You Shall Go Out And Grow Fat Like Stall-Fed Calves

BY: HAL DITTBRENNER

I make myself a cup of hot chocolate. Tiny sparks of salt glint in the too-expensive tin of dark powder. I decided I wouldn’t heat it up, drinking instead some weak form of chocolate milk. It’s a time best suited for something cold, to match the f lurries that have finally crowned the budding winter.

Mom is in the kitchen and she’s sitting at the island counter, her hands folded and her knuckles white. She’s hungry—I can hear her stomach grumbling. She’s got nothing but a ginger ale that she takes swigs from whenever she feels her stomach constrict. The Food Network is on; Ina Garten takes her beef bourguignon from the front burner and shows it off to the camera. Mom closes her eyes and starts to pray—she’s hungry—her elbows square on the little green book she’s got. She’s memorized the worship inside.

“I pray that my sweet daughter may live long and prosperously. Teach her how to make wise choices and to reject anything that undermines good health. Reveal any truth that needs to be seen and give her understanding. Teach her to be disciplined in the way of eating and exercising and getting proper rest. Help her to bring her body into submission.”

Maybe I need the warmth. I put the kettle on.

Stormie Omartian set my mom to this. When your child is battling sin of the f lesh—fatness or fucking—a mother shall fast for twenty-four hours, pray for her child’s healing whenever she’s struck with hunger. The book calls for nothing but water, a rule Mom passively broke. She is praying my fat away. I feel tight in my clothes and there’s nowhere to hide.

Mom once told me to pretend that we’re in the days before Revelations and the world is ending. You’d ration everything to make it last. Two parts of powder to one part milk, scarce, liquid gold. If my world was ending, I would eat like it’s bacchanal, everything and anything, and when I’m done, I’d crush and eat the sparrows.

Mom lied to me about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to keep me happy. I’ll lie about my intentions.

She’s sitting there like a zombie as the commercials play out. She’s focused on her prayer, hands folded, itching for the signal to make the sign of the cross. An ad comes on for bug spray, cartoonish splats of bug innards on the screen, but she’s starving. She parts her lips and recites.

The kettle starts to whistle and I let it roil.