The moon is a white corn tortilla, the night a sizzling comal, and the stars are parmesan cheese because God loves quesadillas with his nightly cafecito
When our tía wasn’t pat-pat-patting masa to make sopes, or when she wasn’t zapateando, her heels ta-tapping and za-zazzing! on the kitchen floor (a luxury of living on the ground floor, no one to complain other than maybe mole people), or when she wasn’t at church praying for Doña This’s health or for Doña That’s daughter to come to her senses and leave that bueno para nada, desgraciado, cholo of a boyfriend of hers—when she wasn’t doing any of that, our tía was at our house, watching the latest episode of Teresa with us, helping our mom cook pozole or tamales or enchiladas, threading conspiracy theories into our heads. And we loved it. She believed in God as much as she believed in the Illuminati. And don’t get her wrong, she could dance to “Single Ladies” and “Beautiful Liar” any day, but that didn’t mean Beyoncé wasn’t a lizard person.
At least we liked to think she believed it all. Our cousins certainly believed she did. They would glare at Ruby and me when we’d ask our tía for more of God’s favorite dishes. He preferred tamales de fresa over savory tamales. Though if He had to choose, He preferred pork over chicken. Or more about the Taco Bell incident on 13th Street, the one where a man dove into a dumpster and was never seen again. Or we’d ask our tía to teach us Spanish slang in case we ever visited México. Like what was the Spanish version of okay? Would our okays and our yeahs expose our tongues as American? And did the kids actually call each other fresas like they did in telenovelas? Did they say o sea? Did they say equis when they didn’t like something?
We’d want to ask about her son, our cousin Juven. When was the last time he called? But our other cousins would’ve said our nosiness was invasive, childish even, and our tía might’ve cried the way she did on the phone with our mom, so instead we’d ask more about the Cucuy. What were his favorite dishes? And what about other spirits like La Llorona? What was our tía’s theory? Why was La Llorona actually out on the river with her children that night? She was a mother too, after all, but our cousins would shut it all down if they were around. They would say La Llorona was made up, just like all else our tía said. La Llorona was a lie used to keep children from venturing out into Mexican streets at night, and La Llorona was a lie—they would then tell our tía—that she should have left behind when she crossed the border.
But our cousins were older, and we didn’t get along much anyway. When we wanted to stay in to watch the latest giant shark versus giant octopus movie, they wanted to go barhopping. Whereas Ruby and I got Bs in our Spanish classes, our cousins were lucky to get Cs. It meant our tía would turn to us when our cousins said complex words in English. And even though we only knew close-enough Spanish translations, our cousins would seem mad at us. At parties, on Christmas, New Year’s, birthdays, our cousins would be playing beer pong, and we’d be with our tía, wanting to hear more, wanting to hear her laugh. Her laugh sprung off walls, glass candles, the bottom of empty coffee mugs.
If only they were more like us, our tía would say. Pero no. They won’t drink teas when their panzas are hurting. They don’t like Chamoy or Tapatío or at least sal y limón on their fruits and veggies because it’s too spicy, or because it’s too weird, or because the elote man looked dirty. They’d rather have Taco Bell than go to a taco truck. Can you believe that? They’d rather watch Grey’s Anatomy and SNL than Chavo del Ocho, or La Hora Pico, or Teresa. They are losing their Spanish. They pretend not to understand. When asked where they are from, they say here, and yes, they were born here, but they grip México between their molars and grind it down as much as they can. Our tía didn’t understand where she had gone wrong, she’d tell our mom. And then in private, we’d overhear her say, but I’d forgive it all if Juven came back home. If he called more. If he texted me to ask if there is leftover birria, or leftover frijoles, or leftover jaiba. And yes, yes, there always is.
Juven was our eldest cousin. Our theory was that he was the first to lose his Spanish. The first to tear it out the back of his throat and pummel it into the ground with the heel of his Converse shoes. The first one to leave. The first one to stop watching telenovelas. The first one to go salsa red at our tía’s broken English. Because it was broken, our tía said. Her spoken English was like glass puncturing her gums, but she understood more than our cousins thought she did. She understood when they were embarrassed of her for pronouncing words wrong. She knew it was thank you, but her mouth refused to hold onto the h.
She really was trying, but the English language was the conspiracy that haunted her the most. When the police called that one night, she theorized that there may have been a way to save Juven if she had only been able to respond to the police officer. Perhaps, had she been able to ask where her son was, the one bullet in his rib cage, the three in chest, the one in his throat, the two in his skull may have crawled out, and his blood snuck back into him.
It was no conspiracy theory that our cousin was a cholo. A lot of kids in the neighborhood eventually shadowed their way into the local gangs. You could see it in their brown eyes—like bullet wounds, the blood dried out. Our tía didn’t want to believe it. If Juven had given up his Spanish, it meant he had given up on this darkness that too many Latino boys in the neighborhood inherited. If Juven refused to drink horchata and agua de Jamaica, then he was too whitewashed for that cholo chingadera, but we all could see it. The two inked tears below his left eye, the baggy pants, his shaved head. It was just his style, our tía would say. And if he was in a gang, it was because he had been blindsided. A worm had tunneled into his ear and settled in the pit of his stomach, but it could be lured out. It’s why our tía was always baking. When we’d visit her, there would always be cookies or brownies or flan or conchas de fresa in the oven.
Salt circles were a conspiracy. Garlic was a conspiracy. Sweets were the real answer, our tía would say. Sugar on the tongue, sugar in the belly, sugar to draw light into the home. Into the body. Our cousin’s worm was a stubborn one. It had thorned itself into his intestines, but our tía was hopeful.
Even on the day of the funeral, our tía had faith that God was in her oven. She made the biggest tres leches cakes we had ever seen. Ten layers! Two whole cakes! One for Juven’s spirit. The other for him when this nightmare ended and our tía woke up and our cousin woke up. Not inside a coffin, but in his bedroom, in a different part of the city, out in Elkhorn, in a five-bedroom home that would keep them warm all winter, so warm that they could sleep without blankets, and he’d probably lose all his Spanish surrounded by all those white people out there in the west part of town, but that would be okay because our tía would be fluent in English, and he’d still be alive, and they’d all be drinking wine and eating cheesecake right now, watching reruns of the Gilmore Girls.
Or at least that is what we thought our tía was thinking at his funeral. But what did we know—we were losing our Spanish too.
Moisés R. Delgado (@MoisesTheHuman) is a Latinx writer from the Midwest. His prose appears in Gulf Coast, SmokeLong Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. Moisés’ favorite home remedy is eating anything sweet.