ROLANDO: My mother would never THINK of making mole from a jar. What are you TALKING about!
ITO: Rolando, how do you have the nerve to say such things. She NEVER made mole from a jar?
ROLANDO: Never.
And like that and like that. So that the way it ended, they were furious with each other before the enchiladas even arrived, and they haven’t talked to each other decently since, even though that was the same night Astrid belted out a song for dessert that had everyone, including the kitchen help, flooding the Christmas Room with applause.
But that was a long time ago. Over a decade, to be precise. I recently invited myself to mole dinner at Rolando’s house. This was because I had fresh mole that padrinos from Mexico City had brought in a cooler in their car, a mole dark and moist like a heart freshly sacrificed in an Aztec ritual. And besides, everyone knows I don’t cook.
It was a splendid dinner, with several courses beautifully presented. Beneath an elegant chandelier, the table shimmered with Rolando’s grandmother’s century-old china and fiftieth wedding anniversary silver.
But when the main course arrived, it was green mole Rolando finally decided to serve, not the red mole that had traveled all the way from Mexico City.
“Wow!” I oohed and aahed. “And how long did it take to prepare the mole?” I asked.
“Oh, it was easy,” he said, brushing the air with his hand. “I made it from a jar.”
PILÓN/BONUS TIDBIT
Though I admit to having reconstructed dialogue, this story is true. There are witnesses to back up my claim. Rolando, however, insists my account is nothing but puro cuento, pure story. But that, dear reader, is another pleito.
To Seville, with Love
After the European book tour of Caramelo, I was invited to write for The New York Times’s Sophisticated Traveler magazine soon after my return to the States. I could go anywhere I wanted, but I was so tired, the only place I wanted to travel to was my bed. Fortunately, I keep notes in a journal, save business cards, glue candy wrappers and restaurant napkins in my notebook, document graffiti on my camera, and from this “button” jar of images that snagged my eye and ear and a few questions to my travel companion, I was able to re-create the following after the fact. It includes a lot of shopping tips that may be out-of-date now, but the emotions are still current. The article first appeared in print on November 16, 2003.
Since the conquest, Mexico has had a crush on Spain. That’s why I never believed my Mexican family’s boasts about our Spanish patriarch, a composer of waltzes who supposedly once performed for the Mexican president. I assumed it was puro cuento, just another story. Until Uncle Enrique Arteaga stepped forward with my great-great-grandfather Luis Gonzaga’s baptism certificate from San Esteban, a church in the old part of Seville.
I’ve inherited something from my family, those nomads who came and went and were forever homesick for what they left behind. My father for the lost Mexico City of his youth. My great-great-grandfather for the Andalucía of his memories, perhaps. And me, hiding out on the border searching for the homeland of the imagination. I’ve since been filled with a desire to travel somewhere that might explain and answer the question “Where are you from?” and, in turn, “Who are you?” Isn’t this why all writers write, or is it just those of us who live on borders?
So when a book tour transports Liliana Valenzuela, the translator of the Spanish editions of my books, and me from Texas to Spain, we arrange a weekend vacation to Seville before heading home.
On that very weekend, a soccer tournament claims every hotel room in town. Instead of the quaint pension of our dreams, we find ourselves in Nervión, a throbbing neighborhood of shops, a sports stadium, and an endless zoom of traffic. We can’t complain, our hotel is Euro-chic and quiet.
It’s a short cab ride or a long hot walk to the old part of the city. We walk, hoping to be mistaken for natives and not the Mex-Tex and Tex-Mex aliens we are. We’re as mesmerized by Seville as the two Indian captives Columbus brought back with him from the New World. Shop windows filled with the ordinary fascinate us—door locks and bolts of serious twine, confections of baby clothes as exquisite as whipped pastries, hams lined up like soldiers, a delightful chaos of hard rolls. Here and there, on anonymous apartment buildings, enigmatic graffiti:
“READ ME WHEN YOU FORGET THAT I LOVE YOU”
“BREAD WITH TOMATO”
“PAPERS FOR EVERYONE”
“What does that mean?” I ask Liliana.
“It’s about immigration,” Lili answers matter-of-factly.
