[. . .] Sure, he’d get some mustard, if she gave him some money. Laura was in a hurry. She had to get supper out of the way. She had a paper to write tonight. She looked around, and grabbed the booklet of food stamps. Then Benjamin told her he didn’t want to go.
Only a few weeks before, Laura had stood in a checkout line at a grocery here, about to use food stamps for the first time in her life, and the moment she’d taken them out of her pocketbook she’d felt mortified. Suddenly, the place was full of eyes. Hurriedly, she handed the booklet to the cashier. The cashier said, in a weary voice, as if talking to a child, “I can’t tear them out. You have to.” As Laura fumbled with the things, she could hear noises coming from the woman in line behind her, a sniffing, then an angry-sounding clearing of the throat. So Laura should have understood how Benjamin felt. But she wasn’t thinking clearly. She told him to knock it off, just go and get the mustard.
He came back with the wrong kind. It wasn’t their favorite brand. It wasn’t even honey mustard. She would be calm. Maybe the store didn’t have the right one. Was that the problem? He wouldn’t answer. He wouldn’t look at her. He sat on the sofa with his arms folded across his chest and scowled at the wall. Then she raised her voice. Damn it! What was wrong now?
He started crying, angrily. He’d done what he was told to do! He had brought the right brand, their brand, up to the cashier, but when he’d handed her the food stamps, she’d suggested that he buy a less expensive kind. “I hate it here! I hate being poor!”
“We aren’t poor! You can’t be poor at Smith College! We’re just broke!” Angry scenes played out in Laura’s mind. She would go out and confront the cashier. “How dare you!” she would say. She rattled pots and pans instead. [. . .]
Tracy Kidder, Home Town (New York: Random House, 1999). Pages 119 to 120.
(This book is nonfiction, and Laura and Benjamin Baumeister are real people, although we have only the author’s word.)
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