Umami (8 page)

*

Marina greets me like she greets everyone: by grabbing you by the back of your head and planting a kiss on your cheek (and if you don't know her, and if you're as dumb as my brothers, you might think she's going in for the mouth). From this angle, I can see her black bra. Maybe I need me one of those. Thirteen is definitely the age for one's first black
brassiere.
It's too embarrassing if Dad takes me, but maybe Pi will want to come along when she gets back. I go into Bitter. It's always a surprise when you step through the door. Firstly, because it's different every time, and then because there's something over-the-top about it. Something bubbly. The décor consists of piles of cushions on a chicken-yellow sofa, the only constant in the whole place. Some of the cushions have tiny little mirrors that twinkle depending on where you stand. Marina donated me some cushion covers, which now take pride of place on my chaise longue. I filled them with plastic bags, just like she showed me. Luz would say Marina is the queen of recycling. She gets all those clothes I like second-hand. With her hands on her hips she says, ‘Yes, miss?'

Before they clashed, my mom used to teach Marina English. She tried to teach Dad too, back when they met, but his pronunciation still sucks. According to him, on principle you should distrust any language that uses the same word for
libre
and
gratis
. When he's around she speaks to us kids in Spanish. He says she doesn't want us to turn out like foreigners, which is exactly what we are. Or, at least, we have two passports. Even Luz had an American passport. She's a baby in the photo, just a few months old. Mom is holding her in her arms and Luz looks serious, sort of startled, as if even then my sister foresaw the gravity of the trip she would come to take. Four by five centimeters of portentous ID.

*

The only thing I tell Marina is that I designed a garden. I don't feel like explaining that my parents still feel the need to send me to the epicenter of the tragedy each year to wallow in seaweed and memories under the now obsessively watchful eye of Emma, and that to avoid going, I had to make up some form of tangible compensation. She wouldn't appreciate the word
milpa
either: too native for her liking. Design, on the other hand, is one hundred percent her thing, I think.

‘And now I'm actually ready to build it, so I need tools,' I go on.

But before I've even finished my sentence I realize how absurd my request is. The most useful thing I'm likely to find among all this velvet is a spoon. And if there is a spoon then it's probably from the cutlery set my mom gave her the day she discovered Marina ate exclusively out of recycled yogurt pots.

Marina puts her hands on her hips, raises her elbows and curves her spine, her breastbone backing away from me. Her collarbones stick out. She always does this when she's thinking. She looks like a mandolin. Then, quick as a flash, she straightens up again and leaves the room. I don't know what this means, but I stay put. There's a new lampshade above my head. It's made of a series of solid, sheer droplets which hang in semicircles around the bulb, like a ghostly spider. The correct word would be ‘ethereal'. It must be made of plastic because Marina doesn't use glass. My mom explained that this is because Marina saw her father break a glass of wine with his teeth when she was a little girl. It gives me goosebumps just imagining it. In fact, when I want goosebumps I think of exactly that: my mom calmly biting her wine glass and chewing on it.

Marina comes back, takes a little bow and hands me the prettiest, tiniest, most ridiculous hammer I've ever seen. It's half the size of a normal hammer and has an elaborate, flowery, leafy pattern printed on it. Marina unscrews it and shows me how, inside the handle, it has a spade hidden on one side and a brush on the other. I laugh.

‘The land,' she says, ‘belongs to she who decorates it.'

‘I'm going to get it dirty,' I say, ‘maybe even get lead on it.'

I say ‘lead' slowly and deliberately, to impress her. Marina squints.

‘Keep it,' she finally rules.

‘You sure?'

‘It was a gift from a total waste of space. You can cover it in mercury for all I care.'

‘Lead.'

‘Whatever.'

Very gently, Marina pushes me toward the door.

‘Thanks so much,' I tell her, ‘I like your lampshade.'

She takes me by the neck, kisses my forehead, and just before closing the door behind me points to the ceiling and clarifies, ‘It's called a chandelier, darling.'

