The Last Bite Before the Best Bite

I have started writing again because my dear friend K will be leaving for China again tomorrow. She is to return on July 2nd, just in time for me to get done with summer school. I am taking a creative writing class this semester. I've decided to post some of my writings for the sheer pleasure of entertainment. Well this one is due in 13 hours for a peer edit, so there are still a few kinks to work out. Hey K, this is how I told my dad I was coming to live next to you freshman year. We just didn't know it yet. Look how amazing this dinner turned my life around to be!

The Last Bite
The week before I made a call to my aunt, a plump, genuine woman whose crow’s feet added to her sincerity, asking her to arrange this family dinner. I told her I had something I needed to tell the family.
“Umm. Yes, I can do that,” she drawled over the line, hinting interest and concern into my something I needed to tell the family.
Pulling up in my dad’s driveway, behind his old, dented green Ford pickup truck decorated with Mississippi State flags and stickers, I felt the knot tighten in my stomach. I made myself get out of the car walk to the front door instead of the usual back. I stood underneath the bulldog flag and knocked at the door, as if I were about to enter a stranger’s home, not the home I had spent half of my life in.
My father came to the door, “Why didn’t you use your key? Funny. Well, how ‘bout them dawgs?”
I could only mutter, “Yeah. Aren’t they great?” with a scared smile plastered across my face.
In the back of my mind I was telling myself I can do this. He will not disown me. If so, at least mom’s on my side. I might not be invited to family dinner as often, and he might never come visit. This is your dream, not his.
Greeting me were my stepmother, aunt, and grandmother, and lastly Bully, the family bulldog named so because my dad had taken care of the official Mississippi State Bully while in college. The hugs from the women never seemed to end. They contained an extra squeeze as if it would be the last they could every give me. I asked where my two sisters were since the house seemed eerily quiet except for the rumblings of the Mississippi State basketball post game show on ESPN in the background. My stepmother smiled her nervous smile where her mouth extends across her face not up and you don’t see her teeth.
“Well, we thought it would be better to have an adult family dinner this week with your announcement and all,” she said.
I noticed the food was waiting on the counters to be served. The smell of that juicy steak so sweat and savory was the only thing keeping me from bolting out the door. The baked potatoes welcomed me with the steam rolling off their tin foil wrappers. The steamed broccoli was lined on the plates like those I had stood under the one time I had tail gated in the Ole Miss Grove before the football game I attended without telling my father. I was told to serve my plate first. The rest of the family lined up like drill sergeants ready for rations while at war. Calm and somber their faces read that of worry.
I was the first to enter the dinning room of deep maroon coating the walls as it were blood dried to the walls. My dad did always make that remark. We bleed maroon around here. The condiments of sour cream, ranch dressing, and steak sauce were directly in a row in the middle of the table as if they were a shooting line.
I had to get my thoughts under control. How was I going to lead into this?
Everything I had practiced to say just did not seem right. It was compassionate enough, or it was too corny. Heck, what was I going to say?
The rest of the family joined me at the table. I felt like I was at a board meeting by the way everyone sat so straight almost rigid in their chairs. Everyone waited for the others to be seated before they began eating. The usual screaming and running around collecting forgotten silver ware and napkins did not happen. Only the clank, thud, and crunching could be heard from my family.
Finally with a thud of my dad’s fists upon the table he almost shouted, “Ok what is your big announcement, Allison?”
Before he could udder of his crazy guesses, later to find out, I diplomatically stated, “I have decided to go to Ole Miss for college.”
I shoved a piece of steak so big in my mouth hoping it wouldn’t be my last bite.