A Sandwich Story

Asian American Lunchbox Moment Story

I dread the days I have to bring lunch to school. Days where I carefully unzip

my lunch bag, as though going slower will prevent the stench from escaping. It doesn’t help. I can see the fumes as they waft out. I try to air it out, fanning my hands over my lunch bag nonchalantly, hoping people don’t notice. Nothing helps. The cacophony of noise that fills the cafeteria cuts out abruptly. I look straight at my food. I know they’re staring at me, trying to identify the mixture of odors that have ruined their appetites. My vision has closed in. I just need to eat it and then it’ll be gone. Nobody actually cares.

Someone audibly retches.

I told my mom not to pack anything crazy. I told her to do something simple, something that smells good. Something I can maybe even share with people. It doesn’t need to be healthy, it just needs to be normal. Before I’ve even opened the box containing my food, I can tell it isn’t.

It’s her fault.

I just need to get it over with. The faster I eat it, the sooner people will go back to their conversations, to their normal states of being. Nobody cares, I repeat to myself. It doesn’t help. I can feel their eyes on my back, noting their judgements with each inch the zipper moves. The smell has filled the cafeteria. It hangs in the air, with a faint green color.

My life is a cartoon.

It’s been minutes. I fish the box out of the bag. I can see the condensation through the clear plastic, blurring what’s inside. I groan inwardly. It’s going to be soggy. I hate rice. I hate idli. I hate dosa. I hate chapatis. They’re all two hundred times worse when they’re soggy. I just want a sandwich. I’ll take the zero nutritional value of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich over the public humiliation of Indian food any day. I’d rather be strung up on a cross and be burned alive than have to eat this moist, repulsive dish that my people call food.

I hate my parents.

I already know the food is going to be bland. It tastes the same every time. Idlis with some type of chutney on top. Condensation has turned it into something that resembles porridge. My stomach grumbles. It isn’t worth it. I glance at the trash can. Some days it is easier to just not open the bag. I can’t let my parents know I didn’t eat it though. They’ll get mad.

I hate when they hit me.

I never come home with food in my lunchbox anymore. I used to. I used to throw it out at home once I got back. Both of my parents worked. Once my dad came home and found the food that I had thrown out when I had gotten back home. He threatened to make me eat it out of the trash for wasting it. I once told him that it’s illegal to abuse your children. He just hit me more.

I sometimes feel at war with my own family.

I place the food in my mouth. It’s the strangest mixture of wet and dry. Rather than being an oasis in the Sahara for my mouth, it is wet at first and then the more I chew, the more it turns my mouth into a sub Saharan wasteland. It didn’t have any flavor to begin with. I spit it back into the box. I’m not going to make it through the meal. I’d rather just eat the cafeteria food right now.

Pizza sounds delicious.

I toss the food my mom packed for me into the trash en route to the pizza station. I join the line and grab two slices, my usual order these days. I pay out of the existing balance in my lunch account, stealing the hard work my mom put into the early hours of the day. 

Guilt tastes like pizza.

I take my lunchbox home and place it in the sink. Later in the evening, my mom comes home, cleans the lunchbox, and places it in the dishwasher. She acts like she doesn’t know. She definitely sees the money trickling out of my school account and continues refilling it, telling herself that as long as I’m eating something it’s a good thing. My dad came home around the same time as her. His day is the same every day. He works to let his family live a happy life. His exhaustion affects all of us. My sister lives in my shadow. She will end up doing a lot of the same things as me. At least she will never know the worst parts of my childhood. I do my best to protect her peace. It works sometimes. My family will grow through this. It’s just a phase.