I returned from two weeks in Mexico City, at the age of 18, with a small package in my suitcase. My girlfriend, Celina, had wrapped it in butcher paper and kitchen twine and hidden it there, between the Aztec onyx masks for my parents and my own laundered shirts, its contents a mystery. She was not one to be questioned. I was only told to deliver it straight from the airport to her seaside home, the second home, the outpost in the States. This last phrase Celina adored and tossed off casually, as if the tons of marble, oak and plaster could be reassembled, tile by tile, anywhere in the world.
I first remembered the package upon entering customs. At the head of the line, an official emptied pink, heart-shaped tins of candies into the trash. He was a large man, and the glee he took in discarding the sweets only served to expand his features. Before him, on a long table, were thick sausage cylinders and tiny purple fruit in bunches, slick-skinned, oval-shaped—fruit that I could now identify as the mangosteen but then carried no name. Behind him hung large orange signs depicting the silhouettes of a cow, a horse, a pineapple and a cob of corn, each struck through with a red diagonal line. Other signs welcomed me home to Los Angeles. If the official discovered my parcel, I could honestly plead ignorance. This was a time when ignorance, even at an airport, was still acceptable. He scanned my form and my white, doughy face set in relief against a crowd of brown, and waved me through.
The package, when untied by Lorena, the Sanchez’s maid, contained a disk of fresh queso de cabra, or goat cheese; chiles en adobo, pasilla peppers preserved in a masonry jar; and three papayas slung in plastic netting. It’s now possible to purchase these items, even here in the East, at any local market, like the one I do my weekly shopping at, list in hand and the same recipes twirling like a waterwheel through my head. But then, such delicacies required the grateful, lovesick services of a smuggler. I didn’t feel betrayed, or used, but rather honored to have been given the assignment. I would have done it again fully aware of my cargo.
I left Lorena in the kitchen and wandered the house. It was a big house—not obscenely big—but designed with enough hallways broken up by two- or three-step staircases that it felt like a journey moving from one end to the other. First there were the red Chinese screens and cloisonné vases of the first floor. Then, the emerald-hued jungle theme of the second. The house was built on a cliff, so instead of marching upward to the more intimate rooms, you went down. Finally, on the bottom floor, the cool modern shades of beige and black, and at the end of the hallway, Celina’s room.
Celina seemed to have final word on everything but the design of her room. Big flowers, big patterns, lacy fringe on the pillows. She called it her prison. It was comforting to know she had to answer to someone. The one redeeming feature was the glass door, which opened onto the balcony circling the house like a ring of Saturn. From the bed, with the shades open, you could see the rocky peninsula coast and the ocean stretching all the way to Catalina.
It was in this room, two weeks later, that Celina and I would give ourselves over to each other. Preparations were still in the works: deceptions concocted, accomplices recruited, purchases made. I sat on the bed and thought of this, as well as the parcel in my suitcase, and decided, along with my other purchases, I would find Celina a bottle of tamarindo.
The tamarind fruit isn’t a member of the citrus family, but it seems the cousin of the orange, with more acidity and a sweetness that lingers in the throat—an orange with something to prove. In Mexico, it is used to flavor sauces, rolled into taffy-like candies, and mixed with sparkling water to make soda. During my trip, Celina would order tamarind soda in the middle of each meal. When the tuxedoed waiters lay down the main dish and ask if they can get you anything else, you say, “I’d like a tamarindo.” We took our lunches in the cafés alongside the zocalo or near the Anthropology Museum.
The first time I tried tamarind soda, it was by mistake. Celina had gathered her childhood friends to meet me, and they laughed at my high school Spanish, and I teased them about their mall security guards, armed with submachine guns. They agreed it was ridiculous. “Everything is ridiculous,” they cried. A maid had set out a bowl of pickled vegetables. They dared me to try one of the peppers. We compromised, and I popped a carrot into my mouth. A spike of heat bit into my tongue, then cascaded in small, rolling explosions down my throat. I reached for a bottle of tamarind soda, took one gulp, and the heat rebounded, bursting through my sinuses, my nose streaming snot. Everyone laughed. “Soda only makes it worse,” Celina remanded, smiling, and handed me a glass of water. She had the knack of displaying exasperation and delight as if they were the same.
Celina had invited me to spend the last two weeks of July with her family. Her parents didn’t mind: they took the long view. What nebulous thing Celina and I had going would soon disappear, they reasoned, and if they could please their only daughter during her last summer at home, so be it. My parents took equally little convincing. I was a serious student, with serious habits and serious minor accomplishments. Anything potentially rebellious or wayward could be refigured as educational. They approved all forms of education, even those in foreign lands with foreign girls with foreign inclinations.
Seriousness is often mistaken for aloofness, which can doom a teenager or lend him an air of mystery. Celina thought I had mystery. She told me so. She also said that I was the right amount of funny, meaning, I guess, that a few well-timed remarks could carry me for days. If I had the right amount of funny, Celina had the right amount of everything else.
