Olives

5

Olives. The food part of my ancestor’s laboring, a stable of their meals, an income for the sustainment of their livelihood. The delicacy my mother would hover over me about, when I’d dish salad out at dinner time, “Only take one olive, there are four of us and only four olives!”… “don’t take the biggest piece, that’s for your father!”… “did you eat a banana after school? There were four, but now there are only three, and I wanted to have four because…” And I’d panic over olives.

My stomach turning at the table.

I hadn’t eaten breakfast because I’m just not hungry in the morning. I can’t eat in front of other people who aren’t my immediate family or my best friend so I didn’t eat at school, and when I came home I ate a banana but that wasn’t ok, I guess. Now my stomach feels full of acid and I don’t want to eat at all; did I get only one olive; what if a second one is hiding or even a third; what if this is the biggest piece of fish even though I thought it was the smallest? My best friend said “all this stuff with eating” will ruin my body later on.

After dinner, my mom will practically scream while slamming cupboards, “everyone out of the kitchen, it’s closed for the night!” So I will only be able to eat now because I won’t be able to eat later, or in the morning and I can’t each at school, and when I come home after I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to eat a banana or carrots, or anything because there are only so many, and I’m too embarrassed to ask what I can eat because maybe I should just wait until dinner, maybe “only fat people snack”, but then I’ll get to dinner and I won’t know if I’m taking the wrong piece or if I chose the smallest one, or how many olives I can have. Olives. My family is upper-middle class.

I swore off olives years before my anorexia even began to really develop. I’d say I had an eating disorder since I was in elementary school, but, slowly, certain and most foods, and especially all food products, became not ok to eat, rules set by myself. Olives were one of them. My last olive, amongst several other foods, meat much earlier, was consumed in 2005. Swearing off foods made it easier to say, “no thank you” to anyone who offered me anything edible, eating was just too embarrassing, it was gross.

Many, many years later, I will be genuinely far into recovery. I’ll be out of town for several days and I’ll come back into town. I’ll have a puppy in my car who is a support animal, prescribed to me by the eating disorder clinic I’ll attend as an out-patient for years, who will quickly become my best friend and probably already is at this point. I’ll hear of a new Italian deli that has opened just a day before on the south side of town. I’ll tell no one I’m going.

I’ll walk up to the counter after looking around. I’ll ask to olives by the pound. The woman behind the counter will tell me they have a kind I’ve never heard of. I’ll ask what they taste like. She’ll scoop me out a sample. My head will feel like most of the blood has left it and has rushed to my toes. I’ll look around; people are here, the deli woman is looking at me.I’ll stall and say, “do they taste anything like a Kalamata?” She’ll say, “Try it. That’s why I got to a sample.” My breathe will become quick and short. I’ll say, “I know...I’m just...not hungry.”

She’ll blink and say nothing.

I’ll drown out everyone around me, including her. I’ll grab one of the green olives. My fingers and hand will become numb and so will the moment.

I’ll take a bite, in public, around other people, in front of the deli clerk, in the open store, in the town I live in, where people know me.

The bite will be the size of a crumb. I won’t even taste it. I’ll say, “Ok, I’ll take a couple ounces.” But it’ll look like nothing, and the clerk will say so, so I’ll reluctantly ask for more.

I’ll drive home with my olives and my puppy. I’ll make a salad. I’ll put as many olives as I want within it. I won’t even count them. My puppy, Mia, will eat her meal below me. I’ll actually feel ok, even triumphant.