The Hunger Moon (4 page)

“Well, then. Would you like a cup of tea?”

While Mrs. MacGregor prepared their tea in the kitchen, June stared out the sliding glass door to the balcony. Three different bird feeders were stocked with seeds; at the moment, no birds were in sight. Overnight the weather had gone from warm to wintry. The sky was low and the color of eggshells. Mrs. MacGregor had two patio chairs and a little table on her deck; these were neatly bundled in plastic with twine.

“Let me help you,” June said, springing up to relieve Mrs. MacGregor of the tray she was carrying. She noticed that the older woman walked with a bit of a limp. “What pretty tea things.”

“Thank you. They’re English, from my mother’s side of the family. Now,” she announced, settling herself into an armchair, “I must ask you to pour. I’m a bit unsteady these days. Cream and sugar, please, two lumps, very white. And help yourself to a cookie. None for me.”

June poured them each a cup and self-consciously served Mrs. MacGregor.

“Please tell me about yourself, June. What do you study?”

“Psychology and dance. What I really want to do is be a dancer, but I know that you can’t make a career out of that very easily, so my mom said I should have something to fall back on.”

June paused; was the woman listening or not? She seemed to be staring off at the balcony, as if waiting for something. June took a tiny bite of the cookie, guessing it to be about seventy-five calories, mentally adding that to the day’s total so far of twelve hundred thirty. Round off at thirteen hundred, she decided, giving herself five calories’ grace.

“I see.” Mrs. MacGregor fastened her gray eyes on her. “And where were you raised?”

“Worcester.” June wrinkled her nose. “I like living in Boston a lot better. There’s so much more to do. When I can afford it I go see all the dance companies that come to town. Alvin Ailey was here last week.”

There was a short silence.

“What about you? Where are you from?” June asked. She didn’t know if she was allowed to ask questions back; Mrs. MacGregor seemed to be conducting a kind of interview.

“Just outside of New York,” the older woman said without elaborating.

“I’ve been to New York a couple of times,” June said. It’s a very exciting city. Overwhelming, though. I’ve always been a little bit scared when I’ve been there.”

“Yes. It used to be very different.” Mrs. MacGregor stood, folding her napkin. “Well, June. I don’t have anything for you to clean today, but perhaps you can walk to the market for me. It looks as though we might be in for bad weather, and I should get some things stocked up. I’ve made a list, and you can take my grocery cart. Finish your tea first; no hurry.”

Mrs. MacGregor gave June two twenty-dollar bills and a neat list made out in a spidery hand. She had specified brand names and sizes.

In the market, June realized that Mrs. MacGregor had also listed the items in the order in which you came to them if you walked up and down the aisles one after another, beginning with the first one by the door. She finished the shopping in less than half an hour and was back at the apartment, letting herself in with the key she had been given. Mrs. MacGregor was in the armchair, a book open on her lap.

“Thank you, June. I’ll put those away. Just leave them on the counter. Did you have enough money?”

“Yes, plenty. You’ve got change here.” June put the money with the receipt by the groceries. Mrs. MacGregor had already washed up the tea things. “Are you sure I can’t put the groceries away for you?” she asked her.

“No, thank you. I need to have something to do. I know you haven’t used up your two hours, but I think that’s all I’ll need for the first day. I’ve written out your check for the full amount. It’s on the desk there. On Friday I’ll have some cleaning for you.”

Dismissed, June lay the apartment key on the desk. Mrs. MacGregor saw her to the door. June waited until she was in the elevator to look at her check: twenty dollars. Twice a week at Mrs. MacGregor’s would barely keep her in groceries, but it would help. She would still need to find another job.

On the walk back to the train, June saw that it had begun to snow small, almost invisible flakes. By the time her stop came, the wind was driving the snow sideways, into her face, and the flakes had formed sharp, stinging edges. The streets were emptying of
pedestrians, and cars were turning on their lights although it was only three o’clock.

