The Tequila Worm (3 page)

EaSTeR CaSCaROneS

IT was Lent. I stayed close to Mama as she stood in front of her big cast-iron skillet, a carton of eggs next to the stove. She took an egg, turned its pointy end to the top, and then went
tap! tap! tap!
all around with a teaspoon. She peeled off the pieces of eggshell, leaving a small hole, and poured the egg into the frying pan, which was sizzling with oil and slices of onion. The egg white fell into the pan like a waterfall in slow motion, and the bright orange ball finally popped out.

Mama handed me the empty eggshell. While she did the same thing to the second egg, I carefully washed out the shell. I set it on the windowsill by the kitchen sink, its little hole facing down so it could dry.

We did this to the other seven eggs Mama used to make breakfast that morning.

We ate eggs, eggs, and nothing but eggs all during Lent. And although my favorite eggs were sunny side up, eggs with a happy face, during those weeks I ate only scrambled or sometimes very soft-boiled eggs.

I didn’t mind, because this meant that many more cartons of
cascarones
for Easter.

As the forty days of Lent marched on, towers of egg cartons grew on top of the refrigerator. Seven days before Easter, I counted fifteen cartons.

“We’ve won! We’ve won!”
I yelled, jumping up and down.

But then Berta walked in. “
Fifteen?
That’s
nothing
. We’ve got seventeen,” she said, baring her big fat teeth.

“Liar!”
No one could possibly be eating more eggs than we were.

I rushed across the street to her house and counted and then recounted the cartons on top of her refrigerator.
Seventeen!

“Cheater!”
I said. “Some of those cartons are empty! Or missing some.”

I ran home. “We aren’t eating enough eggs!” I told Papa, who was sitting in the kitchen, tuning his old guitar.

Papa laughed and shook his dark-haired head. “Mi’ja, we have
too many
eggs already. You’ll see, especially when it’s time for you and your little sister to turn them into
cascarones
on Good Friday.”

That evening I secretly poured a whole carton of eggs down the kitchen sink.

On Good Friday, Papa called me and Lucy to the porch. “Mama did her part, collecting all these eggs. Now it’s
your
turn.”

He moved the rocking chair and the plants in coffee cans to one side. Then he handed us a stack of old newspapers and helped us spread them on the cement floor. Lucy and I brought out the egg cartons—twenty! Papa appeared with a big brown paper bag.

As Lucy and I sat on the porch, the stacks of egg cartons towering around us, Papa sat down on an overturned pail. He opened a carton and handed an eggshell to each of us.

He put his eggshell onto his left index finger like a finger puppet. He opened the bag, took out a red crayon, and quickly drew a bird on the egg. With a pink crayon, he drew a flower, and gave it a green stem and two leaves. The yellow crayon produced a butterfly.

Papa spun his pretty egg around on his finger. We clapped as he placed it back inside the carton, its small hole pointing up. He popped another egg on his finger.

He took the black crayon and drew piercing eyes like the Mexican revolutionary hero Zapata, bushy eyebrows, long nose, smiling mouth. Then a pencil-thin mustache. He colored dark brown hair on the sides and back.

“Your
Papa
!” he said, laughing, as he spun the egg and then put it into the carton.

A third egg was colored orange. His fourth was decorated with bright blue stars. The fifth became a pinto bean, spots and all. Then Papa stood up. “Your turn. Start coloring, use your imaginations. I’ll stop by to check on you.”

My first egg broke completely as I tried to draw a purple cat. The second egg was actually going quite well until I tried coloring near the top and the little hole became a huge gaping one. Then I just put a bunch of polka dots and checkmarks all over my eggs. I also drew a face or two, although I could never get the eyes to look like eyes, especially on the egg I did of Berta. But I got her big fat teeth right.

And Lucy was doing
even worse
! If only I had an older sister, one who could be
helpful
.

Lucy drew our cousin Linda dancing at her recent
quinceañera
on her next egg, big white dress, crown, and all. “I can’t wait to turn fifteen and have
my quinceañera,
” she said, spinning it to show me.

“Nice,” I said. “The party was fun, but I don’t care about a
quinceañera
.”

Lucy said, “You’re crazy,” as she added a big pink cake to the egg.