*

By the time I leave Bitter House, The Girls are nowhere to be seen, which means I'll find Alf at home. His mailbox says Doctor Alfonso Semitiel. I've known him since I was born. His wife was the doctor really, but ever since he retired a couple of months ago he's been supplementing his pension selling the prescriptions she left behind. He doesn't skimp on diagnoses either. No matter what time of day you pop by, he always insists on giving you an
alegría
(which are kind of like cereal bars, only made of amaranth, ‘So not a cereal bar, Agatha Christie, but a seed bar!') from the basket he keeps in the hallway. He says amaranth is the food of the future. And of the past. Above all, the past. Alf is my friend. In fact, Alf is the inspiration behind all of this: it's thanks to him I know how to grow things. I spent my entire childhood sowing amaranth and other Mesoamerican pseudo-cereals: quinoa, chia, acacia. And real cereals, too: wheat, barley, oats, millet, corn (naturally); and corn's two sisters: beans and pumpkin. He called it his MM or Modern
Milpa
. Over the last years almost everything we planted was destroyed by the toxic summer rains, but some of them did OK. The MM used to be in his yard, but he let it die when his wife died. Now, in its place, there's a built-in jacuzzi. My dad, who is the least medically minded person in the whole mews, diagnosed Alf with depression. But when I go over, Alf's always soaking in the jacuzzi and reading. He says he's learning to swim or, at the very least, to take little dips. Missing the MM; wanting to bring it back to life, for Alf and for all! These were some of the arguments that helped me finally convince Mom that the whole yard-renovation thing could really work.

Alf seems pleased to see me when he opens the door (looking like a dog fresh out of the water). He is wrapped in a pinkish robe that looks like it might have belonged to his wife, but I have the goodness of heart not to comment. I follow him to the yard, skipping over his wet footprints. I don't need to explain my plan to him because he already knows it. In fact, it was to him and not to Pina that I took the serviette contract the day we signed it. Pina is my best friend, but for her the word agriculture might as well refer to the superstore around the corner. Or La Michoacana. Her idea of a harvest is when she buys herself two
horchatas
in a row.

We sit down on the rocking chairs on the terrace looking out over the jacuzzi. The Girls are sitting on a bench, one looking at us and the other out to the horizon. I explain to Alf that I need tools.

‘I'm so frickin' proud of you, Agatha Christie.'

He's always called me that, and coming from him I like it, because Alf is an investigator. Not a private investigator, but definitely a research investigator something or other. Alf is actually a doctor too, but in anthropology not in curing people. It could be I'm the only person who knows this because hardly anyone goes into his study where he keeps all his diplomas and books, some of which he wrote himself. His doctoral thesis is about umami, the fifth taste, which wasn't at all known except in Japan, and it was him who helped to spread the word about it in the West. Or at least in Mexico. Mexico is in the West. I don't dare tell him, but I'm proud of him, too. He carries his grief better than my mom. He doesn't act like a ghost, or go totally nuts over songs. At least not in front of me he doesn't. I guess I'd have to ask The Girls what they think about it. But The Girls don't think.

Alf starts pulling tools out of a mini-shed, which he keeps locked, as if someone might come steal his shovel.

‘Where's your friend?' he asks.

‘Pina? She's with her mom.'

Alf scans my face to see if I'm lying.

‘She turned up, didn't she?' I say, then try to think of something to change the subject quick because I don't want him to ask me any questions. I don't know if Pina wants Alf to know her mom has resurfaced after all these years, and that she's living on that Mazuzzy beach, which isn't even that far from Mexico City.

‘When was the very, very first time you heard anyone talk about umami?' I ask.

‘I never told you? I was at a conference dinner where I got lumbered sitting next to a grouchy Japanese man, one of those people who make waiters miserable for sport. He complained that his food didn't have enough umami in it, and of course I had no idea what he was talking about. It was 1969. Is this any use to you?' he asks, holding up a microscopic hose, which I immediately recognize.

‘A Dampit?' I say.

‘A what?'

‘A Dampit. It's a guitar humidifier.'

‘Really?' he asks.

‘I think so, let me see. Yep.'

