“What trouble? They’re the ones with the car that won’t start. They’re probably tourists like us,” Joanne said. “How would you feel if we were the ones sitting in a car that wouldn’t start out here in Nowhere Land?”
“How do you know they’re tourists?” I turned on the engine, released the emergency brake, and put on my turn signal, prepared to bolt out of there.
“They’re in a Baja bug. Isn’t that what those cars are called? They probably rented it to go off-road racing around here like the tour book said, and now they have engine trouble. We can’t leave them, Melanie.”
“Yes we can. It’s not safe to try to assist strangers on deserted roads in the middle of Mexico! Didn’t the tour book say anything about that? Come on, Joanne, don’t make this a big deal. We need to be safe; we’re leaving.”
“Just wait!” she yelled at me. “Stop being so paranoid and pushy and wait one stinking minute! If someone gets out of the car and comes toward us, and we don’t feel safe, we can bolt. But what if it’s two women stranded out here in the dark?”
“What would two women be doing out here?” I snapped.
Joanne lowered her chin and gave me that all-knowing big-sister look. “Maybe they’ve inherited beachfront property and are trying to drive to San Felipe. Maybe they went to a car rental place that didn’t fill their tank with gas or maybe—”
“Okay, okay,” I muttered. “I got your point.”
The driver’s door and the passenger’s door opened at the same time. “If you see that they have guns,” I crouched to get a good view in the side mirror, “you holler, and I’ll punch the gas pedal, and we’ll scream out of here.”
“It’s a little boy,” Joanne said.
“A child is driving the car?” I turned to look over my shoulder just as a tall man approached. The boy had popped out of the passenger’s side and was waving his hands over his head, trying to get our attention. In the darkening light around us, it was difficult to make out any of the man’s or the boy’s features. Clearly, though, they had nothing in their hands. Specifically, no weapons.
“Hello!” the man called out, waving at us as he approached. “¡Hola!”
“I’m still going to bolt, if I think for one second that we’re not safe,” I told Joanne.
“Fine! But just give the guy a second. We can’t leave him stranded here with a little boy.”
Something inside me wanted to say, “Haven’t you filled your quota for saving lives for one day, Mother Joanna?” But I could see now in the glow of our taillights that this guy wasn’t a local. Joanne probably was right; they were stranded tourists. We should help them.
“Hello,” the man said breathlessly as he jogged up to my side of the car. “I was hoping to catch you. We passed you earlier, but when the car started to go out on us, I turned around hoping you hadn’t gone too far.”
As soon as he said the word out, Joanne and I knew he was Canadian.
“I have to get to one of the ranches about five kilometers from here, but my car isn’t going to make it. We received a call that one of the workers broke his leg.”
“Oh!” Joanne responded like the trained medical professional she was by jumping out of the passenger’s side, pushing back our luggage, and motioning for this stranger and the boy to hop right in.
“I need a few things out of our car,” the man said.
“Melanie, turn us around.”
I complied but shot Joanne a stern look. I did not like this predicament. She appeared as confident and in control as if this twilight rendezvous were planned.
Grabbing a small duffel bag and with the car keys in his hand, the man directed me to continue west, back toward Ensenada.
We are never going to make it to San Felipe the way we keep going forward then turning around and going backward!
“Watch for a dirt road that intersects with this main road on the right side. It should be about a kilometer or less up here.”
“I’m Joanne,” my cruise director sister said. “This is my sister, Melanie. What part of Canada are you from?”
“Vancouver. Is it that obvious?”
“To another Canadian, yes. I’m from Toronto. Melanie lives in Langley.”
“No kidding. We’re neighbors then. I’m Matthew Henderson. This is Cal. I apologize for putting you out.”
“It’s no problem.” Joanne spoke freely for herself but not for me. I wanted to pinch her. If she started to share private information with this man the way she had when I left the dinner table the night before, I definitely would pinch her.
“How did you find out about the rancher with the broken leg?” Joanne turned toward our hitchhikers and seemed to study them intently.
“I come down a couple of times a year to volunteer at the clinic in San Felipe. One of the ranchers called in on the radio. I was the only one available to come. The details were sketchy, but it seemed they weren’t able to transport the guy to the clinic.”
“I’m a nurse-practitioner,” Joanne said. “So please, if I can be of any assistance, let me know.”
“You’re serious? You’re a nurse-practitioner?”
“Yes.”
“Slow down, slow down.” Matthew grabbed the back of my seat. “I think the turnoff is right up here. It comes fast. There it is. Turn right.”
The Jeep took the bump onto the uneven dirt road like a champ, but I had my mouth open and bit my tongue when we took the dip. The taste of blood mingled with the last bits of chocolate cake, and tears welled up in my eyes.
Don’t cry, you big baby! Keep your eyes on the road.
We rambled over what felt like ten miles of rough dirt road with only the headlights to guide the way. Matthew directed me, encouraging me for doing such a great driving job. All I could think of was how Joanne and I would have to drive back over this in the dark alone and then make the rest of the trek to San Felipe in the deep darkness. At the core of my being I was more frightened than I’d ever been in my life.
Matthew directed me to slow down, and we inched along, using the headlights as feelers until we came to a gravel road that led about half a mile to a ranch house. Two lanterns hung from wooden beams that jutted out from under the adobe roof. Matthew said he had been here two years ago and was grateful he remembered the approximate location, because otherwise it would have been easy to pass it by.
The sound of our wheels on the gravel roused the occupants, and a man and woman rushed out to greet us, speaking rapid Spanish.
Matthew answered them in Spanish and then instructed Cal to go into the house with Señora Valdepariso while he went out to the ranch hand’s quarters with Señor Valdepariso.
“I could use your help,” Matthew said to Joanne.
“Sure.” Joanne turned to me. “Are you going to be okay?”
I nodded, trying to hide my fear. “I’ll wait with Cal in the house.”
Joanne fell in step with Matthew and Mr. Valdepariso, who took one of the lanterns. The señora motioned graciously for Cal and me to follow her into the humble dwelling. She wore a dress covered by a full apron. Her graying hair was wrapped in a thick coil on the back of her head. Reaching for the other lantern, the gracious woman spoke to Cal and me in Spanish.
“I’m sorry; I don’t understand,” I said.
“I think she asked if we’re hungry,” Cal said. “Hambre means ‘hungry.’ Hombre is ‘man.’ I learned that yesterday. I think she said hambre.”
“Sí? Hambre?” She said a few more words.
“¡Yo!” the boy answered. I thought that was a rather disrespectful way to respond to someone who had just offered him food, but then I realized yo was Spanish for “me,” and he was indicating he was hungry.
By the lantern light, I could see the young boy’s distinctive features. I guessed him to be about eight or nine. He had sandy red hair that stuck straight up in front.
“Cal, did you see that white box on the Jeep’s backseat?”
“The one with the cake in it?”
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He obviously had looked while we bumped down the road.
“Yes, could you bring it in?” I was thinking we could share the cake, but I also was thinking of wild animals that might be attracted to the food, if we left it in the open car.
Cal jetted back to the Jeep, retrieved the box, and handed the mangled gift to our slender hostess. I guessed her to be in her early fifties. Maybe older. It was hard to tell. Her face was weathered with as many wrinkles as the peach-tinted streaks we had watched in the western sky only an hour or so earlier. But her skin wasn’t peach toned. It was a rich reddish brown hue that looked warm in the glow of the lantern. She was smiling at us as if we were old friends who had stopped by for a scheduled visit.
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.
Our 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.”