June’s basement studio apartment seemed dark and cluttered after Mrs. MacGregor’s, even though she really didn’t own that much. Her books were on pine planks supported by cinder blocks. Her futon was folded up along one wall of the apartment. Along the length of the other wall was a barre that June had installed herself, where she did her stretching exercises. Dance posters covered the walls, hiding the fine network of cracks and nail holes from previous tenants. She had a small closet that held her collection of sweaters and blue jeans, along with a few Indian print rayon skirts. Plastic milk crates stacked in the corner separated her socks, underwear, and T-shirts.

The small painted table she had bought at a yard sale was her combination desk and dining area, and she had inherited two mismatched chairs from the former tenants. June’s kitchen consisted of a two-burner electric stovetop with a half-size refrigerator below a miniature sink. Part of her two feet of counter space was taken up by a toaster oven and various jars of bulk pasta, rice, beans, and tea. She usually made herself big batches of soup or spaghetti sauce and ate it for several days, stopping on her way home from class to pick up some fresh bread.

June had studying to do, but didn’t feel like it. Instead of working, she decided to do some stretching. She popped a tape she had made into the stereo on her bookshelf, and slipped out of her jeans and shoes so that she was standing in just socks, underwear, and a long-sleeved T-shirt. When the jazz music began, she started with head rolls, then shoulder rolls, then rib circles. Working her way down the body, she finished her warm-up with ankle circles, then assumed first position and waited for the Chopin to begin her pliés. After moving through the ballet positions for pliés and relevés, the African drums started. June left the barre to do some improvisational moving, dancing into all the odd spaces of her cramped studio, working with the space, against it, defining it, becoming the space and the drums.

When the music stopped, she heard the phone.

“June! It’s Dad.” Her father always began this way, practically shouting her name, as if she were a brand-new discovery of his.

“Hi, Dad. This is a surprise.” Somehow, words to her father that started out sarcastically in June’s head always came out in actual conversation sounding mild and pleasant.

“Listen, I’ve got to be in Boston tomorrow on business. Let’s have lunch together.”

“I have classes all day.”

“Do you have one at noon?”

“No, but I’ve got one that ends at eleven-thirty, and another one that begins at one.”

“Perfect! I’ll have a driver for the day. We’ll pick you up and go somewhere close. You choose the place, but not any of that Indian shit again, June. Pick a place with normal food. I may not get to see you over the holidays, so this will be it, kiddo.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“That’s my girl. Melanie sends her love.”

June flinched. Melanie did no such thing, but her father thought that by saying that she could be fooled.

“Yeah. See you tomorrow, Dad.”

June hung up the phone, her stomach tight. Her apartment had a new flatness to it in the aftermath of her father’s voice. She saw her cheap furniture for what it was; she saw the glue traps for the roaches gathering dust in the corners. Her dance posters, with their pictures of unattainably perfect bodies, all of a sudden seemed a pitiable way to decorate a room.

June rummaged around her cupboard for something to eat. She craved something sweet, like one of Mrs. MacGregor’s ginger cookies. There were bananas and oranges on the counter, but they wouldn’t do. She compromised by toasting some bread and spreading jam on it. She was restless, and paced the tiny apartment as she ate the bread, annoyed by the ugliness of everything she saw.

As she toasted a second slice, she mentally added up the calories
This would be her dinner. She wanted to put in another tape, but her hands were sticky, and putting down her toast to wash them seemed too difficult.

She toasted two more pieces, leaving one on her table while she paced. She didn’t bother to toast the bread after that; it irritated her to wait for the slices to pop up. She was out of jam but had some honey. The honey was difficult to spread. Now the knife was sticky, as well as her hands and the table. She tasted nothing, was not conscious of fullness. Her mind was blank. She felt no emotion except a desperate restlessness, and the voracious need to keep taking food inside her. Because she had long ago stopped adding calories to her total, she felt as if some mechanism had broken, resulting in an unexpected freedom—as if a parking meter had quit working so that she could not be cited.

