Helena in Blue Jeans (short story)

I never fed the children. When they talked it didn’t make any sense so they never got to tell me if they were hungry. Some of the children could eat so fast I’d hardly know the food had been there. Some of them would never eat anything, just look at the tray of food and then at me as if to say, ‘I ain’t eating that.’ Some of the children I fed too much, and their parents would complain about the three or four pounds their child had put on and we’d all be told not to give out any extra food or candy, ever. The red-haired boy in the bed space to the left of the kitchen was pleading with me to give him his dinner twenty minutes before anybody else got theirs. His voice was piercing and ricocheted everywhere.
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