Guadalupe Nettel - Natural Histories - Stories

“Don’t worry,” she said to me protectively. “We’re going to win this war. ”

Isabel stopped using insecticide that week. Never losing for an instant her newfound calmness, she began hunting down the bugs and putting them in an empty yogurt jar. The following Saturday my aunt went with us to La Merced, driving her car rather than taking the bus. We did the shopping like always but this time, before leaving, Isabel led us to a section she’d never taken me to before. The stalls there didn’t have metal curtains or display tables like they did in other zones. There, the vendors laid out their wares on the ground. A sheet or a mat was enough to display their goods. Some had herbs, others, little piles of wild berries, loquats, and plums they had clearly gathered themselves. Others sold baskets. Someone at one of those miserable stalls caught my attention. It was a little girl with a lovely and very dark face who was helping her mother sell insects.

“What are they selling?” I asked Isabel in disbelief.

“Jumiles,” responded the little girl in a voice so sweet I instantly blushed. “Want to try?”

I looked at the scene, astonished. The girl was selling round and very squirmy insects in paper cones, and the customers were eating them, there on the spot, with lime and salt and not even bothering to cook them first.

“What are you waiting for? Go on,” Isabel chided me as my aunt watched, amused. “You’re going to say no to that angel? She’s giving them to you!”

I extended my hand and in it the girl placed one of those little cups, overflowing with jumiles. She dressed them for me herself.

Despite everything my aunt could say about my parents’ eccentricities, I’d never eaten insects before. Not even grasshoppers. As I deliberated whether to try them, one of the critters escaped and started crawling up my forearm. I couldn’t take it; I threw the cone on the ground and took off running. Isabel found me at the gate that separated that section from the next one, where they sold fruit and where we always went.

Jumiles were not the only bugs they sold there. There were also vendors who sold bees, whose venom — I learned that morning — helps reduce inflammation in wounds and lower fevers, brown crickets, corn earworms, ahuatles, and some enormous ants they called chicatanas . According to the institution at the university where I work, the number of known edible insects in Mexico is approaching 507 species.

“See? There’s nothing wrong with eating insects,” Isabel said to my aunt, who continued regarding her with a pensive expression. “I swear to you, señora. If we start eating them, the cockroaches will flee in terror.”

“But how are we supposed to convince my husband and the boys to go along with it?” Claudine asked to my surprise.

“We won’t tell them at first. We’ll just serve them, and once they get used to it, we’ll explain everything. Or we can bring them here and they’ll figure it out.”

On Monday when I came home from school I saw that my aunt had been convinced. For dinner Isabel served a salad of lettuce and breaded, fried fish. For dressing she brought out several spicy sauces, salt, and slices of lime. From the kitchen I watched as my family devoured that new dish with their usual appetite. My aunt also ate it, but not as much and somewhat reluctantly, with the expression of a martyr absorbed in her sacrifice. I didn’t eat a bite. The next day they had chop-suey and on Wednesday different kinds of mushrooms in guajillo chili sauce. That whole week Isabel kept coming up with delicious dishes. After a few days and for no apparent reason, the cockroach population in our cupboard had diminished. My aunt was overjoyed and called her sons over to explain to them what was going on.

“Don’t tell your father yet,” she advised. “I don’t think he’s ready.”

My cousins seemed upset at first. The younger one threw up that evening and refused to eat for several days. However, soon enough we all got over our prejudices and began to enjoy our supremacy over the cockroaches immensely. So great was the animosity we felt toward them that we’d think up all kinds of ways to torture them. The family’s favorite recipe was cockroach ceviche, which Isabel would prepare in front of everybody. To make it she’d dry the wretched things using fragrant herbs, as you would grasshoppers, and once purged, she’d leave them to marinate in lime juice for a few hours. I now know that many people develop allergies to cockroaches. Just the insects’ presence will make their eyes puffy and watery. However, maybe because of the highly scrupulous way Isabel cooked the cockroaches, nobody in the family developed that kind of reaction. Ingesting the cockroaches not only helped us end the plague, it also fostered a kinship among us. I began eating with the family again, being careful with my manners, and my cousins stopped segregating me for my ill breeding. Nothing like a family secret to strengthen the unity between its members.

Clemencia alone did not participate in these feasts. If before she had kept to herself, now her gastronomic reticence marginalized her completely. One night I was awakened by a whispered conversation. Isabel and her mother were having a heated discussion in their room. I put on my sandals and went out to listen through the door.

“It may be the solution, but you don’t have the right. It’s not fair what you’re doing,” said the old woman on the verge of tears.

I knew Clemencia well enough to know that she didn’t give a damn what the habitants of the house ate. I couldn’t believe it; she was defending the cockroaches. But Isabel, who somehow hadn’t realized whose side her mother was on, kept insisting, over and over, that it was the only way to defeat them. I once saw a program on TV about how insects get rid of each other. The best way to finish off a species is to let another one eat it. Isabel was right and the results spoke for themselves.

Days later, as I kept her company while she smoked one of her unfiltered Delicados, Clemencia spoke to me about the cockroaches, with obvious admiration.

“Those animals were the first inhabitants of Earth and even if the world were to end tomorrow, they would survive. They are the memory of our ancestors. They are our grandparents and our descendants. Do you realize what it means to eat them?”

Clemencia was not joking with that question. The kinship seemed invaluable to her. I told her that Isabel and I weren’t trying to exterminate the entire species, we just wanted them out of the house.

“Besides there’s nothing wrong with eating insects!” I exclaimed, using Isabel’s words. “They sell them in the market.”

Clemencia remained silent, and as she did she looked at me, accusingly and full of resentment. “Nobody, except for you people, eats cockroaches. But in this life we must pay for all we do. Don’t be surprised by your bad luck.”

I returned to my room terrified by the old woman’s threat. I’d already seen how her crazy predictions come true.

Friday morning my aunt came to school to bring me home. I asked her if something bad had happened but she only shook her head no. She looked so serious that I didn’t dare ask anything else. We rode the entire way in silence. In the foyer I recognized my mother’s coat. From the living room came the diffused, peculiar scent of her dark cigarettes. I was surprised by how outdated her clothes looked. In the months I’d spent in that housing complex I had gotten used to the sheen of middle-class clothing and spotless furniture.

Much skinnier than before, my mother was perched on the arm of the couch and shaky with nerves. Breaking the rules of the house — rules she knew perfectly well — she lit cigarette after cigarette and inhaled deeply, as if in the drifting substance entering her lungs she hoped to find the courage to look me in the eyes. She hadn’t come for me. She seemed more interested to know if I was well behaved, if I did my homework and my chores, and if my aunt would agree to let me stay longer. Some comment was made about a bank account that would take care of her expenses, or mine. I didn’t really understand that part. What I did easily grasp was that she was very frightened. Practical as ever, my aunt gave me the explanation her sister was not able to formulate: