But as much chocolate atole as she drank, Rosaura never had any milk. Whereas Tita had enough milk to feed Roberto and two more babies besides, if she’d wanted to, from that day on. As Rosaura was still weak sometimes, no one was surprised that Tita took over her nephew’s feeding; what no one found out was how she fed him, since Tita, with Pedro’s help, was very careful not to let anyone see her.
For that reason, the baby, instead of driving them apart, actually brought them closer together. It was as if the child’s mother was Tita, and not Rosaura. That’s how she felt and acted. The day of the baptism, how proudly she carried her nephew, showing him off to all of the guests. Rosaura had to limit her appearance to the church, since she felt too sick. So Tita took her place at the banquet.
John Brown, the doctor, was watching Tita, charmed by her. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. John had attended the baptism just to see if he could speak to her alone. Even though he saw her every day during the housecalls he made to Rosaura, he had never had a chance to speak freely to her without someone else being there. When Tita walked by the table where he was sitting, he got up and went over to her on the pretext of admiring the baby.
“How nice the child looks with such a beautiful aunt holding him!”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“He isn’t even your own son. Imagine how pretty you will look with one of your own.”
A look of sorrow crossed Tita’s face. John saw it and said:
“Forgive me, it seems I’ve said something wrong.”
“No, it’s not that. I can’t marry or have children because I have to take care of my mother until she dies.”
“But how can that be! It’s absurd.”
“But it’s true. Now, please excuse me, I have to attend to my guests.”
Tita quickly moved away from John, leaving him completely shaken. She was too, but she recovered when she felt Roberto in her arms. What did her fate matter, when she had this child near her, this child who was as much hers as anybody’s? Really, she did a mother’s work without the official title. Pedro and Roberto were hers and that was all she needed.
Tita was so happy that she didn’t realize that her mother—like John, except that she had a different motive—was not letting her out of sight for a single instant. She was convinced that something was going on between Tita and Pedro. Trying to catch them, she didn’t even eat, and she was so intent on the task of watching them that she hardly noticed the success of the party. Everyone agreed that a large part of the credit should go to Tita; the mole she had prepared was delicious! She kept getting compliments on her skill as a cook, and everyone wanted to know what her secret was. It was really a shame that as Tita was answering this question, saying that her secret was to prepare the mole with a lot of love, Pedro happened to be nearby, and that they looked at each other for a fraction of a second like conspirators, remembering when Tita had been bent over the grinding stone; for the eagle eye of Mama Elena saw the spark that flew between them from twenty feet away, and it troubled her deeply.
Actually, among all the guests, she was the only one who felt at all troubled. Everyone, oddly enough, was in a euphoric mood after eating the mole; it had made them unusually cheerful. They laughed and carried on as they never had before and wouldn’t again for a long time. The threat of the revolution hung over them, bringing famine and death in its wake. But for those few moments they all seemed determined to forget the bullets flying in the village.
The only one who never lost her control was Mama Elena, who was too busy looking for a way to vent her bad temper. When Tita was standing near enough not to miss a single word, she remarked to Father Ignacio in a loud voice:
“The way things are going, Father, I worry that some day my daughter Rosaura will need a doctor and we won’t be able to get one, like when Roberto was born. As soon as she gets her strength back, I think it would be best if she went to live with my cousin in San Antonio, with her husband and little boy. She would receive better medical attention there.”
“I don’t agree, dona Elena, because of the political situation. You need a man to defend the house.”
“I’ve never needed a man for anything; all by myself, I’ve done all right with my ranch and my daughters. Men aren’t that important in this life, Father”—she said emphatically—”nor is the revolution as dangerous as you make it out! It’s worse to have chiles with no water around!”
“Well, that is true!” he replied laughing. “Ah, dona Elena, always so clever. And tell me, have you thought about where Pedro will work in San Antonio?”
“He can start as an accountant in my cousin’s company; he wouldn’t have any problem, his English is perfect.”
