Maria, the Grandmother Who Was Not My Grandmother
Translated by Stephanie Lawyer
The guts yearn, they remember, they have the power to bind from a long distance. The guts call, and the soul is incapable of pretending it cannot hear. As far as I know, what is left of my naval isn’t buried anywhere. If it wasn’t thrown away, maybe it still lies stiff and lifeless in the cigar box where my mother keeps her treasures, with no more than a faded pink bow as a lame excuse for a catch. If I decided now to bury the visceral tube that delivered my first food (conjuring, in order to do so, a mystical spell that would take me back), I have no doubt I would bury it in the corral, between the roots of the plum tree belonging to Maria, the grandmother who was not my grandmother.
I spent the summers and most spring vacations of my childhood and youth on a small farm in a forgotten corner of Nayarit. The earliest houses were built with thick adobe bricks, high ceilings, and spacious corrals of red earth on the banks of the Rio Grande de Santiago. Its then roiling water was responsible for nourishing the tobacco plantations and surrounding mango orchards, and it even allowed itself the luxury of provoking a natural disaster when it really became too full of itself.
To reach the place known as La Presa you had to cross a breach of at least five kilometers covered in loose rocks. There was no dam in those parts—god only knows why they gave it that name. This dusty spot could hardly be considered picturesque, but despite that Maria decided that’s where she would end her journey from the farmlands of Sinaloa. She once told me there were only a few small houses there at the time. “We were just a little pile of people, nothing more,” she said, joining her wrinkled hands together to suggest the crowd I was incapable of imagining, because as far as I was concerned, ten fingers lumped together were still ten fingers. Thinking of it now, maybe her calculation wasn’t that far off after all.
On the other side of the river you could glimpse Santiago Ixcuintla, the neighboring town and municipal seat. Santiago may have appeared more prosperous, but La Presa gave the impression of having been left behind in the past, and because of this and its other peculiarities, I thought it was wonderful.
In the house belonging to the grandmother who was not my grandmother the door was never shut, at least not before ten at night. Outside the entrance, a huge, woolly, cinnamon-colored dog was permanently stretched out. We never tread on him, and he never moved. We had to take a big step over him, and he would not react at all. I think he was the only dog in the world that never wagged his tail. Maybe he had come down with inverse hyperactivity syndrome, or some sort of canine dysfunction, or perhaps he was just immune to human charms.
Maria, unlike the dog and in contrast to her fragile, elderly appearance, seemed incapable of keeping still. Even though her vitality conveyed an elegant composure, the woman never stopped all day long. Always coming and going, out to the market or the tortilla shop, in the farmyard with the chickens or the potted plants and, most of the time, in the kitchen actively absorbed in the gerunds: skinning, chopping, plucking and/or gutting some animal or other. On rare occasions, when night had overtaken us on the road, we would find her sitting in one of her two rocking chairs, the only living-room type furniture. It did not require much effort to move a rocking chair to the small front porch for a better view of the people strolling about in the street. Even so, she preferred to be near the fan—I suspect because of the relic’s lulling hum. That thing was really only good for circulating the warm air and scaring off the flies.
It wasn’t Maria’s style to jump for joy when she saw us. She never greeted us ecstatically, but we always felt we were welcome, expected. To show her pleasure, it was enough for Maria to stand up and look at us through thick, greenish glasses that made her eyes appear enormous. She would touch our faces with trembling hands as though reading our features before giving us a kiss and then smiling by way of completing her welcome ceremony.
The woman who was actually my great-grandmother never looked kindly on progress. Few were the modern comforts she allowed into her house. She had electricity because she was forced to, but she never had a television. A small brown transistor radio kept her up to date about what was happening around her. Between songs, the announcer would read out the news from neighboring villages and even from other cities or the United States. That was how she learned, two weeks after the fact, that her daughter Elodia had been killed by a public bus in the nation’s capital.
She eventually came to own a gas stove, but even so she would often choose to cook outside on the portable stove. She never had drainage installed in the house; you had to walk to the end of the corral to get to the gloomy latrine and, next to it, a shower-less bathroom Maria never used. She preferred to bathe standing up next to the cistern* in the farmyard. She would wash herself with cupfuls of cold water without ever taking off her undergarments due to some notion of modesty—but of course she washed daily whether she needed to or not. It was one of these soakings that made her succumb to the pneumonia that cost her her life at ninety plus years.
In my eyes, Maria was always the same age, always had the same face. The only thing she changed was the way she arranged her gray braids: one on each side, singly, or coiled around her head. I do not remember ever seeing her as younger or older; I never saw her lying down or sick. Many people told stories of her being a very hard woman. She was never like that with us. I can’t say she was tender or indulgent—at least not by today’s standards—but I also do not remember her raising her voice or ever scolding me over something. What I do remember, and with great affection, is sitting down to dinner with her.