You didn’t pronounce Celina like the late Tejano singer, Suh-lee-na, but rather with the hard “ch-“ of checkmate: Cheh-lee-na. My fourth-period biology teacher, a real crank, made that error, and she corrected him mercilessly. I told her after class that she had said what we’ve all been meaning to say for months. “That what,” she asked, “he’s a bastard?”
We began from there.
She told me she came to Los Angeles to dance. It was not so much a lie as a half-truth. She did dance, beautifully, and had a dancer’s body: agile, thin, limbs jutting at impossible angles, and shoulder blades, when viewed from behind, like twin harps submerged beneath the flesh. The other half-truth was that her father ran a textile company with business on both sides of the border. Rather than shuttle her back and forth between their two homes, they camped her in California with Lorena. She would drive herself to and from school, and each night call her parents to tell them she was safe.
In Mexico, she had a driver. He took us to the cafes, the pyramids, the flea markets, and Frida Kahlo’s house. For the first week, we spent every hour together, continuing our stateside oblivion to the outside world. Then one day, Celina’s mother took her aside, spoke to her behind closed doors, and the oblivion cracked. The hand she would hold on walks lay limp at my side. Her offers to play tennis on one of their private courts never materialized. She treated me in the most unimaginable way: like a houseguest. I asked her what was going on, if I had done something wrong, and she said, nothing, nothing at all, her eyes drooping in moody finality.
We stopped going to the cafes. We ate our meals at home, at the dining room table, one at each end with Mrs. Sanchez presiding in the middle. She had always treated me kindly, but suddenly engaged me fervently. She asked me about my college plans—still the same as the last time I told her—and sought my advice on how best to move Celina’s belongings from L.A. across the country to Juilliard. When the maid brought the dishes from the kitchen, Mrs. Sanchez would uncover the silver-domed trays and explain the meal’s provenance. “This fish comes from the Atlantic, from the state of Veracruz,” she’d tell me. “And this preparation of the chiles with the chocolate and the almonds, this comes from Oaxaca.” By dessert, I could map the country.
Mr. Sanchez didn’t join us. He was either in Los Angeles, or Guadalajara, or only downtown. Neither Celina nor her mother seemed to mind. One night, when I skulked away after dinner, retreating to the large stone patio, Mr. Sanchez appeared from out of the twilight and sat down beside me. He patted me twice, hard, on the shoulder, then removed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tilted them in my direction.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Of course not.”
He lit one up, then turned in his chair to face the wide, landscaped terraces of his property, the last sunlight twinkling off the silver chain hanging from his neck. His profile gleamed. He had Celina’s clean, graceful features, though bloated by age and misuse: the skin grey and pocked, the long limbs sheathed in tubes of fat. We didn’t speak, and I was grateful. He intimidated me, not only because of his stature as an international businessman, or because of the many dalliances he was supposedly conducting on the sly, but because we frankly didn’t have anything to talk about. Silence frightened me then. I had nothing in my limited experience that would interest him, no joke that would make him laugh, no piece of me that he would care to be revealed. And he knew I’d be gone in a couple of days. On this count, we were even.
I was about to excuse myself, when he nodded, almost imperceptibly, to the grounds and said without warning, “One day, I will give all this up and leave here.”
I wouldn’t have answered, but he turned to face me, expecting something. So I asked him a question, a question that when spoken sprang from genuine curiosity. I asked him where he would go.
In 1994, the citizens of Los Angeles worried about fire. They worried about roaming, brick-hurling mobs. They didn’t worry about the tamarind fruit.
I learned as much on the search for my bottle of soda. The supermarket chains—Ralph’s, Von’s, Hughes’—didn’t stock it; their ethnic foods aisle held ramen and watery salsa. They told me I could order it special, but it would take three weeks. I didn’t have three weeks.
I expanded my hunt. I went through the Yellow Pages, ticking off store by store. I drew a map and plotted my targets with red dots, the distances growing wider. A few times I’d call some mom-and-pop market, and they would say, Sure, we got the tamarinds. I’d then drive the 20 miles inland and discover tamarind candies and cans of Crush orange soda.
Each day, I’d drive off and return empty-handed. My mother wasn’t working then— she’d taken time off to get me ready for school—and she’d wave me goodbye and greet me again when I pulled into the garage. (She must have heard the door opening.) Back and forth it went, my fool’s gold expeditions and my mother’s steady send-offs and welcomes. She never pressured me to tell her where I went, and I never did. In the week before Celina returned, I figured that my mother welcomed me home more times than in the next four years combined.
One day, after being lured downtown, past the skyrises of Grand Avenue and the souvenir booths hounding Olivera Street, I still had no bottle. The clerk said he made an honest mistake over the phone. Maybe, but I didn’t believe him. On the drive home, I grew frustrated and parked hastily on a side street, cursing the empty car. My heart began to pound, and rivulets of sweat snaked down the contours of my chest. I had no desire to slug through the afternoon traffic, so I got out, and on my walk down the street, the August air and exhaust fumes swirling into my lungs, I spotted a small convenience store and told myself, Sure, what the hell.
