She had been born in the United States in the last years when being poor also usually meant being thin. Her parents had lied about her age when she was 11 so she could get a job picking with them in the fields. They ate what they picked, raised their own chickens and boiled rice by the pound. But the sprawl of McAllen edged into the farmland, and Blanca dropped out of school in 10th grade and took a job at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. She had her first baby at 19 and her second a few years later, with a man who soon disappeared to Mexico. She applied for public housing in a community that offered little space to grow her own food, near a commercial road lined with 17 fast-food restaurants. Now, each morning on the way to school, her children rode past signs that advertised “Dollar Menu,” “Ultimate Dollar Menu,” “Dollar Tacos,” and “Hot Cheetos, two for a dollar.” These were the treats they loved and the treats they could afford.
For years, Blanca had tried to provide an antidote by forcing the children to sit nearby as she gave herself insulin shots. “You need to look at your future,” she told them. “Is this what you want?” She had tried planning a menu and cooking family dinners, but tailoring meals on a budget to the varied tastes of five children exhausted her. They would eat broccoli only if she slathered it with butter and cheese. They would eat Mexican mole sauce only if it came with a hulking side of tortilla chips. The prepackaged diet lunches she splurged on at $3.50 each sometimes came back from school with uneaten turkey and whole-wheat crackers.
As her health worsened, she had started shopping mostly for foods she knew they would eat and prepare themselves. She was a single mother with little money and less energy, she reasoned; it was more important to provide enough than it was to worry about what, exactly, she was providing.