Those words echoed like cannons inside Tita’s head. She couldn’t let it happen. They couldn’t take the child away from her now. She had to keep that from ever happening. Meanwhile, Mama Elena had managed to ruin the party for her. The first party in her life that she had enjoyed.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Next month’s recipe:
Northern-style Chorizo
CHAPTER FIVE
May
Northern-style Chorizo
INGREDIENTS:
8 kilos pork loin
2 kilos pork head or scraps
1 kilo chiles anchos
60 grams cumin
60 grams oregano
30 grams pepper
6 grams cloves
2 cups garlic
2 liters apple vinegar
1/4 kilo salt
PREPARATION:
Heat the vinegar and add the chiles after removing the seeds. When the mixture comes to a boil, remove the pan from the heat and put a lid on it, so that the chiles soften.
Chencha set the cover on the pan and ran to the kitchen garden to help Tita look for worms. Mama Elena kept coming into the kitchen to supervise the preparation of the sausage and the preparations for her bath, and they were behind on both. Ever since Pedro, Rosaura, and Roberto had gone to live in San Antonio, Tita had lost all interest in life, except for her interest in feeding worms to a helpless pigeon. Apart from that, the house could fall down and it wouldn’t have mattered to her.
Chencha didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Mama Elena came in and found that Tita wasn’t helping make the sausage.
They had decided to make the sausage because it’s one of the best ways to use the meat from a pig economically and get food that both tastes good and keeps well, without risk of spoiling. They had also prepared a lot of salt pork, ham, bacon, and lard. They had to get every possible use from this pig, one of the few animals that had survived the visit the revolutionary army had made to the ranch a few days before.
When the rebels arrived, only Mama Elena, Tita, Chencha, and two farmhands, Rosalio and Guadalupe, were at the ranch. Nicholas, the manager, had not yet come back with the cattle he had been forced to go buy; the scarcity of food had made them kill the animals they depended on, which he was now trying to replace. He had taken along two of his most trustworthy workers to help him, leaving his son Felipe in charge of the ranch; but Mama Elena had relieved him of that duty, sending him to San Antonio, Texas, for news of Pedro and his family. They were afraid something bad had happened to them, since they hadn’t heard a thing.
Rosalio rode up at a gallop to tell them that a troop of soldiers was approaching the ranch. Mama Elena immediately picked up her shotgun; as she cleaned it she plotted how to hide her valuables from the greed and gluttony of these men. No one had ever had anything good to say about these revolutionaries—and obviously what she had heard could scarcely be unreliable, since she’d gotten it from Father Ignacio and the mayor of Piedras Negras. They had told her how the rebels entered houses, destroyed everything, and raped all the women in their path. She ordered Tita, Chencha, and the pig to stay hidden in the cellar.
When the revolutionaries arrived, they were met by Mama Elena at the entrance of the house. She had her shotgun hidden in her p
etticoats, and she had Rosalio and Guadalupe at her side. Her gaze met that of the captain in charge, and he knew immediately from the steeliness of her eyes that they were in the presence of a woman to be reckoned with.
“Good afternoon, senora, are you the owner of this ranch?”
“Yes, I am. What is it you want?”
“We’ve come to ask you to volunteer to help the cause.”
“I’ll volunteer to tell you to take whatever you like from the corn crib and the stable. But that is the limit; I won’t allow you to touch anything inside my house. Understand? Those things are for my cause.”
The captain, laughing, snapped to attention and answered her:
“Understood, my general.”
This joke tickled all the soldiers, and they laughed heartily, but the captain could see you didn’t fool around with Mama Elena, what she said was serious, very serious.
Trying not to be intimidated by the fierce domineering look he got from her, he ordered the soldiers to inspect the ranch. They didn’t find much, a little corn for scattering and eight chickens. A frustrated sergeant came back to the captain and said:
“The old lady must have everything hidden in the house. Let me go in and take a look around!”