Next I drew the weird panty-hose baby doll Mama had made us using her old pairs of stockings.

After about an hour, Papa popped his head out the screen door. We were only starting on the third carton and fading fast. He laughed. “Keep going, you still have seventeen cartons left to go.”

Ages later he appeared with a cold pitcher of lemonade, a big cheese quesadilla cut into triangles like a pizza, and a chocolate bar. We perked up.

Lucy and I glowed, showing him the cats and birds we’d drawn, the funny faces, and the strange and psychedelic designs. We even showed him the carton of the weak, wounded, and dead: the eggs we’d cracked or broken altogether.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We can still save them. Wait and see.” He brought out his old guitar and serenaded us with his favorite song, “
De Colores,
” as Lucy and I drank lemonade and devoured the quesadilla and chocolate. His brown and white boots kept time.

“De colores, de colores se visten los campos En la primavera. . . .

Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me
gustan a mí.”

Papa rested his guitar on his lap and pointed to the cartons. “Fifteen to go!” My fingers were throbbing from holding the crayons too hard. And to think I had wanted even more eggs.

Papa said, “I have a surprise.” He reached inside the paper bag and took out a pink box with a picture of a yellow chick and a rabbit. The rabbit was coloring a giant Easter egg with a small paintbrush.

We went into the kitchen, where he set eight Styrofoam cups on the table. He poured water into each one, and then a spoonful of white vinegar. He opened the box and took out eight colored tablets. We took turns choosing: I got red, green, purple, and yellow. Papa said, “Drop one tablet into each cup.”

I felt a jolt of joy as the green tablet fizzed and sizzled and filled the cup with a cloud of emerald green. The red tablet dazzled with its deep ruby explosion. The other cups held yellow, blue, pink, orange, purple, and violet. Magic.

Papa helped us carry the cups out to the porch, handed us each a spoon, and then showed us how to color fifteen boxes of eggshells in the blink of an eye.

The next day, he brought out a plastic bag filled with round paper jewels of all colors, called confetti. He filled each egg by feeding the confetti through the little hole on top.

Now, with paper jewels scattered over the porch—and us—Papa said, “You can each take one of the eggs and fill it with anything you want, so long as it won’t hurt anyone.”

As he began to cut circles from a thick roll of yellow crepe paper, I picked up the egg with Berta’s face and big teeth on it. The day before, Berta had shouted, “We’re still the winners! Twenty-one cartons!”

Lucy and I ran off to fill our special eggs with something secret. I sneaked into the kitchen, opened the cabinet under the sink, and filled my egg with flour. Back on the porch, Lucy grinned and hid hers behind her back.

There were more than a hundred yellow circles of crepe paper as big as half-dollars scattered around Papa. As Lucy and I coaxed each other to reveal what we had put in our secret eggs, Papa went inside and returned with a big bowl of thick white goo. “This is Mexican paste, flour and water. Now we’ll paste the crowns on the eggs.”

He took one of my emerald eggs and dipped a finger into the goo. He rubbed it around the little hole, took one of the yellow paper circles, and put it over the top of the hole. Then he pressed the edges of the paper circle onto the egg.

He held up the green egg with its bright yellow crown. He shook it, making the confetti rattle inside. “Now you do it.”

Lucy and I sat there for hours, until the sun finally set. By then we were not only streaked and colored from the previous day’s crayons and dyes and markers, but also covered with confetti and bits of crepe paper and gobs of goo. But we were experts at transforming empty white eggs into magical
cascarones
.

After I had endured the long Easter Mass wearing a white cardboard hat with an elastic around my chin, and after I had traveled miles and miles in the car holding my Easter basket filled with a chocolate bunny and candy Easter eggs just screaming to be eaten, we finally got to the park near Falcon Dam.

Lucy and I tore out of the car and met up with all our friends and relatives, including Berta, who now claimed to have won with a total of
twenty-five
cartons of eggs. Our fathers barbecued colossal cuts of meat and rings of thick, spicy sausages on silver coals of mesquite. The mothers talked and took walks, admiring the wildflowers, the birds, the big blue sky.

I told Berta, “All your cartons are disqualified since you didn’t even bother to color them.”

