Umami (20 page)

Knowledge pisses you off.

*

A list off the top of my head of the things Noelia would buy in the supermarket without stopping to think:

Flip-flops, especially the kind with patterns on them. I must have given away a thousand pairs, but every time I clean out a closet, there's another one.

Tin foil.

Canned tuna. This was an old tic of hers: before she met me, since she practically lived at the hospital, she ate the same salad, over and over, which she'd picked up when she did her junior residence. It consisted of one can of tuna, another of corn, and a few tablespoons of Hellmann's mayonnaise. (Noelia made a point of stressing the mayonnaise brand whenever she passed on the recipe to some malnourished resident: in her day, only the nurses used McCormick; residents ate Hellmann's.)

Sugar-free gum (at the cash register). She only ever chewed gum when she drove alone, because she was paranoid she'd fall asleep at the wheel.

Paracetamol.

PAM
: 1-cal cooking spray.

*

Noelia once said to me, ‘Being only a daughter is so Umami No.'

*

PAM
cooking spray – that piteous substitute for oil which I refuse point-blank to use – came into our lives kicking and screaming. Lulú brought it for us. Lulú is Noelia's cousin from Boston, and was the undisputed chief promoter of my wife's esoteric side. Every time she came to stay she'd bring a new tarot-card game, or a year's worth of Chinese horoscopes, or a book on her latest diet. The pair of them were hooked on Weight Watchers for about a hundred years, during which time Lulú sent boxes and boxes of points-based, readymade food without ever giving a thought to how deeply it offended me.

In exchange, whenever Noelia went to the States for a conference, she would take Lulú a box full of handmade tortillas and Mexican bits, because her cousin was one of those émigrés who spends their life idolizing their homeland. When it got easier to get hold of Mexican products over there, Lulú became more and more picky. She only wanted Noelia to bring her things from the market; nothing prepackaged. One time they stopped us at customs and we had to hand over all seven kilos of the Oaxaca cheese we'd attempted to sneak through. Try as Noelia might to play up her credentials for the customs officers, nobody would believe her that that stringy, by then ever-so-slightly-tangy cheese was pasteurized.

Lulú lived outside of the country and, to some extent, outside of time. As far as I recall, she was the only one of our friends and family who never stopped making hypothetical comments about our hypothetical children. She never gave up telling us about how gringas were having babies later and later, about fertility clinics, about how she was going to take our kids to see God knows what team over there, because she was a baseball nut. She probably still is. I mean, in all likelihood she's still alive, it's just I haven't seen her since Noelia's funeral. I remember she took care of the flowers.

Lulú didn't have children either, or a partner. In her own words, she didn't even have ‘a dog to whine at her'. The day she turned up with a tub of Cool Whip, she presented it to us with the words, ‘Not even God, who invented the penis, could have come up with something this good and this low in calories.' But that was the only reference to a man I ever heard her make. I know she had several, because she was a fine-looking woman and because, once Lulú had taken herself off to the guest room, Noelia would fill me in, jumping into bed possessed by a kind of gossip hyper-frenzy, which only sleep, generally mine, could snap her out of. It was during one of these sessions that Noelia let on how the idea of the reborn dolls had come from Lulú.

‘What are they?' I asked. ‘It sounds esoteric.'

‘They're dolls that have been reborn,' Noelia explained.

‘Reborn how?'

‘Like, they're not dolls anymore. When they're reborn, they become babies. Sort of to console those people who don't have children, you know the type?'

My job is to take all the dirt off the death trumpets with a toothbrush. It's really hard because the dirt is the same color as the trumpet so you can't tell when to stop. When I think I can't get any more off I put the trumpet in a salad bowl full of warm water and Grandma rubs it with her fingers to make sure. Her hands look like mine when I've spent ages in the lake. Now I have clothes on again and it feels all toasty. When the trumpets are as clean as clean can be, we give them to my mom and she puts them in with the garlic and tomatoes that are sizzling in the pan. Sizzling is what you call the sound of loads and loads of snakes talking at once.

‘What do you paint your hands with?' I ask Grandma.

