At Our Table

What I noticed first was that she was eating her chicken with her hands. It was a leg and a thigh, a big piece of chicken for anyone to handle with a knife and fork so I could see why she’d just pick it up and eat it.

But she wasn’t eating it. She was taking it apart. She was methodically, carefully, surgically taking every bit of meat off the bones and putting the meat in a plastic container. She put the rice and vegetables in another plastic container and put everything in her purse except the pear which sat wrapped in white tissue paper. I waited to see if she would eat that but, no, she just pulled it to her chest as she readied herself to leave.

She had come to our table at the back of the senior dining room where my friend and I were meeting to talk about aging policy and projects. We were in the thick of it when she sat down, a very gray woman in a black winter jacket and gray knit hat. Her face was worn but hearty. She seemed like someone who had seen plenty of weather. Her hands were strong-looking, muscled, her nails long but neat and very thick. I watched as she dug out each shred of chicken from the bones.

We asked if she came to the senior center very often and she said, “once in a while,” and when I asked why she didn’t come more often, I couldn’t hear her answer because of the din of other diners. The room was packed, the tables full, a lot of couples who looked like they probably came every day. She wasn’t with them. She was alone. Well, she was with us. But we were poor company.

I asked her name and told her mine.

I wished that she was happier, satisfied with her meal, but I knew that would only come later when she was home or wherever she was going, and she could parcel out the meat she’d gleaned from the chicken leg and thigh. If she had eaten as she sat with us, that would have been one meal. What she was taking with her could be stretched to two or three.

There’s no more to the story. She left. We stayed and talked. I pushed away my tray with my half-eaten chicken and the volunteer came to pick it up. What I left would have probably given our table mate another meal. My friend gave her an unopened milk saying she was allergic and would be throwing it away. I considered giving her my pear but kept it to eat later in the car on the way home. I doubt she would have accepted it anyway. She seemed that kind of person.