The Tequila Worm by Viola Canales Read Free Book Online Page B

learn from
that
. Won’t you, Sofia?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “But remember, Sofia, a
comadre
is always free to tell you what she thinks, like it or not.”
    “Okay.”
    “Yes, I think this will be
very
good training for both of you. So, Berta, will you do it?”
    “Well, I guess so . . . yes.”
    “And you, Sofia, will you be Berta’s first
comadre,
too?”
    “Yes, of course, but I don’t know what her dream is. . . .”
    Tía Petra laughed. “Oh, Bertita will have
too
many along
her
way. Just wait and see. That’s the secret behind those great teeth of hers. She’ll always be biting off more than she can chew.”
    I laughed, and eventually Berta did too. We kissed Tía Petra goodnight.
    When we joined Papa, Mama, and Lucy in Papa’s old Ford, Berta said, “Sofia, I’m . . . so, so . . . excited for you, really.” They stared at Berta.
    “Eh . . . thanks, Berta,” I said, smiling. “Yes, thank you
very much
.”
    As we drove home that night and I stared out at the passing darkness, I felt I had never loved Berta more.

CLeaninG BeanS

    EVERY Tuesday Papa would come home from the cabinet shop where he worked, change into his jeans and boots, and then take the yellow metal container from the kitchen cabinet. He would sit at the kitchen table, take the lid off, and start cleaning his pound of pinto beans. I would always join him.
    It was a Tuesday, and I now only had a couple of weeks to decide whether to accept the scholarship. As I sat down beside Papa and watched him clean his pinto beans, I wondered what it would take to finally convince my family to let me go. Tía Petra’s plastic performance and Berta’s support had surely helped my cause, but I still hadn’t gotten the blessing from my parents.
    Papa dipped his left hand into the metal container and fished out a fistful of beans. He raised his hand to his chest and opened it. Using his index finger, he began looking through his little mountain, a gentle giant. As he pulled out pebbles, clumps of dirt, and broken beans, he put them in the upturned lid. He also kept blowing on them as he poured them from hand to hand like jewels. This helped clean off the dirt.
    After turning and moving all the beans around, making sure they were now clean and none were broken— broken ones only got stuck to the side of the pot and burned—he slowly spilled his handful into a big brown clay bowl.
    That was how he cleaned his pound of pinto beans every Tuesday—handful by handful. He said that holding and cleaning them relaxed him, made every single one meaningful—sacred, even.
    I loved sitting and cleaning beans with Papa. He told me secrets about beans, how they were better than meat, how they were like us, mestizo—the pale part Spanish and the brown spots pure Indian.
    He’d often pick up a single one, squint at it, and ask me whether I saw the image of Pancho Villa in the scattering of the Indian spots, or Zapata, or the Mexican comic Cantinflas, or my Tía Petra or this or that. I always looked but never saw anything. Still, I said that I did. It was better than watching stars, he’d say. Watching beans was a lot like watching a Mexican channel on TV—
only
Mexican things came out.
    But usually we cleaned in total silence. And that was when I felt especially close to Papa. He was the only person I knew who made me feel I could be perfectly quiet and still enjoy something really warm and special with someone.
    After the bowl was half full, Papa filled it with fresh water and started moving the beans around and around with his long, golden-brown fingers. He liked the sound, like the waves at Padre Island.
    When the water turned gray, Papa drained it all off and washed the beans again, until the water stayed completely clear. Then he poured the beans into the big clay pot. The pot was brown, with a red rooster on its belly. This was Papa’s only prized possession, and it was solely used for cooking beans. It was the only pan or pot that had its own space