Chapter 6 #2
Nina’s tortillas were uneven and a little too thick, but they were exactly right. Her hands seemed to know how to do something her brain didn’t. The dough felt familiar, even though she had never done this a day in her life.
It was as if she had muscle memory that had been waiting for her, inherited over years of watching her husband, of standing next to him in their kitchen as he pressed and flipped and sang along to whatever was playing on the radio.
Senora Morales watched Nina. “Elena was right. You do have good hands.”
“Elena said that?”
“Oh, Elena said many things. Most of them are correct.”
They cooked tortillas on the comal, watching them puff and blister, the smell of toasted corn filling the kitchen.
Nina thought about all those mornings when David made tortillas for breakfast, standing at the stove in his boxers and a T-shirt, the one with holes in it, flipping them with his fingers because he said a spatula was for people who didn’t trust their own hands.
She ate one warm tortilla off the comal with nothing on it. It tasted like earth and corn and the ghost of those hundreds of Saturday mornings. She closed her eyes and let herself travel to that place where everything had been right in the world.
The mole took two whole hours.
Senora Morales guided them confidently, as someone who had done this countless times.
Toast the chilies, soak the chilies, roast the tomatoes and tomatillos, fry the tortilla pieces until they are dark and crispy, toast the spices, cumin, clove, black pepper, oregano, roast the garlic, blend everything in stages because mole was not a recipe that you could rush and throw everything together.
According to Senora Morales, it was an insult to the ingredients.
The chocolate went in last: two tablets of Mexican chocolate, dark, grainy, and sweet, dropped into the pot, where they melted slowly into the sauce, turning it from a dark red to a deep brown that was almost black.
The kitchen smelled like everything that was good in the world, the kind of smell that made you want to sit down and not get up again for a very long time.
Nina stirred the mole. Senora Morales had given her a spoon and then stepped back.
Claire and Harper stepped back, too, so that Nina stood at the stove alone.
She stirred the sauce that David’s grandmother had made in a kitchen in Oaxaca sixty years ago, that David’s mother had made in a kitchen in Charleston for thirty years, that David had made in their kitchen for years, and that Nina was now making in a stranger’s kitchen in Charleston, her hands shaking, her heart broken, with her two best friends who loved her enough to just stand in the corner and let her do this.
The smell of chocolate and chilies rose up and permeated the room. Nina stirred, and the tears came. She didn’t want to stop stirring.
They ran down her face and dropped into the pot, and she thought David would have said it was fine, that the best mole has a little salt, that food with tears was made with love.
Nobody said anything.
Claire put her hand over her mouth, and Harper just stood there still with her arms crossed. Senora Morales watched from the doorway.
She had seen grief walk through this kitchen before. That much was obvious. And she knew the best thing to do was just let it happen.
Nina stirred.
The mole thickened and darkened.
It looked like something David would have been really proud of. She could hear his voice in her head.
Stir slower, mi amor. You’re rushing it. Let it talk to you.
So she stirred more slowly. She let it talk. After a while, she stopped crying.
Not because her grief was gone, but because it had somewhere to go now. It was in the mole.
It was in the chilies and chocolate and hours of slow, patient work.
Standing at that stove, she understood that this was what David had meant when he said cooking was a conversation.
This conversation with food and the people who made it for you, and with yourself, was so important, and it didn’t end when you finished cooking.
It just got quieter.
Senora Morales walked to the stove. She took a small spoon and dipped it in the mole, tasting it. She closed her eyes and then opened them.
“Your husband taught you something after all,” she said, a smile on her face.
“Well, no, he never taught me this recipe.”
“Nobody taught you how to cook with your heart. The recipe is just the directions, the words. The heart is what makes it food.” She handed Nina a stack of index cards.
“Write everything down, all of this, the way I showed you and the way you felt. And then you can give it to your daughter one day, and she can give it to hers.”
Nina took the cards. Her hands were steady as a rock now.
They sat together and ate at Senora Morales’s kitchen table. It was crowded, but it was warm, and it felt like they were all inside their own little hug.
They ate mole over rice. They ate beautiful but imperfect tortillas. The salsa de pasilla that Harper had redeemed herself on after the angry chili incident was also a winner.
Senora Morales brought out cold bottles of Jarritos and a plate of sliced mango with chili powder. They sat, ate, and talked for what seemed like hours.
Senora Morales told them about her own husband, who had passed away eleven years ago. He loved to fish but hated to cook, and once tried to make mole from a jar, only to be nearly banished from the house.
She told them about coming to Charleston from Oaxaca in 1989 with only $200 and a suitcase full of dried chilies because she was afraid she could not get them in America.
She told them that cooking for other people was how she stayed close to the people she had lost, because food was memory made physical. As long as someone was eating your recipe, then the person who taught it to you was still alive in some way.
Nina listened and ate. She felt full in a way that had nothing to do with food.
She was full in her chest and her hands, and in that part of herself that had been so hollow for a year and a half, that was slowly and carefully starting to come alive again.
Claire’s phone rang during dessert. She glanced over at it, and Nina saw her face change a bit. It wasn’t dramatic, but just a small tightening around her mouth.
“Sorry,” Claire said, standing up. “I need to take this.” She stepped out onto Senora Morales’s porch and closed the door behind her.
Through the window, Nina could see Claire pacing back and forth. She had one hand on the back of her neck, which was a tell that Claire was stressed.
She was speaking in a low, careful voice, the one she usually used with her husband when things were tense. And over the past couple of months, that seemed to be happening more and more often.
Harper had noticed it too. She watched Claire through the window for a moment, but then turned back to the table.
“Greg?” Nina asked quietly.
“Yeah, I’m thinking Greg,” Harper confirmed.
Senora Morales looked at the porch, then at Harper, and then at Nina. She said nothing. She was the kind of woman who understood that some conversations were not hers to join.
Claire returned about five minutes later and sat down. She picked up her drink. She smiled the smile Nina knew too well, the one that said, don’t worry, I’m fine, please don’t ask.
So Nina did not ask, and neither did Harper. Of course, they would later, in the car or on the phone or maybe on Claire’s porch with some wine, which was where the three of them did their real talking.
But not here.
Not in Senora Morales’s kitchen, where the mole was still warm on their plates.
“Everything okay?” Nina asked, which was not really the same thing as asking what was wrong.
Claire knew the difference.
“Greg just wanted to know when I’d be home.” She took another sip of her drink. “He said I’m never home anymore.”
The table went quiet.
“And what did you say?” Harper asked.
“I said I’d be home when I was done.” She looked at her hands. They were still dusty with masa flour, and dried chili sat under her fingernails. “He didn’t ask how I was doing. He doesn’t really care about that kind of thing. He just wanted to know when I would be back. Probably to cook dinner.”
Harper set down her fork. Her jaw did that thing it did when it was holding back something sharp. Nina could see the words lining up behind Harper’s teeth.
He doesn’t deserve you.
He hasn’t noticed you in twenty years.
Why are you still counting to three before you say what you really think?