Unlike the experience of dinner at my mother’s, where the food tended to be abundant, everything at Maria’s was, let’s say, discreet. In the beef broth there only floated a small portion of meat and a bit of potato or carrot. Nothing like the mound of vegetables and chunk of meat on the bone they gave us at home. When I asked my mother about this difference, she told me that when she was a girl, her grandmother had told her meat and eggs were meant for the men who went to work on the tobacco plantations; for women and children there was no shortage of broth and vegetables. Maria’s circumstances changed at some point, but it was barely noticeable in her way of serving dinner. This moderation when it came to food gave it a value I had not known. Maybe remembering need makes us place more value on what we have when we have it. It isn’t easy to bear the cruelty of hunger. When there are a lot of people at the table, unfairness must be meted with common sense.
At Maria’s, there was never any waste; however, there was no lack of stewed beans, warm tortillas, molcajete salsas, and cured meat that she would put out to air dry on the clothesline next to the plum tree, which lost its leaves by May. On Sunday mornings, it was impossible to ignore the smell of charcoal-grilled meat that called to you to get up early. But when there was no meat, an odd smell pervaded the kitchen, the house, the whole street, so that making an appearance in the dining room amounted to an act of rashness. Fortunately, when cooking gave way to the sautéing of garlic and onion, alarm turned to joy. It was tripe day!
A steaming plate of pepena was synonymous with celebration, at least for me. I could put out long tablecloths and candles in the silver candelabra. Maria would defiantly make do with an outrageous, laminated, flowery tablecloth and pewter forks. Many years later, I came to realize this delicious stew was considered a last resort as far as food went: it was classified as “poor people’s food.” As though he were a garbage picker, the butcher would deliver to my great-grandmother a mixture of beef offal—liver, heart, entrails, and who knew what else. When it comes to these things, the less one knows, the better. Once cooked, she would fry them in a spicy mixture such green sauce that I would lick off my fingers, without thinking that for many it was that or no food at all.
The grandmother who was not my grandmother gave me a thousand moments to remember. The guts, my guts, still contract with emotion when I remember her. The childhood and youth I spent with her, in a place that despite its shortages amazed me, was something that enriched my life. Maria was with us for almost a century. She lived through three different generations without change leaving its mark on her or her house. I got to know a woman who was calm, without the distraction of a bunch of children, grandchildren, or the loads of stepchildren she might have taken into her house. Nor did she have a husband. Bartolo had died many years before. On his deathbed, he was at the point of strangling her because his blood boiled at the mere thought of leaving her where he would no longer be.
My great grandmother did not have an easy life. The austerity she lived through, and I never knew, was always evident at her dinner table. Not because pain or want were condiment, but because despite everything she found pleasure in satiating her family’s hunger. Her delicious stews, in small portions, multiplied themselves as if by magic to nourish her people. What’s more, she converted them into a means for showing us the value of things. As she would say, “A little good goes a long way,” and of that Maria gave us plenty.
* My great-grandmother's had an integrated laundry. It seemed big to me back then, because my sister and I could use it as a pool. There wasn't much room to move around, but it was a good way of cooling off. The cistern ran from inside the kitchen to the corral. From the dining table, we could wash our dishes and clothes through a large glass-less window that looked onto the outside part of the cistern. Maria would bathe on the corral side, standing on a slab.
PEPENA RECIPE
Pepena is a typical dish from western Mexico. There are many different ways to prepare it, because not all the ingredients will be to the taste of your dinner guests. So, select the all-beef offal you want to include, and if you do not like or cannot easily find a particular organ, all you have to do is take it off the list. It will not make much difference to the recipe.
Remember that cleaning is especially important, which means you have to do it very carefully. Tripe reduces considerably during cooking, so it is much easier to cut into small pieces once it is cooked.
This recipe suggests using green sauce, but you can substitute any sauce you like. You can even serve it separately from the stew and add it according to individual taste.
INGREDIENTS (3-4 PORTIONS)
3 kgs tripe
1 heart
½ kg liver
1 clove garlic
3 laurel leaves
1 medium size onion, sliced
oil as needed
salt to taste
¾ kg tomatillo
chile de arbol to taste
3 cloves garlic
cilantro, minced
onion, cubed
PREPARATION
Boil the intestines and heart with the garlic clove, laurel leaves, and a piece of onion. When the meat is cooked through, add salt, and let it season for 15 minutes. Remove the meat from the broth and cut it into approximately 2 cm strips.
Fry the guts and the heart in hot oil until they turn golden brown. The meat is well browned when it begins to foam slightly. At this point, add the sliced onion and also the liver if desired. Remove any excess oil.
Blanch the tomatillos and chiles de arbol in a little water.
Crush the tomatillos, chiles de arbol, and 3 cloves garlic in some of the defatted broth.
Pour this sauce over the meat, making sure to prevent the stew from becoming watery. It should be slightly thick.
Adjust the salt, cover, and let boil for 10 minutes.
Garnish with cilantro and chopped onion. Serve hot with stewed beans and corn tortillas.
