Chencha figured this lie would cover her with glory, but unfortunately she wasn’t able to tell it. That night, when she got to the house, a group of bandits attacked the ranch. They raped Chencha. Mama Elena, trying to defend her honor, suffered a strong blow to her spine and was left a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down. She was in no condition to hear this type of news, nor was Chencha in any condition to give it.
It was a good thing she hadn’t said anything, because when Tita returned to the ranch after hearing about their calamity, Chencha’s pious lie would have been shattered by Tita’s splendid beauty and radiant energy. Her mother received her in silence. For the first time Tita firmly held her gaze, and Mama Elena lowered hers. There was a strange light in Tita’s eyes.
Mama Elena had disowned her daughter. Without words, they made their mutual reproaches and thereby severed the strong tie of blood and obedience that had always bound them together, but could never be reestablished. Tita knew perfectly well that her mother felt profoundly humiliated because not only did she have to allow Tita back into her house again but until she recovered she needed Tita to take care of her. For that reason, Tita wanted with all her heart to give her the best possible care. She prepared her mother’s meal very carefully and especially the ox-tail soup, with the good intention of serving it to her so that she would recover completely.
She poured the seasoned broth with the potatoes and beans into the pan where she had placed the ox tails to cook.
Once that is done, all that is necessary is to let the ingredients simmer together for half an hour. Then, remove from the heat and serve piping hot.
Tita served the soup and took it up to her mother on a beautiful silver tray covered by a napkin whose exquisite openwork cotton had been perfectly bleached and starched.
Tita waited anxiously for her mother’s reaction when she had her first sip, but Mama Elena spit the soup on the bedspread and yelled to Tita to get the tray out of her sight immediately.
“But why?”
“Because it is nasty and bitter, and I don’t want it. Take it away! Don’t you hear?”
Instead of obeying her, Tita turned away, trying not to let her mother see her frustration. She didn’t understand Mama Elena’s attitude. She never had understood it. It was beyond her comprehension that one person, whatever her relationship with another, could reject a kind gesture in such a brutal manner, just like that, so high-handedly. She was sure the soup was delicious. She had tasted it herself before bringing it up. It couldn’t help but be good, she’d taken so much care in preparing it.
It made her feel like a fool for having returned to the ranch to care for her mother. It would have been better to stay at John’s house without ever giving a thought to the fate that might befall Mama Elena. But the pangs of her conscience wouldn’t let her. The only way Tita would ever be really free of her mother was when she died, and Mama Elena wasn’t ready for that.
She felt an urge to run far, far away, to shield the tiny flame John had coaxed up inside her from her mother’s chilling presence. It was as if Mama Elena’s spit had landed dead-center on a fire that was about to catch and had put it out. Inside she felt the effects of snuffing the flame; smoke was rising into her throat, tightening into a thick knot and clouding her eyes and making her cry.
She opened the door quickly and ran out at the exact moment that John arrived to visit the patient. They crashed into each other. John held her in his arms just long enough to keep her from falling. His warm embrace saved Tita from freezing. They only touched for a few seconds but it was enough to rekindle her spirit. Tita was beginning to wonder if the feeling of peace and security that John gave her wasn’t true love, and not the agitation and anxiety she felt when she was with Pedro. With a real effort, she pulled away from John and left the room.
“Tita, come here! I told you to take this away!”
“Dona Elena, please don’t move, you’ll hurt yourself. I’ll remove the tray, but tell me, don’t you want to eat?”
Mama Elena asked the doctor to lock the door and confided to him her suspicions about the bitterness of the food. John replied that it might be the effect of the medicines she was taking.
“Certainly not, Doctor, if it were the medicine, I would have this taste in my mouth all of the time and I don’t. They’re putting something in my food—curiously enough, just since Tita came back. I want you to test it.”
With a smile at her malicious insinuation, John went over to taste the ox-tail soup that had been left untouched on the tray.
“Let’s see, let’s find out what they’ve put into your food. Mmmmm! Delicious. It has beans, potatoes, chile, and . . . I can’t tell very well . . . some type of meat.”
“Don’t play games with me. You don’t notice a bitter taste?”
“No, dona Elena, not at all. But if you wish, I will send it to be analyzed. I don’t want you to worry. But until they give me the results, you have to eat.”
“Then get me a good cook.”
“Oh, but you already have the best one right here. I understand that your daughter Tita is an exceptional cook. Some day I’m going to come and ask you for her hand.”
“You know that she can’t marry!” she exclaimed, gripped by a violent agitation.
John kept quiet. It didn’t suit him to inflame Mama Elena. There was no point, for he had resolved to marry Tita with or without Mama Elena’s permission. He knew too that Tita was no longer so concerned about that absurd destiny of hers and that as soon as she was eighteen years old, they would get married. He pronounced the visit over, ordering rest for Mama Elena, and promising to send her a new cook the next day. And so he did, but Mama Elena didn’t even see fit to receive her. The doctor’s remark about asking for Tita’s hand had opened her eyes.