The old part of town begins when streets narrow into alleys, and we have to stand sideways to let cars pass. Walls are papered with signs for bullfights, language schools, student housing, and flamenco shows. How is it we’ve timed our excursion right in the middle of siesta? We’re starving, and it’s as hot as Texas, a heat that can make a horse faint. And it’s only May.
The world is so quiet we can hear a spoon clink against a glass. Somewhere behind iron grilles and geraniums, someone is washing dishes. I imagine my grandmothers in houses like this, a child upstairs pretending to sleep, a husband snoring in a dark bedroom. To stave off the heat, they unfurl curious window shades, like jute rugs, no doubt the same since the time of Cervantes. And I wonder where I could buy some to take home to Texas.
In front of the beautiful Casa de Pilatos, a nobleman’s mansion, a vendor sells tourists paper cones of sugared almonds, like the ones my father always craved and bought in small doses each payday at el Sears. Can someone inherit a craving? I wonder. I buy in memory of my father, and perhaps in memory of ancestors who craved sugared almonds too.
The sun has made a little hat on our heads and we’re in a terrible mood, but by diligence or providence, we stumble upon a church, austere and stocky as a fortress. San Esteban of my ancestors, finally! It’s closed. Of course. It’s Saturday. What were we thinking? We were thinking like Americans. Lili takes a picture of me in front of the gothic doors, and I sigh and promise to come back before leaving.
A few blocks down and in the nick of time, a tapas bar raises its metal curtain and rescues us from perishing. The bartender at La Bodega treats us like long-lost kin and introduces us to his Virgen de Guadalupe. Seville is devoted to over fifty images of la Virgen—la Virgen del Rocío, la Virgen de la Macarena, la Virgen de los Remedios. And here, her pictures are featured on the wall like celebrity photos in American restaurants.
Because we don’t know what to order, we ask the bartender for his recommendation, and he serves us an Especial Bodega, a sandwich of serrano ham, goat cheese, a smoked mackerel called “melva,” anchovies, and mussels, on a crusty bread drizzled with olive oil. It’s 1.65 euros at the table, or 1.50 euros standing. We stand. With a cold glass of beer, it’s the cheapest and best meal yet.
At home, my mother would complain when we’d “eat standing like horses,” but in Seville everyone except the elderly eats at the bar. We dine under an array of ham legs dangling comically above our heads like piñatas. The young marrieds next to us hand-feed a fussy toddler in a stroller. “This is probably how tapas got invented,” Lili says. “Some housewife said, ‘Enough! It’s too hot to cook, we’re going out!’ ”
Just beyond La Bodega, Lili and I discover la Plaza de la Alfalfa, a tiny neighborhood square, not blessed with looks, but with good shops. “And why is this plaza called alfalfa?” I ask. “Well, at one time I suppose they sold alfalfa for the animals,” a local says, shrugging. Puro cuento, nothing but story, I think.
La Esmeralda is a boutique only wide enough to hold two or three customers at a time, but a treasure box of costume jewelry styled with enough Moorish influence, they look like the antiques las majas wore in the paintings in the Prado.
Across the street, the wide selection at Mayo, a shop specializing in flamenco shoes, tempts me to buy, even though I dance like a donkey.
It’s next door, at Ángeles Berral, where we finally find what we need to transform ourselves i
nto proper majas. Flamenco wear—dresses, silk roses, hair combs, earrings, and mantones and mantillas with exquisite hand-knotted fringe. Here the staff addresses you as “guapa,” good-looking, and, with amazing expertise, selects colors and patterns to help you create your nuevo look.
Tucked behind the plaza is Compás Sur, a shop devoted exclusively to flamenco music. Esperanza Fernández, the latest Ketama, campy Martirio, the legendary Conchita Piquer, they’re all here. The shopkeeper is knowledgeable and helpful. Except when we ask where we can hear live authentic flamenco. Then he’s as vague as everyone else in Sevilla. After a little thought, he recommends El Sol Café Cantante.
Since the time of Caesar, Seville has been a crossroads. Cultures may clash elsewhere, but here they thrum. At El Sol Café Cantante, located near El Rinconcillo, the oldest tapas bar in town, they put on a short, sweet, and snappy show with a sinewy dancer who turns out to be a Swede studying flamenco on a government grant. Her guitarist is Dutch. It’s here at the bar where I discover un zumo y tinto, a popular summer drink. One part red wine, one part fresh o.j., one part sparkling water. Lots of ice. This will work well in Texas, I think.