Mama Elena put her finger on the trigger and answered:
“I’m not joking. I repeat: no one is setting foot in my house!”
Laughing, swinging the chickens he was carrying in his hands, the sergeant started toward the door. Mama Elena raised the gun, braced herself against the wall so she wouldn’t be knocked to the ground by the kick of the gun, and shot the chickens. Bits of chicken flew in every direction along with the smell of burnt feathers.
Shaking, Rosalio and Guadalupe got out their pistols, fully convinced that this was their last day on earth. The soldier next to the captain was going to shoot Mama Elena, but the captain motioned him to stop. They were all waiting for his order to attack.
“I have a very good aim and a very bad temper, Captain. The next shot is for you, and I assure you that I can shoot you before they can kill me, so it would be best for us to respect each other. If we die, no one will miss me very much, but won’t the nation mourn your loss?”
It really was hard to meet Mama Elena’s gaze, even for the captain. There was something daunting about it. It produced a nameless fear in those who suffered it; they felt tried and convicted for their offenses. They fell prisoner to a childlike fear of maternal authority.
“You’re right. Don’t worry, no one is going to kill you, or fail to respect you, that’s for sure! Such a valiant woman will always have my admiration.” He turned to his soldiers and said:
“No one is to set foot in the house; see what else you can find here and let’s go.”
What they found was the huge dovecote formed by two slopes of the roof on the enormous house. To get to it you had to climb up a twenty-foot ladder. Three rebels climbed up and stood there stunned for some time before they were able to move. They were impressed by the dovecote’s size and by the darkness and the cooing of the doves gathered there, coming and going through narrow side windows. They closed the door and the windows so none of them could get away and set about trapping the pigeons and doves.
They rounded up enough to feed the entire batallion for a week. Before the troops withdrew, the captain rode around the back patio, inhaling deep whiffs of the scent of roses that still clung indelibly to this place. He closed his eyes and was still for quite a while. Returning to Mama Elena’s side, he asked her:
“I understood you had three daughters. Where are they?”
“The oldest and youngest live in the United States, the other died.”
The news seemed to move the captain. In a barely audible voice, he replied:
“That is a pity, a very great pity.”
He took leave of Mama Elena with a bow. They left peacefully, just as they had come, and Mama Elena was quite disconcerted by the way they had treated her; it didn’t fit the picture of the heartless ruffians she’d been expecting. From that day on she would not express any opinion about the revolutionaries. What she never learned was that this captain was the same Juan Alejandrez who had carried off her daughter Gertrudis some months before.
They were even on that score, for the captain remained ignorant of the large number of chickens that Mama Elena had hidden behind the house, buried in ashes. They had managed to kill twenty before the troops arrived. The chickens are filled with ground wheat or oats and then placed, feathers and all, into a glazed earthenware pot. The pot is covered tightly using a narrow strip of cloth; that way the meat can be kept for more than a week.
It had been a common practice on the ranch since ancient times, when they had to preserve animals after a hunting party.
When she came out of hiding, Tita immediately missed the constant cooing of the doves, which had been part of her everyday life ever since she was born. This sudden silence made her feel her loneliness all the more. It was then that she really felt the loss of Pedro, Rosaura, and Roberto. She hurried up the rungs of the enormous ladder that went to the dovecote, but all she found there was the usual carpet of feathers and droppings.
The wind stole through the open door and lifted some feathers that fell on a carpet of silence. Then she heard a tiny sound: a little newborn pigeon had been spared from the massacre. Tita picked it up and got ready to go back down, but first she stopped for a moment to look at the cloud of dust the soldiers’ horses left in their wake. She wondered why they hadn’t done anything to hurt her mother. While she was in her hiding place, she had prayed that nothing bad would happen to Mama Elena, but unconsciously she had hoped that when she got out she would find her mother dead.
