Holy Meals

“I love to eat.”

I was sitting in Marya’s dorm room at West Chester University, what would in a few weeks be mine as well, and this was the first thing she told me about herself. Marya was randomly assigned to me as a roommate for the second semester of my freshman year as I was preparing to switch dorms, and we knew instantly it was a perfect match.

“I’m addicted to food. Burgers.” She cocked her head to the side and forward, giving me a stare as serious as death. “The Marya Look,” as I would soon learn it was called.

“Every week we go to Whopper Wednesday at Burger King, when Whoppers are half off. You’re always welcome to come with us.”

Despite this addiction to fast food, Marya did not appear to be affected by it. She was average height, about 5’4”, and had an athletic build. Perhaps this was why her appearance did not suffer. She was half black, half white, and had caramel skin with long curly black hair. Her round face was always in a big smile, her mouth either closed in contentment or stretched open in laughter.

In that same first meeting, she pointed out her Bible quotes posted around the room, along with drawings of a cross. She had been raised Baptist, and was very devoted to God. She prepared me for this, explaining that she often prayed and went to fellowship. I soon came to realize that her relationship with food was also very much associated with her faith, whether she realized this or not.

By the time the spring semester began, I had all of my belongings moved into our room, including my refrigerator. Marya and I split space in the fridge. She had a shelf full of juice and canned fruit. And on her shelf on the door she kept a giant bottle of ketchup. I quickly discovered what a big part of our relationship would revolve around eating. Going to meals at Lawrence Dining Hall was an ordeal. Typically it meant you might as well clear your schedule for the rest of the day, because you’re not getting out of there anytime soon.

We would gather around a table in this giant university dining hall for hours to eat, laugh, and talk. But before every meal, Marya would pray. Even when the dining hall was packed—so crowded you couldn’t find a clean fork and people walking by had to squeeze between chairs—Marya would fold her hands and bow her head to pray. A moment later, she would look up and our meal would begin.

The meal consisted not only of food. It was filled with laughter, love, and fellowship. These spiritual appetites are not always filled in a thirty minute block of sitting down to eat. They often require an hour or more of sitting back, eating slowly, and simply enjoying the time with friends. One of our friends told me about the time she went to lunch with Marya and stayed for seven hours—until dinner was over. In both the dining hall and the diner, Marya greeted every staff member she saw by name, and spoke with them about their personal lives, of which she knew every detail.

“I’m really shy,” she told me one night coming back from the diner, and to her dismay I doubled over with laughter. (A few minutes later, we found ourselves on the elevator with someone we didn’t know. Before the doors closed, Marya knew his name to be Leonard. By the time he got off on the fourth floor, Marya was calling him Lenny. “Gosh Marya,” I said. “You really need to open up to people.”)

I often recognized a few of the seemingly countless people who worked in dining services at West Chester, but I never learned the names of anyone except Ernie who cooked my omelettes. And come to think of it, I only knew his name because Marya told me. Now that Marya works in the dining hall, I suppose I know one more person’s name. Marya, though, I believe knows the name and story of every person who works in dining service. But though she knew everyone’s story, Marya was not one to pry. She always remained appropriate and sincere when inquiring into the lives of others.

“Hi Betty,” she said one afternoon to the older lady who swiped our cards as we entered for lunch. Betty’s face lit up when she saw Marya. “How are you today?” Marya asked her. “It’s so nice to see your beautiful smiling face.” They exchanged words for a few minutes, and Betty made a comment as to Marya’s young age. “You’re young too, Betty,” Marya told her. “Look at your beautiful blonde locks. People can be sexy at any age.”

“Sexy” was one of her commonly used words. Every time I wore something nicer than yoga clothes or sweatpants, without fail Marya would notice and say, “Oooh look at you. You so sexy.” And every night when she picked up her ringing phone, she would answer it, “Hello, you sexy woman.” I knew when I heard this greeting that it was her mom, whom she referred to in regular conversation (with friends, professors, strangers in the diner) as Sexy Lady. I never once heard her call her mother “Mom.” I can’t imagine she ever did. When she met my own mother, Marya even called her sexy.

“Where do you think our sexiness comes from?” she asked when my mom denied this observation. “We have to have sexy moms like you ladies for us to be so sexy.” Of course, these words were spoken to my charmed mother in the West Chester dining hall.

