The Angels of Bread

So may every humiliated mouth,

teeth like desecrated headstones,

fill with the angels of bread.

“Imagine the Angels of Bread” by Martín Espada

It still takes me a long time to eat a meal. I chew and swallow carefully. I think of Lucia at least once a day. Lucia was the first person I ever knew who passed away. She worked as a cashier at the grocery store my family frequented, just north of Boston. An easy, serendipitous union, she became like a grandmother to my sister and I. She made us cookies that we weren’t allowed to eat, because we were raised vegetarian, and Lucia baked with lard instead of butter. She choked on a chicken bone. When I was four, I couldn’t understand how that was possible.

In the height of my dysphagia, my fear was arresting. My fear is old. I was afraid to call doctors, make appointments, go to the hospital. I was afraid that I would say the wrong thing, or that a receptionist would be cold to me, or that I wouldn’t be able to stop crying when the hold music stopped.

Mostly, I was afraid at the table. Rational or irrational, Lucia was the only person I had ever known who could understand the feeling. At first, my fear was mixed with grief. A sour cocktail, like sweet adrenaline on the tongue. The table became the setting for consistently gut-wrenching unfulfilled desire. I became numb to my own opinions and preferences on taste. I could remember what it felt like to be delighted, but I couldn’t summon delight. During each meal, I was consumed with one question - can I swallow this, and if I don’t succeed, will I die?

One night, Joe and I got pupusas. We ate them in the cold car, parked in front of a jewelry shop called “Imagine.” Suddenly, my airway was blocked. I tried to cough but I didn’t have the strength. Like gum stuck in a recorder, or anything stuck in anything. My voice became more whistle than whisper, and I was so afraid.

The emergency room was packed. Joe spoke to the receptionist for me because I was shaking too violently. In retelling the story later, Joe would say, “I didn’t know how to explain pupupas in that moment.”

We were brought to a bed in the hospital hallway. It sounded like moaning and screaming was coming from each room. A doctor told me that because I could breathe at all, my airway wasn’t fully blocked, and because I hadn’t choked on meat or bone, the matter would resolve itself. She recommended an all-liquid diet.

I brought my blender with me everywhere and kept shelf-stable meal replacement drinks in my bag. Everything I ate, I sipped alone. My brain slowed down. It became harder to reach out to friends. My friends are all sensual artists, farmers, and salad lovers. I had nothing of value to share about my days spent laying on the couch. I was afraid my friends would grow bored of me, or fatigued by my illness.

I waited two months for my upper endoscopy, and it was scheduled for the worst blizzard of the year. We stayed at a hotel nearby the night before, but 5 miles of a blizzard is still a blizzard. The roads weren’t plowed and the snow kept coming down. I felt fear in anticipation for the procedure, and fear of a crash.

When we arrived, I slipped into a hospital gown and watched the snow accumulate in the field outside. Sedation was administered by IV, and I was so dehydrated, they had to poke me twice. Rolled to sleep very easily, and woke up just fine. The doctor told me there was no growth in my throat, and that it must be silent reflux. In a haze, I listened, and then we left and drove home slowly.

But then the pain came. It was too painful to drink water. It felt like what I can only guess birth feels like, something inside ripping open. I refused to drink. I started coughing up blood. Deep in my chest, below my heart. We called my doctor, who ordered me to go back to the hospital. I had an X-ray, nothing was visibly wrong, so I was sent home. Woke up from the pain at 2am. I hadn’t had anything to drink in over 24 hours. When we came back to the hospital, the nurses covered me with heated blankets. They administered fluids and pain meds through an IV, but had to poke me 3 more times. The pain, the pain, the pain. It is ineffable, inarticulate. A climax of pain.

The pain was from biopsies taken on my esophagus where a cold was blooming. Just so raw. It ended up just being pain, that eventually faded. But it made me realize that enduring pain is so different than experiencing fear. To me, fear is much worse than the worst pain I’ve known.

I was terrified to eat solid food again. It had been months since I chewed anything. But on the morning of March 1, my dear friend’s birthday, I ate some toast.

I imagine that the angels of bread in Martín Espada’s poem aren’t carrying tangible masses of wheat and water. I think they bring something that has been transformed by fire. Cooking is a paradigm shift. Something cooked cannot become raw again. Something understood in a somatic way cannot be forgotten.

I am not grateful to be able to eat again, although I thought I would be. I am only grateful for my new understandings. People with feeding tubes, people without access, without time, with disordered eating, with grief. In war, in famine, in disaster. The people deserve a table set with flowers that negate isolation, and conversation with people who understand. We’ll talk about our fears and how to face them. We are there to celebrate each other’s remarkable strength. At the table, I’ll sit beside Lucia. Against all odds, and impossibly, it is the best dinner ever.