Oh Heavenly Ham

Okay. 'Fa Reak' is a little strong for people I hug stiffly every other year or so and who've named their firstborn after me... who apologize for things I can't remember them doing ...who push ham at every meal as if it were Gristle of the Gods...
Ham for breakfast
Ham for lunch
Spiral Ham for Xmas dinner:
Layed out on The Good China in the Center of a huge red swathed table, a gold halo of fat out-glistening the star atop the tree looming over us...The Ham stood with a crown of cloves, nailed to it's platter with a knife through one side, a big fork thru the other.
All the other food, the perfect white rolls from Costco, the overcooked veggies drowning in butter, the potatoes crispy with cheese... the cold calculating pie in the corner...just made me feel all the more the weight of the ham's importance.
The other white meat died for my sins.

I ate fudge and chips. I heaped my plate with olives and something I later realized were only for decoration. I drank.

"JUDY! Eat the HAM!" My mother chided, adding in a whisper not unlike sawing through hardwood with a bread knife, "YOUR BROTHER CAN'T AFFORD SPIRAL HAM in the FIRST PLACE. MARY SPENT A FORTUNE ON THIS GODDAMNED CHINA!"
Everyone paused a moment to look embarrassed. We stared at the ham in silence.

"I am enjoying the ham, mother," answered my sister, who is actually named 'Judy', cheerfully, because she loves other people's discomfort, reaching for the platter, she cooed,
"I'm having seconds, infact."
Seconds.
She never has seconds on anything that isn't alcohol based.

Mary whispered almost to herself, "It was on sale."
The ham took the hit with dignity, it's succulent juices dribbling down my sister's chin.

My mother loves Mary. She thinks she spends too much money, sometimes, on superficial stuff to "keep up with her rich doctor friends", and that my brother works too hard when he isn't drinking and whoring around in skeezy skeezy N. IDEE HO bars, provoking fights and picking up on toothless aged bar hags.
"He's going to kill himself keeping Mary in pedicures," my mother complains, oblivious to the fact that my fellow gifted underachiever brother is also a crazy hillbilly drunk 1/3 of the time and that might be a bigger threat to his health than Mary's shiny red toenails.

"Those feet are the LEAST of her problems!" my mother often rants, "She should do something about her big ass."

But it is really really rare that my mom is catty about Mary, only when she's irritated or worried about my brother, or Mary is wearing something new, and usually she rails only to me because I encourage that sort of confidence. Judy, however, is always trying to get something mean out of her. The Judy resents how much affection my mother and Mary have for one another. Mary is a good daughter in law. She takes my mother shopping and remembers every holiday. She makes crafty things for my mother to hang on her refrigerator - Worlds Best Grandmother, God Bless This Mess, etc. Judy is actually like the kind of daughter normally seen in the weasel family, or amongst hyenas. She is mean and greedy and suspicious. She has a lot of money, which she, I shit you not, burys in her backyard because she doesn't TRUST BANKS.

"Mary is a good person," my mother says to judy. "Who loves sandals."

Judy also hates Mary because she is Catholic. She scowled at the Christmas Carols playing before dinner. She rolled her eyes at the Jesus is The Reason for The Season doormat. She sneered when we said grace.

Then she set upon that ham like a fatwa had been issued against it, until only the bone was left. "If you don't want that," she said, licking her fingers, "I'll take it home and make soup."

Mary nodded, numbly, "Sure. Take it."

I'll bet she buried it in her yard. But I do not have proof. Yet.