The Dinner Table

Every year Mom bought a half cow and instructed the butcher to package it up to her specifications for the freezer. Inevitably, that half cow included the organ meat. Consequently, once a year, we were served liver and onions for dinner.

By five o’clock my four-year-old sister, Susan, and I knew what was coming. We could smell the odor. I pressed my face deep into my bed pillow trying to breath in the scent of laundry detergent and fabric softener, but it didn’t help.

“Girls,” Mom called, “dinner is ready.”

Susan and I reluctantly appeared in the kitchen and obediently took our seats at the table. Dad sat down at the head, Mom to his left. Our plates were served, and Mom’s pressed lips indicated she was already anticipating what our response was going to be. We said our prayer of thanks and both our parents took up their forks and knives and began eating. I mashed my potatoes with the tines of my fork, applied a bit of butter, and pointedly ignored the liver. Susan stared down at her plate, a look of utter despair on her face.

“Eat your dinner,” Mom ordered, a note of irritation rising in her voice. I pushed my peas around and into my potatoes and took several bites. “The liver too,” she said, her index finger pointing clearly at the unappetizing blob on my plate.

“I don’t like it, Mom,” I whined. Susan’s head popped up, her look hopeful, her fear, that I had crossed the unspoken line, evident.

“You will eat every bite on that plate, young lady,” Mom crossly responded as her eyes bored into each of us. Tears welled up in our eyes and we both now stared at our plates. Dad continued to eat in silence and Mom joined him. I managed a few more bites of potato and peas but Susan hadn’t touched anything yet and was now openly crying. Tears plopped unheeded into her lap.

Mom and Dad finished their meals and got up from the table. “I don’t care if it takes all night,” Mom announced. “You both will sit there until those plates are clean.”

We sat. And sat. And sat.

An hour passed as Mom noisily washed the pots and pans, and the plates, glasses, and flatware she and Dad had used. Susan and I continued to sit.

“This is the most ridiculous display of stubbornness I have ever seen,” Mom now yelled in unconcealed anger. Susan began to sob, but I felt the throb of anger. “If that food is not eaten in the next 15 minutes, you both will be spanked and sent to your rooms,” she threatened. I was prepared to take the deal. A spanking was definitely worth not having to eat those liver and onions.

Ten minutes passed. Susan looked at me and squeaked, “Do you think she’s really going to spank us?” 

I nodded.

“With the wooden spoon?” she winced.

I nodded again.

Susan looked at her plate again and promptly vomited on it. I marveled at the way the vomit completely covered the food, how it teetered at the lip but had not spilled over the edges of the plate. It was a miracle.

“Oh for crying out loud,” Mom exploded. “Both of you leave the table immediately. I don’t want to see either one of you until morning.” We made a hasty and joyful exit and ran to our rooms.

Sometime in the middle of the night, my sister sneaked out of her room and crawled into bed with me. She snuggled close and whispered, “We didn’t have to eat the liver and onions.”

I patted her head in praise and said, “And we didn’t get a spanking either.”

Susan and I were never served liver and onions again. 

Copyright DJ Anderson 2011