A Place at the Table Read Online Free PDF Page A

for Bobby. Not that I love any of you better than the rest, you hear, son? But you were an easy baby.”
    Mama is always checking her words, trying to make sure she doesn’t play favorites, but I know she loves me best. Probably has something to do with how much I love her, too. She just smells so good, on account of how often she rubs her hands with Jergens lotion, which is scented with almonds and cherries. She is prettier than most other mothers, too, so pretty she was runner-up in the Miss Georgia contest back before she married Daddy, and she flat-out won a contest for her face to be on the side of the Greenfield Pralines N’ Cream ice-cream box. She almost always wears a skirt and heels—except when she is doing her “fitness walks” or gardening or deep cleaning the house—so she just clicks along the kitchen floor like a dancer. And she is the best cook in the world, well, except for Meemaw, whose pound cakes are so good ladies buy them straight out of her kitchen. Meemaw sells them for five dollars a cake, taking a maximum of ten orders a week, which always get filled. She says the steady baking is no problem now that she no longer has her job working in the lingerie department at Davison’s Department Store.
    I love to help Meemaw and Mama cook. By the time I was two I could crack an egg without getting any shell in the bowl. Mama swears to this, even though Christians aren’t supposed to swear. Mostafternoons I’m in the kitchen with Mama, snapping beans or peeling potatoes or husking corn or mixing meat loaf, while Troy studies in his room or is off meeting with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Hunter plays sports outside.
    There are two rules Hunter has to follow when he goes outside to play. He has to always have a friend with him, and he has to wear a whistle on a string around his neck. If a bee stings him, he’s supposed to blow and blow and blow on that whistle until an adult comes running. Or have his friend blow the whistle for him, depending on how bad off he is. He’s only been stung once in his life, but he swelled up all over. It was during the annual Fourth of July church picnic supper at Clairmont Avenue Baptist. We all ate on the lawn, on blankets. After the desserts were served, but before the fireworks began, the kids started playing Red Light, Green Light. Hunter was the caller, so I stayed with Meemaw on the blanket, who brought one of her pound cakes to the potluck even though she goes to her own church and not ours. The reason I stayed with Meemaw was because Hunter didn’t play fair. He always said I moved even when I didn’t, and he would send me back to the starting line.
    Plus, I just love spending time with my meemaw.
    Suddenly Hunter threw his arms up in the air like someone being saved on television, then fell to the ground. And before I could even wonder what had happened Daddy was rushing toward him like a football player charging the goalpost. Daddy scooped Hunter up in his arms and raced to the parking lot where our station wagon was parked. Mama followed, yelling along the way for someone to tell Meemaw that Troy and I were to go home with her and wait for them to call. Later Mama told us that Daddy drove pell-mell to the hospital, breaking about a dozen traffic laws along the way. Turned out Hunter fell over on the field cause he got stung by a bee and was allergic. At the hospital they shot Hunter up with this stuff called epinephrine and Benadryl, and sent him home with a bunch of it,that and a boxful of needles. And they gave Hunter a pair of dog tags like Mr. Morgan has from Vietnam, only Hunter’s tags say that he is allergic to bees.
    It probably doesn’t even matter whether or not Hunter wears those dog tags; everyone at church and school knows about his allergy, and every grown-up is prepared. There is epinephrine and a needle in the nurse’s office at school, put aside especially for Hunter, and there is some in the RAs’ meeting room, and in Mama