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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Stephanie Wynn, Angie O’Gorman, Bertha Wherry, Danette Brown, Mari Spiva
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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
O'Gorman watches as Danette Brown serves one of her classic desserts.
Mari Spiva bends over a chalkboard, brow furrowed as she carefully inscribes today’s menu: pepper steak and stir-fry over rice, salad, eggrolls… Bertha Wherry and Angie O’Gorman wrangle over what Wherry, who’s on rotation as today’s cook, intends to prepare. She’s promised Pastor Mary a strawberry shortcake.
That’s the Rev. Mary Albert of Epiphany United Church of Christ in Benton Park, where The Kitchen Table serves its Thursday lunches.
“But hold on,” says O’Gorman, an Epiphany UCC member who helped organize this startup. She waves a piece of paper. “This is the menu that went out.”
“Then I’ll just make a small cake for Pastor Mary. I’m not going to let her down.”
“A cake for one person?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s where my heart is.”
Wherry starts chopping veggies, her knife a samurai blur. She wants to make vegetarian stir-fry, too.
“That’s not on the menu at all,” O’Gorman groans.
“Remember the man sitting right there last week?” Wherry asks, pointing through the kitchen window. “He’s a non–meat-eater. Now, what if that man show up again? The Lord said, ‘Be prepared. Feed whoever needs to be fed.’”
O’Gorman opens her mouth, shuts it. She tries again: “OK, so do you have enough food? We have 14 reservations already.”
“I’ve got enough to feed whoever comes. I had seven kids.”
The Kitchen Table started as a women’s support group, then morphed into a small business, its first meetings held around somebody’s kitchen table.
For O’Gorman, it’s been “a chance to get inside what it means to be poor in this f—ng city—the inability to construct financial security, no matter how hard you work.”
Now Wherry’s filling wonton wrappers with cream cheese. “Crabs are so expensive,” she says, shaking her head. “I just try to use enough where it will taste good.” She pinches the wrappers into perfect little carnival tents.
“I learned this in jail,” she tells Danette Brown, smearing tiny dabs of cream cheese on the corners to seal the wrappers. “We baked them in the microwave.” Brushing eggrolls with melted butter “to make them shine,” she offers a stream of autobiography: “My stepfather used to beat my mom. I was the kid who had to put my mom back together, wiping the blood off the walls. When I grew up, I thought I was like a straight-up gangster.”
She was into heroin, mainly—using and dealing. After prison, she was homeless for a while. “I just never could see myself going to a shelter. A lot of people get molested. I’ve already been through that phrase. I don’t need nothin’ else messin’ up my brain.”
Searching for the kind of relationship her mother had with God, she fell in love with a minister. They’re now married.
I smile, remembering the kiss she gave the stocky sweet-faced man who’d just come by with the strawberry cake recipe she’d forgotten. She’d been distracted, worried about a young woman she found living in a van with a baby, a toddler, and a dubious boyfriend. Wherry took her in and urged her to set some goals for herself: “Forget about that man, I told her, ’cause that man ain’t got nothin’ for you but a stiff one. You don’t need no man to validate who you are.” She high-fives Brown, who’s chortling at the truth of it.
When the last guest finishes the last morsel of fruit—or strawberry cake—the women sink into chairs and compare notes. Earlier, they’d held a quick meeting to crow over their second big catering event: “A little boy went back six times to get meatballs,” Brown reports.
They each make $120 (Brown ooohs). “Now, here’s the tough decision,” O’Gorman announces. “After that and the food bills, we end up with a surplus of around $300. Do we want to split that and add it to your salaries, or do we want to invest it into the business for the hard times?”
When The Kitchen Table opened, only that week’s cook was paid. Now they’re making enough to pay everyone, and Epiphany has raised their rent (from $5 to $15).
“I think it would be good if we put it back into the business,” Brown ventured, “because we never know what might happen.”
O’Gorman asked for other opinions: “I think this is a difficult decision.”
“It’s not difficult!” Wherry exclaimed. “It’s not difficult. When you are doing a business plan, your business has to come first, because when you fall, who’s going to pick you up? Anybody here got the money to pick us back up? You put it back to see the growth. Maybe we decide to get some better tablecloths—we only have two that match!”
Spiva nodded: “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with having money, but it’s always good to have some put back.”
They moved on, marveling at the business cards that Brown’s made. They now also have a website, and its tagline came easily: “You have a place at The Kitchen Table.”
Editor's Note: The caption in the second photo has been updated to identify Danette Brown, rather than Bertha Wherry, serving one of her classic desserts.
