Searching for jelly.

While sitting in a cluttered cold dark back room that I shared with insects, rodents, and a host of other detestable creatures, the growl in my stomach went from a quiet grumble to a loud roar. The purple monkey who had been my imaginary companion for quite a while began to offer all types of suggestions to tame this beast growing inside of my abdomen. The purple monkey who for the time being will remain nameless was pissed at what he called my “weak a** tolerance for dealing with bull sh** and letting mother fu****** get over on me.” I disagreed with his positioning on that but what else was new?

Ignoring the verbal assaults my sub conscious was tossing at me I made my way through the maze of the mess that existed in my bedroom/storage closet/rodent nest and made my way into the kitchen to search for food that I knew wasn’t there. As I approached the kitchen, I held my breath and took the extra measure of covering my mouth and nostrils with a cupped hand, as to ward off the pungent odor that seemed to waft off of every surface in sight. Aside from the unclean appearance of it all, the smell was enough to make you vomit. On my way to the refrigerator I could feel roaches crunching under my Reebok Classics, it didn’t bother me because the roaches were everywhere and had seemingly become a part of the family. As I opened the refrigerator door I closed my eyes and imagined that waiting for me inside would be a left over meal of some kind, a box of chicken, cold pizza, even a half eaten candy bar. I hoped it would just be sitting there, waiting for me to seize it so that my brothers and I could share it in the hopes of satisfying the hunger pains long enough to make it through the night. As expected the refrigerator was empty aside from a mason jar filled with water, an open jar of pickle juice and a jar of mayonnaise that I normally would’ve eaten by the spoonful but my stomach couldn’t take any more of it. Frustrated, I slammed the refrigerator door and started to walk back into the room to share the disappointing news with my two brothers. On my way out of the kitchen I saw something that made my mouth water and caused my stomach to leap with excitement.

The door to my guardian’s room was slightly cracked and on the dresser I saw a loaf of bread, a jar of grape Welch’s jelly (which was my favorite), and an extremely large jar of peanut butter. I started to walk closer to the door to investigate this source of nourishment further and as I got closer my cousin, who at the time reminded me of what the mascot of The Village People would look like (only more feminine) slammed the door shut and quickly locked it right in front of my face.

As soon as this happened the purple monkey looks at me as if to say, “You gone take that?” I looked at him and shook my head and went to go let my brothers know about what I had just witnessed and like me they were saddened and angry but I’m not sure if it was because I didn’t kick the door in and bring them some food or because of what happened next.

The door knob jiggled followed by a rapid banging and then by the feminine shrill of the mascot, “open the door!” I opened the door and was so close to running my fist through the gap in his mouth, but before I could react he handed me a used filthy plastic grocery store bag and said “here you n***** go.” He then turned his back and pranced away. I opened the bag and in it was three cold and mangled peanut butter sandwiches. Peanut butter, just F-ing peanut butter and not a drop of jelly! It had been days since we had eaten any solid food so I quickly gave the sandwiches to my brothers so that they could eat them. I was pissed because I realized, as we sat there, we seemingly were not even worthy of a teaspoon of Welch’s grape jelly.

Before I could get my next thought out the purple monkey sat next to me shaking his over sized head, but I could see from his eyes that he was hurting for me. I expected him to yell at me for not kicking the mascots a**, but he didn’t. He just asked me, “what are you going to do?” I didn’t really know but I opened the back window, told my brothers that I would be back in a little bit, and hit the streets to figure it out.

About Author: chadwicksapenter