When she had finished the loaf of bread, she opened the cupboard doors again to see if there was something she had overlooked. There was nothing but uncooked pasta, beans, rice, and spices. She considered going out for a sack of doughnuts, but that would mean stopping at a cash machine first. And she had nothing in the bank. June sat at the table, breathing shallowly, gradually feeling her pulse moderate. Slowly the room gained depth again, and colors returned. She washed her hands and put on a tape. She sponged off the table and straightened the kitchen. Everything was back to normal. She went into the bathroom and held her finger down her throat until she threw up. Again. Again.

R
ENATA HAD TRAVERSED THREE QUARTERS
of the country. She felt the airiness of distance, as if all the roads she had taken had dried into husks and blown away behind her—no way to find them ever again. She could close her eyes and feel as ghost presences the winding pitches and great level stretches of ground she had covered. Dust had collected in all the seams and crannies of the car. During this time, Charlie had outgrown some of his first sleepers, and Renata had left them carefully folded on motel beds, dotted across Iowa and Illinois.

She was somewhere outside of Bloomington, Indiana, when she decided to stop for a picnic. The temperature was nearly seventy degrees, like early summer, though it was November. She picked up a hamburger and soda for herself at a drive-through, and followed the signs to a state park, where she left the car and transferred a sleeping Charlie to his stroller. With the diaper bag over her shoulder and her lunch tucked into the stroller’s carrier, Renata followed the trail that led into a woods. She walked for about ten minutes, stretching her legs and listening to the crow caws and squirrel chatter. Selecting a sunny open piece of ground cushioned with fallen red maple leaves, she spread a blanket and lay the baby down, moving the stroller so that it shaded his eyes. While he was still asleep, Renata ate her hamburger and watched
him. Every part of him was perfect: his fine blond hair that stood up in back with a crazy cowlick, his delicately veined eyelids, his fat cheeks, his precisely shaped mouth, which now was pursed and sucking with a dream of nursing. Then, as if suddenly aware that the earth had ceased to move under him, Charlie’s eyes flew open and he cried. He always woke that way, with bewilderment. Renata liked to be hovering right above his face when this happened, so the first thing he would see when his eyes cleared would be her smile, and her eyes looking into his.

“I’m right here, Charlie; right here, buddy,” she crooned. Abruptly, the cries stopped and he looked at her with astonished delight. Then, as he always did, his face became a wreath of smiling, and his whole body started fidgeting with pleasure. Renata laughed at his excitement, which doubled the baby’s pleasure. He began laughing his breathy little laugh, and waving his arms. She picked him up and lifted her shirt, undoing her bra cup to nurse him. As soon as he saw the breast he began to squirm and fuss.

“Hold on, tiger. Okay, okay, there you go.” Charlie latched on and began sucking with greed. A little rivulet of milk leaked from the side of his mouth, his lids drooped, and his eyes rolled partway up into his head, so that just the whites showed. The baby’s wild drive to nurse had shocked Renata at first; from birth he had grabbed on to her nipple with a lunge and almost a little growl.

His first hunger satisfied, Charlie slowed down to a more methodical pace, then opened his eyes again to stare up at her.

“Hello, little boy; hi, baby,” she murmured.

He opened his mouth to smile and the nipple escaped him. He cooed and babbled a few syllables, then started to look around. The older he got, the more frequently he lost his place while nursing, distracted by sights.

“What do you see, huh?” She propped him in to a sitting position so he could take in the trees and grass. “Do you see the squirrel? See the fat little squirrel?” Charlie babbled and drooled, bringing his hands together in front of him to suck with great smacking noises.

Through the woods she suddenly heard the low sound of men talking. They were coming down the trail in her direction. Renata fumbled to close her bra and pull down her shirt with one hand, holding Charlie with the other. The silence and dappled sunlight darkened around them; she realized how isolated they were sitting there. The men’s voices came nearer. As they rounded a bend she could see briefly through a gap in the trees that there were three of them. She had an irrational urge to hide, but there was no place to screen herself completely, especially with the stroller. With Charlie, she couldn’t run, not fast enough to get away from someone.