We are all sitting at the kitchen table: my father, my brother, my grandmother, and me. My grandmother looks little, like a child almost, waiting to be served. My mother stands at the stove with her back to us, spooning something onto white china plates. Pot roast. She hands my father his plate first, of course, then my brother, then my grandmother, and last of all me.

My mother sits down with her own plate. She is on Weight Watchers and measures everything she eats on a little white postage scale she keeps next to the toaster. I have only carrots and potatoes on my plate. I am a vegetarian, so I have rinsed the pot roast’s gravy off the vegetables. Everyone is pouring themselves something to drink: my father, Mott’s apple juice; my brother, orange soda; my mother, diet Pepsi; me, Poland Springs. Often my mother remarks, “What am I running here, a restaurant? I’ve never seen anything like it. Everyone has to have their own private drink.” Tonight, though, she simply looks at my grandmother and asks, “What do you want to drink, Ma?”

“I don’t care, some soda,” my grandmother replies.

My mother lifts the heavy bottle of orange soda my brother has just put down. My grandmother says, “What’s that, orange? Don’t give me that, give me something diet, I got too fat already.” My mother puts down the orange soda with a sigh and pours my grandmother her drink.

We eat in silence. Forks and knives clink against plates, ice cubes rattle in glasses, my father chews loudly across the table from me as he sops up his gravy with Wonderbread. The refrigerator clicks on and begins to hum, and outside through the screen door I can hear the bells of Mr. Softee fading down the street.

My grandmother is not eating. Instead she studies each of us in turn, as if she is trying to make up her mind. Her gaze falls upon me.

“Jocelyn, here, take some of mine, I don’t need so much. You’re too skinny, here, take a piece of meat.” Her plate is up in the air, hovering above mine, fork poised to scrape.

“No, Grandma, I don’t want any. You know I don’t eat meat.”

“You don’t eat no meat? What’s the matter with you? Who don’t eat meat? Everybody eats meat.” She looks around for support of her argument but, finding none, tries a different track. “Oy,” she says in a gentle voice, “what my mother wouldn’t have given, when I was your age, to have a piece of meat to put in my mouth, I shouldn’t go hungry. Here, mameleh, take a piece of meat, it wouldn’t kill you.” She stabs a piece of pot roast, which waves off the end of her fork like a flag.

“Grandma, I don’t want it.”

“Here, Jeffrey,” she says to my brother, who knowing he was next has been busily shoveling food into his mouth, hoping to be excused. “Take some from my plate. I can’t eat all this.”

“No, Grandma. There’s more in the pot if I want more. You eat it.” My brother’s voice is tired, as if he’s said this a thousand times before, which in fact he has.

“I can’t eat all this,” my grandmother says to no one in particular or perhaps to God.

“Ma, it’s enough already,” my mother says. She has finished eating and rises to put her plate in the sink. My grandmother slowly puts a piece of carrot into her mouth. My father and brother finish eating and leave the table: my father heading for the den to watch TV, read the newspaper, and fall asleep on the couch; my brother grabbing his baseball cap to run outside and play stickball with his friends.

I push my food around my plate as my mother clears the table. A cool breeze tickles the back of my neck as she opens the refrigerator to put away the half-empty bottles of soda.

“Jocelyn, I’m going upstairs to lie down. Will you finish cleaning up?” I don’t bother answering, since I’m the one who cleans up every night.

I bring my plate over to the sink, and as I return to gather the dirty napkins, my grandmother pushes her plate away. “Oy, I’m so full, I’m busting already,” she says to me. She pushes her chair back with another oy, stands up, and brings her plate to the sink.

“I’ll do the dishes. You don’t have to.” I take the plate from her hand.

“All right,” my grandmother says with a shrug. “You want some applesauce maybe, a piece of sponge cake?”

“No, Grandma, I’m not hungry. And you know I never eat dessert.”

“Not hungry, no dessert, listen to her, she don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive–a piece of carrot and half a potato.” I can feel my grandmother studying my back as I run the water. It takes a while for it to get hot. “What’s the matter with you, you don’t eat no meat, you don’t want no cake.…” She pauses, trying to figure me out. “Jocelyn, darling, the boys ain’t gonna like it if you get too skinny. Believe me, I know.”

I turn to see her smiling and wagging her finger at me, the nail shiny and red. I blush in spite of myself but not for the reason she thinks.

My grandmother thinks I have a boyfriend, but I don’t. I don’t even like boys. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the same reason I don’t like meat and I don’t like dessert. I told my best friend Karen about it. I told her right after I’d gone for a walk with this guy Mark from my social studies class. He kissed me over by the handball courts, and I almost lost my lunch.

Karen said we should practice, maybe then I would like it more. She says she didn’t like it at first so much either, but you kind of get used to it. We were up in my room studying–or pretending to study, really–with our books scattered all over my bed just in case my mother walked in, which wasn’t too likely because a bunch of her friends were over playing bridge, and my brother and I have been instructed in no uncertain terms that unless one of us is having a heart attack, nothing is to interrupt my mother’s bridge games. Anyway, Karen pushed aside our books and told me to lie down on the bed. “This is what Bruce does,” she said, and then she climbed on top of me and put one of her legs between mine. Bruce is Karen’s boyfriend, and he’s a senior, so I guess he knows what he’s doing.

Then she kissed me. Her mouth was soft, not like Mark’s at all. She showed me what you do with your lips and your tongue and even your teeth. I started feeling funny between my legs, where her thigh was pressing, like I had to go to the bathroom or something.

“Then if you really like the guy, you can let him touch your boobs,” she said. “Want me to show you?”

“Sure.”

She lifted my shirt and pulled my bra down, so my breast popped out of the cup. Then she put her mouth on my right nipple, like a baby. “You stroke my hair,” she said, so I did. It felt nice. I felt all warm and soft inside, and I wet my pants for sure, but I didn’t even care. Karen showed me on my other breast too, and then we stopped. She said that after I go out with Mark again, if I still don’t like kissing him, we can practice some more. I didn’t tell her I wouldn’t go out with Mark again if my life depended on it. Maybe we can practice some more anyway. I just don’t like boys. But I would never tell Karen that. And I definitely would never tell my grandmother. She already thinks there’s something wrong with me, and I guess maybe there is.

I put my hand under the faucet. The water, like my face, is finally hot. “Why don’t you go inside and watch TV with Daddy?” I say to my grandmother, who is still watching me.

“All right,” she says with a shrug. “I’m an old lady. What do I know? Nothing.” She shuffles off to the den, and as soon as I hear her footsteps fade down the hall, I run the water full blast and pick up her plate. But instead of scraping the pot roast into the brown paper bag from Waldbaum’s we keep in the middle of the floor for garbage, I pick up the pieces of meat and put them into my mouth, one by one by one.