The Holy Tortilla and a Pot of Beans by Carmen Tafolla

Author:Carmen Tafolla [Tafolla, Carmen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60940-036-1
Publisher: Wings Press
Published: 2008-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Stuff to Scream With

I don’t scream. I ain’t never been able to scream. Guess God didn’t give me the voice. I just do what I tol most the time, take care of the kids, and don’t bother nobody else. I stay quiet like you’re sposed to.

Once, I tried. I was little. My older cousin Manda, she tol me, “Can’t you scream, muchacha?” I shook my head. She said, “Here, do it. I take you someplace where nobody else can hear you. Then, you do it.” So she took me. Behind the neighbors’ garage. Next to the empty lot, where we used to throw mudballs at the wall and no one could see us. Then she said, “Go head.” I opened my mouth and made a sound, but it sounded like someone else’s sound, like someone else’s voice someplace else.

She said, “Girl, that ain’t no scream.” She stared at me, studying, daring me, then just figuring. She screamed at the top of her lungs. I looked around, scared we’d get scolded. But we didn’t. ‘Cause there was nobody there to scold us. She screamed again. Loud! She screamed a third time, louder this time than all the other screams, an’ long. An’ I didn’t know why, but I smiled. She smiled too. Then she just looked at me, like waiting.

“I can’t,” I said. “I don’t have the stuff to scream with.”

“Everybody gots the stuff to scream with. If you can talk, you can scream. Maybe even if you can’t talk, you can scream. Try. You’ll see.”

I wanted to tell her I can’t, you know, but she looked at me so hard, her eyes so much like two black knives that can cut you, that I opened my mouth and pushed out the breath, all funny-sounding and low and full of air. But it sounded like a sound. It didn’t sound like a scream.

“Try again,” she said. “Jus do it. Thinka the scary movies.”

An I thought of those ladies that let out those screams in the movies, like everybody turns aroun an’ you hear it real, real cutting through like something more than speaking, more than singing, more like from inside you, and more important than any other sound aroun. An’ I wanted, an’ I opened my mouth an’ well, something came out but it sounded silly, like a shout high up and too quiet, like someone acting in a school play that lets out a sound in a way they not sposed to.

She was lookin at me so hard an’ with a frown so down that I opened my mouth again, without her even tellin me to. But then I closed it, cause I didn’t know what to do, an’ I didn’t want to make that funny sick sound again for both of us to hear.

“I can’t.”

Then Manda said, “Jus do it.”

Then Manda took her strong hands and her zig-zaggy fingernails and grabbed up a piece of my stomach like you would grab a piece of bread that you were going to tear offa the bolillo.

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