Agua de Pepino

This morning’s giant breakfast ended with the cutting of the Rosca de Reyes, a sweet bread with dried fruit on top and plastic Jesuses inside. If you get a slice containing a little white baby, you have to throw a party on February 2. I got a Jesus, but I’ll be long gone when fiesta-time comes.

I’ve been having more nightmares. Like last night, I accidentally set fire to West Virginia and the wind blew the blaze to Albany, where it consumed first the Mosses’ house and then mine. As it approached I ran into my house again and again to retrieve the things that mattered most to me. First I went for my scrapbooks, and then old things Mom and Dad had given me. Dad appeared from the dead to help me choose what to take. I was grabbing only belongings that were rooted in sentiment, rather than those with intrinsic or practical value, like clothes for my girls or sleeping bags for the homeless nights to come. As I drove away from my flaming house, I realized that it would be a long time before I knew whether I’d brought the right things or left behind those that mattered.

This school day began with a couple rounds of Escrupulas [Scruples] in Spanish, in which an ethical or moral question is posed and the group discusses it. First dilemma: would you intervene if your young daughter were to be involved with a significantly older man? For me, t’was an easy question to answer, even in Spanish.

After class we celebrated Dia de los Reyes. Araceli and I chopped up veggies in the kitchen and Enrique started a fire to cook the clayudas (a type of tortilla/taco that’s giant and crispy and that you can fold in only one direction). We devoured drink called agua de pepino (sugar, water and ground-up cucumber), mescal (I passed) another loaf of Jesus-Bread (no babies for me this time) and Oaxacan hot chocolate.

Here’s Adolfo (one of the maestros) taking a break from the festivities.

The best part of the celebration may have been when the Méxicanos completely lost it over something that was beyond translation, yet contagiously funny. I adore my teacher, Araceli (at right). And that’s Enrique at left.

Operating on Mexican time, Enrique didn’t round us up for our next adventure till 6:00 or so. We gathered ourselves for the trip to the pueblo of Arrazola, famous for its alebrijes: those painted wooden animals that you see in import stores all over the US. We rode a bus for a while, then disembarked and crammed into a cab for a bumpy 45-minute ride up the mountainside on narrow dirt roads with the occasional car-sized hole in the middle.

It was dark when we arrived so all the shops were closed. But that didn’t stop us. Up and down steep alleys we followed Enrique as he banged on door and tin rooftop until his amigos emerged and admitted us to their home-workshops.

At one stop I found a new hero: César Jimenez. His work, carved from the wood of the copal tree, is imaginative and meticulous. Also expensive. So we went on to a bunch of other houses, but in the end I came back to César and bought a sort of prairie dog that called loudly to me. Sadly, he is quite large and thus difficult to transport. Here he is, with César and son.

After making purchases, we bounced back to Oaxaca, arriving at 9:30. We speed-walked through the gnarly part of town where trash abounded in the dying moments of the Street of Toys, which was being disassembled till this time next year.

Now I’m sitting in the dim outdoor courtyard inside Magdalena’s house. The air temperature exactly matches that of my body. All the birds are covered for the night but occasionally let out a lone squawk. Sarah and I are looking on our laptops for flights to Chiapas and finding everything too expensive. But I really want to go there.