‘My nails?'

‘Yup.'

‘With varnish.'

‘Would you like Emma to paint your nails?' my mom asks me.

I shake my head from side to side. Of course I don't. I know what varnish is and how much it pongs.

*

We eat at a table on the terrace, which Grandma calls the porch. I'm hungry. Everything smells of oil and garlic. Pina doesn't like garlic because she's dumb. Ana likes garlic as much as I do, especially the burnt bits. My mom takes two pieces from the pan, gives us one each, and we chew on them happily. Pina pulls a face at us like she's disgusted. She says to me, ‘Jeez, Luchi Luchi, who would have known?'

‘Known what?'

‘That you're not a vampire.'

Emma gives us cotton serviettes instead of paper ones and I sit all elegant, like the elegant ladies on the planes who wear neckties and little hats and give out peanuts.

‘I can't be a vampire because I'm a peanut, right?' I ask, and everyone says, ‘Right,' apart from Ana, who rolls her eyes and stays looking at the sky like when she wishes we weren't sisters at all.

Emma serves the pasta from the pan and some wine that her friends on the other coast make. She serves us girls a little bit too, but it tastes gross. Only Pina likes it, but then she says that her mom also likes wine and her chin trembles like she's going to cry, but then she asks Grandma for some Coca-Cola. Ana and I laugh, because we know Grandma hates Coca-Cola. But then Emma explains to Pina something she's never explained to us.

‘Coca-Cola is the sewage of the empire,' she says.

Ew, no wonder my mom never let us touch the stuff.

‘Is Michigan an empire?' I ask, while trying to wrap my spaghetti around my fork like my mom wants us to.

Pina says it is and that the emperor is called Michelin.

‘That's not true,' Ana says. ‘The emperor is called Umami.'

‘And is he a baddie?'

‘A really bad baddie,' Pina says. ‘He eats little girls for breakfast.'

‘Nuh-uh, no he isn't,' interrupts Ana. And then she says to Pina, ‘Don't tell tales to my sister!' And to me she says, ‘Umami is the best emperor in the world; if a little girl goes visit him in his castle, Umami will grant her a wish.'

I want to ask more but Mama and Grandma put us to work in the kitchen. They give me a special spoon, like the teeny-weeny baby of the one you use to scoop ice cream, and I have to use it to make melon balls. First you dig it in the fruit, then you turn. I'm the queen of the melon balls. I have to put them then in glass dishes where Ana then serves a scoop of ice cream and Pina adds a spoon.

Grandma makes tea. She puts a white cloth, two mugs and a jar of honey on a tray.

‘Why are there bugs in the honey?' I ask her.

‘They're not bugs,' she says, ‘they're special mushrooms for adults. But I've got something special for you kiddos too,' she says, and she pulls out a tin of long cookies with a chocolate middle. She asks me how many I want and I say, ‘Lots.' She puts one cookie in each ice-cream cup and hands me the ones left over. Ana gets all jealous. She hates it when I get presents and she doesn't.

‘I'll give them to you if you tell me where the emperor's castle is,' I say to her.

‘Done.'

I give them to her and she whispers in my ear, ‘You'll never reach it, because it's at the bottom of the lake.' Then she sticks her tongue out at me and walks off with my cookie tin. Pina sticks her tongue out at me too, just because.

When we go out with the dessert, Emma gives us a round of applause and my mom sings a song she really likes about a donna, which is Spanish for doughnut. Except it's not in Spanish.

‘What language is that?' asks Pina.

Mom says it's Italian and then we all teach Pina the song. Turns out it's not about a doughnut as I always thought, but about a woman. My mom keeps on explaining all the words but I'm not paying any attention to her because I'm thinking about something else. I'm thinking of how my ziplings and I are always hiding to drink a drink that is actually made of poop.

*

Ana and Pina go watch their TV series in one of the bedrooms. They bought it yesterday in Penny Saver and it has a zillion new episodes and it's all they ever talk about. I don't want to watch it because, even though they say it isn't scary, I've seen vampires on the cover, so it's scary.

