The Last Bite

Audrey Smith

During some year in my youth, I can’t remember which, I was in the car with my mother and sister. A bag of crackers and a Fuji apple sat on my lap. The ride was quiet, except for my nibbling of that large apple. At that age, I could never eat the whole thing, but I still thought some fruit would be nice. Halfway through, I was ready to be done with it.  

I let go. The apple fell into the empty grocery bag, our car’s make-shift trash can. A heavy thud.  

My mom turned. She looked into the bag. Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes widened. I don’t remember exactly what she said, only an outburst of how she couldn’t believe I just did that. She told a story. My mom and her sisters with my grandmother, my Popo, at the grocery store. My aunt wanted an apple, but with their budget, Popo refused to buy it.  

“She begged, and begged, and cried for that apple. She was crying. And you just threw it away,” my mom said. She grabbed my bag of crackers and looked at my sister. “No, she doesn’t get to eat these snacks after throwing that away. You’re not going to eat for the rest of the day.”  

That is the image I was left with. A sobbing, hungry girl being dragged out of the grocery store. I didn’t say a word. I recalled another one of my mom's stories, the time my Popo prepared dinner on a cardboard box that replaced their table, only for the box to collapse under the weight. I imagined my young mother, staring at a mess of food on the floor, realizing there wouldn’t be dinner that night.   

About a decade later, I was at my college’s bustling cafeteria. On my tray, I put heaps of red tri-tip and spinach from the salad station. My stomach was bloated, but I persisted. Just one more bite. Now another. If I was to successfully donate blood later that month, I needed my iron levels to make the cut. Anemia ran in my family—so much that my sister needed iron infusion treatment when she got older. I got lightheaded whenever I watched my sister get her blood drawn, so I knew I needed to prepare not only physically, but mentally. Mom tried helping our anemia with lots of wok-fried steak over rice. She worked hard for my version of Chinese food. In some ways, our idea of Chinese food was the same. The kohlrabi soup, steamed chicken, and fried Ong choy that filled the house with the aroma of garlic. She had all that and more in China but fell on hard times when she moved to the United States. Chinese food was sometimes that, government cheese and white bread.  

As the donation date approached, my stomach tightened by the day. But someone out there needed this donation, and I wasn’t going to let a missing plate of spinach, or an upset stomach interfere with that. The day arrived, and after chugging lots of water, I walked to the donation center on campus, and signed in. Once my name was called, I sat down for questioning. A woman asked me a long slog of questions, but only one made me stutter.  

“What’s your ethnicity?” 

“I’m white and Chinese.”  

“Well, we can only pick one, so…” She paused and cringed. “I don’t want to erase part of your identity, but I think we’ll just put white?” 

“Yeah. Uh, you know what, just put white.” I was, after all, very white. I had my mother’s black hair and brown eyes, but apart from that, I looked so much like my dad—some people were surprised to learn my mother and I were even related. Still. An eraser, she said? I grimaced at the thought of my family tree on a whiteboard, a giant eraser wiping half of it away. The blood my mother passed through me in the womb, sucked out by one of those needles. But whatever, I thought. They’re not writing a biography about me; it’s probably for evaluating their demographics of donors.  

She pricked my finger and then did some things on a computer I didn’t understand. After a couple of minutes, she turned to me and sighed.  

“Your iron levels aren’t quite high enough to donate, I’m sorry.”  

She explained to me that my levels barely missed the mark. If I could get them up, then perhaps next time. Just how many more spinach smoothies would that take? 

“You can still get a snack. Do you want a snack?”  

“No, thanks.” I said.  

Some people I passed by had blue bandages around their elbows. The people whose blood wasn’t rejected. I fiddled with the beige band-aid around my finger where they pricked me. I’m a strong believer in giving back to the community, my mom would say. I thought about my mother again, and again, and again. Mom always volunteered to eat the leftovers, to clean up after others, didn’t she?  

As a teenager, I went through phases of trying to waste nothing. Even when my stomach was on the brink of bursting, I kept eating until all the food was gone. Whenever I was tempted to throw the last bite away, I thought of how that wouldn’t be a problem for my mom. I thought of the homeless man across the street, the displaced family starving because they were escaping war. Food was money, so throwing away food was throwing away money, let alone a disgustingly unapologetic display of privilege. I huffed and rolled my eyes at videos of obnoxious online influencers making a mess with food for “comedy.” Guilt had a big appetite. But I could only maintain that level of strictness for so long. Every so often, I would find myself at a restaurant with portion sizes too big. Food that was forgotten and left to mold in the fridge. When I had too much food, I gave in and threw it away. I winced. But who exactly was I helping by stuffing myself?  

I developed new habits as I got older. I structured my grocery lists carefully. I asked my friends if they’d like to split meals with me at restaurants, although only some were willing. I tried to stick with ordering food that could be heated up as leftovers. I gave food to the homeless when possible. The most important principle was to buy less than what I thought I needed and then return if I needed more. Most of the time, I would be content with what I purchased and didn’t need seconds. Even so, when I was too full to eat the last bite, I listened to my body. I asked myself if I ate as much as I could, and if yes, I wasn’t going to push myself further.  

After graduating, I developed some digestive issues unrelated to my attitude toward food. I never knew when acid reflux or nausea would attack me, but this meant overeating was no longer an option. Food was sacred, but so was my body. Jesus’s words from the book of Luke echoed in my mind: “For life is more than food.” I had to believe that God created food for the body, and not the body for food. So, when it was mealtime, I knew the plate in my hands, carrying a blessing, was an altar. 

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