Erin Striff’s “Eat All You Can” is a raw and heartbreaking exploration of a mother’s desire to do right by her kids. Told from the point of view of the young daughter, the story takes place mostly at an all-you-can-eat buffet at a country club the mother cleans. Even the child narrator knows this will not end well, and yet, the narrator and reader have hope.
When Jimmy and I woke up Easter morning, we ran to the baskets Mom put out in the night, only to find jelly beans swarming with ants. Jimmy wanted to rinse them off and eat them anyway. He cried when Mom took them away.
I said, “Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring more candy tomorrow,” and showed Jimmy how the ants marched like soldiers from behind the kitchen cabinet. I’d just learned in sixth grade science how they followed each other’s smell.
“It’s the warmest March on record,” Mom said. “The heat stirs them up.” She showed me how to wipe their trails with vinegar. “I bet I can borrow bug spray from work,” she said. Then, I helped her lift the AC unit from her closet and she jammed it into the window. It popped and clattered and no matter which button she pushed, the only air that blew out was warm and smelled like burnt dust. I didn’t want to think about the long hot seasons to come, and how every year in our apartment would be hotter than the one before.
I poured bowls of Rice Krispies for Jimmy and me and had already added the last of the milk before I saw the ants, like tiny sprinkles.
“No crying, Lily,” said Mom. “You’ll ruin the surprise.”
“What surprise?” I asked warily. Jimmy kept eyeing the cereal.
“Get your best clothes on,” said Mom. “We’re eating out.” Jimmy punched the air in excitement and I was so happy I didn’t mind that my only dress was way too hot. Since Jimmy was only seven, it was probably okay that I dressed him in a clean tee shirt and plaid shorts. Mom poured a little oil into the car because the light was on again, and we lowered all the windows before heading off. Jimmy and I tried to guess where we would go. He said Burger King and I said Olive Garden, because that sounded like a place you’d dress up for.
But Mom drove to the edge of town and turned at a black sign with gold writing that said Riverview Country Club. Golf carts scooted over cartoon-green hills, even though it was still March and everyone was saying there should be snow on the ground.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“I told you we’re going out to eat,” she said. I tensed, trying on all the possibilities. She would never joke about something like this. Maybe it was some sort of charity meal for the free lunch kids from school. Mom was always leaving out little details that might worry us.
“No way,” whispered Jimmy, as Mom parked by a fancy building with giant pillars like the White House.
“Don’t you have to be a member to eat at a country club?” I asked.
“This is one of the places I clean,” Mom said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “They gave us free passes to Easter Brunch.”
“You mean, as a present?”
She nodded. “Kind of like a tip. They’re in my bag.” She held up the striped reusable shopping bag she sometimes used as a purse. But Jimmy couldn’t wait anymore and opened the door and Mom and I both chased him across the parking lot and into the building, my shoes biting at my heels. We caught up with him in the entryway, under a chandelier that shone down like a hundred flashlights. The wave of cool air was such a relief that I barely even noticed the group of well-dressed people until I saw Sophia. She was an eighth grader I knew from choir who was always getting picked up early from school to go skiing. Her two perfect French braids skimmed the top of her pink strapless dress. I shrank back a little. My forest green Christmas dress was too tight across the chest now, and everyone else was wearing the colors of Easter candy.
Jimmy pointed to a fancy sign. “What’s brunch?”
“Breakfast and lunch,” Mom said, holding onto Jimmy’s shoulder.
“So you can eat twice as much,” I said, like I’d ever eaten brunch in my life.
Jimmy pulled away from Mom and ran past all of the people. We followed him down a hallway to an enormous room, where he’d stopped short, and I did, too. Platters of food—more than I’d ever seen in my life—were spread across rows of tables covered with bright pink cloth. I smelled the tangle of richly sweet bacon and the buttery vanilla of the pile of pancakes before I saw them. The smell of coffee drifted by, along with something fruity and jammy that reminded me of summer. An Easter Bunny ice sculpture glimmered in the sun streaming through the arched windows. All around us, beautifully dressed families chatted while they loaded their plates with mountains of food.
“It’s a buffet,” said Mom. “All you can eat. It’s like a competition.”
“Against who?” I asked.
“Against the restaurant. Their job is to make you fill up on cheap stuff, like rolls and muffins, but then you’ll be hungry in a couple hours. Your job is to eat the most expensive food, which is also the most filling. Go for the protein.”
“I don’t like protein,” Jimmy whined.