Well, that’s that, yawning and catching a cab to call it a night. But just as our taxi winds past an alley in the old quarter, the roar of flamenco music snaps us to attention. “Your mother, niña, your mother, doesn’t want me to see you…she won’t even let you hang your clothes to dry on the roof…”—a popular hit by Los Romeros de la Puebla. “Stop the car!” The taxi screeches to a halt, we tumble out, delighted to find ourselves in a plaza with an open-air recital of one of the dance academies. The little plaza is a flurry of polka dots. Good thing we thought to wear our new shawls and earrings from la Plaza de la Alfalfa.
The dancers are gum-chewing little girls and teens, but their mamas have gone to a lot of trouble to dress them and arrange their hair as if they were queens. What kind of hair gel do you suppose they use, and how do they get those flawless chignons? We take our seats among the relatives on the wooden folding chairs. This isn’t a professional show like the one we’ve just seen, but it’s charming, filled with the thrill and pride only family can feel for their own.
By midnight, kids are slouched and snoring on laps and shoulders. Still the party goes on, and, it seems, just as a cab swoops us up, the amps are turned up even louder. It is, after all, Saturday night.
Sundays are for church and family dinner in Mexico City, in San Antonio, Texas, and here in Seville. Out of obligation as out-of-towners, we visit the famed La Giralda, the main cathedral, swarming with tourists. It’s like being inside a box of bees. I can’t stand it and am forced to flee. Later I’ll brush up on my Seville homework and realize Columbus is asleep here, brought back from his first burial site in Havana. And later I’ll regret I didn’t know all his papers are here too. On Palm Sunday, 1493, he returned to Seville with his booty from the New World, treasures, plants, animals, and two Indians who survived the journey, reluctant tourists, well, why do I have to tell you? You know the rest of the story. I am the rest of the story!
Lili and I take a refreshing carriage ride through María Luisa Park. I know, a bit corny, but the only sensible thing to do during the savage siesta hour. After being deposited downtown, we set off in search of a book fair, only to find again we are thinking like Americans. It’s closed. We walk over to Triana, the birthplace of flamenco, just across the Guadalquivir River, in search of authentic music.
But in Triana it’s like the day the earth stood still. Only pastry shops are open. We buy ice cream cones and miniature flamenco dancers and meander down the Triana streets amused by a sign in a shop that rents lockers: “Dear Customers, We beg you, please do not leave fish inside the lockers. —The Management.”
It’s here in Triana, by accident or on purpose, that we hear something honest and heartbreaking. From a closed bar—Antigua Taberna la Cava—the sounds of palmas and of men’s and women’s voices rising like black silk, the metal curtain half shut to block out the sun. All we can see is the dimpled hand of a child sitting on the cool tile floor.
Who cares that our feet hurt? Who cares that we’re leaning against a building in full sun? This is it. The real duende, when the performer is simply a medium and the song sends shivers down your spine. We’re in rapture. Until the child’s hand shifts and a curly head pokes out from under the metal curtain to look up at us. We flutter off as startled as pigeons.
Monday is my last day for guerrilla shopping, and our neighborhood of Nervión is a great convenience. The streets are filled with shops, and everybody crazy about polka dots. I didn’t bring a purse with me on this trip, or even a wallet, because Spain has such wonderful leather goods. El Corte Inglés has it all—soft Italian driving moccasins and, of course, Spanish espadrilles. In the music department I find Los Romeros de la Puebla with their catchy hit “Tu madre, niña, tu madre,” and La Mala Rodríguez, a Spanish hip-hop singer.
Around a sale bin, knowledgeable old women and I stand opening fans next to our ear, listening for the good ones that flick open like a switchblade. Fans are not only practical gifts to pack, in Texas, as in Seville, they’re necessities.
On my last day I make it back to la Plaza de la Alfalfa to try once more to get inside San Esteban Church. I knock and knock, and finally someone opens. “I’ve come from across the ocean…” But there’s a funeral tonight, they’re busy, come back another day. Then the door thumps shut, and I’m left feeling like Dorothy at the door to Oz. Muddied with grief, I don’t know what to do. Until the door swings open again with another man, who takes pity and lets me in.
