something. Like I put her in her place.
I didn’t. I felt sick. My hands were shaking.
She’s sixty-six. She buried her husband three years ago, on this exact day, in a recliner, before supper. She eats most suppers alone in a brick house on Jackson Street.
And I’d just stood in my kitchen and handed her four lids in front of her whole family.
She closed her mouth. She looked down at the lids in her hands. Then up at me.
“When I was a girl, the kids ate last,” she said. Her voice was quiet. A little shaky. “Eleven of us. We
turned out just fine.”
I looked at her.
“Not at my table,” I said quietly. “Not today. He eats.”
Then I kept fixing plates.
I went to the hen on the counter, the one nobody had carved. I picked up Neil’s carving knife. I’ve watched him do it a hundred times. I carved it. Badly. But I carved it.
I fixed a plate for Renee’s youngest, Emma, who’s five. Turkey and potatoes and a roll, cut up small. I handed it to her. She ran it to the table.
I fixed a plate for Lisa’s little girl, Harper, who’s three. Just potatoes and a roll and some green beans
she wouldn’t eat. I handed it to Lisa.
Renee’s oldest got up first and stood behind Jonah’s spot with his plate.
Tucker. He’s fourteen. Tall and gangly, with a buzz cut and braces. Nobody told him to. He got up
from the dining room table where he’d been sitting with the grown-ups, because he’s fourteen and thinks he’s too old for the kids’ table. He walked into the kitchen with his own empty plate. And he stood there.
Not in front of me. Behind Jonah’s chair. In the doorway. Waiting.
Nobody told him to.
I fixed his plate. Turkey from the hen. Potatoes. Dressing. A roll.
He took it. He looked at his grandmother, still standing by the counter with her four lids. Then he looked at me.
“Thanks, Aunt Molly,” he said quietly.
He went and sat down next to Jonah. At the big table. In the chair next to the head.
Then Renee’s middle one, Cody, who’s eleven, got up and came into the kitchen with his plate.
Chapter Four: What Neil Said
I was handing the littlest one her plate when the garage door banged.
The door from the kitchen to the garage. It sticks. You have to hit it with your shoulder. Neil hit it.
He came in with the card table under his arm. A folding card table from the 1970s, brown vinyl top,
with the legs that never quite lock. It was his parents’. He had cobwebs in his hair from the garage.
He stopped in the doorway.
He looked at his mother.
Standing at the counter in her navy cardigan. Holding four plastic lids against her chest.
He looked at the lids.
He looked at the four containers on the counter. Open. One with the turkey half gone. One with the
corner of dressing missing. One with the pie. One with the persimmon pudding, a corner cut out.
He looked at Jonah, eating at the end of the big table.
In his grandmother’s chair. At the head of the table. With his plate full. Eating his mashed potatoes
with a big spoon, the way he does when he thinks nobody’s looking.
Tucker next to him. Cody next to Tucker.
He set the card table down against the wall, slow.
He leaned it carefully against the refrigerator. He didn’t let it bang.
The whole house was silent. Even the football game in the living room seemed quieter.
His sister started to say something.
Renee. From the dining room. She half stood up. “Neil, it’s not what it looks like, Mom was just…”
He held up one hand.
Just one hand. Palm out. Not angry. The way you’d hold up your hand at the plant to stop the line.
Renee sat back down.
Bernadine’s chin came up.
She looked at her son. Her only son. She’d had two children. Renee first, then Neil, four years later.
“Neil,” she said. “Tell your wife how we always did it.”
He walked over and took the lids out of her hands, one at a time.
He didn’t grab them. He didn’t snatch them. He reached out and took the top one. Then the next
one. Then the next. Then the last. His big hands. His father’s hands.
He set them on the counter.
Next to the containers. Stacked neatly.
Then he put his hand on his mother’s shoulder.
On her navy cardigan. Gently. The way you’d put your hand on the shoulder of somebody at a funeral.
He leaned down a little. She’s five foot two. He’s six foot three.
He didn’t say it loud.
He didn’t have to.
All fourteen of us heard what he told her.
“Mom,” he said. “You were the kid who ate last.”
Bernadine went very still.
“Eleven of you,” Neil said quietly. “You told me. Wings and backs. Every Sunday. Every Christmas. Every Thanksgiving. You told me about it when I was little, and you laughed about it like it was funny.” He took a breath. “It wasn’t funny, Mom. And you’ve been hungry ever since.”
Nobody moved.
Bernadine looked up at her son. Her chin was shaking.
“Dad knew,” Neil said. “Didn’t he?”
She didn’t answer.
“Every holiday,” Neil said. “Every single one. Dad would fix our plates first. Mine and Renee’s. Before he fixed his own. Before he fixed yours. He’d go to the stove and fill our plates and hand them to us
and tell us to go eat while it’s hot.” Neil’s voice cracked. “I never knew why. I thought it was just Dad. But it was for you, wasn’t it? So we’d never eat last. So we’d never stand there with an empty plate the way you did.”
Bernadine made a sound.
Small. Like something breaking.
“And Dad’s not here anymore,” Neil said. “He hasn’t been here for three Thanksgivings. So
somebody’s got to fix the kids’ plates first.” He looked over at me. Standing by the stove with the carving knife still in my hand. “Molly did it today. That’s all, Mom. She just did what Dad would’ve done.”
Chapter Five: After
Bernadine didn’t say anything.
She looked at her son for a long time. Then at me. Then through the doorway at Jonah, sitting in her
chair at the head of the table, with gravy on his chin, holding his fork very still. He’d stopped eating. He was watching his grandmother.
She picked up her purse off the counter. The canvas tote bag. Empty.
She walked through the dining room past everybody, past the table, past Jonah in her chair.
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