Have You Seen the Oatmeal?

2024

December 16, 2017: The day my stepmom hid the oatmeal

Nearly five years had passed since her marriage to my father, and the number of words Kate had spoken to me since could be counted on one hand. It was clear my stepmother despised me. But she decided that simply icing me out was not enough – she had to be more proactive.

Already, the environment in that house was so hostile that I did everything in my power to avoid Kate. That woman always seemed to be in the damn kitchen, and I was always so damn hungry. Sometimes I would forgo the kitchen all together, resorting to cold cans of split-pea soup that I stockpiled in my closet, all watery and coagulated and cardboard-tasting. Sometimes I would wait until past midnight to tiptoe downstairs, not daring to turn on the light.

Sneaking around by the faint beam of my phone flashlight to microwave a frozen burrito felt illicit and dangerous, like I was trespassing on property where the owner had a shotgun. I would hold my breath as the dimly lit glass plate spun in lazy circles, praying for it to please hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. Preparing myself with the countdown, I would spring to release my burrito before the microwave announced its readiness to the world with a deafening beep. After hastily wrapping it in a paper towel, I would race back upstairs to the sanctuary of my room. But sometimes, I couldn’t take the hunger, and had to face my stepmom in broad daylight. 

One afternoon, desperate to quiet the growling in my stomach, I made my way reluctantly downstairs and took a bag of Terra sweet potato chips – one among many bags of Terra sweet potato chips – from a drawer in the pantry, averting eye contact with Kate, whom I passed on the way back to my room. The next day, I found the entire drawer empty. I had a sinking suspicion that this wasn’t mere coincidence. The same vanishing act played out with the extra fancy mixed nuts, then the Korean barbecue pork jerky, then the Dave’s Killer multigrain bread, then the Trader Joe’s unflavored instant oatmeal. It wasn’t until the day the oatmeal disappeared that I finally decided to speak up.

I woke up at seven in the morning, at regular intervals tiptoeing down the stairs and slinking along the walls, listening for the shrill whiny voice that signaled the coast was not clear. Up and down the stairs I stealthily traveled, praying to finally hear the blissful sound of safe silence. But after three hours, Kate still hadn’t evacuated the kitchen, and I was dizzy with hunger. The monstrous, clawing emptiness in my stomach annihilated my resistance. I closed my eyes, clenched my fists, and stepped out of the shadows.

“Hi Kate! Hi Josh!” I squeaked as I passed by the dining table where they sat, trying to keep my wavering voice even. 

“Hi Jackie!” Josh flashed a gummy grin and flapped a chubby hand in my direction. Kate looked at me with daggers in her eyes, saying nothing. 

With the urgency and speed of someone diffusing a bomb, I grabbed a packet of oatmeal from its box in the pantry, poured it into a white ceramic bowl, eyeballed a dash of tap water straight from the sink, stirred, microwaved, and finished with a dollop of sunflower seed butter. I barely breathed the whole time. Gripping the edges of the piping-hot bowl with the loose fabric at the bottom of my oversized yellow pajama shirt, I slipped out of the kitchen with my head down and retreated back to home base.

About an hour later, when I heard the rumbling of the garage door from down below, I climbed up on my bed and pressed my face to the window just in time to glimpse Kate’s car pulling out of the driveway, with Josh in the back tucked snugly into his cushioned car seat. This is how it went: whenever I was around, Kate and Josh would always leave the house, spending the whole day at a museum or zoo or park. Her deliberate evasion of me used to hurt, but now it only brought relief.  

With danger no longer lurking around the corner, I allowed my footsteps to thump heartily against the wood floor as I strolled leisurely back down to the kitchen to refill my empty water bottle. Since I was already there, I decided to peruse for a snack. Upon opening the pantry door, my stomach dropped. For the past many Dad’s Weekends, oatmeal was my sole source of early-morning sustenance, as one of the few vegan options available in that house. So when I found an empty space where the teal cardboard box used to be, panic zipped through my body. It recalled, with tortured agony, what it was like to be deprived.

“Dad, have you seen the oatmeal?” I called, peeking my head into the doorway of his office, just a few steps down the hall from the kitchen.

He swiveled toward me in his cushioned chair. “Shén me oatmeal?”

“The oatmeal I’ve been eating for breakfast. There was a whole box, and it was on a shelf in the pantry just this morning, like right at the front, next to the cereal. But now it’s gone.”

“Hmm…you sure?” He scratched his stubbly chin. “Was the oatmeal maybe expired? Could Kate maybe have put it in storage for some reason?”

“I doubt it,” I replied, pressing my lips tight to mask my frustration. 

