I reek by the time I land in Mexico, aggressively so. Thanks to severe thunderstorms, I spent the whole flight gripping my seat, worrying that I was going to plummet to my death. First I want to die and then I don’t. Life is weird like that. I look at my armpits, and they are drenched. Not exactly a “fresh start” for me here. I search for my water bottle in my bag and discover it’s spilled all over my things. I probably didn’t screw the cap on right. I don’t know why, but I always do that. I can be so careless. As I sift through my stuff to see the damage, I remember Olga’s receipt. I open my journal, and there it is, wet and smeared, of course. I can only make out some of the numbers and letters, and what scares me the most is that I don’t remember if I disabled her password. That is so typical of me, always making things harder for myself. Como me gusta la mala vida. Fuck. What am I going to do now?
—
Tío Chucho picks me up from the airport in the rusted and battered pickup he’s had since I was a kid. His hair is gray and wild, but his mustache is still black and neatly trimmed. Tío has silver-capped, poor-people teeth and looks much older than the last time I saw him. When he hugs me, I can smell the sweat and dirt in his clothes. Amá said tío hasn’t been the same since his wife died. I was little, so I don’t remember when it happened, but I can sense a brokenness about him that I think will never, ever go away. I suppose that’s why he’s never remarried. He and his wife only had one child—my cousin Andrés—who I’m guessing is about twenty now.
Los Ojos is nearly four hours away, deep in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere. Once we get on the road, tío Chucho asks me about school because he’s heard I’m having a hard time. I wonder how much he knows. He seems to think Amá sent me here because I was getting bad grades. I’m not going to correct him.
“It’s okay. I just want to go to college already.”
“Good! That is what I want to hear, mija. Don’t work like a donkey, like the rest of your family.” He shows me his callused hands, then looks at mine. “Look at you! You have rich-lady hands.”
Why is everyone in my family always talking about donkeys? I look down at my hands and realize he’s right. They are smooth and soft, not at all like my parents’, which are always chapped and worn. My hands look like they’ve never had to work hard, and I’d like to keep them that way.
“I want to be a writer,” I tell tío Chucho.
“A writer? For what? You know they don’t make any money, right? You want to be poor your whole life?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not going to be poor.”
“Just make sure you work in a nice office. Remember, don’t work like a—”
“A donkey,” I say, before he can finish.
Tío Chucho laughs. “Of course. You already know.”
I nod. Everyone always tells me to work in an office, which shows they don’t know me at all. That’s why I never talk about what I want to do with my life.
“I’m so sorry about Olga,” tío finally says. “What a shame. She was such a good girl. We all loved her so much. Ay, mi pobre hermana, la inocente.”
I wince. He didn’t really know Olga. No one did.
The day is bright with a few fat clouds scattered throughout the sky. The Sierra Madre mountains are so stark and impossibly tall that they fill me with an inexplicable panic. After studying them for a few seconds, I have to look away.
“I miss her, but it’s better now,” I finally tell tío Chucho. “Time heals, etcetera.” That’s not true, and he knows it better than
anyone, but that’s just what I say to make people feel better.
Tío sighs. “You know we couldn’t go to the funeral because we couldn’t get visas, and then the money, of course. Que lástima. We were all very sad. We wanted to be there for the family.”
“I understand,” I say. I don’t want to talk about my sister anymore, so I pretend to fall asleep until I do.
—
I wake up with drool trickling down my chin. I must have slept almost four hours because we’re already pulling up to Mamá Jacinta’s house. The land is dry and dusty, and my mouth is sour with thirst.
Mamá Jacinta runs to the pickup with her arms outstretched and tears in her eyes. She hugs me, and covers my face with kisses. She’s just as warm and soft as I remember, but her cropped hair is now entirely gray.
“Mija, mija, you are so beautiful,” she says over and over. I start crying, too.
There’s a crowd of people behind her—aunts, uncles, cousins, and people I either don’t know or don’t remember. My cousin Valeria, who is only a few years older than I am, has three kids now, and they all look like eaglets. Tía Fermina and tía Estela look almost exactly the same since the last time I was here. The Montenegro women don’t age much, apparently. Their husbands, tío Raul and tío Leonel, stand next to them, both wearing cowboy hats.
Tía Fermina and tía Estela hug me for a long time and call me mija, niña hermosa, chiquita. It makes me feel like I’m two years old, but I have to admit I enjoy it.
According to Mamá Jacinta, everyone is related to me somehow. I just nod, smile, and kiss everyone on the cheek like I’m supposed to.
The house is a brighter shade of pink than the last time I was there, and some of the adobe is cracked. The concrete additions look harsh against the softer colors of the original house, but that’s how most homes look in Los Ojos—a clumsy mix of old and new.
The cobblestone streets have been paved, which is disappointing because I always loved the smell of mud when it rained, and the bakery across the street has burned down, so I won’t get to wake up to the scent of baking bread in the mornings. A lot has changed in the last few years.
