Él que hambre tiene, en comer piensa.
One who is hungry thinks only of food.
Tomasita’s little dog runs out from under a pickup truck to yap at us, announcing that Mom and I have arrived. It’s not the usual time of year for us to visit. Normally, we come in the fall for red chile, but we’ve had a hankering for some green this summer. In all the years we’ve been getting chile from Tomasita, we’ve not once tried her green chiles. We mentioned this to Tomasita a few weeks ago, and she invited us to come back when the chiles were ready. That time has come. Tomasita has picked a bushel for us from the first harvest.
Giant cumulonimbus clouds billow over the mountains and thunder rumbles softly in the distance as I get out of Mom’s car and approach the dog. He growls as if guarding the bushel of chile in the bed of the truck, but he flees at my approach. The pods gleam, creating a halolike glow around the basket. I can smell them. Their fragrance, combined with the thunderstorm-charged atmosphere, evokes memories of roasting chiles on Grandma’s woodstove. Green chiles and thunderstorms are the very essence of late summer in Chimayó.
I pick up a few chiles and bring them to Mom. She holds them, sniffs them, smiles. Tomasita emerges from her house and greets us graciously. It seems like just yesterday we were here getting red chile from her, but it’s been almost a year. We ask about her health, her family; she asks about ours. And then we get to talking about chile.
“The thing about chile,” Tomasita says, watching me as I snap a pod open and take a crisp bite, “is that once you start eating it, you can’t stop. My kids are always coming over and I put out cacerolas of chile and they just devour it. And if I don’t have any ready when they get here, they say, ‘What happened to all the chile?’ And I tell them, ‘Well, the the other kids got here first and ate it all.’”
“Even my grandson, Delfín, he’s crazy about chile, and he’s only four. He takes a bite, and if it’s too hot he blows in and out like this”—she puffs her cheeks out—“and then he takes a sip of water and then goes for another bite of chile.”
We laugh about the chile addiction that grips so many here, including us.
“Oh, I grew up growing and eating chile,” Tomasita relates. “Pero ya casi no siembran.—But now people hardly plant at all,” she says. “They say, ‘It’s too hard. It’s too much work. I don’t have time. It’s too much trouble.’ But I notice it’s never too much trouble to eat it!”
It’s been a difficult water year, with water available to Tomasita from the Acequia del Distrito only every two weeks or so. She’s managed by planting her chiles over near her son’s house, where there is access to the Espinosa acequia, which comes directly from the Santa Cruz River in Los Ranchos. Between the two ditches, there’s just enough water to keep her chiles going.
“The chiles love the hot weather we’ve been having, but they need water, too,” she says. “This is the hottest, driest summer I’ve seen for years. It didn’t used to be like this. You could count on the rains in the old days, and the ditches were usually running full. Not only was there more water; people took care of the water and land better in those days.
“Oh, how things have changed,” Tomasita pines. “They’ve changed so much. It used to be so nice, with all the land around here planted and hoed and full of chile, corn, melons. Now it’s just a pigpen. Nobody plants. They don’t clear their land. Look over there. You can’t even walk through, with all those thick trees. And your pants get full of stickers, if you manage get through. They don’t even bother to take care of it anymore.
“And people don’t take care of each other, either,” she goes on. “My parents used to tell my sisters and brothers and me, ‘Love each other.’ And we learned that. If we’d get in an argument, we’d make up and say we’re sorry and really mean it. I still talk to my brothers and sisters every day, on the phone. But nowadays, people around here don’t even talk to their brothers and sisters! Not to mention their neighbors. Some people don’t talk to anyone.”
Tomasita looks over to my mother, sitting in the car, and says, “Es que algunos, ¡ni solo se aguantan!—Some people can’t even stand themselves!” She and Mom laugh, and Tomasita goes on, “Jesus said we’re all brothers and sisters, so we all need to love one another. But all people care about now is material things. People want more and more things, and then they die, and they have nothing at all.
“Nowadays people don’t know how to eat, either. I remember when my father would buy a one-hundred-pound sack of flour, some coffee, potatoes, and that would last us for months, and we didn’t have to go to the store. We had our own cows, pigs, chickens. We ate fresh eggs every day. We had tortillas made with whole wheat flour. And now if you give a kid a whole wheat tortilla, they don’t like it. They say it has freckles!”
My mom nods in agreement and adds, “And then they talk about organic this and organic that, and they say lard is so bad for you. It used to all be organic, from right off the farm.”
“Yes,” Tomasita agrees. “I used to come home every day from school and my mother would make me a tortilla and spread it with a layer of fresh lard, from our own pigs, and it was good! And look at me! I’m still here and I’m still planting chiles, when all these young people say they’re too tired to do it!”
Mom nods again. “And we never heard of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes. And now they go to the doctors constantly, and they take pills all the time, and they die young—but they say we shouldn’t eat lard or meat and all that. ¿Sabes qué? ¡Están locos!—You know what? They’re crazy!”
I’m still confused about how we’re related to Tomasita, so I ask her and Mom to explain it to me again. This time the entire conversation takes place in Spanish, with occasional English phrases thrown in. I turn on a tape recorder and listen attentively, but I’m still lost. How many times will they have to go over this before I get it? I wonder. But at the same time I realize that Mom and Tomasita’s dialogue is, in effect, a recital for them, so they won’t forget.
My mom begins, “Allí es donde viene la parentela, de Severo, but ¿quién era el papá de Severo?—That’s where our kinship comes in, through Severo Martínez. But who was Severo’s father?”
“Epifanio era el papá de Severo.—Epifanio was Severo’s father,” Tomasita explains.
“¿Y luego cómo venía del lado tuyo?—And then how did it come down to your side?”
“Era del lado de mi mamá.—On my mother’s side.”
“Bueno, pues. ¿Tu mamá era qué de mi primo Severo?—All right, then. Your mother was what to my cousin Severo?”
“Severo era su tío de mi mamá, porque Severo y su mamá de mi mamá . . . eran hermanos.—Severo was my mother’s uncle, because Severo and the mother of my mother were brother and sister . . .”
And so it goes, with more lists of names and relations and memories of personalities. I’ve heard this before, but I haven’t yet committed it to memory. Listening, I realize there is no end to this story of families and relations, and it’s my task to keep telling it. I’m humbled by the realization.
The sun is sinking low when we get back into the car for the ride home, the green chiles filling the interior with their fresh scent, and lightning flashing from a black thunderhead on the western horizon. In my imagination I’m already tasting the green chile we’ll make when we get home.
Thundercloud over the Jémez Mountains, ca. 1995.
A faltas de pan, cemitas son buenas.
When there is no bread, crackers are good. (When one is hungry, any food tastes good.)
A la mejor cocinera se le ahuma la olla.
The best cook sometimes burns the pot.
Barriga de pobre, primero revienta que sobre.
A poor man will rather split his belly than waste food.
Barriga llena, corazón contento.
Full belly, happy heart.
Con hambre no hay mal pan.
When one is hungry, there is no bad-tasting bread.
De lo que no cuesta se hace fiesta.
From that which costs nothing, a feast is made. (Make the most of it when someone else is paying the bill.)
Donde no hay harina, todo es mohína.
Where there is no flour, everything is sadness. (Without food, there is sadness.)
Él que hambre tiene, en comer piensa.
One who is hungry thinks only of food.
Entre menos burros, más elotes.
With fewer burros, more ears of corn. (There will be more to eat if fewer people are eating.)
Vale más que me haga mal que se pierda.
Better it makes me sick than having it go to waste.