It was the recipe his grandmother had brought from Oaxaca to the United States in the sixties, written on a piece of paper that was so thin you could see through it.
It had been passed down to his mother, then to David, who spent 20 years perfecting it. He used to say that mole was not a sauce, it was a conversation between thirty ingredients, and they all had to learn to get along.
“Elena gave me the recipe,” Señora Morales said quietly. “Your husband’s family recipe. She said it was time someone else learned it.”
Nina’s throat felt tight. She nodded because she couldn’t form words. She felt Claire’s hand on her back.
“We start,” Señora Morales said matter-of-factly. She wasn’t unkind, but she was firm. Like many women of her age, there was no time to sit and stew over the things a person cannot change. There was only time to get on with it. “The chilies first. They need to toast.”
She handed each of them a dried pasilla chili. The skin was dark and papery, almost black. Nina held it to her nose. It smelled like smoke and earth.
David used to buy these by the pound at a shop on Rivers Avenue. He would come home with bags of dried chilies and spread them across the kitchen counter. Then he would sort them by type with seriousness.
“You hold it over the comal,” Señora Morales demonstrated, pressing the chili flat against the very hot surface with her bare fingers. Claire was visibly nervous. “You count to ten, you flip, you count to ten again. When it blisters and the smell changes, it’s ready. But don’t burn it. Burnt chili is an angry chili, and angry chili will ruin everything.”
“Wow, that feels like a metaphor,” Harper said, nodding. “I think I’m an angry chili,” she said under her breath.
“It is a chili,” Señora Morales said flatly. “Not everything is a metaphor.”
They toasted chilies. Nina went first, pressing the pasilla to the comal and counting under her breath the way David used to. The smell filled the kitchen, smoky and sharp. It was so familiar that her hands started to shake, but she didn’t cry.
She just pressed the chili, counted, flipped, counted, and placed it in the bowl that Señora Morales held out. Her hands were shaking but steady, if that was even possible.
Claire toasted hers carefully and precisely, turning it exactly at ten seconds. She loved to follow directions to the letter.
Harper approached it the way she approached everything: with confidence, speed, and a slight overestimation of her own abilities.
She burned her first chili.
“Angry chili,” Señora Morales said, taking it from her.
“Well, I counted to ten.”
“Yes, but you counted to ten very fast. Chili does not care about your schedule.”
Nina laughed.
She felt it coming before she heard it, like a bubble rising through that tightening in her chest that had been there for so many months.
It surprised even her, because she had been so sure this morning that this was going to be hard. She had braced herself for all the pain of it and forgotten to account for the possibility that it might also be enjoyable and even funny, that David’s food could bring her joy and grief in the same breath, and that she could allow both to exist in the same kitchen.
The tortillas were an absolute disaster.
Señora Morales mixed the masa with warm water and worked it in her hands until it reached a consistency that she could only describe as being “like a baby’s cheek,” which was the most specific and least helpful cooking instruction Claire had ever received in her entire life.
She handed each of them a ball of dough and a tortilla press, then stepped back to watch.
She had probably seen hundreds of people fail at this and found it both amusing and educational.
Claire’s first tortilla was way too thick. Her second was so thin it had holes in it. Her third was a shape that could only be described as oval, but was more accurately a huge mistake.
She was concentrating so hard that a small line had appeared between her eyebrows. It was the same line she got when she was grading papers or trying to do any other task that required full, meticulous attention.
“You think too much,” Señora Morales told her. “Tortillas don’t want you to think. They want you to feel.”
“Well, I’m not very good at that,” Claire said. She meant the tortilla, but the words came out carrying more weight than she probably intended.
Harper’s tortillas were pretty decent, surprisingly.
