by Marie Davis and Margaret Hultz.
“Mom said she never gave birth to me, that I came right out of the middle of a lime. She was busy making sliced turkey smothered in brown mole for the Sunday dinner — fifteen aunts, uncles, cousins – my grandparents were alive then – you know. Anyway, Mom quartered the lime and went to give it a big squeeze when she heard me screaming. Can you believe it, I could have been squished into turkey mole!”
“NO! Quit kidding around, Juanita, how do you expect me to believe all your crazy relative stories? I just can’t! Ha ha ha?” Even as a Sunday dinner guest, Clara wasn’t — well, she just wasn’t.
“Listen up, senorita – nobody…” Juanita genuflected with her left hand and shook her paring knife in the other – “nobody ever called my beloved grandmother a liar. Well, except for my great grandmother, but you gotta understand she came out of a coco pod.”
Clara tried to smooth things, “No offense, but people are just not born out of fruit.”
“Born out of fruit? My grandmother came out fully-grown – unfolded from a pineapple, and my grandfather climbed out from between the layers of a turkey’s waddle — said gobble gobble between every other word his entire life. Small things can affect us as kids – make a mark.”
“Oh – okaaay.” said Clara with utter disbelief.
Juanita stabbed her paring knife into the cutting board. Without even looking back at Clara she grumbled, “The problem with you Clara is that you are a doubter — oh — you believe in lots of gobblety gook — but not in the real way things are — you believe in make-believe.”
“Me?” Clara shook her head.
“Look, my entire family line came from this very dish thousands of years ago — maybe even before the Aztecs. Relatives we can’t even remember, except through their flavor. That’s why our family has mole every Sunday. It’s the day we invite all our ancestors to the table.”
“And then you eat them.”