She shot back, “You have too many broken ones.” Then Lucy spotted a tiny brown bunny under a bush, so we all started chasing it, trying to claim it as our pet.

After the meal, when we were stuffed with candy, it was time for the
cascarones
.

While we closed our eyes and turned our backs, the grown-ups hid the eggs. I prayed I would find the most of all.

When we heard the whistle, I popped my eyes open, empty Easter basket in hand.

The landscape was completely covered with
cascarones,
as though they had fallen like rain from the sky, sprinkling trees, bushes, and the ground.

After we all scurried around collecting, we ran wild, smashing the
cascarones
on each other’s heads. The fathers and mothers took eggs and smashed them too.

It was a riot of laughter and paper jewels and bits of bright eggshells flying and falling everywhere and on everyone.

Then I snuck up behind Berta and smashed my secret egg
hard
on the very top of her even harder head. Her bewildered face turned completely white with a big
poof
of flour. She growled, bared her teeth, and let me have it with
her
secret egg—filled with thick yellow mustard.

As I kicked the air and swiped at the yellow gobs on my hair, face, and stinging eyes, I could hear Berta’s big fat laugh.

Then—
silence
!

There was Berta with real egg running down her hair and face, mixing with the flour. She was spitting and glaring at someone.

I turned to see Lucy smiling from ear to ear, no longer holding her secret egg.

As we drove home, I turned to Lucy.

“Berta must smell like one big fat rotten egg.”

Mama laughed. “I finally had to pour a bottle of Clorox down the kitchen sink to kill the smell you caused by putting those twelve perfectly good eggs down the drain.”

Papa smiled into the rearview mirror. “And remember, Sofia, your little sister won the competition with Berta for you at the end, and with just
one
egg.”

I beamed at Lucy, feeling so, so lucky to have her on my side.

SKuLLS anD QUaRTeRS

“THIS time I want to go as a curandera,” I told Mama.

“Why don’t you go as a witch instead?”

“But I thought a
curandera was
a witch.”

“A curandera isn’t a bruja, exactly,” she said, “but someone special who heals others by praying to saints and using herbs. Dressing up as a
curandera
for Halloween . . . well, it just isn’t right.” Mama picked up her old broom and started sweeping.

I had been dreaming about going as a
curandera
for Halloween since one had come to our house that summer.

She came because Lucy had gotten hit by a car and the doctors couldn’t seem to cure her. They didn’t find any broken bones, or even cuts, but there was still something wrong with her. She’d scream at leaves blowing on the ground, calling them spiders. She’d burst out crying and say the strangest things, like the time she said she’d swallowed the straight pins she’d seen in a box, when she hadn’t at all.

Mama summoned her circle of
comadres
. They gathered in the living room, prayed a rosary, and then, while eating
pan dulce
and drinking cup after cup of hot coffee, they decided that Lucy was suffering from
“susto,”
shock, something no ordinary doctor could cure. Only a good
curandera
could do that!

Then each
comadre
reviewed her solar system of friends and family to find the best
curandera
in their universe.

That’s when I heard the name Belia. Not only had Belia done the usual stuff—like curing cases of evil eye with the secret power of a chicken egg, or curing earaches by inserting and then igniting paper cones inside throbbing ears—but she had brought a dead baby back to life just by blowing into it. She had given a poor woman who couldn’t have children so many teas to drink and so many saints to bury that the woman wound up with three babies, and all of them with bright orange hair.

That day I asked Mama, “What’s a
curandera,
exactly?”

She thought for a moment. “She’s like a good witch, someone with a
don,
a gift for healing others through her magic powers.”

“Will she be coming on a broom with a black cat?” I asked. But the
comadres
called Mama back into the living room before I found out.

The witch Belia just walked in through the front door. The biggest surprise was that Belia turned out to be Berta’s mom. But she did look different, all dressed in black, and serious. I remembered Clara’s story where she said that certain brujas can turn themselves into wild animals, like mountain lions and eagles.
So the witch Belia
turns herself into Berta’s mom,
I thought.

I hid behind a door and watched as Belia took a white sheet and draped it over Lucy, covering her from head to toe on her bed. Lucy looked like a dead body.

