My mother hates sweets
By Allison Peda
I take the jug, my grandmother’s prized possession from my mother’s mantel and drink her stories.
There was a tradition in her village that she didn’t like to talk about. The belief that if a girl went up the mountain with a man and stayed overnight meant that in the morning they were married. She didn’t want to talk about walking up those sloping paths when she was 16 and my grandfather was 24.
She was already pregnant when he left a few months later to make a home for them in America. He was drawn by the siren song of steel and opportunity. Spain in the 1930’s heard a different song.
For ten years she was trapped in her homeland. She arrived alone, empty handed except for the water jug passed to her by her mother’s mother that she held during her entire journey across the ocean, held it tightly like the child she would never get to introduce to his father.
They were strangers again walking up the side of the mountain.
Another baby came and went before he saw his first year. Then in quick succession my uncle and mother were born. Made fat on their daily Hershey’s bars and raw egg served up in a tumbler etched with daisies. She needed to keep these new American children fat and permanent. To her, gorda was the same as beautiful.
My mother still doesn’t like sweets.