It was cool and dark inside, a city cave. I walked to the back, to the upright coolers. Behind me I could hear the manic announcer of a soccer match rising above a fan’s low buzz. At the cooler, I pulled a can of Coke and pressed it to the back of my neck. As I slid the door closed, I saw, below the Sprite, the Diet Coke and the Fanta, a familiar bottle. Jarritos, the Mexican brand. It wasn’t orange but green: limon. Below limon, sandilla. Below sandilla, manzana. And at the bottom, tamarindo.
The bottle, beneath a fine white layer of soot, contained a living liquid crayon of orange. It may have been there for years, who knew? I tipped the bottle forward, judging the effervescence. It looked flat. I didn’t care. I piled two, three, four bottles in my arms, and because I couldn’t carry more, I left my own drink in its slot.
At the counter, the cashier, his legs propped on a crate, was watching the soccer game through terrible reception. He waited 10, 15 seconds before acknowledging me, then turned abruptly when I lay my cache on the counter. He was dark-skinned, what Celina would have called a true mestizo. He looked at my bottles suspiciously and clicked his tongue.
“Hot day,” I said.
“I know, or otherwise I’d be outside myself.” There wasn’t a trace of accent. He snapped open a paper bag. “You like soccer?”
“Not really.” I caught a glimpse of the green and white jerseys through the TV’s snow. “But I like that team—I like Mexico.”
“You been?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I haven’t been, but I like it anyway.” He rang up the soda, but before he could push it back across the counter, I saw behind him the one purchase I still needed to make. A small box, no larger, it was true, than a wallet. He followed my gaze and slipped a package off the shelf and tossed it over to me. Automatically, I flipped it over and checked for an expiration date.
“Use them fast enough, you won’t have to worry about it.” He laughed heartily, and I felt the heat flush on my face grow. I paid my bill and gathered the package in my arms. He plopped back down behind the counter to watch his match, and just as I was leaving, he called, “Remember J&J Market for your everyday needs.” His laugh followed me onto the street.
I sat the package down beside me. But before I returned home, I had to pull over and transfer it to the trunk, so my mother, faithful as ever, wouldn’t see it as she welcomed me home.
I met Celina at the international arrivals gate. I expected a reprisal of the sad ballerina act, unresponsive and gloomy. Instead, she bounded into my arms, her arms locking behind my neck. This might have been an overcompensation for our time in Mexico, or a compensation for something hidden in the future. It didn’t matter because I was grateful. Celina had returned.
By this time, the deceptions had been arranged. I told my parents that I was sleeping over at a friend’s (another half-truth). Lorena had gone to a peace rally with friends in San Bernadino. I was to park down the street in case the neighbors became snoopy. Our secrets propelled us forward.
We took Pacific Coast Highway from the airport, past the surf shops and burger huts, the gear-laden families hiking the last two blocks to the sand. We didn’t talk much, and I feared that the last two weeks apart convinced Celina to change her mind. But when I sneaked my hand over to her knee, she squeezed it and pressed her nails into my palm. I told her then that I had a surprise waiting for her. She tried to needle it out of me, her voice rising high, her eyes wide with quick lashes. I wouldn’t give in, not even when she began to kiss me about the neck.
Afterwards, I told her.
Afterwards, we opened the shades. It was past sundown. The sea was black and calm, glass-like. Celina pressed her head beneath my arm, the nub of her nose poking me above the ribs. She made a headless soldier with her two fingers and marched him across my belly. The ocean and sky melded together. “Can I have my surprise now?” she asked, quietly.
I leaned over the side of the bed and snatched the paper bag. The bottle was warm, a small concession for not having to traipse upstairs naked to the kitchen to retrieve it. I presented it to her like a split of champagne.
“Yes?”
“This is it.”
“But it’s a bottle of soda.”
I agreed. I told her about my daily journeys, about J&J Corner Market, my desire to give her a taste of home. She listened patiently. When I got to the end, all Celina could say was that she couldn’t believe I would go to that part of town, even for her. Finally, she unscrewed the top and took a single sip. When she set the bottle down again, she turned, smiling faintly, her lips unparted and tight—her peculiar expression of delight and exasperation, but now also mixed, I could sense, with jealousy, condescension, disappointment and fear. Her face held so many things that it held nothing at all.
I have read that a stabbing victim, once the blade is removed, can either shriek in pain or recoil, silent, in shock. I took the latter course, rolled onto my side, and fell asleep.
When I woke—hours later? minutes?—Celina was gone. On the nightstand stood the bottle, now empty. Did she finish it, or, with pity, pour it down the drain? I never asked. The door to the balcony was open, and from outside I could hear the gentle roar of the ocean, mingled with Celina’s troubled sobbing. I stayed in bed, heavy-hearted, but also glad that her cries were certainly not for me.
DAVID STEIN, ’99, MA ’99, is working on an MFA in writing at Johns Hopkins University.
