Safe in the Black Sand

9

Her kitchen is an ecosystem. As drab as the house looked from outside, the inside swells with color, and with the smell of seafood baking.

Goldenrod walls support tall cupboards standing proud like redwoods. Chiseled log beams tied off at the ends by thick ropes bridge the wood-slat ceiling. Hung across the golden walls are dozens of ceramic and cast iron plates, all painted with exotic flora and fauna. Each plate hangs peacefully on its nail, keeping to its spot on the wall, pleased with the balance of power in the room.

In the center of the kitchen is a wooden table with three chairs, three cups, three spoons, and a hot teakettle—as if she's been expecting us.  

            The old woman, her back curled like a seahorse's tail, points to something on the countertop. Overhead kitchen light shines down on the object—a carving of a casserole dish with a wooden turkey inside. Like the rest of the kitchen, the colors on the dish are warm and vibrant, a careful smear of yellows and reds with a splash of orange on the head. Painted onto the beak is a black line curved up into a smile—the hint of a smile.

            "This is alebrije from San Martín Tilcajete," she tells my father. "You like?"

            "Very much," Dad says. "But my favorite is still the spotted dragon man—the one you found in Oaxaca de Juárez all those years ago." Dad says the name with a good accent. When did he pick up Spanish? "I see the dragon man's not in his usual spot near the sink. Did you trade him for the turkey?" 

            "I will never trade spotted dragon man," Ms. Jakintsu says, half smiling. "I know what he mean to you. He moved to living room, change scenery. Plates move twice every year. Everything need new perspective or our thoughts become lazy. But this one..." She points again to the turkey in the casserole dish. "Vendor who sell me this call it el guajolote sereno. She was insist that I buy. I want to ask why but no could speak her language."

            "Zapotec?" Dad asks, as if the answer is on the tip of his tongue.

            "Yes," Ms. Jakintsu confirms. "From sixty Zapotec language, I speak only two. No was language of this woman. Bad luck! I ask her to sing something. Music no need words. After I buy, she say me to have safe way back to America. You can believe this? She think I am American!"

"You've assimilated!" Dad says, laughing and fake-stamping an invisible passport. "Next stop citizenship!"

"I study for test," the old woman says. "But I never remember what year those men—how you say? Your Starting Fathers? I no remember when they write your Constitution."

            I slip into the conversation, trying to piece this person together. "So you're from Oaxaca then?"

            Her accent could be Spanish, though it doesn't sound like the accents of my Spanish-speaking students at school. 

She shakes her head. "No am from Oaxaca."

            "But you're from Mexico?" I press.

Ms. Jakintsu unties her kerchief then rewraps it tightly around her hair. "Why this worry for where people from?" She shuffles toward the oven then turns to address me again. "My accent is many years of travel, many language, much time and life. I apologize. My English is more and more bad with time. More I grow old, more I forget rules, mix grammars of many language. You know, my first language, this one is impossible to learn. In English you have big vocabulary, many words for one idea, but in my language we use only one word for one idea, like iparsortalderatu, which is mean you should walk north. Crazy to learn grammar like this. Because this reason, government make us learn Spanish in school. To make one people from many peoples. For control."