Anthrophilia

(Fiction) Funeral Pyre

It was because my mother was the only white woman in a church of three hundred Mexican Catholics. And it was because no one was talking to us, even though everyone, except for the dead man and the youngest children could speak English.

It was because we were three non-Catholics at my Mexican grandfathers roman-catholic funeral—everyone speaking some form of Latin—my father taking communion with his siblings while my sister and mother and I sat in our pew—we watching the ritual as outsiders to a sacred act—which was exactly what we were.

It was because there was a line of pickups outside—to form the procession to the cemetery—where my grandfather would be buried. The dead man lay pale and soft-looking in a box at the front of the room, he resembled my father—but smaller—like a child sized version of my father—a dead child sized version.

If some day you find yourself in this situation, and you are fourteen years old with a newly minted drivers permit pulling at you from your pocket—and you start to think about all the Chevy’s sitting out in the parking lot right now that you could take for a little drive—then you should find some way out of that church.

It was because you thought you had felt the tongue of God in your ear.

And later when everyone is mad and they want to know why you left—tell them—it was because you thought you had felt the tongue of God in your ear—speaking wetly in a language only you could understand—and that he had led you—with his whispers—to steal your uncles truck.

If some day you are in the parking lot of a Roman-Catholic church in a small town in Arizona—inhabited mostly by Mexican immigrants and you are looking over the rows of vehicles, looking for one that would be easy to take—then—this is how to steal a truck. Or, more accurately, this is how to steal a blue 1983 Chevy pickup belonging to your least favorite uncle. It has a rusted gash running down the length of the passenger side and the divers door is not locked because vehicles are never locked in small towns—and the keys are still in the ignition—because people in small towns leave their keys in their car ignitions—and the passenger half of the truck is filled with food and beer for the gathering of the funeral goers—and its all too good to walk past—and this is how you might steal a funeral banquet.

The truck started with a few hurried shudders—then it evened out and warmed to the already 110-degree air. I drove cautiously by the idling hearse, out past the center of town, away from the dozen churches and three schools of this 4-thousand person community. Out towards the purple snow topped hills—they looking exotic—like nothing in my hometown could be—and me thinking both—isn’t nice to be alone—and wouldn’t it be better to have some beautiful dark haired boy riding next to me, his feet on the dashboard and his hair in his face, his name would be Enrique—because his name is always Enrique or Sergio, and we would drive until we found a river—and then we would go for a swim together—and we might get caught in the undercurrent—and pulled down together to the river bottom where we would fall asleep.

But I was driving alone—along one of those dry channels that we desert dwellers refer to as rivers—though they have no water—the mountains gradually getting taller in front of me and the reality of my family becoming less tangible. And I had decided not to turn back—I would live as long as I could on the three ice chests of beer and the seven trays of enchiladas. But the truck—my chariot—my magic carpet—screamed in that universal language of dying automobiles—crying black smoke and green fluid—orange flames licked in tiny, and then bigger spires from under the hood. And I grabbed one of the coolers of beer and three of the pans of enchiladas and I sat on the side of the road watching that truck burn and it occurred to me that it was like a funeral pyre—that it was like a Viking ship filled with food and wine and the body of some dead Viking warrior burning on the open sea. Only it wasn’t a boat—it was a Chevy—it was filled with enchiladas and Budweiser and burning to honor my grandfather—the very brave and very dead warrior who was, in this instant, becoming entombed in the desert.

And I pretended this, on the open road. Building a Stonehenge of empty beer bottles around me and eating enchiladas a handful at a time—my stomach swollen from the remnants of my Mexican heritage and a three-month old pregnancy, and I was in the desert—14 years old and lost—wishing there was water in the river—just deep enough to take a swim.

Clifton, Arizona

Clifton Arizona, as you may not know, is the true hometown of Geronimo. The town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico also claims him, but my grandfather, that is my father's father, says that it would have been too cold in October when Geronimo was born for his family to be in TRC (as its called) and they would have been in Clifton instead. Of course the area was Mexico at the time and all of these places had different names. Today Clifton is a small mining town with an aging and dwindling population that is ever aware of the fluctuating price of copper and how that relates to the price of fuel. The biggest social club in town is the group that organizes the funeral banquets.

