They had eaten the blue, star-shaped flowers Estrella drew up from the land.
He felt the tastes of all these things in his mouth, all seasons at once. His heart filled with the remembered joy of finding things that were safe to eat, and his stomach wavered with the memory of his fear and hunger when they had to eat things not knowing if they would make them sick.
He sealed this grief and wonder inside him, locked them behind a heavy door. He did not want them crowding the stone house. There was already so much grief and worry thickening the air.
That night, as the sun drifted down into the garden valley and the blue of the sky deepened, Estrella and her cousins crowded into Dalia’s room. No lights on. Azalea and Gloria lay on the bed, Azalea’s head resting on Gloria’s stomach. Calla settled into a nest of pillows she’d thrown on the floor. Dalia sat on the windowsill, one bare foot dangling off, her eyes on the window like she was waiting for the stars to tell her something.
They had cried themselves out, all of them. Except Dalia, who Fel had seen outside, arms wrapped around herself against the chill. Dalia did not wail or sob. She faced the moon with her back and shoulders straight, her jaw held tight, and Fel wondered if this was a sign that maybe Dalia loved Bay a little harder.
Not more than the rest of them. Not deeper. Just harder. It had taken such sure root in her that when it pulled away it turned her up like the ground.
Estrella lay across a woven rug, her shoulders against the rough wool. A bar of light from the hall fell across her stomach and hips. It caught in the folds of her slip. Through the thin fabric, he could make out a softness in her stomach and thighs that he hadn’t noticed through her dresses and skirts. Her breathing was so slight and shallow he had to stare to find its rhythm. Her eyes took in the ceiling, head tilted like she had never considered it from this angle.
They all shared so many features, the Nomeolvides girls. Maybe Estrella’s hair fluffed out, neither curly nor straight, and Dalia’s fell in coils, but they still looked more like sisters than cousins.
The same with the older women. They shared a similar half-curl to their silver and black hair. One might have six or seven inches on another, and a rounded face instead of a pointed chin, but they all seemed like photographs of one another, younger and older, shorter and taller, fuller and bonier.
The guilt of watching Estrella and her cousins crawled over the backs of Fel’s hands. He passed their door.
The things he had remembered spun inside him, insisting he do something with them.
He did not know how to thank these women for feeding him and giving him a place to sleep and lending him clothes owned by men he had never met.
But he could do this.
No part of this house was his. But he had dried enough dishes and scrubbed enough pans that their kitchen was familiar country. They had sent him out to the garden for squash blossoms and oregano lace enough that his hands could pick leaves from the wooden box planters without him thinking.
He could only remember ever cooking one thing that he would be unashamed to serve these women; the thing he and the one who took care of him ate when they had money to buy food. And he could do it with the least costly things in their kitchen. He could cook for these brokenhearted women who had forgotten to feed themselves.
Fel remembered hands gesturing over a meat counter. Negotiating. The one who had taken care of him talked butchers into giving them the fat trimmed off good cuts of meat for a few pennies or for nothing. They rendered it into manteca, spiced it, and then poured it over stale bread, again bought with pennies.
Now Fel stood in the Nomeolvides kitchen, melting down manteca, dyeing it red with paprika and chili powder. He tore green herbs into pieces, letting them fall into the bright sauce.
For a minute, this was his family and his family’s kitchen. The sage-colored walls and the deep orange of the tablecloth. The copper pots and cast iron pans.
This could be a place he could be unashamed to come through the door holding wild asparagus and dandelion greens.
He sliced day-old bread and spread it over a metal sheet. He brushed it with olive oil and garlic cloves and left it in the oven until the edges browned.
As he swirled the spoon through the wide copper pot, this family and this kitchen felt so much like his that he didn’t worry about the paprika staining the wooden spoon. He stirred in bay and oregano leaves, and they sank into the manteca colorá. The stems gave off a low, bitter smell that made him remember the gold and orange of fall leaves.
He did not know if it was the bite and warmth of paprika in the air, or the noise of spoons against the copper pots, but he did not have to ask the women to come downstairs. They came, and they did not order him out of their kitchen. The grandmothers tied the extra herbs with twine. The mothers took down plates from the cabinets and set them out on the long wooden table.
Then the daughters came, barefoot and with their hair unbrushed, their grandmothers’ handed-down sweaters over the slips they wore to bed.
Gloria put out water and wine. Calla let a cotton napkin flutter to each place setting. Azalea took handfuls of knives and forks from the drawers.
Fel almost told Azalea that this was nothing worth the glint of hammered nickel and copper, that he could not remember eating this with anything other than his hands. But he kept quiet.
Estrella stood in the kitchen doorway, her eyes looking red and soft, her lips parted with a kind of surprise that made her seem like she was reconsidering him. She wrapped the too-big sweater around her, the pale blue of her slip falling to her knees.
She held one hand to her chest like she was keeping her heart from breaking out of her. She looked at his paprika-and herb-stained fingers like this small thing had both wrecked and mended her.
That look, like he had overwhelmed her in a way that both broke her heart and held it inside her, was enough that he wanted to remember everything he had ever been and done. Even if it was marked by the scars crossing his back, he wanted to remember.
He wanted to sift through it all to find the things that would make her look at him like this.
The light of her watching left him, worry covering her face when she saw Dalia. She took Dalia by the shoulders and led her to the table.
Fel spooned the manteca colorá over the bread, softening the edges. He served the Nomeolvides women, grandmothers and mothers and daughters, hoping they would speak, talk to one another about anything, knowing they wouldn’t. He sat down with them, and they ate. The paprika’s spice slid over their tongues, the herbs coming up through the red enough that they still tasted green and alive.
FIFTEEN