Belia grabbed the old broom, hairballs and all, and started sweeping Lucy, up and down, up and down, the full length of her body. And as she did, she called out: “Lucy! Lucy! Where are you? Where are you?”

Lucy had been told to respond: “I’m here! I’m here!” This back-and-forth went on and on for what seemed like hours. And then Belia put the broom down, uncovered my sister, and left.

I jumped from behind the door and grabbed the broom. Laughing, I told Lucy, “Do the same thing again, but this time with me.”

Lucy giggled and covered herself with the white sheet.

I started sweeping her up and down, calling and asking where she was. “I’m here!” she said.

We were having great fun until Mama walked in with the witch right behind her. “Belia forgot her purse,” Mama said, shaking her head.

I froze, broom in midair. Belia would surely put a hex on me now. But she started laughing and said, “Sofia is going to grow up to be a good
curandera
!”

Lucy did get well in a couple of days. And I took all the credit.

That Halloween I agreed to go as a regular bruja. I helped make a big witch’s hat from a cardboard box, slipped into one of Mama’s old black dresses, and allowed her to paint a big black wart at the end of my nose. Poor Lucy had to stay home with the flu.

I loved Halloween even more than Christmas, because it allowed me to be something new. The year before, I’d gone as a big walking tequila worm. Mama had created this crazy costume using yards and yards of plastic she’d borrowed from Tía Petra, my godmother. I crinkled and sweated with every step. The year before that I went as a bean taco. Mama made that even crazier costume from a brown jumper and beige blanket she’d bought for seventyfive cents at Johnson’s
Ropa Usada,
the biggest secondhand clothing store
anywhere.

Mama was always inventing funny things, like her panty-hose baby. But Halloween, like the full moon, brought out the wackiest in her. Poor Lucy had to go as a rainbow
raspa
the year before, sporting a hairy wig that Mama dyed every color in creation. Lucy could hardly walk, all taped up in a giant cardboard cone.

What I liked best about Halloween was candy.

The year before, Berta had told me that she’d gone to the other side of town and found Halloween heaven, where she got whole chocolate candy bars and quarters. I didn’t believe her, of course. But then she opened her bag and showed me. It was
amazing
!

I started in the barrio. I got a small skull with my name on it at the yellow house, a cucumber at the pink one, and then a big sugar tortilla at the green one.

At the next house, a white-haired viejita suddenly popped out and started drenching me with water, saying, “I hate ghosts, devils, and witches visiting my house! A bucket of holy water should take care of you!”

I ran to the sidewalk where Mama was waiting for me. Something flew over my head. I looked down and found a card with an image of the Guardian Angel attached to an old black boot. Mama picked up the boot, slipped the card off, and dropped it into my bag. She left the crazy viejita’s boot by her door.

After that it was more cucumbers, carrots, sugar tortillas, pennies, peanuts, popcorn balls, and even a brown egg from a woman with her very own chicken coop, which Mama volunteered to carry. There were flowers, too—fresh, paper, and plastic. One woman asked if I wanted a bean taco.

I did get a couple of lollipops, even one with a tequila worm inside, as well as a few pieces of hard candy, but my Halloween bag was only getting heavier and heavier with vegetables. And I hated vegetables—
all
of them, but
especially
cucumbers.

I stopped. “Mama, I want to go home. Now.”

“Why? Why do you look so sad?”

I hesitated. “Well . . . I was hoping to get chocolate bars and quarters. Last year Berta got chocolate candy bars and quarters on the other side of town.”

The next thing I knew I was in the car. When we crossed the railroad tracks and came to a stop sign, I looked out and saw princesses, pirates, and penguins in the most amazing store-bought costumes. They were carrying big orange plastic pumpkins for their treats.

And when I came to the first house, a white brick mansion, I pushed a lit-up button and heard bells. The enormous door with the gold handle swung open, and a woman in pointy high heels came out carrying a huge bowl full of Hershey bars and silver-wrapped chocolate Kisses. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I felt the incredible warmth of the big fireplace inside.

I stood staring, forgetting to say “Trick or treat.” The woman smiled and dropped a chocolate bar into my paper bag, then a quarter, and then a whole handful of Kisses.

And it was the same at the other five mansions we visited.

