Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

Half a block later I began to make out cars clustered like metal shavings near the magnet that was my mother’s house. The house was the smallest on the block, probably in town, but it came armed with the loudest bark causing nearby houses and their inhabitants to recoil when it pulsated like it did now, illuminating the surrounding sky with the sounds of fortune. What sounded then was a family gathering loosely centered on my temporal crisis. The cars told this story: A blue Ford Escort that seemed to sputter even when off, registered owner Tio Chino also owner/co-creator of three of my cousins their names being Joann, Cybill, and Andres and their aforementioned father being married to Tia Margarita and he being the youngest child of the two old-timers ultimately responsible for this mess and whom in a long-ago uninspired fit of invention someone, a small someone doubtless, had monikered Buela and Buelo; and Buelo’s green ’51 Chevy in the driveway since he lives in the house with my mother who came to this country essentially on a dare from his wife’s lips to the effect that you marry that man at the age of sixteen and well you can image the rest and her doing Buela one better and marrying that man — of whom nothing more will be said throughout but only out of deepest love and similar emotions even though the clarity of the image faded daily, like a photograph left under the sun — in a country where they were currently dropping like flies off highway overpasses and all this to the chagrin of the real head of the family and oldest sister Tia Miranda who decided to try and undo the geographically done and so boarded the next plane here to talk some sense to the newly wed, but little sister had decent powers of persuasion herself and before long Miranda was having apple pie and rooting for the home team at the ole ball game and subsequently birthing two more cousins with since-discarded male in the cigar-dispensing role and naming them Lorena and Vanessa and all this from an apartment located not more than ten feet from her sister’s. Well there followed a genuine exodus of Colombian tourists who overstayed their INS welcome, the first being older-but-not-oldest sister Nia who married only long enough to expel sole daughter and cousin Melinda who later joins forces with redheaded Patrick, his black Lexus now parked facing the wrong way, to create not-yet-one-year-old Jaren whose grandmother was followed by youngest daughter and final aunt Ariana who at least waited until she was eighteen years and one minute old to take to the skies and now drove a red sports car with SEXY license plates and was unencumbered by reproductions. So all five gone from a now empty house and Buela spends the next twenty-odd years convincing Buelo to join them until finally they do, so that on weekends they, and others like newly-arrived cousin Armando and his 70’s Volkswagen van costumed like a giant hot dog, make my mother’s house jump with salsa and merengue for your ears, chicharrón and arepas for your belly, and aguardiente for your soul.

Such was the case that night as the house’s music crossed the street to where I pulled up behind the oversized frank, my front bumper coming to rest directly beneath the part where the little extra beef peeks out from inside the bun. Timmy woke up and immediately started singing:

One two three… three two one

Join with me and we’ll have fun

Join with me

We’ll have fun

As th’Earth flies

’Round the sun

Now I know my Alpha Beta C’s

Next time I want some money

Mary watched and listened but said nothing. Then she stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth like Charlie Brown, ran towards me and jumped into my arms. We walked into the house to find my mother frying. My mother didn’t cook, she fried. If you weren’t vigilant she’d fry your goddamn Lucky Charms in the morning.

What she fried on this night were empanadas and these are an unqualified good. If you disbelieve me then get your hands on this:

To serve as filling :

2 tablespoons olive oil (cheap kind)

1 cup peeled potatoes diced into 1/4-inch dice

(Must get tiny yellow Colombian ones unless you can’t in which case abandon the entire project)

2 cups sirloin steak similarly diced

1/2 cup finely chopped white onions

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 cup ripe tomatoes seeded and diced

To create the dough that will surround the above :

1/2 teaspoon salt (Diamond Crystal or the lass with the inexplicable umbrella)

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon roasted garlic

2 cups cornmeal (finely ground)

1/2 tablespoon chopped parsley

21/4 cups hot chicken stock

To prepare :

1 large egg you’ll beat lightly

More vegetable oil than you’ve ever eyed at once for frying.

And do this:

Boil the potatoes in a small saucepan with cold salted water until just tender, maybe 5 minutes, then drain. Concurrently, heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large nonreactive skillet. Add the sirloin and cook until browned. Add the scallions and cook for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes and cook for 1 minute. Add the potatoes and cumin and cook for 3 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and let cool.

As to the dough, grab a large bowl and throw the dough ingredients in it. Mix them all until the dough is sticky but malleable. Refrigerate for 10 minutes to let the dough set. Cover your work surface with plastic wrap and slap the dough onto it. Cover with another sheet of plastic wrap and roll the dough flat with a rolling pin, using short strokes, until about 1/8 inch thick. Without removing the plastic wrap, and using a cup about 4 inches in diameter, cut out rounds of the dough.

Peel off the top layer of plastic wrap then remove excess dough between the circles and reserve. Using a pastry brush, brush the edges of each round with the beaten egg. Place a teaspoon of the filling on the lower half of each disk. Working on one empanada at a time, use the plastic wrap to fold the dough over to create a half-moon shape. Pressing through the plastic wrap, use the edge of the cup to seal the empanada . Remove from the plastic wrap and place on a baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining empanadas , rerolling the scraps of dough until none remains. Heat many inches of oil in a heavy medium-size pot or in a deep fryer to about 365 degrees (to test use a bit of leftover dough, which should quickly puff and turn gold on contact). Fry four empanadas at a time until golden. Remove and drain on a wire rack. Repeat again and again then serve hot.

Do that and you’ll have what we were having. Now please, make sure not to make the dough too thick or you’ll ruin the whole enterprise. Also resist the temptation to substitute healthier alternatives to either the ingredients or the frying process. Do it right. And eat them right too meaning get yourself some lime (never lemon) or maybe a little bottle of Tabasco sauce. Now bite off the corner and add your condiment into the newly formed opening. Repeat this process until you can’t.

On my mother’s orange kitchen counter lay several dozen of the above. Bottles too and other assorted distractions. Now my mother was hugging both of Marcela’s kids simultaneously, calling Mary Maria and Timothy some concatenation of phonemes I can’t possibly hope to replicate.

Then she was coming at me. Tiny and round and looking no older than Marcela she squeezed my head and—¡ Ay mi amor , twenty-four jeers ago! You’re still my little boy. Here eat. I made it especial for you.

Half an empanada sticking out of my face, I walked out of the kitchen and into near-hysterical humanity. The room was so loud that at first I looked for the fight that had erupted, but no, just the usual mayhem from everyone I mentioned before and more. The heavily-made-up women all wore indecent-exposure-short skirts and heels in the smack of winter and looked like they should be elegantly twirling their hands in the vicinity of A New Car. These were mostly my aunts. There was music. Loud enough to interfere with conversation but really discouraging no one and by simply changing the position of your head you could go from one multilogue to the next. A bottle of aguardiente the size of an equine thigh lay on the center table with a small bowl of limes.