Ashamed of these thoughts, she placed the pigeon between her breasts to free her hands for the dangerous ladder, and climbed down from the dovecote. From then on, her main interest lay in feeding that pathetic baby pigeon. Only then did life seem to make a little sense. It didn’t compare with the satisfaction derived from nursing a human being, but in some way it was similar.
The milk in her breasts had dried up overnight from the pain of her separation from her nephew. As she looked for worms, she kept wondering who was feeding Roberto and how he was eating. Those thoughts tortured her night and day. She hadn’t been able to sleep, for a whole month. The only thing she accomplished during this period was to quintuple the size of her enormous bedspread. Chencha came to shake her out of her rueful thoughts; she gave her a few pushes to get her into the kitchen. She sat her down in front of the stone metate and set her to grinding the spices with the chiles. To make this process easier, it helps to add a few drops of vinegar from time to time as you’re grinding. Last of all, mix the meat, finely chopped and ground, with the chiles and spices and let the mixture rest for a while, preferably overnight.
They had barely begun their grinding, when Mama Elena came into the kitchen, asking why the tub for her bath had not been filled. She didn’t like to bathe too late, or her hair wouldn’t dry properly.
Preparing Mama Elena’s bath was quite a ceremony. The water had to be heated with lavender flowers, Mama Elena’s favorite scent. Then this “decoction” had to be strained through a clean cloth and a few drops of aguardiente added to it. Finally, she had to carry buckets of hot water, one after another, to “the dark room”—a small room at one end of the house, next to the kitchen. As its name indicated, this room didn’t receive any light, since it had no windows. All it had was a narrow door. Inside, in the middle of the room, there was a large tub into which the water was poured. Next to it, there was a pewter pitcher for the aloe water used in washing Mama Elena’s hair.
Only Tita, whose mission it was to serve her until death, was allowed to be present during this ritual, to see her mother naked. No one else. That’s why the room had been built to prevent anyone seeing in. Tita first had to wash her mother’s body and then her hair, and then finally she had to go iron the clothes that Mama Elena would put on when she got out
of the tub, while Mama Elena stayed in the tub relaxing and enjoying the water.
At a summons from her mother, Tita helped her to dry herself and put on her warm clothes as quickly as possible, so she wouldn’t catch cold. Afterward, Tita opened the door just an inch, so the room would cool down a little bit and Mama Elena’s body wouldn’t suffer from an abrupt change of temperature. The whole while, Tita brushed her hair in that room lit only by the weak beam of light through the crack at the door, which created an eerie atmosphere as it revealed strange shapes in the rising steam. She brushed Mama Elena’s hair until it was thoroughly dry, braided it, and that completed the liturgy. Tita always thanked God that her mother only bathed once a week, because otherwise her life would be a real cross to bear.
In Mama Elena’s opinion, both her bath and her meals were the same story: no matter how hard Tita tried she always got an infinite number of things wrong. Either her blouse had a wrinkle, or there wasn’t enough hot water, or her braid came out uneven—in short, it seemed Mama Elena’s genius was for finding fault. But she had never found as many faults as today. And that was because Tita really had been careless with all the fine points of the ceremony. The water was so hot that Mama Elena burned her feet when she got in, Tita had forgotten the aloe water for her hair, burned the bottom of Mama Elena’s chemise, opened the door too far, and finally, got Mama Elena’s attention the hard way and was scolded and sent from the bathroom.
Tita was striding toward the kitchen, the dirty clothes under her arm, bemoaning the rebuke she’d received and her boundless failings. What grieved her the most was the extra work burning the clothes meant. It was the second time in her life that this sort of disaster had occurred. Now she had to wet the reddish stains with a solution of potassium chlorate, plain water, and soft alkaline lye, scrubbing them repeatedly until she managed to get them out, and this difficult job was added to her job of washing the black clothes her mother wore. To wash those, she had to dissolve cow bile in a small amount of boiling water, fill a soft sponge with it, and use it to dampen the clothes all over; then she had to rinse the clothes in clear water and hang them out to dry.