Sometimes I am 10-years-old, the youngest member of the Miszak family, and by no means the only Miszak to tolerate weekly mass for the promise of once a month “Donut Sunday.” For first Communion, I wear the same white dress that my mother wore to promise herself to the church thirty years ago. It is not a falsehood to say that my curls were sprayed with enough hairspray for them to crunch against the car seat on the way to the church or that my frilly dress felt like tree bark against my skin. As uncomfortable as it is, I am reminded I would rather be in the apple tree than the chapel, scraping my knees like the scars were tattoo proof of my youth. Yet, in front of too many relatives to count, I am handed a wafer. What I say is “amen,” but what I want to say is that it tastes like burnt cardboard.Â
Father Richard says this is the only food I’ll ever need. I make myself feel like I have a full stomach off of a thin wafer filled with sky-high expectations. I am promising my heart and life to a being that did not answer my morning prayer for my parents to not fight before church. I listen to the word of God who loves all, except for those who love the wrong gender or love anything more than we love Him. So I washed the cracker down with wine so dry that I wanted the bread to wet my mouth again. Which makes a lot of sense, when I think about it, craving something I know will only worsen my circumstances off of the hopes it will be better this time; being trapped in the melancholy merry-go-round of believing in things that didn’t believe in me. I think that is why I loved women who didn’t love me back.Â
Sometimes I am in middle school, five feet and two inches, full of information about the Great Molasses Flood and Edgar Allen Poe. I anxiously await the growth spurt that is promised to come following weeks of eating a loaf of bread a day. I had never especially craved bread unless it was the fresh French bread from the Polish bakery down the street, which never needed butter to adorn it. It was a treat akin to the sweetest of cupcakes or the most perfectly ripe of strawberries. In my mind, this is still the most divine delicacy because its simplicity does not rid me of such incandescent joy.Â
Before school I butter four pieces of soft white bread that tear beneath even a plastic knife. I find this in likeness to my sense of self- soft enough that my mother’s tears of disappointment are my resolve. Unstable enough that when Jewel walks down a line of sixth graders to snap the bra straps against their back that proved them women, the laughter that replaced what should have been a harmonious sting against my skin, still hurts. In second hour, I am backed into a corner to confess who my crush is and say the name of a girl for the first time. Destiny. My horrible bowl cut and large glasses do not hide the red in my face enough to find an escape.Â
Sometimes I am in high school and the world has shut down. Sometimes God is a loaf of pepperoni bread, I hide in each bubble of crust to make the yelling end. I tear it apart to make the simple joy last longer, to focus on every taste enclosed in the crust, from melted mozzarella to the pepperoni my brothers always say is too spicy. I take theirs from their plates the same as I hope to take their worries. When will we go to school again? Am I why my father left? What career path is right? Will anything be right when I feel this profoundly wrong? So, I cramp myself into the bubbles of crust like how I strip myself of every single imperfection- also known as everything that says I may be my own individual. I will be small enough to hide somewhere or anywhere.Â
If I let my hair grow out, I’ll become a branch on the family tree that will someday flower and bear fruit. Perhaps if I date the right person, although there is always quiet shame around anyone outside the family. Yet, as is the same as with the chapel bread, not one of these hopes can save me. The pandemic rages on as I sit in my house. The black walnut tree that peaks from behind the most atrocious pink curtains I have ever seen, is all that reminds me life will continue out there- in some way.Â
Sometimes the taste of fairground pretzels after a day at Cedar Point sits homely on my tongue. Life’s as kind as the woman who let me sneak out two donuts on that blessed “Donut Sunday.” I have always found something magical about roller coasters. My brothers call me an adrenaline junky or say I have no fear of God. Which is true, there is no fear that overpowers my love of what feels like flying. It was the first taste of freedom I had- aided by the fact that for months I have talked about pretzels and elephant ears like they are food gifted by the universe itself.Â
It is easier to worship the universe when it has never given me cardboard nor told me that it must have made a mistake when creating me and my rainbow heart. I fall asleep soundly for the first time in what feels like a lifetime with those cinnamon sugar coated dreams, until I am woken by the salted touch of someone who I saw as a brother. We shared each struggle, skipping along railroad tracks and sharing bosco sticks from the liquor store down my mother’s street. For a while, no food sounds good, not even bread from the Polish Bakery. The fairground only smells of burnt sugar and I cannot pretend the scent is anything else.
Sometimes it is months after that and I am kneeling in the same house we sheltered in, before an altar full of ripened wheat. I let the dampened dough and let it coat my hands and prove that I am not only destruction. I create again in the kitchen beside the black walnut tree, in my grandfather’s sweater.
Sometimes, I am 20. I am nearly 300 miles away from that school, that church, the yelling and the person who deserves no name. The one who is made of music and stardust. My love drives us to the bakery down the block and I grab the sweetest maple latte and a quiche with bread that flakes like snow. There are no prayers to be made and yet, bit by piece we pull it apart. We do not hide in the airy crust of my love’s croissant, but rather let our conversation fill it; doing all we can to make the 10 a.m. sunshine last. Later that day as we coat the recipe book in batter and laughter rings with laughter- their voice so honey I could taste it. More than honey, I tasted cinnamon sugar again and it’s never burnt.Â
I remember making and losing friends in Redford, Michigan and then leaving for a small town that few would say are worthy of even naming in rural Pennsylvania- wondering how I could ever belong. Yet, a sugar cookie-crust fruit pizza, music and the minnows in the creek gave me Fennick. When they came over to make tart lemon cookies, flour coated our shirts and icing covered our hands. We could not control the clock counting down to 250 miles apart again, but we could control every grain of salt. I finally understood the type of fulfillment that Father Richard said I would one day get from a simple mixture of wheat and water. I understood what it meant to not want, even if this hunger was not a call answered by a man in the sky. I prayed to a man in the heavens and he could not answer in 20 years. Yet praying to art, creation, and bread worked. Just bread, this time.Â
Sometimes, I sit in the driveway. I watch the stars or let the rain bathe 20 years of nightmares off my skin. Sometimes I am older than I even know, cinnamon sugar sits on my tongue, there is music and the loudest noise is laughter. I curl into the side of my lover as if their ribs are my home. I run around picking wildflowers and feeding fish with Fennick and when I go inside there is so much bread on the table.