Joe, my fiancé, and I made a last minute trip to Arizona so that I could say goodbye to my great-grandmother. She is my mother's mother's mother, and a few weeks ago when she turned ninety her pancreas failed. My mother was raised in Duncan, Arizona, a neighboring town of Clifton, and though she and my father were born in the same hospital and both of their fathers worked for the copper mine, my white mother and hispanic father didn't meet in their segregated towns until they were in their twenties.

Friday night we made the three hour drive from Tucson to Clifton with my sister and her two kids to stay the night with my father's parents. In the morning it was our plan to drive to Safford, where the hospital is, to visit my ill great-grandmother. Saturday morning I could hear my grandmother in the kitchen; just as I could when I was a child visiting. I got up and Joe followed me and we sat at my grandmother's kitchen table and she rolled fresh flour tortillas out and put them on a hot flat skillet behind her. I took one of the new and still warm tortillas, tore it in half, and gave part to Joe. He ate it and said, "This is the best thing ever." He likes to use superlatives, but he always means them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakub_hlavaty/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

My grandmother keeps her tortillas in a drawer in her china cabinet and I went for another and tore it in half and shared with Joe and we talked with my grandmother about Chicago and her plans for breakfast. As we ate tortillas Joe told my grandmother of our efforts to learn to speak Spanish, and how his favorite thing in the world is fresh corn tortillas and that I don't make them often enough. My grandmother good-naturedly tried to speak to us in Spanish, and though I followed her better then Joe did, she soon returned to English so we could communicate. My grandfather came in and sat at the table with us and my grandmother finished cooking her tortillas and started chopping poblano chilies and tomatoes with a giant freshly-sharpened knife. "How old is that knife grandma?" I asked, already knowing the answer, but I wanted Joe to hear the story. My grandfather answered, "That knife is from the Mexican Revolution. A man gave that knife to my father as a trophy and it had a real nice scabbard on it and he kept it mounted on the wall. One day I came home and your grandma was using it as a butcher knife." My grandmother smiled, "It works really well."

For breakfast my grandmother made green chili meat. It's a kind of thick stew, usually made from beef, poblano chilies, jalapeños and tomatoes, though the beef is sometimes replaced with goat. I asked if I could help her cook, and my grandma handed me a block of cheese to grate. Apart from my nephew rolling out the last ball of tortilla dough, my grandmother was the only person cooking. As the green chili meat finished, my grandmother made some corn tortillas, which she pressed between two ceramic plates. Joe immediately felt badly, "I didn't mean for you to make these just for me," he said, "but they are awesome."

Green chili meat (and much Arizonan cuisine, actually) is eaten by tearing off a small piece of tortilla and then using that, and your fingers, to pinch up some of the meat and juices. The difficultly for beginners is trying to keep the juices from running down to their elbows. This is a new method of eating for Joe, and he was the only person at the table that morning to use a fork.

After breakfast I helped my grandmother clean up and then we sat in their living room and I asked my grandfather about his hunting trophies. There are three huge heads on his walls; all of them have been there since I was a child. One is antelope, one is elk, and one is a deer. My grandfather remembered the weight of each animal, and how many dozens of tamales and bags of jerky each animal made. I told him about how hard it is to get good menudo (a tripe and hominy soup) in Chicago, and he explained the long process of cooking and cleaning the tripe, he said, "Some people don't like tripe, don't like the idea of it because its the cows stomach, but my question is, what part of a cow is not a cow?"

This meal is the result of hundreds of years of cross cultural interactions between the Old World, with its flour and cows, and the New World, with its chilies and tomatoes, between the Spanish, who my grandmother traces her heritage to, and the Apache warriors that my grandfather resembles. Its about agrarian societies becoming industrial towns and the tradition of hunting and eating what you kill. It is also a story about what the Southwest looks like to someone from the Midwest and how small towns all over are dying with the older generation. For me, this meal was important for sharing family history with my fiancé, and though my sister's kids weren't interested this history was told for them too. This meal is a series of stories, some of them small and some the size of a revolution, but they become meaningful to my family when they are put together, simmered a little, and wrapped up in a fresh tortilla.