I’m rushed to the kitchen for dinner after I greet everyone. Mexican ladies are always trying to feed you, whether you like it or not. As much as I get sick of eating Mexican food every single day of my life, if heaven existed, I know it would smell like fried tortillas. Mamá Jacinta gives me a giant plate of beans, rice, and shredded beef tostadas covered with sour cream, lettuce, and chopped tomatoes. “You’re too skinny,” she tells me. “By the time you leave, your mother won’t even recognize you, you’ll see.”
No one has ever called me skinny. I’ve lost a few pounds because the medication has made my appetite weird lately—one day I want to eat the whole world, and the next day everything grosses me out
—but I’m not even close to being thin.
I finish the whole plate and then ask for seconds, which pleases Mamá Jacinta. I also drink an entire bottle of Coca-Cola, which I normally don’t even like, but it tastes so much better here. Tía Fermina and tía Estela sit across from me and tell me how much they’ve missed me, and the rest of the family crowds around me and asks a million questions: How is your mother? How is your father? How cold does it get in Chicago? Why haven’t you visited us in so long? When are you going to come back? What’s your favorite color? Can you teach me English? I feel like a celebrity. My family back home never treats me this way because I’m the designated pariah. Here, they even laugh at all my dumb jokes, every single one. Maybe Amá was right for once. Maybe this is what I needed.
—
Mamá Jacinta teaches me how to make the menudo they sell near the town square. Unlike the porquería of other cities and states, her version is made with meat, leg bones, and maíz. That’s it. No chile rojo to hide the dirty tripe. First, Mamá has to track down a butcher who’s just slaughtered a cow, then she and tío Chucho
pick up the buckets of dirty cow stomach and take them to a woman they’ve hired to wash it. Mamá Jacinta says this poor woman is even more jodida than she is, and I believe her. I don’t know what I would do if my job was to literally wash shit. Mamá Jacinta says that she used to clean the meat in the river, but it became so polluted that she had to start washing it in an outdoor sink. Thank God, because yesterday I saw stray dogs splashing in that filmy water, what’s left of it anyway.
Once the meat is thoroughly de-shitted, it’s rubbed with calcium oxide and left for a while. When the calcium oxide has softened the delicate inner skin, it’s peeled off slowly and carefully. Then it’s washed again and again until it gleams white as fresh snow.
The piece of tripe that comes from the butt has a beautiful honeycomb pattern. This is called las casitas. The thinner tripe with horizontal grooves has thick seams called callo. All the pieces are cut into slivers, and the slivers are cut into squares. The nerves are tough and slippery and resist the knife. The raw meat has a strong animal smell, and as you slice and slice, the tissue inevitably gets under your nails, and the scent lingers on your hands for hours.
The leg bones, the tripe, and the white maíz are cooked in a giant pot all night on low heat. The texture of the meat can be shocking to the average American tongue, but I like it. The pieces are soft and chewy, and the surface of the soup glitters with yellow globs of delicious fat. It’s topped with lime juice, white onion, and dry oregano.
When we’re finished slicing, Mamá Jacinta gives me a bowl of yesterday’s menudo and a cup of té de manzanilla. She says it’s good for nerves.
“Why do you think I’m nervous?” “You’re not?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Thank you, but I don’t really feel like it.” I look down into my empty bowl. A fly lands on a tiny piece of meat. I wave it away.
“Are you afraid I’ll tell your mother?”
“Well…yeah.”
“Whatever you say stays here with me. I know you and your mother don’t get along, but you’re more alike than you think,” she says, stirring in the honey.
“I seriously doubt that.”
“You know, she was always the rebellious one. She was the first one in the family to move to the other side. But you knew that, didn’t you? I told her not to go, but she said she wanted to live in Chicago, where she could work and have her own house.”
“Rebellious? Amá?” My mind can’t process that. My mother is the most rigid person I know.
“She never listened to me, always did what she wanted. You shouldn’t be so hard on her, mija. She’s been through so much.”
“Like what?” I know my sister died, and that’s been a living nightmare for everyone, but is there something else I don’t know? Something begins howling outside.
“Oh my God, what is that?”
“Oh. The cats. They are very…amorous right now. Even during the day.” Mamá Jacinta smiles.
“Gross.”
“And they’re two boy cats. Can you believe that?”
“Gay cats?” I gasp and slap the table. I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Mamá Jacinta chuckles.
“Okay, back to the story, Mamá. What else happened? Is there more?”
She shakes her head, her pale face suddenly pulled into a deep frown. The menudo gurgles in my stomach. The animal taste crawls up my throat.
“They got robbed when they crossed the border,” she says, wiping her hands on her apron and looking toward the door. “Yes, they lost all their money. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that?”
“Yeah, she said it was the worst days of her life, but that was before Olga died.”
Mamá Jacinta rubs her temples, as if this conversation were giving her a headache. “Ay, mi pobre hija. She’s had such bad luck in this life. I hope God has mercy on her from now on. She’s suffered too much.”
I don’t know what to say, so I drink the rest of my lukewarm tea and watch one of the cats pace back and forth outside.
