“Your children can eat when they get home,” my father said, throwing two cocktail napkins onto the table, as if he were doing my daughters a favor.
My youngest daughter, Lily, was six. She glanced at the napkins, then at the basket of garlic bread on my sister’s side of the table, and looked down silently. Her older sister, Emma—nine years old and already beginning to understand what humiliation felt like—sat stiffly beside me, both hands neatly folded in her lap.
Across from us, my sister Rebecca was pushing two white takeout containers toward her children. The waiter had just packed away their leftovers: pasta in creamy sauce, grilled chicken, breadsticks, the whole shebang. Seventy-two dollars worth of food, according to the itemized receipt resting near her husband’s elbow. Her children were still on dessert while my girls had shared a simple salad and a plate of chips because I had silently decided to wait until payday before spending more than I could afford.
