El olor del comal

I was born in a town in Jalisco, one of those places that don't appear on the big maps. The house was adobe, cool in the heat and cold on the few chilly nights, with a courtyard in the center where my mother kept her potted plants and a jacaranda tree that turned everything purple in April. What comes back to me first when I think of those years is not an image, it's a smell. The smell of the comal in the early morning, when my mother would put the first tortillas on and the fire was still low. I slept with my sisters in one room, and before I even opened my eyes I already knew it was morning by that smell of corn and smoke. Then came her voice, calling me by my full name, which she only used when she was serious or when she wanted to wake me up. My mother cooked for everyone. Not just for us, but for whoever arrived, because in the town whoever came sat down to eat. She made a pozole on Sundays that brought together half the family, and a mole for the holidays that took her two days, grinding the chiles on the metate until her arms ached. I would sit on a little stool watching her, my hands full of dough, learning without knowing that I was learning. My father worked the land, beans and corn, and looked at the sky like someone reading a book. We weren't rich, but I never felt like I was missing anything. There was food, there was prayer at night, and there was a certainty that as a child I couldn't name and that I missed my whole life afterward: knowing exactly who you were and where you came from. Those first years were short. Life was going to take my sister and me far away. But the comal in the early morning stayed with me. I carried it north like someone carrying a photo in their wallet.

I crossed with my sister Lupe in seventy-two. She was twenty years old, I was twenty-two. We each carried a backpack, a photo of our mother, and the name of a cousin written on a piece of paper that I folded and unfolded so many times it almost wore away. I'm not going to tell everything about the crossing, because there are things a person keeps to herself. But I'll say that it was long days, that we were afraid, and that there were good people and people who weren't, like everywhere else. There was a night in the desert when Lupe wanted to turn back, and I grabbed her hand in the dark and told her a lie, I told her we were almost there, even though I didn't know where we were. Sometimes love is that, telling a kind lie so the other person can take one more step. What I missed most wasn't the whole town. It was small things. The smell of the comal in the early morning. The church bell. My mother's voice. You leave for a better life, that's what we said, but nobody explains to you that you're also leaving behind the smells, the sounds, the way the light falls in one place and nowhere else. We arrived with the cousin in a town in California surrounded by fields that never ended. That first morning I looked out and saw rows of trees as far as the eye could see, and I thought two things at the same time. I thought how big this is. And I thought how far I am from my mother. Both things were true, and I learned that they almost always are, that life almost never gives you just one thing at a time.