I have been hungry. There were four months of my life (detailed below) when I had a very small income and (yes, it’s a cliché,) medical bills. Relatives and friends of mine have been hungry. Here, I present our stories, with names of my friends and relatives changed.
In all these cases (including mine,) none of us sought help. Neither I nor people I knew went to a food bank or signed up for government assistance. We sure as heck didn’t tell anybody until years after the fact. Quite honestly, I blushed and shook the whole time I typed this diary, and I considered not posting it for a week.
It’s mortifying, in the deathly sense of the word, to admit that you can’t even feed yourself or your family.
This is why I’m asking people to plant a garden. People will refuse to go to charities and ask for help. They will not refuse a big bag of heirloom tomatoes, lettuce, butter beans, peas, spinach, bell peppers, and squash from your garden, especially if you humbly ask them to take this embarrassing, over-planted bounty off your hands.
These intimate, terrible stories (below the fold) are why you should do what you can to help.
How could anyone in America be hungry? This is the land of milk and honey, of fruit and plenty.
Here’s my story.
I was in graduate school. That year, I had a fellowship of $8000, plus tuition paid, for my Master’s Degree (the Truman Capote Fellowship at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, fiction.) One of the stipulations for receiving the fellowship was that I could not work at another job, but I did anyway. I tutored women athletes for $8 an hour. Theoretically, they could have asked for the whole amount of the fellowship back, if they had found out that I was working.
So, for ten months, I received $800 a month, gross. They took out taxes, of course, so that left about $700. My studio apartment in the scary part of Iowa City* was $500 per month. Rent in Iowa City is pretty high for the Midwest because the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is a major regional hospital, which means there is a high number of MD’s per square foot in Iowa City, which drives up rents and property values.
(*Seriously, they have a part of town that is scary to Iowans, though I was not scared at all by these corn-fed hipster drug addicts, as I grew up in a far, far scarier barrio section of Phoenix, Arizona. I thought the scary people there were wussies.)
After rent, that left about $200 from my fellowship.
As I said, I tutored about 19 hours a week, which was all that I could without losing my fellowship. That brought in an extra $600 a month, out of which I actually saw about $400 due to, again, taxes.
Six hundred bucks left. Health insurance was a hundred and thirty a month. A hundred and twenty for car insurance per month. Thirty for gas. A hundred for utilities (heat and water.) Forty for phone, plus long distance. Basic cable was around forty a month, because rabbit ear antennae picked up nothing at all.
That left around $140 a month to eat.
Quite honestly, I’m a small female. I don’t eat all that much. It was enough to survive graduate school for two years. I had some money saved from before grad school. I planned to work as much as possible during the next summer to save up some more money.
The problem was that I got sick.
Medical Bills
Clarification: I was sick before I got to Iowa. I had been to a doctor in Arizona before I moved for stomach problems, ulcers and such, and that was on my medical records.
That first year of my MFA, I started having real problems. I went to the University clinics because I had insurance. I was sure that I had insurance because I was paying for it every month.
The doctors did a bunch of tests, and I had a lot of appointments. About twelve thousand dollars’ worth.
This was in the late 1990’s, before the Clinton health care reforms that specified that insurance companies had to cover pre-existing conditions. In Arizona, the law was that, if you had no lapse of insurance, if there was no gap in coverage, a new insurance company had to cover pre-existing conditions.
I had carefully manipulated my insurance to ensure that I had not even one hour of lapsed coverage. Indeed, I even had double coverage for about two weeks, because that was the only way to avoid a lapse.
I thought that was a general rule.
I was mistaken.
More Bills
In Iowa, there was no such law. If your problem started before your insurance active date, insurance companies could deny all claims, forever, relating to that particular problem.
Twelve thousand dollars.
If I went out and got a job, the fellowship-granting foundation could have asked for all that fellowship money back, in a lump sum, adding another eight grand of debt to the twelve I was already in.
The hospital started calling me. The bills were triple-overlapping: hospital charges and doctor charges and lab charges for the same visit were all on different, color-coded bills, and every one of them was huge, accumulating, and impossible to pay. They came every day in the mail. Green bills. Blue bills. Yellow bills.
Finally, all the bills turned red.
I negotiated with the hospital with little but some effect, and I started sending them money. First, all my savings. Then, I shut off the cable TV. I only drove when I had to. I stopped going out with friends, even to just sit with them, because I couldn’t afford the parking.
Then, I cut down on eating. I ate rice mixes and ramen, and little else.
Finally, one night, I kind of fell down in my apartment. It didn’t feel like merely passing out. I think I had a seizure, a mild one, but it scared the living daylights out of me.
Getting Out
Finally, June arrived, and my stipend ended, which meant that I could work. I got two jobs and worked like heck. I sent the hospital some money, ate some more, and hoarded the rest of the cash. I felt like Scarlett O’Hara, clutching a freaking radish.