And that summer when we went off to a friend’s barbecue and my mom suggested I get a jacket, Marya responded for me: “Oh it doesn’t matter, she just gets naked as soon as we get in the car anyways.” Exactly what I was going to say.

Every couple of weeks or so, I would return from yoga around ten o’clock and find a crowd of floormates in our room. On these nights, we most often ordered pizza; sometimes we splurged and had it covered in pepperoni. Marya would pull out her Costco economy packs of chips, candy, and fruit roll-ups, and hand out juice to everyone present. Whether we considered West Chester a home or not, it was home when Marya brought out her food. Everyone was taken care of when they were with Marya. Food was her ministry. Sometimes this went along with YouTube searches for videos of people falling—off of tables, doing gymnastics, while running on the track, and so on. One time we brought out face paint to accompany our nighttime pizza and snacks.

Our room was in the new dorms, so the walls were white and clean and the carpets were spotless. We were on the Honors College floor, so everyone was well acquainted. Our door would be propped open, and people would come to join our pizza and snack party. My side of the room was usually neat as a pin, and Marya’s side was covered in clothes, papers, and books. People would sit on our beds, our chairs, and our floor. They would eat, talk, play my didgeridoo, speak Spanish with Marya, and leave when they were satiated. It was not unusual to have people in our room past midnight. After a while I came to appreciate this, and started taking naps during the day.

The most prominent of my food adventures with Marya, however, was Whopper Wednesday. I soon learned that when she said “we” went to Whopper Wednesday, she meant an entourage. She gathered as many friends as she could pull together every week for the event—floormates, classmates, and eventually people she happened to meet in the diner on campus. As she had told me from the beginning, she was hopelessly addicted to fast food. On her key ring was a plastic card in the shape of a Wendy’s frosty. She went to Wendy’s almost every week to get a meal, and with this card came a free frosty. She got fast food as many times a week as she possibly could. In this respect, she was more American than George Washington.

On Wednesday nights, often six or more people came to our door. Sometimes I went and sometimes I didn’t. It wasn’t until later in the semester that I began to appreciate this ritual. When I didn’t go, Marya often came back and told me about the drunk people she had met at Burger King that night.

“That man was at Hogwarts,” she would often say. “He was Hagrid.”

When I did go along, I saw that Marya knew the names and life stories of the employees at Burger King, just like at the dining hall and diner. Everyone would order a whopper for half-price, and experience the world of fast food restaurants—the brown tiled floors, the white plastic chairs attached to the ground, the distinct smell of Burger King fries. I watched people at the counter put a penny in a water-filled container and hope it would land on a colored circle. I was always cautious of what I touched in Burger King, noticing the crumbs and ketchup stains on the tables.

Like usual, Marya would fold her hands and bow her head before biting into her Whopper. I had not eaten fast food in years, but under Marya’s influence I indulged occasionally. Though I enjoyed the taste of Whoppers, I was irritated that I could devour them in a matter of bites. I appreciated the fries more. They lasted a while, and tasted of nothing but salt and fat. I had to plan my night, however, around eating those fries, as I knew my stomach would make noises for the next several hours.

Sitting on the plastic booths at Burger King, we would talk and laugh as usual. I remember the last time I went to Whopper Wednesday, sitting with Marya and our friends Alex and Caitlyn, and a boy named Pat whom Marya had met in the diner the night before. Before leaving, Marya had insisted that though Pat was more than welcome, he was not obligated to come. He clearly wanted to be there. The five of us talked about awkward moments, and different signals for these moments—the turtle, the balloon, the giraffe, and so on.

Wherever we ate with Marya, we were at home. In the middle of Burger King, in the crowded dining hall, the noisy diner, our bedroom, it became a familiar ritual. Whomever we were eating with became our family. By bringing friends together to share meals, Marya was performing acts of God. Though she often performs much more deliberate acts of Christian fellowship, these meals were the manifestation of God’s love at a table—or on a carpet. As college students we didn’t have the means for fancy, or often even healthy meals. But this was irrelevant. Whatever we had to eat, we were experiencing goodness in all its forms. The quality of the meals may even have been necessary; it was comfort food. Away from home, away from all that was familiar, we found common ground at meals with Marya. The meals were her ministry of love.