Spy Wednesday

I came downtown last week on Spy Wednesday, looking a bit like a spy myself with a bandanna tied over my face. Another friend from far away had sent some money for me to fill the Friendship Room’s outdoor pantry.

Things are dire downtown. It’s very hard to catch a bus up to where the grocery stores are on the new quarantine schedule, and it takes an hour to walk uphill. People take their EBT cards to the Dollar Tree which has a few groceries, or to a gas station convenience store which has mostly snacks. If they have cash, they can still order Chinese takeout– most of the the other restaurants I noticed had closed entirely for the duration. There is so little money to go around downtown in the first place, a financial hit like this can be a death blow to a small business. Nobody has much to spend, and what there is to buy costs a lot.

I walked from the bus stop bearing all the canned meat, boxed milk and cold cereal I could carry on both shoulders, knowing full well it would be gone in an hour. They are refilling that pantry at least ten times a day, sometimes nearly twice that.

I happened to take a different road than usual, past the Urban Mission. Urban Mission used to give out bags of groceries once a month, but they’re doing it more like once a week now. They’re not even bothering to ask for proof of income now, according to my neighbors. They just give you a punch card to make sure you’re not getting in line twice in a day, and then they bring a bag of food to your car. When I walked past, there was a line of cars snaking around the building. I don’t think you can even get in line if you don’t have a car. It would make social distancing impossible.

I grew up seeing photographs of bread lines from the Great Depression and imagining what it must have been like. At the time, I didn’t imagine I’d ever live to see one in person– let alone, a bread line made of cars. As recently as six weeks ago, I didn’t really think I’d live through a pandemic either– not like this. Pandemics are things that happen to other people in other parts of the world. But the bread line was easier to reconcile in my imagination. Living in Steubenville, sometimes in pretty bad poverty myself, I’ve seen how thin the gloss is on the United States.

We have been veering toward this recession since the last one, and Steubenville hasn’t had any hope of prosperity since at least the early nineties.

At the Friendship Room pantry, people without even a car to drive through the bread line were waiting. Their mouths were covered like mine, but they weren’t social distancing.

I washed my hands carefully at the outdoor sink, and they washed their hands cursorily. I opened the pantry door and then they were all around me like a murmuration of starlings. Just three people can do a very good imitation of a whole murmuration when they’re hovering near you and mumbling through bandannas. One beside me, two behind. One for sorrow, two for joy.

I put food in the pantry and they snatched it out as quick as I could pile it up. Mackerel and tuna, spam and canned chicken, a can of shredded roast beef, dried kale and dried vegetables, cereal and boxes of oat milk. I also had a bag of oranges that I threw in the cardboard produce box beside the pantry on top of some limp heads of lettuce.

“Why do you keep bringing stuff I like!” joked one man as he put back a can of mackerel and grabbed the chicken. They know there are cameras watching for people taking more than a few cans per person, so they each chose carefully.

I would like to do this for the rest of my life.

I wish there wasn’t so much need. But as long as there as need, I don’t take more joy in anything than in filling it.

I wish we were not all trapped in this waking nightmare. But as long as we’re in a nightmare, this is place I would be proud to find myself when I wake up crying and find it wasn’t real.

When I came out here to the Ohio Valley, I had the notion that I was going to learn irrefutable syllogisms to make people believe in God and flock to be baptized. In my years of study I haven’t come across one. I can’t say for sure that I’m responsible for any baptisms. But I’ve discovered that I like to fill pantries with cans for other people to eat. My catechism tells me that my liking to fill pantries is part of an infinitely larger Liking-to-Fill-Pantries which gives every creature their food in due season, and that all the people whose pantries I fill are Christ.  Christ the lamb, Christ the starling, Christ driving in a bread line, Christ leaning over me in a bandanna.

Christ was also in the church across the street, hidden under a purple curtain, and I dropped in to pray for you after carefully washing my hands.

I stopped at that Chinese takeout restaurant on my way back to the bus stop. We’ve been eating too much Chinese takeout lately, but Rosie has so little fun cooped up at home with all of her lessons canceled, I want to at least feed her treats she likes. Fried rice is one of the only fast food meals she can eat, since she shares my wheat sensitivity.

The lady at the counter took my order and quickly ran back to cook it. I stopped and chatted from six careful feet away with her son, or perhaps her nephew or grandchild– a boy who said he was in Kindergarten, or had been before they closed all the schools. He was the first person I saw on my errand who wasn’t wearing a mask. He showed me his laptop and the game he was playing to teach him his shapes.

“I’ve unlocked two monsters,” he boasted.

Then, of course, our chat turned to the pandemic. The boy assured me confidently that COVID-19 never kills children, only the elderly, and I mentioned that sometimes it might.

“Oh no,” said the boy. “The virus doesn’t kill children. It suffocates them.”

“Well,” I said, “That’s also very serious. So remember to wash your hands and follow the safety rules to stay healthy!”

“Thank you!” said the lady, more heartily than her usual “Thank you,” and I took the rice home.

And then it was Triduum, and Christ died and rose from the dead before my eyes yet again.

They tell me that the Church has been suppressed by the government, but I don’t find it to be true.

Image via Pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross. 

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