The Necessary Beggar Read Free

thank our food before we eat it: for anything, fruit or flesh, may contain the spirit of some beloved person. We must believe that the dead delight to feed us, lest we starve, but we must also pay due reverence. And so coming to America was hard for us adults, for every television commercial of someone gobbling unblessed potato chips, unhallowed ice cream, made us blanch. The first time we saw a
television set, at our friend Lisa’s house, it was playing an ad for Smuckers jelly in which children smeared the stuff on pieces of bread and stuffed themselves, while animated fruit danced across the screen. We stared, aghast, although little Zamatryna immediately began humming the tune the cartoon fruit were singing.
    Lisa had gone shopping for food to feed us, and was not there to explain this atrocity. “They didn’t bless the bread or the fruit stuff,” Macsofo said, somewhat wildly, and Erolorit, frowning, suggested that perhaps the first piece of bread and jelly had been blessed to include all the others. “But they didn’t bless the first one either!” Macsofo said, to which Erolorit countered that maybe they had, and we just hadn’t seen it. Macsofo shook his head. “Brother, what good is a blessing no one sees?”
    Harani was in the bathroom, vomiting. Aliniana cried for a week. The children were puzzled but willing to adapt, and soon developed an inordinate fondness for Smuckers jelly.
    At first we blessed all our food, as we had at home. But soon enough we stopped. It is easier to bless food you have grown and made yourself, and we still bless the yield from our own garden; but supermarket food rarely seems sacred here. Aliniana and Macsofo buy the parve Jewish food whenever they can find it, and Erolorit says prayers over entire bags of groceries, and Harani over the stove. But the children became good American consumers who could not eat just one Pringle, and who rarely remembered even to bless the first one. I remember Zamatryna-Harani, when she was eleven, pulling a bag of popcorn out of the microwave and telling her uncle Macsofo, “You want me to bless each piece? Are you crazy? ”
    â€œYou would bless each ear of corn,” Macsofo said, “but all the kernels may not be from the same ear. You can bless the bag, but say something about the different ears of corn. That will be good enough.”
    Zamatryna was already eating. “Too much work,” she said, around a mouthful of hot popcorn. “Uncle Max, if the popcorn were haunted, I’d know.”
    â€œHow? How would you know? How can you be sure?”
    â€œI’d know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It would be, like, scary popcorn. This isn’t scary popcorn.”
    Macsofo looked pained. “The dead are not frightening, Zamatryna. The dead love us. You have been watching too many horror movies.”
    Zamatryna stuck her arms out straight in front of her and began lurching around the kitchen. “Night of the Living Popcorn,” she said, in her best horror-movie voice. “Woo-woo-wooooo! Would you just chill?”

    â€œYou are not listening to me, Zamatryna. I am saying that the popcorn does not have to be scary to contain the spirits of the dead. The popcorn loves you. You should thank it.”
    Whereupon Zamatryna laughed so hard she choked. Then she gave Macsofo a hug and said, “If the popcorn loved me, I’d know that, too. Really I would. It’s just, like, popcorn. If it’s dead people, I’m helping them be alive again by digesting them, okay?”
    Macsofo nodded. “Exactly! But you should thank them for feeding you!”
    Zama shrugged. “Or they should thank me for giving them a body again. I’m going to go do my English homework now. I have to write a poem.”
    Zamatryna-Harani loved popcorn at least as much as she loved poetry. She loved movies and shopping malls as much as she loved math; she loved the Gabbing