Clearly a romance had sprung up between those two.
For some time she had suspected that Tita would like to see her vanish from this earth so she would be free to wed, not just once but a thousand times if she felt like it. Mama Elena perceived this desire as a constant presence between them, in every little conversation, in every word, in every glance. But now there couldn’t be the slightest doubt that Tita intended to poison her slowly in order to marry Dr. Brown. From that day on, she absolutely refused to eat anything that Tita had cooked. She ordered Chencha to take charge of the preparation of her meals. Chencha and no one else could serve it, and she had to taste the food in Mama Elena’s presence before Mama Elena would make up her mind to eat it.
This new arrangement didn’t bother Tita, it was a relief to delegate to Chencha the painful duty of caring for her mother, so that she was free to start embroidering the bedsheets for her trousseau. She had decided to marry John as soon as her mother was better.
The one who really suffered was Chencha. She was still recovering physically and mentally from the brutal attack that had been made on her. And although it might have seemed she would benefit from not having to do any other work than cooking and serving Mama Elena, it wasn’t so. At first she received the news with pleasure, but once the shouts and reproaches started, she realized that you can’t have a slice without paying for the loaf.
One day Chencha went to Dr. John Brown to have the stitches removed where she had been torn when she was raped, and Tita fixed the meal in her place.
They thought they’d have no problem fooling Mama Elena. When she got back, Chencha served the meal and tasted it as she always did, but when Mama Elena was given some of it to eat, she immediately detected a bitter taste. Furious, she threw the tray on the floor and ordered Chencha out of the house, for having tried to deceive her.
Chencha used that excuse to spend a few days in town. She needed to forget the whole business, the rape and Mama Elena. Tita tried to convince her not to pay her mother any mind; she’d known her for years and she knew pretty well how to manage her.
“Yes, child, but why should I want to add any more bitterness to the mole I’ve got! Let me go, don’t make trouble.”
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Tita held her and comforted her as she had every night since her return. She couldn’t see any way to draw Chencha out of her depression, to dissuade her from the belief that no one would marry her after the violent attack she had suffered at the hands of the bandits.
“You know how men are. They all say they won’t eat off a plate that isn’t clean.”
Seeing how desperate she was, Tita decided to let her go. She knew from experience that if Chencha stayed on the ranch near her mother, she would never be saved. Only distance would allow her to heal. The following day she sent Chencha to the village with Nicholas.
Tita found she had to hire a cook. The cook quit after three days. She couldn’t stand Mama Elena’s demands and her terrible manners. They hired another, who only lasted two days, and another, and another, until there was no one in the village who hadn’t worked at their house. The one who lasted the longest was a deaf-mute: she put up with it for fifteen days, but she left when Mama Elena told her in signs that she was an idiot.
After that, there was nothing Mama Elena could do except eat what Tita cooked, but she took every possible precaution about it. Besides insisting that Tita taste the food in front of her, she always had a glass of warm milk brought to her with her meals, and she would drink that before eating the food, to counteract the effects of the bitter poison that according to her was dissolved in the food. Sometimes these measures alone sufficed, but occasionally she felt sharp pains in her belly, and then she took, in addition, a swig of syrup of ipecac and another of squill onion as a purgative. That did not last long. Mama Elena died within a month, wracked by horrible pains accompanied by spasms and violent convulsions. At first, Tita and John had no explanation for this strange death, since clinically Mama Elena had no other malady than her paralysis. But going through her bureau, they found the bottle of syrup of ipecac and they deduced that Mama Elena must have been taking it secretly. John informed Tita that it was a very strong emetic that could cause death.
Tita couldn’t take her eyes from her mother’s face during the wake. Only now, after her death, she saw her as she was for the first time and began to understand her. Anyone looking at Tita could easily have mistaken this look of recognition for a look of sorrow, but she didn’t feel any sorrow. Now she finally understood the meaning of the expression “fresh as a head of lettuce”—that’s the odd, detached way a lettuce should feel at being separated abruptly from another lettuce with which it had grown up. It would be illogical to expect it to feel pain at this separation from another lettuce with which it had never spoken, nor established any type of communication, and which it only knew from its outer leaves, unaware that there were many others hidden inside it.
She could not imagine that mouth with its bitter rictus passionately kissing someone, nor those yellowing cheeks flushed pink from the heat of a night of love. Still, it had happened once. Tita had discovered it too late and entirely by accident. Dressing her for the wake, Tita had removed from her belt the enormous keyring that had been chained to her as long as Tita could remember. Everything in the house was under lock and key, strictly monitored. No one could take so much as a cup of sugar from the pantry without Mama Elena’s authorization. Tita recognized the keys for all the doors and nooks and crannies. But in addition to that enormous keyring, Mama Elena had a little heart-shaped locket hung around her neck, and inside it a tiny key caught Tita’s attention.
