I fear smelling like the Garcia household,
I fear of walking through halls of gold, of diamond, of emerald, of amber,
And staining them with scents of aluminum, copper, and rust.
I’m scared of entering through the kitchen as I age,
With each step I take, utensils evolve from spoons, to forks, to sticks, to peelers, to scissors, to knives,
In the kitchen, where walls are stained with sauce, tomatoes, ketchup, and blood,
The kitchen, whose perimeter engulfs an unpredictable weather of hot and cold, of shrills and silences, of music and news, of laughter and accusations…
The kitchen table holds not just ingredients and tools,
It holds tupperwares stained with hard water and grease,
The very same water we wash our hands with before we eat, before we lie, and before we clasp our hands in truce or in resignation,
The very same grease that not only warms beings but also warns,
Warns us that our time at the table marks our calendars of the day when the wrong Mary* joins us in our last feast…
I’m scared of going outside with the same clothes I used to cook in,
I’m scared of having evidences of what happened in that house, of my lapses, of our mistakes, of their arrogance,
I fear of smelling like tradition—of poor execution, of living by definition, of the same old useless solution…
Menudo. Afritada. Mechado. Puchero.
I was taught how to cut, peel, segregate, saute, and appeal,
Generations of cooking bequeathed to me simply by inhalation,
This way, I could say that our family recipe was passed down to me by heart,
When in fact all I could smell was the smoke from the burning carcasses who drowned in their own pursuit of our identity,
And in my quest to find the smell of our cooking,
In my anguish and exhaustion of trying to know what our kitchen is supposed to smell like,
I then try to start each dish,
I try and rewrite the stories that once made my ancestors full…
But is it right to modify the taste of our dinner?
Or should I just let it be?
Let it taste like what it did decades ago?
When the people who cooked it first were still alive?
When the sins that marked the skins of the children of tomorrow’s relatives hadn’t been yet committed?
When we still worded words and still conversed in conversations?
When pages were still held together by the spine and not by the very feet that carried us?
If only life was as easy to mise en place in the kitchen.
I fear by the time I walk out of the kitchen door,
In my attempts to finish the crossfire between my past and my future,
I serve a dish so poignant, so red,
I can’t even tell if it’s from the tomatoes,
Or if it’s made from the dreams of escape that always simmered low.
* “the wrong Mary” pays homage to the Filipino dish, dinuguan. some locals call it bl00dy mary