Alf laughs, ‘I always thought it was to keep cacti and other things you don't need to water from going dry; I found it one day out in the corridor!' He's really losing it now: ‘I suppose one only sees what one wants to see.'

‘It was probably my brother's.'

‘Well, in that case, take it.' He takes a couple of deep breaths and manages to stop giggling. ‘Tell him I nicked it off him.'

‘I haven't seen you laugh like that for ages,' I say without thinking. He sighs and his face relaxes into a smile somewhere between stoical and serene, and which makes me feel older than I am. Emma always says I have an old soul, and sometimes I think she's got that right.

*

I leave Umami with a loaded trolley. Aside from Marina's dainty hammer and Theo's useless Dampit, I have: a shovel, a rake, a pair of enormous, mucky gloves, an extension hose and some garden shears which Alf uses to prune the little tree on his porch. It's a lemon tree that has never given lemons. I've only just started to appreciate the huge amount of plants in his house. Before, I always focused on the MM, never on the pots inside, which I thought were more his wife's territory. Her name was Doctor Noelia and she always offered me sugar-free candy because she was worried I would get fat. It worries me too now, a little bit, but I can't consult her anymore because she died three months after my sister. When I ask my mom if I'm fat she says no, that it's only baby fat and that I'll grow out of it.

‘So, what you mean is that I'll keep growing till one day I burst out of my fatness and leave it behind like snakes shed their skins?' I ask her.

‘Calm down, Ana,' she says.

‘I'm not a baby,' I say.

‘You've got such beautiful eyes,' she says, and I get mad because she's always trying to change the subject.

Growing the
milpa
is a matter of principle, but the houseplants inside are more like Alf's pets. That's what I think as I leave Umami. He looks after them lovingly. Not as lovingly as he looks after The Girls, but almost; a lot like the other old folk in the neighborhood look after their dogs. Normally I like to hang around Umami for hours, but this time I left quickly because ever since I let slip about Chela I feel bad. Sort of like a traitor. This reunion with her mom is going to be the weirdest thing that Pina's done in her life, and it's going to happen without me. I didn't even help her pack. I decide I'm going to call her tonight. I hope her cell works in Macuque, or whatever that beach is called. Me, I don't have a cell. One day I asked Dad for one and he said, ‘If you lived in the nineteenth century, what would you think of a thirteen-year-old girl who spent all day glued to the mailbox waiting for a letter?'

‘I'd think she was pathetic,' I said.

‘Exactly,' he said, ‘end of discussion.'

I'll ask again when I start high school. Safety first, Dad.

I leave the trolley by the bell in the passageway and head out of the mews again. Then I cross the street and poke my nose under the door of the house in front. The feet are still there, and I bolt it again. It's only when I'm back at home arranging the tools out in the yard that I realize two things. One: I'm as stupid as stupid can be. Two: the feet under the door are a pair of shoes.

*

A week later I'm finally ready to throw out the old soil. Since you can't do any work in the afternoons because of the dumb summer rains, I've been waking up earlier, pretty early in fact: around ten!

I emptied the planter with the shovel. It took me the best part of the week. Then I put the mega-loads of mud in trash bags, which I stacked in a corner. Now I'm hauling the bags through the mews out onto the street. One of them snags on the bell, splits open, and covers the passageway in soil. Bah, the rain will wash it away.

I'm just putting the last bag out on the street when Beto pokes his head out of a window of Sour House.

‘You're polluting the planet, my girl,' he calls down to me on the sidewalk.

‘
Au contraire
,' I tell him. ‘This soil here is full of lead, whereas the one in my yard will have plants and the plants will produce oxygen!'

‘Right on,' he says.

My mom has called Pina Pi her whole life. Pina calls my mom Aunt Linda. I also used to call Pina's mom Aunt Chela, and she would call me Ananás, which means pineapple in French. But she doesn't call me anything anymore because she disappeared when we were nine, and even though she's back now, she still hasn't shown her face around here; instead she wrote Pina an email and sent her a ticket to go visit her Mitsubishahi beach. Anyway, Beto is just Beto, and he calls us kids ‘my girl' or ‘my boy', even though we're not in any way his.