Best Food Writing 2014 by Holly Hughes Read Free Book Online Page A

to stress that a reversal of biliary dyskinesia and complete relief of epigrastric pain could not be guaranteed without surgery. My sister, Dezy, faced a decision that compromised her identity at its core, both physiologically and metaphysically. She had been taught, by our CPA father, that life is about costs and fluctuating supplies based on demand. Now, Dezy had to decide whether she would pay the new cost of enjoying her favorite beverage. Having a favorite, mind you, is a big deal in my family. Dezy saw it as her right as an American, echoing our father’s famous saying, “He who has a surplus has the benefit of favorites.”
    The panic that settled in Dezy’s already unstable mind came not from the pain she had been feeling the past couple months but from the prospect of giving up the sweet, syrupy goodness, the pungent aromas of peppermint pouring out of a single can of Dr. Pepper.As a child, the substance was as verboten as dope, classified by our parents as a Schedule 1 drug with no medicinal benefits. Dezy didn’t understand why her parents would criminalize something that lined supermarket aisles, sparkled on TV commercials, and tasted like the gods’ ambrosia. Why should she be denied what is publicly available? Therefore, she made a pact with her soul that when she had her own house her refrigerator would be stocked from drawer to shelf with shiny, sweating burgundy cans of the liquid she wouldn’t live without.
    She learned to trust the marketplace over her family, for only in the marketplace can any desire be fulfilled, at a price.
    And so she considered the price, as explained by her doctor. “Remove the gall bladder, undergo a brief period of recovery in which you will have to remain on a strict diet, and then reintroduce more volatile foods, such as soda. I can guarantee, in this scenario, that the functionality of your gall bladder will not be a factor, since, of course, you will no longer have a gall bladder.” The doctor laughed, but then swallowed his smile at Dezy’s failure to appreciate his joke.
    â€œSo the problem,” Dezy asked, her legs going numb from the firm chair, “is the gall bladder itself?”
    The sterile paper covering the chair crinkled under her shifting weight. Dezy, though bone skinny, felt heavy with the weight of a bowling ball pressing against her intestines.
    â€œIndeed,” her doctor answered.
    â€œThen remove it,” she said. And in that instant she felt a sudden release. Not from the pain twisting her stomach, but from the burden of having a very essential freedom taken away from her. She could survive an operation; in fact, she had already resolved herself to doing so. Hell, she had had her wisdom teeth pulled when she was fourteen. One operation is like any other. She could survive without auxiliary parts of her body. What she couldn’t do: renounce her sovereignty and not eat and drink what she damned well wanted to.
    My sister the proud American: She votes Conservative in every election. She listens to Toby Keith and cries every time he mentions the word “soldiers.” She watches football every Sunday. The Star-Spangled Banner hangs from a post over her garage. Her kids are in gifted programs. Her husband is a manager. She is in the PTA. Shesupports the troops. Her last name is Blanco. Her last name before that was Torres. Her mother is Cuban, her father Columbian. She refuses learning Spanish on principle.
    She buys the 24-pack of Dr. Pepper in sets of two, a habit she picked up from our father, who would buy cartons of cigarettes and stash them around the house. I remember being three years old and finding a carton tucked behind my Ninja Turtle toy box. Another time I found one under the matt in Thumper’s crate. Thumper was our Yorkie. My father used to say he felt more relaxed knowing he had so many caches than he did when he actually smoked a cigarette. When he had to quit, following a hernia