She knew immediately which lock that key fit. As a child, playing hide-and-seek one day, she had hidden in Mama Elena’s wardrobe. Tucked among the sheets, she had found a little box. While she waited for them to find her, she had tried to open it, but it was locked and she couldn’t. Mama Elena hadn’t been playing, she wasn’t one of the seekers, yet she was the one who discovered Tita by opening her wardrobe door. Mama Elena had come to get a sheet or something and had caught Tita red-handed. Tita was punished in the cornloft, where she had to take the kernels off a hundred ears of corn. Tita had felt that the punishment didn’t fit the crime, hiding with your shoes on among the clean sheets wasn’t that bad. Now, with her mother dead, reading the letters contained in the box, she realized she hadn’t been punished for that, but for having tried to see what was in the box, which was serious indeed.
Full of morbid curiosity, Tita opened the box. It contained a diary and a packet of letters written to Mama Elena from someone named Jose Trevino. Tita put them in order by date and learned the true story of her mother’s love. Jose was the love of her life. She hadn’t been allowed to marry him because he had Negro blood in his veins. A colony of Negroes, fleeing from the Civil War in the United States, from the risk they ran of being lynched, had come to settle near the village. Young Jose Trevino was the product of an illicit love affair between the elder Jose Trevino and a beautiful Negress. When Mama Elena’s parents discovered the love that existed between their daughter and this mulatto, they were horrified and forced her into an immediate marriage with Juan De la Garza, Tita’s father.
This action didn’t succeed in stopping her from keeping up a secret correspondence with Jose even after she was married, and it seemed that they hadn’t limited themselves to that form of communication either, since according to the letters, Gertrudis was Jose’s child and not her father’s.
When she found out she was pregnant, Mama Elena had planned to run away with Jose. But, while she was waiting for him to appear that night, hidden in the darkness of the balcony, who should appear out of the shadows but an unknown man who attacked Jose for no apparent reason, eliminating him from this world. After that terrible grief, Mama Elena resigned herself to life with her legal husband. Though for many years Juan De la Garza had been unaware of the entire story, he had learned of it just when Tita was born. He had gone to a bar to celebrate the birth of his new daughter with some friends; there a venomous tongue had let out the information. The terrible news brought on a heart attack. That was all there was.
Tita felt guilty for having discovered her mother’s secret. She didn’t know what to do with the letters. She thought of burning them but she was not the one to do that; if her mother had not dared, how could she? She put everything away just as she had found it, back in its place.
During the funeral Tita really wept for her mother. Not for the castrating mother who had repressed Tita her entire life, but for the person who had lived a frustrated love. And she swore in front of Mama Elena’s tomb that come what may, she would never renounce love. At that moment she was convinced that John, who was always at her side supporting her without reservation, was her true love. But then she saw a group of people approaching the mausoleum and from a distance she made out Pedro’s silhouette, and Rosaura with him, and she was no longer so sure of her feelings.
Rosaura, displaying an enormous pregnant belly, was walking slowly. Seeing Tita, she went and embraced her, crying inconsolably. Pedro approached her in his turn. When Pedro took her in his arms her body quivered like jelly. Tita blessed her mother for providing the occasion for her to see and embrace Pedro. Then she pulled away sharply. Pedro didn’t deserve to have her love him so much. He had shown weakness by going away and leaving her; she could not forgive him.
John took Tita’s hand on the way back to the ranch, and Tita in turn took his arm, to emphasize that there was something more than friendship between them. She wanted to cause Pedro the same pain she had always felt seeing him beside her sister.
Pedro watched them through slits of eyes. He didn’t care a bit for the familiar way John drew near Tita when she whispered something in his ear. What was going on? Tita belonged to him, and he wasn’t going to let anyone take her away. Especially not now that Mama Elena, the major obstacle to their union, had disappeared.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Next month’s recipe:
Champandongo
CHAPTER EIGHT
August
Champandongo
INGREDIENTS:
1/4 kilo ground beef
1/4 kilo ground pork
200 grams walnuts
200 grams almonds
1 onion
1 candied citron
2 tomatoes
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup cream
1/4 kilo queso manchego
1/4 cup mole
cumin
chicken stock
corn tortillas
oil
PREPARATION:
The onion is finely chopped and fried in a little oil with the meat. While it is frying, the ground cumin and a tablespoon of sugar are added.
As usual, Tita was crying as she chopped the onion. The tears clouded her vision so completely that before she realized it she cut her finger with the knife. She gave an angry cry and went back to preparing the champandongo as if nothing had happened. Right now she didn’t even have a second to take care of her wound. That evening John was coming to ask for her hand, and she had to prepare a good supper in only half an hour. Tita didn’t like to have to hurry with her cooking.
She always allowed enough time to cook food perfectly, trying to organize her activities in such a way that she had the peacefulness she needed in the kitchen to be able to prepare succulent dishes exactly as they should be prepared. Now she was so late that her movements were jerky and hasty, which led to that sort of accident.