By Deb Nordlie 

Back when it was a sin to be divorced, my mom was. So money was tight. But we scrimped and saved and made do and did without, and eventually, Mom was able to buy a tiny house. In the backyard that first spring, we planted a mini-garden with lettuce, peas, beans, corn, strawberries, and rhubarb. All summer long, we picked and pickled, shelled and shucked, canned and froze, and stored everything in our trusty Maytag freezer in the basement. We made good use of our home-grown resources. We saved some money that way too. 

But, as Mom reminded us, the garden wasn’t the only reason that we “weren’t in the poor house.” The other reason was that Granddaddy supplied us generously with meat from the steers he slaughtered each spring.

But for us kids, that was a problem.

The meat.

Oh, so much beef.

Really, we weren’t ungrateful, but we craved variety. Chicken or pork, and even peanut butter seemed like a luxury to us. But beef. Ugh. We were sick of steak and hamburger and ribs and meatloaf. We were never free of the stuff. We even had slices of it in our school sandwiches. Consequently, we hated lunchtime.

Until we found out that the kids at school thought differently. They loved our beef-wiches. To our amazement, lots of kids were eager to trade their tuna salad or Jif for our steak.

Suddenly we were popular because of those sandwiches––and celebrity is celebrity, no matter how it’s obtained. It didn’t matter that we were famous only from eleven to noon because we got what we wanted: recognition, though short-lived, and a lunchtime reprieve from the despised beef. 

Truth told? What we really wanted was a PB and J to take to school like the other kids, or, better yet, a hot cafeteria lunch. To not carry a dented red plaid lunchbox and thermos to school. To not drink the milk that had warmed from the 7 a.m. pour to the lunch hour. To not have a steak sandwich. To walk into the cafeteria and have, oh gosh, I don’t know, macaroni and cheese or fish sticks like the other kids.

 “Well,” Mom told us, “it’s out of the question. We simply don’t have enough money for that,” she explained at one of our Saturday family meetings. “I work, I have a job, yes, but the ends never meet. We’re lucky to have the beef from Granddaddy (and here we rolled our eyes), and fruit and vegetables from our garden. But no. No cafeteria lunches. I am sorry.”

We knew this to be true. We often went with Mom when she shopped at Jay’s Market. We knew the bill usually hovered around sixteen dollars each week. It covered the basics. 

But Mom didn’t know about our ace in the hole—our sandwich trading business.

The night I’m remembering though, Mom called an unexpected Sunday family meeting. She had foregone her usual Sunday nap to host this meeting, so at her request, we four kids herded ourselves into the dining room and sat in our assigned seats. 

“Well, kids,” Mom started, “somehow I goofed with our money this month. I can pay the mortgage and there’s milk in the fridge, but no cash left for bread. I think you can just wrap up your lunchtime steak in waxed paper, right? You can take it to school that way, right? This isn’t a crisis, I just wanted to let you know.”

We hated the steak sandwiches, but we had quite a long list of clients who didn’t.

My sister and I glanced at each other and I’m sure we were thinking the same thing: Would anyone want our sandwiches without bread? 

No one said anything. Our brothers  couldn’t care less, but my sister and I had developed a real taste for the bologna and Skippy of our customers. We reveled in our lunchtime popularity. Mom continued, “Unless manna falls from the heavens above, girls, there won’t be any bread this week. This is not a big deal—you can manage without, yes?”

Our brothers had lost interest and slid off the dining room chairs to play, but we girls were unwilling to give up our culinary fame, though uncertain how to retain it given the circumstance. Then my seven-year-old sister’s optimism broke through Mom’s reality.

“Hey, I got it! An idea, I mean. Let’s pray. Let’s just pray and ask God to help us. You’re always saying His eye is on the sparrow and all that, Mom, so don’t you think He’ll help us find some money around the house?”

I had never given my little sister much credit, but you’d have to be an idiot not to believe in her Christian confidence. God can do anything—that’s what Mom always said. Let’s give God a chance to make good on His promises, I thought. Let’s just put the Big Guy to the test.

So, the three of us bowed our heads at the dining room table, and my sister, in her little kid way, asked God not for a Troll doll, or a reversible skirt like the rich kids had, not to see the Beatles, or to help President Johnson manage after President Kennedy’s death, but for a measly thirty-two cents for a loaf of bread.

On the surface, this seemed like a reasonable request to a God Who Can Do Anything, but I was used to being snubbed by Him. It had happened before. Frankie Norris didn’t love me despite my prayers. I didn’t get an A in math despite my prayers. I still had a big, fat nose. But somehow this seemed more important. Maybe He’d listen this time.

