These are the basic ingredients for writing the Tamale Story: a kitchen table, female bonding, someone with acrylic nails and/or a baby. Add indigenous maize metaphors, forced sounding Spanglish, the one prima that went to college (only one!), and the goody-goody prima. Mix in the crazy one, the Catholic one, the uptight one, and the raunchy aunt/ grandma. And whatever you do, don’t forget the cultural cluelessness that is emphasized (or cured!) by spending time with las mujeres. It usually goes like that, but not always.
My female cousins and I have only done the tamales twice, in 2008 and last year in 2009. I don’t remember what memory belongs to what time, but I do remember the story.
Maybe it was an uneventful Southern California winter day, 70 degrees, cloudless and sunny, but emotions can change climate. The day we made tamales, we had theatrical Santa Ana Winds, a mauve and cyan sky and the tinkling sound of metal wind chimes. Some ash from a nearby wildfire may have dusted our windows. I remember it was twilight and Grandma was kneading the masa (her hands were still strong back then), and my mom had just finished pouring herself a glass of wine. She was laughing at my Grandma’s joke about beating the masa like a man's will, “until your hands are soft.”
My mom stopped laughing long enough to ask me to make sure her overly-affectionate bulldog, Roomba, was properly locked up with plenty of water. Outside, the wind knocked over a table and scared the primas walking up the steps to our house. The wine bottles in their bags clinked and they announced their arrival with a sing-songy “knock, knock!”
“No one’s home,” I said.
“Whatever, Veva,” they said and playfully rolled their eyes. They added dramatic emphasis to my family nickname as if they were saying “duh”: Ve-vuh. I eventually let them in. They gave me a quick squeeze then rushed into the kitchen to embrace our Grandma.
We immediately set up our stations around the kitchen table. Going clockwise in order of alpha-tamale makingness, Desi was first, followed by her sister Jackie. Marisa would be next, and then Mirna and me. If my gourmet sister wasn't living in Texas, she would be right next to Desi. Desi and Jackie had the most experience and made full, thick, and cheesy tamales. Marisa spread perfectly shaped balls of masa that would then become perfectly shaped corn husked rectangles tied off with a perfect corn husk bow. Mirna told funny stories and kept our wine glasses full with something expensive and well selected, while I was instructed to "just grate the cheese."
“I can make a little one,” I said.
“No, Veva,” Mirna said. “You can’t”
While the tamales cooked in that giant olla, my mom, Grandma, and our Tia Fela from Texas told stories about picking cotton, infidelity, and death. My favorite were the stories about the unstable family members from Texas: the one that had OCD about sweeping his dirt floor, the one that had conversations with his urine, and the one they forced to wear mittens so he wouldn't pick and scratch at his face. Grandma and Tia Fela disagreed about the details because Grandma remembered the day she was born so, of course, she remembered the color of the knitted yarn and the shape of scratches on primos face. But Tia was more of a memoirist and told only the emotional truth. She pointed to her temple and said "el estava malito."
When the winds died down and the tamales were done, me and my cousins and a couple of secretly invited guests would warm ourselves by the birria hole turned bonfire to eat our misshapen tamales. The ones on the bottom had the thickest jalapeno slivers and the stringiest cheese. Those were the ones made before the fifth bottle of wine was uncorked.
We primas would then have our own girl talk version of family secrets and skeletons.
“Did you hear Cousin J’s wife got a nose job?”
“No, it wasn’t a nose job, it was a tummy tuck.”
“No, that was his daughter. And it wasn’t a tummy tuck, it was the lap band. I’m talking about the other wife. The one that divorced her husband then remarried him a year later?”
“Wasn’t she the one with a twin sister?”
“No, she was the one with the nose job.”
Considering the hulking tzompantli in our larger family closet, these skeletons were nothing but salmon bones.
***
The day Ted Kennedy died, it was a sunny day in Santa Ana, but a blizzard in DC. I tried to pick up Grandma for a steak lunch. She had been losing weight but we still didn’t know why. I could not pull her away from the televised service. She was standing with her coat on and purse in hand, but her focus was on the funeral mass. It was dramatic, theatrical weather fitting for the man and the moment. He deserved the storm and the cold. A light chill, or worse, a clear sky, would not have been in harmony with the emotions of that day. "She is so classy," Grandma kept saying, honoring his widow Victoria. "Look at how she shakes everyone’s hand, look at how composed she is." We stayed until we heard the shots fired; it was too dark for the camera to pick up anything but a few flickering lights and muffled cries.
***
It was cancer. My mom and her estranged sister sat in the same pew.
My Tia's knees buckled several times throughout the service and I will never forget the way my mom hugged the casket before it descended.
***
There was wind at the gravesite, a slight gloom, too much sun. It is still fresh in my memory so I can say that is what it was like, but eventually time will change the memory to something else. Like on Valentine's Day, when the diagnosis was four months old, and we thought the Santos still had time to take it away, Grandma and I went to the ocean. She asked me to stay behind and watch her purse and she walked to the waves. Just like our neighborhood mockingbirds and finches, the seagulls and sand pipers were drawn to her and lined up around her. Her hands were wet when she came back. She said she asked the ocean to take it away. We sat in silence for a few minutes and then packed up. At our steak lunch, I could see the peeling had started. Her sunburn lasted until May. I know it was the chemo and solar rays that turned her skin into papel picado, but my guilt over not cutting the beach visit from 30 minutes to 10 remains. It turns the sun into a fierce fireball and my Grandma's skin to tissue paper.
***
This year, instead of making tamales, my mom is on the phone canceling the cable, the credit cards, the subscriptions. "Deceased" is a word that is as lacking in mysticism or hope as the bleating bulldozer dumping dirt over Grandma’s wood coffin. It's one of those words that refers only to the body, not the soul or the full impact of a life. It's one of those words that reminds us we are living inside fleshy machines that require diligent care and lots of water.
It would be a tribute to my Grandmother to have all the primas and tias in the kitchen the next time we make tamales. Considering that her service inspired me to write a “Do's & Don'ts Guide to Funerals” with the lead chapter entitled "This Isn't a BBQ, Please Leave Your Beef at Home," it might take some time. But it will happen. Without proper preservation, even dinosaur bones disintegrate.
When it does happen, and there are wedding rings and babies and rival college sweatshirts, we will encircle the kitchen table, wine glasses uncouthly filled to the top, and talk about the time it snowed in Los Angeles.
Contributor Notes
During the winter holiday season, tamales are plentiful. So are tamale stories. It’s a potent way for writers to explore family history, secret recipes, and cultural identity. In 2008, I orchestrated tamale time with my female relatives with the sole intention of finally writing my own tamale story. Each woman provided a necessary element to the food and narrative and we maintained the tradition for a couple of years before our matriarch fell ill. This past winter I learned that although the recipe stays the same, when the familial ingredients change, so does the story.
Marytza Rubio is a writer from Santa Ana, CA. She was a 2008 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow, the 2010 Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholar in Fiction, and recently completed her first novel in the 2011 Mark Program, a rigorous manuscript finishing program for Emerging Voices alumni. Marytza lives in Los Angeles and can be visited at marytzarubio.com