“Okay. I ask her when she get home,” my dad decided, swiveling his chair back to face his desktop computer. 

Of course she’s gonna lie! I wanted to yell. But instead, I simply nodded and returned to my room.

“Honey, have you seen the oatmeal?” my dad asked upon Kate’s return, trailing behind her in the upstairs hallway.

“What oatmeal?” I heard her say, her voice oozing with gooey babyish innocence. “I didn’t even know we had oatmeal in the house.”

A few minutes later, my dad approached the door of my room, knocking right below the rainbow duct-taped sheet of printer paper that read:

JACKIE’S ROOM

Since 2013

Population: 1

“Something weird is going on,” my dad admitted, face contorted in anguish as his fortress of denial began to crumble. “Come, I help you look.” 

Together, we returned downstairs. The first place my dad checked was the trash bin, from which he extracted the limp brown paper packet that once contained the oatmeal I had eaten that very morning. The tight knots in my shoulders unwound just the slightest bit – a small scrap of material evidence confirming my reality. More invigorated now, my dad searched high and low, far and wide. He flung open every cabinet, every drawer – even the oven. I plodded behind him in uneasy discomfort, knowing that he suspected what I suspected, but would not speak it into being.

Resigned, he sighed. “I’ll go ask Kate one more time.” 

That’s a terrible fucking idea! I wanted to yell. But it was all part of the charade, the grand performance of everything-is-fine, so I nodded and played along. I went back to my room as his footsteps receded down the hallway. 

Moments later, I heard muffled voices escalating in volume and tension. My dad came to me shortly after. “Jackie ah,” he began slowly, leaning against the doorframe. “Kate say she never even see you this morning. She say you invent the whole story just to frame her.” 

My jaw dropped. I had underestimated the evil of this woman.

Distraught confusion wrinkled the space between my father’s brows. “One of you guys is not telling me the truth. Promise me you’re not lying to me.”

“Dad, I’m not lying!” I cried. “I guarantee you with my life!”

He looked genuinely conflicted. “I just don’t know who to trust.”

“What incentive do I have to lie to you? I just wanna eat breakfast!”

“Okay, okay.” The doorway gaped in openmouthed silence as my dad stared blankly at the wall, his mind forced to resolve the contradictions clashing within. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Yeah, it was weird – I just casually ask her if she know where the oatmeal is, but then she get so defensive and say I was aggressive and shouting at her. So I was ninety percent sure you were telling the truth.”

Part of me was awash with relief that my dad was finally, finally on my side. Part of me still ached from that ten percent of doubt. “Why does she hate me so much?” I whispered. The question was functionally rhetorical – I knew my dad would never deviate from his programmed response.

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “Maybe you were rude to her and her parents. Maybe you were too aggressive and she can’t handle it. Some sort of personality flaw…” he trailed off. A familiar pang throbbed in my sternum. It was blunter now, thanks to years of acclimation, but it still hurt.

After another pregnant pause, my dad inhaled sharply. “I think Kate – maybe she don’t want you coming here anymore.” 

None of this was news to me – I mean, the woman hadn’t spoken to me in half a decade. But it was the first time my dad was admitting it. “So, what is this?” I snorted. “She’s trying to starve me out? Exterminate me?”

He grimaced. “Yeah, it’s – I don’t know. Maybe just…let it go.” 

I sighed with intentional drama, announcing my exasperation with a loud exhale. “Okay. Fine.”

He left. I did not let it go.

I returned to the kitchen with a renewed fervor, determined to find the smoking gun. Determined to make him do something. Breathing heavily, I systematically disemboweled the pantry, moving box upon box and bag upon bag from shelf to floor, until…jackpot. Hidden behind the canned beans and beef chili and organic lollipops and dried shredded pork, out peeked a sliver of teal cardboard. 

“Dad!” I called, clutching the box. “I found it.”

Back in his office chair, he swiveled to face me. He clucked and shook his head. “Āi yá. Nǐ wèi shé me – why you always – you so slimy.”

My face fell. According to his logic, I was the slimy one, not Kate. Because I was immature and vindictive and would not let it go. Would not leave him at peace in his delusional reverie. I knew it with certainty then: my father would never stand up for me.

Later that night, my dad was taking out the trash, and Kate was tucking Josh into bed. Overcome with sheer reckless desperation, I seized upon this rare window of opportunity. Scurrying silently down the carpeted hallway, I snuck into the master bedroom. Terror and guilt shook my body. I’m gonna get caught. I’m invading their privacy. I should not be doing this. But it was too late. I found myself drifting toward the back right corner of the room and twisting the knob of the closed door. When it swung open, I almost cried with relief. I knew it. I wasn’t crazy. 

