Oil and Fat * T h e re ’s a sale on olive oil in my supermarket. •Buy me two gallons, I’ ll pay you back. •My daughter says safflower oil is better. •Now your daughter is an expert on oil too. •First it’s sugar and then meat and now they want to change the oil. •They worry about their health. • Let them worry about what comes out of their mouths. •I like olive oil. I never use fat anymore. •I like fat but I use butter in my choreg now. • It’s not the same. The old choreg with the fat had its own taste. •Agavni still uses it but she doesn’t tell anyone. She boils it and keeps it in her second refrigerator. Her son’s a millionaire but he still likes fat in his choreg. • I used to get it for a nickel a pound from the butcher. •I used to get it for free. •You can still get it cheap. •No one wants to boil it anymore. They don’t even know how. •You don’t have to know. You just throw an apple in and when it’s brown the fat is ready. •They say it gives you heart trouble if you sit on your ass all day. •That’s why they all run. •My daughter gets depressed if she doesn’t run. •Your daughter looks like a skeleton already. •She likes to look that way. It’s the new style. •Do men like it? •They don’t care what men like. •Good for them. •They don’t get old so fast.. •What’s wrong with getting old? So they look young, so what? •So then they can go out and have a good time. •Do they have to run to have a good time? She’s Not the Woman in th e D ream Anymore Q U h e ’s an old woman with a face like Sitting Bull’s, her lips disappearing as she takes her teeth out and brushes them with baking soda. She asks for a haircut in the backyard, she likes it short and comfortable. She clears the table while her sons talk about her bank account. She washes the dishes during probate and trusts. She sweeps the floor along with interests and taxes, her sons preparing for her death while she grows more alive each day. “Zaykay, just cut it and don’t be so artistic." The white hairs blow in the wind like all the lines of all her portraits that never came out right, that always looked like someone else. She takes a shower and sits in her burnoose and soaks her feet in a pan of water. And now come her toenails which are too hard for her. “ Some women pay a lot of money to have their toenails cut.” Less nail than fungal crust, chronic and recycleable, her feet like the ground itself, the bunions and calluses like a transition into the world of rocks and trees. “ I’m going to make shish-kebab for our meal.” “ I don’t want any meat.” “ It’s not for you, it’s for your brother.” “ I’ ll eat the beans.” “ Eat anything you want.” “ I like beans.” “ If you like beans I’ ll cook beans. If he likes meat I’ ll cook meat.” “What about you, what do you like?” “ I like whatever’s leftover. I grew old on leftovers.” Orange peels, potato skins, bones and crusts, the portrait of her life a compost with wildflowers, the colors mixed in a protoplasmic swirl of slaughter and birth, blood red and death blue, blossom yellow to turn them into earth. She clears the table while her sons talk about her bank account. She washes the dishes during probate and trusts. She sweeps the floor along with interests and taxes, her sons preparing for her death while she grows more alive each day. The valley is home and she is back on her acre, her mother in the dawn and her father in the vines, her brothers in the fruit trees and the donkey in the compost. She walks with her youngest son to his car as he holds a bag of her food in one hand and reaches with his other to hold her arm and kjss her face. She moves to check the bag and he grabs her breast instead. It is beyond softness and feels universal, an old udder that could belong to any mammal. Never before has she been so beautiful who used to appear in dreams of rage. Shut up! Leave me alone! I don’t want it, take it back, I don’t want your damn food! Those dreams have stopped and she’s not a mother anymore. She’s a little old woman who will die and who finally begins to emerge through the cataracts of a personal history. The once-a- month weekends with her now are wonders and her good health a treasure from whatever it is that keeps her alive. She stands by the car and pats the hood as if it were a donkey. “Are you afraid of dying, Ma?” “ No.” “You’re not?” “ No, I’m not afraid of dying. Why, my son?” “ Because who will I talk with on Sunday mornings?” “You can talk with God.” “ I don’t talk with God.” “Oh I always talk with God.” “You do.” “Oh sure.” “What do you say?” “ I say thank you, I always say thank you.” Peter Najarian is the author of two previous novels, Voyages (1971, reprinted 1980) and Wash Me On Home, Mama (1978). 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