San Esteban is small and dark and cool as a cave, and smells like all churches, like candle wax and tears. A weepy Madonna dominates the front altar. “Is that the patron of this church?” “No, that’s la Virgen de los Desamparados. Here is the patron of this church,” the man says, directing me to a splendid golden Madonna radiating in a niche off the main altar: “la Virgen de la Luz.”
The Virgen of the Light. La luz! Here, one hundred and fifty years ago, my ancestors prayed and lit candles. I light one too before leaving, but my heart is already filled with light.
I make my way back toward la Plaza de la Alfalfa and try one more Bodega Special sandwich—oh, all right, I had two!—and attempt to get to that enticing shop around the corner, Callejuela, with frothy flamenco dresses in its windows. I’d been back twice, but it was always closed. It reminds me of home, of San Antonio, where shops open when they feel like it, or close if it rains. I’m lucky this time; the shop door swings open gaily when I push it.
“That dress in the window, the copper one with the pale blue dots, how much?”
“Seven hundred euros.”
This is more than twice the amount of the off-the-rack flamenco dresses I saw at El Corte Inglés. Alas, though my profile is Andalusian, my torso is pure Mexican. Seven hundred euros isn’t bad for a custom-made dress, I convince myself.
“I’d like one just like that, please.”
“Oh, but I can’t sell you a dress today,” the saleswoman says. “The woman who takes measurements isn’t here. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! But I leave tomorrow. And I won’t come back till next year!”
“Well, then, come back next year.”
I drag myself from the shop like a thirsty woman being denied water, and linger outside the window eyeing my dress: “Your mother, niña, your mother, doesn’t want me to see you…”
It is as it should be. I leave Sevilla burning with ganas, desire. For a copper flamenco dress with sky-blue polka dots, for the archives with Columbus’s papers on the New World, for authentic flamenco music, for a sandwich with anchovies, tuna, and goat cheese. I leave with perhaps the same regret in my heart as my great-great-grandfather Luis Gonzaga. And perhaps with the same vow: “I’ll be back soon, Mamá, God willing.”
A White Flower
I wanted to make a gift to a woman I admire. In gratitude. But I didn’t k
now whether one could make gifts to one’s therapist. What’s allowed? It’s a culture I wasn’t familiar with, like traveling to a country where you don’t speak the language. I no longer visit her as I did back in 2005 when I wrote this; I’ve since moved away. But I often think of her. She was my teacher and spirit guide for over a decade. She taught me how to understand my dreams and how to soar. In other times, she might’ve been a Mayan high priestess or an oracle at Delphi. This analogy would make her laugh, I think. But that’s how I saw and still see her.
Every Tuesday I drive toward the most congested area of San Antonio at the most congested hour of the day, and, no matter how early I start, I arrive promptly late for my appointment with a woman I call the shameless shamaness. She doesn’t call herself this. Her business card reads “Jungian Therapist.”
A few months short of finishing my nine-year novel, I sought her out. I was as prickly as a snake after shedding its skin, as agoraphobic as a vampire in the day, as waterlogged as a blue maguey. I was frightened and sad beyond the reach of family and friends. I felt myself drifting away from society, like an unmoored boat swept away by subterranean seasons.
I’d been this ill before, and I knew what to do when I was this beyond-help blue. Seek out a bruja. I asked around, and somebody who was also heartsick and sad gave me her name.
At our first meeting I thought my shamaness looked exactly as a bruja should—wise and clever as a little white owl, benevolent as a television-show grandmother. My therapist listens and is paid to listen to my stories. In the beginning I felt I had to be entertaining. There is something odd for me still in telling a story one-on-one without getting a story back in return. It makes me feel guilty. As if I am being narcissistic hogging up the spotlight. As if I am being rude for not asking, “And you? How was your day?”
I think about her between sessions. When I dream an especially good dream, I’m as delighted to present it as a pupil delivering an apple. I’m curious about this woman who listens patiently to the latest episode of the story called my life. I want to ask her so many things, so many, but I think it’s against the rules.