The next year, I had different financial aid, which meant that I could work more, or at least they couldn’t penalize me if I did. I worked like heck. I paid off the hospital late the next year, but at the expense of doing well in my MFA.
The benefits of the Iowa MFA are the time that you have to write, the other students you meet, and the professional connections you make. Especially the second year, I did little socializing, very little link-making, and pretty much flopped out of the program. I finished my degree. I have the sheepskin, but I missed a lot of the benefits that I could have had.
But I paid off those darned bills.
I didn’t tell anybody about those months, not for years. I straight-out lied to my parents and family, telling them that the insurance covered it and that I was fine, that I lost twenty pounds in four months because I wanted to be a size 0 and weigh 92 pounds. (Okay, that part wasn’t so bad.)
This is the first time that I’ve set it down, telling anyone what really happened, to you, my closest, intimate strangers.
I'm not posting this story to my usual blogs. I still don't want my family to ever know.
More Hunger Stories
Other people’s stories are less prosaic than my own.
Ramen for Dinner
One friend, Joe (all names from this point forward have been changed to protect people,) bought a HUD house in the early 1990’s because he and his wife had a baby. At this point, he was about 21 years old. They had been living with her parents. When the baby was about two, they went through some tough times. His hourly job got cut back. She was working retail, and her hours also got cut back. They were leaving the toddler with her parents during the day but there still wasn’t enough money.
At night, they made one package of ramen, and they let the toddler eat all that he wanted, then one of them ate the rest, taking turns.
Dancing in the Dark
One undergrad college friend, Lydia, of mine paid her own way through school: tuition, books, dorm. She did not have enough money for a cafeteria meal plan.
She routinely danced on tables the last week of every month, or else she wouldn’t have had enough to eat.
Hunger in the Dorm
During my undergrad, I was a resident assistant in the dorms at Arizona State. I knew several girls on my floor were in the above situation: working like hell, but no meal plan. I smuggled food out of the cafeteria for them, every day, in my backpack. I generally took three sandwiches, fruit, milk and juice boxes, instant coffee packets, and anything else I could smuggle out. Once, I smuggled out plastic baggies of chocolate pudding. I was a popular RA that day.
You might shrug, but if they had caught me, they would have revoked my meal ticket, which was part of my RA compensation (free room and 10 meals a week) and only 10 meals a week as it was, and I was required to stay on weekends, too. However, our job was to take care of our residents, and I did.
Coming to America
Another friend of mine, Sanjay, came to this country from India with only $100 in his pocket and the promise of a teaching job at the university while he did his PhD. When Sanjay got to the university, the provost told him that the teaching job wasn’t available anymore. Sanjay hustled and called the other university that had accepted him, bargained, got a promise of a teaching position from them, hitch-hiked to the other university, and then finagled his way into a dorm with a promise to pay later. That $100, which his mother sold her jewelry to give him, lasted six weeks, until his first paycheck.
Recycling for Baby Food Money
A couple friend of mine, Bob and Diana, collected aluminum cans in the alley behind their house to get enough money for formula for their baby. Even a year later, still very low on money, they watched her eat baby food for dinner, while they didn’t eat, for two days until payday.
Heinz Tomato Soup
I have laughed with groups of people who joke, years later, about eating “Heinz tomato soup” for more than one meal.
“Heinz tomato soup” is ketchup mixed with water.
Reasons
In general, hunger stories from people tend to have one of four things in common: college, babies, un- or under-employment, or medical bills.
Here’s something you can do: If you can, plant a garden, because anyone will accept the effusive bounty of someone’s garden, even if they’re too proud to visit a food bank.
Food banks, soup kitchens, and other charities gladly accept good produce.
Watch
But your neighbors and your friends may not ask food banks or charities for help. You need to have a sharp eye to look for those who are lying about skipping lunch because they say that they don’t feel like eating today.
If it’s summer, take them over some produce. If your stuff isn’t ripe yet, take over a basket of muffins or something, as a gift.
No Space to Garden
If you can’t plant a garden for whatever reason (space, apartment living, arthritis, time,) hold a bake sale to raise money. Bake cakes, muffins, banana bread, whatever, and sell it for a profit to donate the money to charity. Food banks really appreciate money.
In conjunction with your local food bank, set up a table in your local grocery store with a sign and copies of shopping lists, asking people to buy certain items, especially protein-rich items like canned tuna fish, other canned meats, or beans, and donate them. Bring big boxes. If you do that once a month, you would really help them out.
At the very least, clean out your pantry and donate that dusty can of green beans at the back to a food bank. They want it.
Have you ever been hungry?
You can say it was “a friend” in the comments below.
Links:
TK's Website
Companion Gardening(Planting groups of plants together to reduce pests and disease, like onions and herbs planted around tomatoes and lettuce repel bugs, and that beans can use corn stalks as poles.)
Shade-loving Veggies(for under trees.)
"How Much Is A Garden Worth?" The economics of a garden, reprinted with permission and links from Kitchen Gardeners Int'l.
Lasagna Gardening Beds (In situ composting)