We completed our supplication quickly. Our heads rose. Then we fanned out to begin the treasure hunt we hoped was endorsed by the Lord God Almighty

We went through coat pockets. We looked under the sofa and between cushions. We were hopeful because Mom was a casual housekeeper, and anything, including money, could be anywhere. We rifled through our dresser drawers. We slid our hands between the seats of our aging Chevy station wagon. My sister poked around in the basement and even searched behind the noisy furnace. I inspected the front porch, behind flowerpots, and under the doormat. Mom hunted in her purse and the pockets of her nurse’s cape. We moved furniture.

Then I screamed out, “Yippee! We’re rich!” I hit pay dirt when I dumped the vacuum cleaner bag onto the hall rug. A dime gleamed through the debris. Getting into the spirit of the hunt, my brother added to the excitement by yelling, “Six cents! Six cents! I found six pennies under my bed!” And in her summer purse, Mom found a roll of Lifesavers with a fuzzy nickel stuck to its wrapper. Twenty-one cents ... Thank you, God!

But we still needed another eleven.

“Yes, God’s given us a lot so far, it’s true,” Mom acknowledged. “But bread doesn’t cost twenty-one cents. Bread costs thirty-two cents, so let’s get crackin’, folks.” We nodded, but now there were fewer places to investigate. 

Except, oh.

Except in Mom’s God-awful kitchen.

Honestly, Mom was not only a casual housekeeper, she was also a careless one. You might find coffee in the freezer or the breadbox. The cereal might be under the sink or in the same cupboard as the pots and pans. As a family, we were used to these treasure hunts. Every meal in our house involved a rummaging of sorts, a catch-as-catch-can-search-and-discovery.   

The kitchen was the only place not yet probed. We knew we might find anything, absolutely anything there, so, despite the hazards yet hopeful for the reward, we undertook the challenge.

We summoned energy from our earlier Sherlock Holmes results. Mom grabbed a bucket from under her bed, not its usual spot, or maybe it was, who knew, filled it with soap and hot water, and we began searching while cleaning, while organizing, while washing everything down. The fridge was scrubbed. The oven scoured. The cabinets rearranged. All the time alert for stray coins.

The silverware drawer with its curling blue and white shelf paper was last. Grimacing while pulling the drawer out of the cabinet, my sister tipped it onto the kitchen table. Silverware, some tea bags, the interior of a broken watch, toothpicks, a few stamps fell onto the tabletop, and then—hot diggity! Eighteen cents! A nickel, a dime, and three sticky green pennies!

We jumped up and down, we screeched, we grabbed each other and did our best Beatles’ moves. We frolicked and boogied as if we had discovered a cure for math homework or planted our family flag on the moon.

Our voices became a chorus. “We did it! We did it! We found enough money! Hallelujah!”

Mom was more excited than we’d seen her since she’d begun this journey as a single mother. She held aloft the few coins and we conga-lined around our now-clean kitchen into the living room, musically cha-cha-ing, “Yes, we found the money! Yes, we found the money!” We pranced and we jigged. We boog-a-looed. We did the Pony and the Monkey. We laughed and giggled and praised each other for our tenacity, for our exploratory skills, for the clean kitchen.

And for finding money for a loaf of bread.

Giddy and breathless, we kids collapsed victorious on the living room sofa, imagining the gastronomic trading we’d do in the cafeteria the next day. Then Mom interrupted our thoughts of future business transactions. While putting on her coat to go to Jay’s Market for the bread, Mom spoke quietly. “See? Just like we knew, the Lord doth provide.”

I’ve thought of that sentence many times since 1963, and the way she said it. No cynicism, no air quotes around those four words. There was no sarcasm or irony in her statement. This woman, my mother, who had lived twelve years with my father, been pregnant eight times, birthed four children, worked forty hours a week as a nurse, whose biggest vice was a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and who would eventually die not knowing who or where she was, still believed.

It’s a wonder I still carry with me.

Guest essay written by Deb Nordlie. Deb has taught English since dinosaurs ruled the earth. After a lifetime of writing assignment sheets, she’s branched into life stories, believing “we are all anthologies filled with marvelous short stories and poems.” Currently, she teaches English in adult school and scribbles away at the Great American Novel. You can view her work at the Chestnut Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, Coffee + Crumbs, and Crown City Magazine.

Photo by Lottie Caiella.