Sisterchicks in Sombreros (15 page)

Her acceptance of the situation, such as it was, spread calm over me, and I found my heart returning to a steady beat and my tears of fright evaporating.

I realized when we entered the house that she was still holding the lantern because they had no electricity. Simple furniture filled the open space. A wooden table with four straight-back chairs. A small wood-fed stove, a single basin sink, a wooden cupboard, and a narrow folding table that held plates and metal bins in which I guessed she stored her perishables.

She motioned for us to sit at the table, and we obliged
quietly. Part of the floor was covered with carefully placed, reddish-colored Tecate tiles. The tiles went only so far. Then it looked as if they had run out of tiles, and the floor turned to smooth dirt.

I pasted a polite smile on my face and tried not to appear to be staring in shock as I gazed around the room. I knew people in the world lived like this, but I’d never imagined I would be in such a hovel.

A faded green floral curtain gathered on a shower rod separated the main area from what I guessed to be the bedroom or at least another room. The walls were uneven blocks of adobe bricks the size of shoeboxes. Bits of straw stuck out of the mud bricks that were wedged tightly together and sealed with more of the brown dirt.

Despite our sitting on dilapidated chairs, which I would have thrown out long ago, inside a house made of mud bricks with our feet on a dirt floor, everything around us was tidy and orderly. I felt the strangest sense of being safe and protected.

Under a sombrero of grace
, I thought. Then I stopped myself before I started sounding like my romantically religious sister.

Señora Valdepariso lit a fire in her woodstove, and the room filled with the scent I’d smelled at a Mexican restaurant we ate at once in Vancouver that cooked all its food over mesquite wood. She was speaking to us cordially, as if we could understand her. I nodded occasionally and kept a goofy grin on my face. Cal sat politely at the table, swinging his legs and looking around.

As I watched, the señora poured water from a plastic water bottle into a ceramic bowl, and with her weathered hands, she worked with some sort of dough.

“It’s okay.” I motioned that she could stop. It seemed she had so little to give. “You don’t have to feed us. We’re fine.”

She smiled and kept working, taking a lump of dough in her worn palms and rapidly flapping it back and forth until she had formed a flat tortilla.

“Cool!” Cal rose from his chair and stepped closer to watch her. “How do you do that?”

She reached for another lump of dough and with amazing speed flattened another tortilla.

“Can I try?” Cal made hand motions, indicating he wanted to make a tortilla.

Like any mother in any corner of the world, the señora reached over, examined the young man’s hands, and pointed at a painted ceramic water pitcher and bowl on a small stand by the wall. Her directions to him were in Spanish, but I understood the universal “go wash your hands first” command.

Rising, I directed Cal to the basin and told him to place his hands over the round bowl while I poured the water from the pitcher. He rubbed his hands thoroughly. I spotted a small wedge of soap and told Cal to use some soap. I thought of all the times at home that I had thrown away pieces of soap twice that size just because it was annoying to try to pick up such a small piece.

He shook his hands dry, the droplets flinging across the
tiled area of the floor. I washed my hands, lathering with soap and then pouring the water over each hand.

“Should I toss this water outside?” I pointed to the bowl and then pointed to the door.

The señora said, “No.” Wiping her hands on her apron, she picked up a knife, reached for the lantern, and motioned for Cal and me to follow her out the front door. I carried the basin of dirty water as we followed her several yards away from the house. Her lantern lit up a row of cactus. She indicated I should pour the water at the base of the cactus. Then with her knife she carefully sliced off one of the round, flat “ears” of the cactus. I couldn’t imagine how she managed to grasp the big, green elephant-ear piece without all the spiny needles going into her hand. Obviously she had done this a time or two.

The three of us returned to the house with Cal asking, “What are you going to do with that hunk of cactus?”

She answered, but neither of us knew what she said.

