Pasteles de masa

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When you're from the Caribbean, it's not easy to go and live out there. I don't know, maybe it depends on the epoch. When Toño left, it was like tearing a piece out of your heart, leaving half your soul on a coat rack so your mother doesn't feel alone. And the things you don't leave, you take them with you. That's how the pasteles de masa arrived to Atlantic City, to preserve the traditions of the isla del encanto. It was Christmas time, the snow was falling on the roof of the house, and Toño.... he had taken a bunch of bananas from who knows where.  He peeled the whole cluster, the stain of the shell reminded him of his house, his mother, the hands that pushed him to grow. With the masa of the pasteles ready, the making became easy. Two dozen freshly tied pasteles were ready before sunset.

I had arrived that same week in Atlantic City, I remember, I was not tempered by the cold, the heat of my little island had escaped from my bones. Until I arrived at my brother's house and found him making pasteles. When we made them at home, in another one of those memories I have, I was the one who tied them, because I was fast; and I was fast because I grew up sewing tobacco at Daddy's ranch. The hands don't forget either, the hands remember the movements and knot the pasteles in pairs, one with the other, the one that goes first and the one that is added later. All of them in the refrigerator, and a few in the pot of boiling water, to defrost my stomach and the hunger of my bones.

While we were making the pasteles, Toño' s neighbors, the Smiths of that time, arrived. They brought him a giant, quirky can of cookies. I still remember the taste of ginger crumbling in my mouth, the sugar sweetening my bitter and salty palate. Toño, like one of those neighbors who grew up watching his mother share rice cauldrons over the fence, looked for two pairs of cakes and gave them to the neighbors.

The cakes we had put to boil were already on the table. We cut the string and unwrapped the paper and banana leaf. The cake remained there, smelly and panting with steam, the house became so full of smell, that the ginger in the candles and the cookies became imperceptible. The Smiths were delighted with the smell; they ate with their nose.  Toño did not hesitate to offer them, but they went home to do their things. We enjoyed the pasteles as a family, we ate and talked in order to free ourselves from the heavy burden of not being where we want to be. Because when you're far away, there are times when you're halfway there.

That night was warmer than others, warmer, homelier. That same night, before it was over and I had to remember it, we went to the Smiths' house, to pass a bottle of coquito over the fence. We knocked on their door, Mr. Smith told us to come in. Toño told him about the " coquito con ron " he brought him, they understood that language, they tasted it. However, Mr. Smith was a bit uncomfortable when Toño asked him about the pasteles. Mr. Smith didn't know how to tell Toño that he didn't like them, but shyly he did. That's why we went into the dining room, to see if they were ruined or something. There were the pasteles, on the plates, open and crushed on the banana leaves. They looked sticky, unsavory, and to the Smith's palate, they tasted like stains. Although Toño could not contain the laughter, he explained to them what had happened. That's when they had no choice but to laugh out loud. Yes, the Smiths were eating raw pasteles, without boiling them, with the masa simply amasada, but without any baking, raw as a bread that has not seen the oven.  I still remember that night, I still remember the Smith's teeth full of raw masa, I still remember one of those nights I spent there, one of the many nights that make me a woman who remembers.

F. JaBieR