The Pierogi We Pinched With Grandma

“Six,” Grandma said. “Megan, six.”

After that I lost track of everything but the work. People came with their wallets already out, and they said Paula’s name again and again.

They said it to Grandma, and they said it to us, and they said it across the room, where the caterer’s trays sat in a long row with the foil still crimped shut.

The retired principal bought three dozen. He looked at me and said, “Did you girls make these yourselves?” and when I said we had, he cleared his throat and did not say another thing.

The post office woman bought four. One of the plow brothers bought two and then came back and bought two more.

The first dozen went in four minutes. The tenth went in twenty.

By half past one, the line wrapped around the building, and Uncle Ed went out to ask people to be patient, and everybody laughed because he sounded like a man trying to hold back the tide.

Across the room, the caterer’s table sold three dozen in two hours. I know because I counted, and I am not proud of that.

Two of those three went to a young couple who were new to the parish and did not know any better, and I saw the woman look at the long line and the empty trays and then look at her husband and say, “Maybe we should have waited.”

I did not enjoy any of it. I want to say that. I watched my aunt stand behind her clipboard while the whole parish walked past what she had picked, and what I felt was not triumph.

It was something heavier, like carrying a full pan up a flight of stairs.

By ten past two, there was nothing left on our table but masking tape and crumbs. Thirty-four dozen, four hundred and eight dollars, and Grandma had Sophie count it twice and Lisa count it once more.

Every dollar went to the parish furnace fund, with eleven dollars in the coffee can on top.

Twenty-seven pans of the caterer’s pierogi were still under their foil. Father Dominic stood looking at them for a while with his hands folded, and then he said something quietly to Uncle Ed, and Ed nodded.

By the next morning I heard they had gone to the shut-in dinners and the men’s shelter in Wilkes-Barre, which is a better end than frozen potato and cheese usually gets.

But the bill was the bill. The caterer wanted two hundred and ninety dollars on delivery, on top of the hundred and fifty already gone, and I watched my aunt count it out of her own purse at the church office window, bill by bill, with her back to the room.

Nobody offered to cover it. She would not have let them.

I found Uncle Ed on the loading dock behind the hall, sitting on an upturned milk crate with his cap in his hands.