“Yes, you do,” I said. “That’s stuff like eggs and sausage and bacon.”
Mom grinned at me. “That’s right, Lily. Eat all you can. And don’t draw attention to yourself.” She took a plate, got in line, and speared a sausage with a giant fork.
Jimmy took cuts and reached so high to the top of the pile of pancakes that he got syrup on his shirt, but he was too little to feel embarrassed. A white-hatted chef was making omelets and you could choose from the little bowls of fillings, bright as a box of paints. Or you could make a waffle and frost it yourself with whipped cream that they’d already squirted from the can into a big silver bowl. Sophia and her family walked in. She probably wouldn’t recognize me, but I didn’t want to take the chance.
“I think they were checking people in at the entrance,” I said to Mom. “Should I go back and give them the passes?”
She gave me a long look. “I think I left them in the car.” Then she dropped a bagel in the shopping bag on her arm and winked at me.
The cold air was electric on my skin. I understood. There were no free passes. Just like the food in the shopping cart she forgot to scan at self-checkout, or the security tags on our clothes she had to break open with a screwdriver because the store accidentally left them on. There was always an explanation—it was easy to believe. But her wink meant we’d snuck in. It meant that now I was old enough to understand and she trusted me. We were in this together—there was no food at home and these people had more than they needed. How could this be wrong when we were so hungry?
Sophia was at the omelet station, so I followed Mom to the other side of the room, where there were dinnertime foods. We stood in a line by a desk lamp burning bright orange onto a slab of meat that smelled like pennies. The chef’s forehead glistened as he cut Mom a pink slice of what the sign said was prime rib.
She didn’t look anything like the other moms, who were puffy in their floral dresses, clutching their fussy little handbags. Mom was small and all angles, and with her leggings and white blouse knotted at the waist she looked like a ballet dancer. She could still shop in the teen section and when her face didn’t look so tired, it was beautiful.
“What’s prime rib?” I asked her.
“Cow,” Mom said showing me her plate. “It’s a row of ribs from a cow.” She added a scoop of mashed potatoes which sopped up the red juices from the meat. She was the only one in the room who ate while standing in line, scraping her potatoes off her plate with her fork like we ate at this kind of place all the time. I couldn’t imagine eating all of that and my plate was still empty. I just needed to act like I wasn’t terrified and eat my food on the go, like she did.
I went back to the breakfast foods, nervously spearing French toast sticks and sausage links. Sophia walked by, her eyes widening to see me. I smiled without showing my teeth, then concentrated on filling my plate. Let her think I belonged.
A waitress stood next to the bunny ice sculpture, pointing a remote control at the window shades, which kept lowering a couple inches, before clattering loudly and reversing. Drips were forming at the end of each of the ice bunny’s folded-down ears. Finally, the waitress gave up and moved a big glass bowl filled with ice and shrimp to a spot out of the glare. Mom caught my eye and grinned. All this money and they couldn’t stop the sun.
Silverware jangled and glasses chimed. People had started sitting at tables, each with a centerpiece of food shaped like other food. One had a lamb carved out of butter. Another had a giant chocolate egg as big as a football. Did they get to eat the centerpieces, too, before they melted? Jimmy was struggling to hold up his plate, which was covered with a mound of food. “Where do we sit?” he asked.
I realized with a sick feeling that the table where Sophia’s family was sitting had her last name, Towers, printed on a folded card. The tables were assigned. I looked at Mom in a panic. Maybe we would have to take our plates into the bathroom and eat in the stalls. Mom led us down a hallway where the desserts were laid out.
“Eat up,” she said. It was hard to swallow standing up, even harder since I was so nervous. Jimmy was so busy packing his mouth full of hash browns that he didn’t even notice. He was good at shoveling in food, like a hamster filling his cheeks. I always ate slowly to help me feel full. These days, a box of mac ‘n’ cheese or a can of spaghetti between us never felt like enough. Mom was lucky because she never seemed hungry. For dinner she liked toast with spread washed down with lots of black coffee. Now she cut her prime rib into big squares, chewing each piece like a wad of bubblegum. Maybe she was like a ball python—they only have to eat once every six months.
A waitress came down the hallway, a pie in each hand like two Frisbees. She was wearing a big fat silver cross with a skinny little Jesus on it. I froze, my fork in the air, but Mom busied herself with serving us cupcakes. The waitress just dropped off the pies, her cross swinging.
“Finish up, Jimmy,” Mom said crisply. “Don’t be a slowpoke.”