Returning to the bowl on her narrow worktable, the señora motioned for both of us to reach for a ball of the tortilla dough. She proceeded to demonstrate how to flatten it. Cal and I both laughed at the same time. We definitely didn’t have the knack for this. Cal’s hands were still damp, and the dough stuck to his palms. I got the motion down, not as swiftly as our expert cook, but I managed to make the dough resemble a tortilla. Sort of. The señora had two perfect tortillas done by the time my first one was serviceable.

With a scoop of her knife into a metal tin, she melted a
wad of lard on the top of her cast-iron stove and lay the tortillas on top as gently as if she were placing a baby bird back in its nest. Her nimble fingers turned the tortillas by grasping the edges, and the room filled with a wonderful fragrance.

In any other context I don’t think I would have considered the combination of lard and tortillas to be a wonderful fragrance, but here, at this moment, the scent represented home and hospitality and nourishment for weary travelers. All my normal pickiness set aside, I knew I would gratefully eat anything this woman offered me in her modest home.

The scent seemed to arouse more than just my appetite. We heard a strange shuffling sound from behind the green sheet door. The fabric fluttered slightly, and a small pig trotted out of the bedroom, snout to the ground, looking for leftovers.

I wanted to burst out laughing. Cal said, “Cool!” and went over to take a closer look at the curious fellow.

The señora wasn’t happy the scrounger showed up uninvited. With lots of Spanish words and a flapping of her apron, she corralled the critter to the front door and used her foot to make him scoot outside. The wooden door didn’t close well or latch entirely shut, so I could see how various animals easily could wander in whenever the door was left open, which I imagined would be often since that was the only way to air out the house or vent the stove.

Reaching to flip the last tortilla, our cook placed a cast-iron skillet on the stove and went to work extracting the stickers and slicing up the piece of cactus. Clearly we were going to be
served this delicacy. I reminded myself that I had thought only a moment earlier that I would eat whatever was offered to me. When I considered how few of these flat appendages were left on the row of cactus we saw, I realized she was giving to us extravagantly out of the little she had to offer.

I stared at this kind and generous woman, feeling as if I’d never been shown such hospitality in my life. I certainly never had expressed this sort of hospitality to anyone who came to
my
home.

Years ago at a church luncheon I heard a speaker talk about hospitality and how the literal meaning of the word was “the love of strangers.” It stuck with me then because I didn’t think that could be right. I never looked it up but always intended to because I thought it couldn’t be true hospitality—or at least not safe, secure hospitality—if you were showing love to a stranger. Such an act would be risky and foolish, not God-honoring and lovely.

However, this night, I saw how wrong I was. What the woman was offering us was extravagantly beautiful. From the hand-flapped tortillas to the cut-up slices of her paltry supply of cactus, she was saying she loved us.

And she didn’t even know our names.

O
ur meal of cactus and tortillas
was accompanied by refried beans. The señora wouldn’t sit with Cal and me at the table, but rather she brought the food to us, and with quick gestures and a demonstration of how to tear off a corner of the tortilla and use it as a scoop to capture the beans and cactus, she spoke to us in Spanish, as if we were her favorite pupils and were receiving high marks that day.

“This is delicious,” I told her, holding up my fourth wedge of tortilla. “Thank you.”

“¿Delicioso?”
she repeated as a question.

Young Cal was quick to respond. “Sí. Muy delicioso. Gracias.”

“Yes,” I added. “Gracias. Muchas gracias.”

“De nada.” Touching her heart, she continued to say something that I’m sure was very tender.

She urged us to eat more, as if all the food on the platter was for the two of us. It seemed we should save some for the others.

“Did you eat yet?” I pointed to the food and then to our hostess.

“Sí, sí.”

She tidied up the kitchen area, chattering to us the whole time. I took one more bite and patted my tummy to indicate I was satisfied. She was surprised and motioned for me to eat more.

“No, gracias. I’m full. It was very delicioso. I thought the cactus tasted like green beans. What do you think?” I asked Cal.