Grandma asks me if I like hammocks. I tell her I do and she takes me to the front terrace, where her old truck lives. Our rented car lives there too, but not today, because the boys took it with them. And the little path that connects the house to the highway is there too. Plus some muddy shoes, some chairs, umbrellas, and a giant ball of threads hanging from the roof. Emma unravels it and it turns out the ball is the hammock. She ties it between the two posts of the terrace.

‘Porch,' Emma corrects me.

‘I thought the porch was at the back.'

‘That too. You've got your front porch and your back porch.'

‘And your middle porch,' I say, but she doesn't laugh.

I climb into the hammock and she says, ‘Lift your head,' and when I do she slips a cushion behind it.

‘I never used a pillow on a hammock before,' I tell her.

‘It's the civilized version,' she says.

‘I'm not sleepy.'

‘I know. It's to make you more comfy.'

‘Will you rock me a little?'

Grandma rocks me for way too little before she stops and says it's going to rain.

‘How do you know?'

‘Because the dragonflies are out.'

She goes into the house and comes out with some paper and a can of pencils. Then she kisses me, and when she's gone I take my foot off the hammock and push myself on the edge of the table until I'm really, really rocking. Every now and then I have to take my foot off and do the pushing again so it's not so boring. I liked Grandma before, but I don't like her anymore because I feel like she brought me here to get rid of me. I bet she wants to talk about adult things with my mom. She doesn't know that at home I always hear everything anyway and nothing bad ever happens. I try to reach the can of pencils with my toes so they make an avalanche but she left them too far away. I think I want to go back to the front porch, or the back porch. I don't know which is which anymore. Then I think I'll go when the sun stops shining on my feet, because it's really yummy. The sun that passes through the threads of the hammock draws shadows on my legs. The shadows are like eyes, and they can see everything I'm doing and everything I'm thinking.

I guess I do fall asleep a little bit in the end because when I wake up the eyes are gone and I'm cold and it's raining. I want my mom, but when I go inside the house I see Cleo on the sofa, and maybe it's better if I lie down there because there's a blanket and because Grandma will find me here and feel bad for leaving me outside with so little on. But I can hear them laughing outside and I fall asleep again before anyone comes and finds me.

When I wake up again it's almost nighttime. Cleo and two of her brothers are asleep on the rug next to my sofa. I can't hear the adults, so I make myself into a caterpillar with the blanket and go out onto the porch to find the grown-up girls. Just like I found the trumpets. The table is covered in dirty plates, but there's no one there. I hear voices and run toward them. It's not raining anymore but the grass is wet. I find Emma sitting by the biggest pond. The ledge is made of bricks but she's stroking it like a dog.

‘Who are you talking to, Grandma?'

‘To her.'

I look around.

‘Her who?'

‘Emma.'

‘You're Emma.'

‘You too.'

I laugh, but I don't really feel like laughing. I ask her where my mom is. She leans her head to the right, pats the side of the pond and says, ‘I made it.'

‘I know,' I tell her. ‘You told us this afternoon already, and yesterday, and the day before that.'

‘What a pretty wig. Purple really is your color,' she says.

She's speaking like she was asleep. Maybe she's sleepwalking. She has her hand over the water, palms facing down, and she's moving them slowly, as if she was waving.

‘And Mama?' I ask her again.

Emma points to an orange carp and says, ‘There she is!'

‘In the pond?'

‘Yes! Your mom turned into a fish.'

I don't believe her. Plus, she's laughing.

‘It's true, honey; ever since she was a little girl, once a month your mom turns into a fish.'

She nods her head saying, ‘It's true, it's true', which makes me doubt her.

‘Which one?' I ask, to try to prove her wrong, and she points to an orange carp, but I can't tell if it's the same one as before. It swims off and hides among the lilies.

‘How can you tell?'

‘Because her eyes shine differently,' she explains, ‘like a mammal's.'

I can feel my lips start to quiver.

‘Don't you worry now, she always comes back.'

‘Don't be a liar,' I tell her, but my voice is very small like a flea so I run off.