“We just got here,” Jimmy whined.
Mom dropped a muffin and two little cartons of chocolate milk in her shopping bag and pointed at the glass door at the end of the hallway. Outside, plastic Easter eggs were scattered on the golf course, next to a line of baskets. “Time for the egg hunt, Jimmy.”
He crinkled his nose at the short grass dotted with eggs. “That’s too easy,” he said.
“There’s candy inside,” said Mom. “Better get it before it melts.”
Jimmy ran right out the door.
I looked up at Mom. “We need the food more than they do, right?” I asked.
Mom tipped my plate and then Jimmy’s into her bag. “They won’t mind if we take some food to go,” she said.
Suddenly, the waitress was standing behind her and there was no air to breathe.
“As a matter of fact, we do mind. Are you members?” she demanded, her big fat cross swinging around her neck.
“We’re new here,” Mom said, smooth as chocolate pudding.
The waitress snorted. “Thirty bucks for you, eighteen for the kid.”
“I don’t have it on me,” said Mom evenly. I couldn’t stop shivering, my teeth clenched tight.
“If you don’t pay up, they’ll take it out of my paycheck.”
Mom shrugged. “So don’t tell anyone.” She was good.
“I’m making minimum wage here,” the waitress said.
“I forgot my wallet.”
“So, leave something here while you get it,” said the waitress. “Or I’ll call the cops.”
Mom glanced at me. “Lily can stay.”
I panicked, trying to say Don’t leave me here with just my eyes. I could taste something sour at the back of my throat. There was a crash from the dining room. The waitress looked over her shoulder. “Don’t either of you move.” She went to get a tray from one of the tables.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“I left the passes in my wallet at home,” said Mom, her eyes never leaving the waitress. “I’ll go back and get them, that’s all.”
“You don’t have to lie,” I said. “She can’t hear us.”
“Take Jimmy and go to the park,” Mom said softly. “She won’t stop you. I’ll pick you up later.” The waitress came back to the hallway, her tray loaded with pies.
Mom thought she was fooling me, as easily as we both fooled Jimmy. We weren’t a team, after all. She was always on her own side.
“Well?” said the waitress.
“Lily doesn’t mind staying.” Mom handed me the shopping bag. “Just let her eat until I get back.” And then she walked down the hallway, through the glass door, and left me there. I wished I could point every heat lamp on those butter lambs and chocolate eggs and that giant frozen rabbit until they melted all over the pink tablecloths, and that Mom had to clean it all up.
“I can put the food back,” I offered. The waitress looked me up and down. Something in her face eased a little.
“Keep it,” she said. “And have some blueberry pie, it’s delicious.” Her voice dripped with pity, but just to look at that scab-colored pie made me sick.
Through the glass door I saw Mom was halfway down the drive, her car spluttering while she waited for the golf carts to pass like a row of ducks. Jimmy was so busy cramming his mouth with chocolate that he never even saw her go.
Then the waitress loaded her tray with our plates and walked toward the dining room. Sophia brushed by her, went right up to me and pointed toward the glass door. I shrank back, waiting for her to kick me out.
“Is that your brother?” she asked. I took a deep breath and nodded.
“He’s not supposed to be out there yet,” she said. “The egg hunt hasn’t started.”
“They gave him special permission for being so well behaved,” I said, staring right at her until she shrugged and went back to the dining room. I’d practically convinced myself.
All this food and I was still hungry. Mom’s shopping bag was filled with sausages and bagels and bacon. And even though it was enough for lunch and dinner too, I dropped the bag and walked out the door, just in time to see Mom’s car disappear down the drive. It would be a long walk to the park, and Jimmy would complain about the heat. When Mom showed up, she’d laugh about how she forgot the passes, thinking I still believed her.
Out on the brilliant green, Jimmy crouched next to his basket of split plastic eggs. He unwrapped the foil from another piece of candy, but froze when he saw me. I nodded at him. He grinned and shoved it into his mouth, not believing his luck that no one told him to stop.
Erin Striff was awarded a 2025 Connecticut Artist Fellowship for her short stories, which have appeared publications including Split Lip Magazine, Booth, and The Forge Literary Magazine. She was also a finalist for both the 2025 Slippery Elm Prose Prize and the Peatsmoke Editor’s Choice Contest in fiction. An Associate Professor of English at the University of Hartford, she teaches creative writing, literature, and drama. She and her family live in West Hartford, Connecticut, where she walks in the woods every day.