“Exactly like green beans,” he said. “My mom always makes green beans out of a can. I like this better.”

“What’s your name?” I asked our hostess.

She didn’t understand. I patted my chest. “Mel-a-nie. That’s my name. Melanie.”

I touched the arm of my young dinner date. “This is Cal. Cal.”

“Cal,” the señora repeated. “Cal.”

“Yes, that’s Cal, and I’m Melanie.”

“Mel …” She hesitated.

“Mel is good. That’s what my sister calls me. You can call me Mel.” I patted my upper chest again. “Mel.”

“Mel,” she repeated, pleased with the ease of
Cal
and
Mel
.

I pointed to her. “What’s your name?”

She touched her chest, and with a gentle smile, she rolled off her name like a well-rehearsed line of a beloved poem: “Rosarita Guadalupe Yolanda Rosario Valdepariso.” Then after a pause she shortened it to “Rosa Lupe.”

“Rosa,” I said.

“Rosa
Lupe
,” she corrected me.

“Rosa Lupe.”

“We have cake.” Cal pointed to the pathetically smashed cake box. “Do you want some cake?”

Rosa Lupe opened the box and let out a delighted cluck of her tongue.

“It doesn’t look like much.” I shook my head. “But it tastes good. Please, have some.”

I made the same sort of gestures she had made when trying to get us to eat more.

With a childish grin, Rosa Lupe wiped off her knife and cut a modest sliver.

“Go ahead.” I motioned some more. “Please, eat it.”

Her eyes opened wide as the cake went into her mouth. She made all kinds of yummy sounds as she swallowed the chocolate, and with a womanly smack of her lips, she declared, “¿Delicioso!”

I grinned and nodded.

What was that we heard on the cruise? No true Sisterchick can turn down really good chocolate. I believe it now! Sisterchicks are everywhere!

The front door opened, and Rosa Lupe’s husband entered
without a lantern. He nodded to us humbly, as if he were interrupting something instead of Cal and me being the interrupters of his evening. We were eating his dinner.

Standing with his back to us, Mr. Valdepariso discussed something in hushed tones with his wife. It didn’t matter what he was trying to say so privately. Cal and I couldn’t understand him anyway.

“I bet they’re talking about where we’re all going to sleep,” Cal said to me in a low voice, leaning closer.

“We’re not spending the night here,” I said.

“You’re not? Where are you going?”

“San Felipe. How long did it take you guys to get here from San Felipe?”

“A long time. Like an hour.”

“An hour? I didn’t think it was that far.”

“You can’t go very fast on the road,” Cal said. “Especially if your car keeps breaking down like ours.”

“Were you planning to spend the night here?”

Cal nodded. “Out in the straw in the barn. That’s where I said I want to sleep.”

“You may get your wish.” My eyebrows caved in with the worry weight of the world now sitting on top of my head. It was one thing to offer a ride a few miles out of our way and to accept a meager meal prepared by Rosa Lupe. But expecting these kind people to find lodging for all of us in their hacienda was far too much to ask.

Cal apparently was right, though, because soon after Mr.
Valdepariso went back outside, and Rosa Lupe took me over to the hanging green sheet. She pulled back the curtain, and with an all-encompassing sweep, she indicated that their bedroom was at our disposal.

I touched her shoulder and smiled as sincerely as I could. “We can’t take your bed. This is your home. You and your husband need to sleep here.”

She didn’t understand me, so I reverted to the one word I knew was the same in both languages, “No.” I pointed to the small bed with the torn blue-and-white bedspread covering it and neatly smoothed out to the corners. “No, we can’t sleep in your bed. We’ll sleep somewhere else.”

“In the barn,” Cal added.

I don’t know what Cal had pictured in his mind for a barn-sleeping experience, but I was pretty sure the Valdeparisos didn’t exactly have the fresh-straw-filled sort of barn that kids in the movies run around and jump in.