Kate had converted her office into a fallout shelter, well-stocked for the apocalypse. As the kitchen pantry shelves had grown increasingly bare, her office had grown increasingly glutted. Packages and bags and boxes lined the shelves, covered the floor, filled the space beneath her desk. Chestnuts, dried meat, crunchy rice cakes, salted pistachios, flaxseed crackers, shortbread biscuits, lemon zest cookies, raw pumpkin seeds, root vegetable chips, Godiva chocolates, Andes chocolates, Toblerone chocolates, Kit-Kat chocolates — all of it unopened. None of it for me. Frantically, I pulled out my phone and took a shaky video of the hoard, saving it to the password protected “My Eyes Only” library on Snapchat, and then scuttling back to my room. I now had proof. I wasn’t crazy. 

I rode high on the vindication, until the gravity of the upshot sent me tumbling down. My real mother didn’t want me; my fake mother didn’t want me; my father didn’t help me. There was a clear common denominator – something had to be wrong with me. If only I could fix myself, then maybe I wouldn’t be so alone. 

One mid-morning a few weeks later, I tentatively entered the kitchen to find my dad sitting with my half-brother at the dinner table, reading him a book. A colander of freshly washed strawberries sat on the counter, glistening and inviting. I reached my hand toward the bowl, but before it made a landing, Josh giggled and whispered something into my dad’s ear. 

“What was that, Josh?” I asked as sweetly as I could muster.

My dad knit his brows and waved his hand in dismissal. “Nothing, nothing.” 

But the four-year-old had no grasp on the complex machinations of domestic politics, so he happily obliged. Louder this time, he stage-whispered, “Mommy says Jackie’s not allowed to eat the strawberries!” 

After that, my father could no longer live in denial. But rather than confront his wife, he began buying his daughter separate groceries, to be stored in a separate part of the fridge, for her to separately consume. And when Kate began to steal things from my room while I was away – castile soap and teriyaki sauce and cans of soup I stored in my closet – rather than confront his wife, he bought an alarm clock that doubled as a spy camera to place on his daughter’s nightstand, which would send his phone alerts when it detected movement, which he would steadfastly pretend he never saw.

My dad and I established a new ritual: every other Friday, after he picked me up from my mom’s, our first destination would be the Stop & Shop at Wayland Town Center. I would pile the shopping cart high with frozen meals, jars of nut butter, fresh fruit, canned soup, snacks of all kinds. Walking across the parking lot to load my haul into the trunk of the muted-aqua Mini Cooper, the shame would weigh me down more than the bulging paper bags tugging at my arms. When my dad would question the enormous volume, and enormous price tag, my heart would race and ears would burn and I would remind him that I was planning to take much of it back with me to my mom’s house.

Ever since I started my whole “healthy eating” thing (a.k.a. orthorexia), my mom had stopped buying me food I wanted from the grocery store. She hated when I asked for things like chia seeds or organic blueberries, as if she were rich. We were not the kind of people, she insisted emphatically, who shopped at places like Whole Foods.

And then I went vegan, and she practically stopped buying me food entirely, aiming quite literally to starve me into eating meat again. I would have to beg her to buy me a single kabocha squash from H-Mart or a couple grapefruits from Market Basket. Most times she would vehemently refuse, but if she did cave, she would lament that she was “not proud of herself for caring.” If she was feeling particularly benevolent, she would sometimes let me get those jars of Costco mixed nuts, but would ration them into Ziploc-bagged portions, allowing me no more than thirty grams – about fifteen nuts – per day. 

So I had a plausible rationale for my grocery gluttony on those Friday evening shopping trips with my father. I pretended that my two days’ worth of food was intended to last two weeks. My dad bought it. Or if he didn’t, he never really said anything. I think he felt bad.

My weekend plans were always the same: to hole up in my room and binge, while getting two weeks ahead on my AP Biology and AP World History textbook readings. Because of course, I didn’t deserve to simply nourish myself, but had to earn the right to eat through “productivity.” I refused to let myself touch food unless I was doing my homework, or watching a Crash Course or Khan Academy video, or reading a research paper, or otherwise optimizing my output and intellect.

The work made the food permissible. But the food, in turn, made the work bearable. Eventually, the dependence became entangled to the point where I could no longer process information unless I was eating. Without something to chew or swallow, I would watch the words on the page jitter and jumble into gibberish. I stuffed myself for hours on end because I had hours on end of work to do, and then sat for hours on end miserably bloated and hating myself. But at least I aced my tests with flying colors. I would graduate from high school as valedictorian. I would graduate from Stanford with one of the top-25 GPAs in my class. I would eat my way through it all.