The Bowl

     Sunday I discovered my one weakness. Okay, I'm loaded with them. But no one informed me of this one until I reacted.
     A regular Sunday. Church in the morning, home for lunch, Mom bending over the stove. She made bass, cooked vegetables, salad. We sat down--Dad, Mom, and me--and I saw that rare item on the table.
     Bread.
     I tell people I'm not a bread eater and it's true. It's not usually in front of me. But when it is, Bigfoot comes out as I claw my way across the table.
     "Bread!" I cry. "Bread!" Half the rolls fall to the floor as I struggle with the basket and people grapple to tie me back. It's no good in public.
     My eyes are glued to the bread plate. Dad sees the look and we immediately pray. Then the cry, the cry of panic.
     "Bread!"
     They're so civilized, the pair of them. Dad passes it in seeming slow-motion, about one-hundredth of a mile per hour. He smiles politely at me, takes a slice himself. Mom shakes her head that anyone could like carbs, but takes one too so she won't be the odd-man-out. I rush to the fridge to pull out butter, an even rarer item in our feastings, and nuke it in the microwave.
     I sit down. Then I see it. The bowl. Next to Mom.
     I can't tell what it is. It looks like oil. Why did Mom put a bowl of oil on the table? How is this idea paletable?
     "Try the olive oil," she says, and she immediately drowns a perfectly beautiful piece of grain bread in a pool of whatever and kills it.
     "Excuse me?" I say, with a sharp edge in my voice. What she's asking me to do is unthinkable. Especially because close by my side is the cherished plate of yellow fat oozing and bubbling just to please me.
     "Try it," she says again.
     "No." Already I'm being more rude than I ever am.
     Her eyes widen. "The Italians do it! They do this in Italy!" she says, as though it had to be reiterated twice because I'm deaf, as though anything done in Italy is okay, like tossing people to lions to crunch on in the Colosseum.
     I tell myself to hold my tongue. Holding my tongue is my specialty in such disturbing situations.
     "You need to try it," she says again. I try to imagine her face turning green just to get my mind off the dialogue. Now she's dangling the bowl in the air in front of my stiffening face. "Come on! Like in Italy!"
     "Good for them!" I shout. I never shout.
     "You'll like it!"
     "I don't want it! I've got butter already!"
     As though her anomosity toward my independence isn't already past the hilt, she begins to attack my butter.
     It's bad for you. You don't need it. This tastes better. The cream. The salt. Try something new.
     "Look," I say, ready to destroy her argument altogether, "It doesn't even have seasonings in it. Dipping oil is supposed to have seasonings." My mind surges at the thought she's actually asking me to dip in plain oil. Like a bath without bubbles. Hot chocolate without whipped cream. Unthinkable.
     "I paid twenty bucks for this oil!" she says, making it a financial issue now. "It's top quality! It's from Fairway!"
     I put my fork down. Oil is oil. It's blah. It's only good for making Duncan Hines chocolate cake. In pure rebellion, I pick up my bread and smother it slowly in my lake of butter, accentuating the experience with oohs and ahs.
     "Butter," I say, as though in love for the first time. I go on with this ritual until it is thoroughly soaked. Then I stuff it in my mouth and roll my eyes.
     My mom has that expression on that I belong in an asylum.
     Dad watches me at work and says, "Oh, I want some." In goes his slice, into the yellow, yellow butter. He bites into it, then sees Mom's face.
     "Um," he says, "Can a person use butter and oil at once?" His bread goes back and forth in the air, as though considering which direction go. Meanwhile, Dad's too afraid to swallow.
     "Choose sides!" I say. "Be a man!"
     At this point he's laughing. I'm just relieved the attack has ceased.
     You can't imitate it. You can't replace it. And you'll never wrench it out of my hands.
     Me and butter, for life.