When we got home, I put my treats from the other side of town into a second bag, leaving the sugar tortillas and carrots and cucumbers in the first one. And when Lucy asked for some candy, I showed her the first bag.

The next day, Mama told me to come with her to Doña Virginia’s. I saw that her house was the same one that had given me the sugar skull with my name on it. We went inside and found Don Chuy, her husband, who took us to a tiny back room. There we found Doña Virginia under a pyramid of covers, her eyes closed, and hardly breathing.

Mama opened her purse and took out her plastic bottle of holy water. She poured some holy water on her fingers and then made the sign of the cross on Doña Virginia’s pale forehead.

Don Chuy quietly asked us to come to the kitchen for tea, which he made by boiling leaves from his orange tree. He brought a plate of white skulls to the table.

“These are Virginia’s sugar skulls,” he said sadly. “She got up really early yesterday morning to make a big batch of them. She wanted to make sure she had enough for all the barrio kids.

“I insisted she go back to bed, that she was too sick. I said I’d go to the store and buy a bag of candy, of chocolate, even. But no, she wanted to give the kids something connected to the Day of the Dead.

“October thirty-first is so hard for both of us . . . her, especially. Our son Luis would’ve been Sofia’s age by now.

“Sofia, do you know that the souls of children get divine permission to come visit their families on October thirtyfirst? The adults come on November first. And then they all depart again on November second for another year.”

I shook my head.

Don Chuy touched my head and told us how Doña Virginia had dragged herself around the kitchen, making
pan de polvo
and hot Mexican chocolate for Luis and a pot of
pozole
for her parents. Don Chuy took us to their tiny living room and showed us a makeshift altar in the corner, with two flickering votive candles, orange marigolds in a dime-store vase, and small statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe and other saints.

Don Chuy pointed to some black-and-white photos. “This is my son Luis. Those are Virginia’s parents.” He lifted the lid off a ceramic bowl. I smelled the chilies and pork in the
pozole
Doña Virginia had cooked for her parents. There was a cup of hot chocolate and a plate full of sparkling
pan de polvo
cookies for Luis.
His
favorite treat.

I also noticed a red wooden top, a small stuffed bear, a bottle of tequila, and a cigar, as well as a glass of water, a cross made from lime peel, and a salt shaker on the altar.

Walking home, I asked Mama about the altar and the things I had seen there. She said that Doña Virginia’s son Luis and her parents were coming to visit for just one day. The lime cross was to direct them home, the salt to purify them, and the water for them to drink along their way. And once they got home, they would feast on their favorite foods and drinks.

When we got home, I found Papa at the kitchen table reading
Don Quixote.
Lucy was fast asleep.

“Ah, mi’ja, show me your Halloween candy,” he said, smiling. I went and got the bags from under my bed.

“Why do you have two bags?”

“One has the stuff I got around here; the other has the candy bars and quarters from the other side of town.”

The next thing I knew I was back in the car, but this time with Papa. “I’m taking you to the
cemetery
to show you something magical about
this side
.”

The cemetery was strangely aglow with lit candles and sprinkled with orange marigolds. I felt fear, not magic.

“Papa, I don’t want to get out of the car.”

“Look,” he said.

In the cemetery, people were talking, dancing, and playing guitars and singing to the tombs and eating from plates piled high with tamales and other foods. Had some of these people come out of their graves? Maybe Doña Virginia’s son Luis and her parents were now over at her house visiting. I thought about the sugar skull she’d made for me—the one with my name on it.

Papa smiled at me and started the car.

“I wish we lived on the other side of town,” I said, looking out the window at the darkness.

“Why, mi’ja?”

“Because they live in nice houses, and they’re warm.”

“Ah, but there’s warmth on this side too.”

“But . . . it’s really cold at home, and most of the houses around us are falling apart.”

“Yes, but we have our music, our foods, our traditions. And the warm hearts of our families. Remember how the
comadres
all got together and found a way to cure Lucy, and with just an old broom? And it was something those rich doctors couldn’t do.”

Sometimes I thought Papa was from another world, especially when he talked like this.

“Don’t worry, mi’ja,” he said as he stopped the car in front of the house. “You’ll see what I’m talking about as you get older.”

I walked into our cold house, nodding and shivering.