“My skin had been so inflamed before I started using beef tallow. Isn’t that right, honey?” Lourdes says.
Honey, or as we know him, Tom, shakes his head in agreement as he wrestles with their three-year-old, Dakota James, who refuses to sit down. Tom is a good guy with a nice family. He just had a wild side to him back in high school, which is how he landed himself on our side of the tracks and in love with Lourdes.
Together, they had three kids, all with D & J as their initials: Darius Julius, Dalilah Josephine, and Dakota James. Dakota James, who used Tom’s clippers down the center of his head, had the longer pieces in a mangled mess. His vocabulary was still limited for a three-year-old, but he loved signed language.Especially the middle finger.
He was the youngest and most challenging of the bunch, just like me. I make a mental note to give him more candy in church next week so he can act up like this. Give these beef tallow lovers hell.
“I’m not fucking putting menudo on my face,” Desmond gripes. Desmond is the only human alive who can bring the devil out of our saint of a sister.
“It’s not menudo, Desmond. It’s the rendered fat from themeat. There’s a ton of collagen. It could help you with the aging lines on your face,” she says boisterously.
Ouch.
Desmond shifts slightly in his seat.
“It doesn’t appear to be helping with your already lacking brain cells,” he says with a mouthful of carnitas.
Lourdes rolls her eyes, and Desmond gives her a signature Dakota James hand gesture. The one he himself had taught our nephew. Dakota James claps, and my mother stares at us all, mortified.
“I’ll pray for you, Desmond.” Lourdes sneers before turning to our mother. “Ma, did you get the invite to Dolly Chavez’s Quinceañera?” Lourdes asks.
“Oh, I don’t know, mija. I’ll have to check.” Mom gets up and goes to the pile of envelopes stacked on the counter.
“Wait, the youngest Chavez is turning fifteen? Sheesh,” Desmond says, jerking his head up.
“Wait, Isa, isn’t Junior supposed to be in it?” Lourdes asks me.
I look out to the front yard where Junior is playing catch with his cousin Darius. He hasn’t said anything, but then again, Juan Carlos could have agreed. I really didn’t need Lourdes’s prayers for my lack of parenting, so I respond with an unsure “yes”.
“Aquí está,” Ma says, grabbing her reading glasses and opening up the invite.
She reads over it before handing it to me. Sure enough, Junior is listed right there as a chambelan.
“¿Y no me dijiste nada?” Her flat gaze meets mine.
“I was going to tell you tonight. After everyone left.” I lie.
“¡Qué bueno! So, you finally talked to Manny?” Ma asks.
Shit. I was hoping she’d forget that.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him,” I reply.
What’s another lie at this point?
“He was just here on Friday. You literally made me get outof the shower to talk to him and said, ‘Don’t tell him I’m here,’” Desmond says, throwing me under the bus.
I look him dead in the eyes. An unspokenGo to Hellthat he reads immediately and looks back down at his plate.
“Why does she need to talk to Manuel?” Lourdes asks, staring between us.
It’s the way she pronounces his name, Man-you’llinstead of Man-well, like the beef tallow is sinking into her brain and removing her ability to pronounce a name she’s known most of her life.
“Mom wants me to get Dad’s old car fixed so we can sell it,” I respond.
“La Pepto Bismol? Who would want to buy that piece of junk?” Lourdes says with a quick chuckle.
Since my father never properly named his car, my mother, in her slight jealousy of the car, would call it La Pepto Bismol. She said it was because it upset her stomach to look at it. Over the years, the orange paint had faded to a rusty-looking pink, living up to my mother’s insults.
