This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Josefina López
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
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First eBook Edition: March 2009
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ISBN: 978-0-446-54446-7
Contents
Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
Prologue
BASIC CUISINE
Chapter 1: Four Gossips and a Funeral
Chapter 2: A Chicana in Paris
Chapter 3: Hiding Out in the Sixteenth
Chapter 4: Bonjour, Carte de Séjour
Chapter 5: Le Coq Rouge
Chapter 6: Like Water for Canela
Chapter 7: I’ll Always Have Butter
Chapter 8: Pardon My French
Chapter 9: Casseroles of Fire
INTERMEDIATE CUISINE
Chapter 10: Blood of the Earth
Chapter 11: Eat Woman Drink Man
Chapter 12: Alive and Rotting in Paris
Chapter 13: Déjà Vu Again
Chapter 14: Not Without My Bag!
Chapter 15: Boys in the Banlieue
SUPERIOR CUISINE
Chapter 16: Spanish Omelette
Chapter 17: No Exit
Chapter 18: Au Revoir les Euros
Chapter 19: Last Mango in Paris
Chapter 20: Canela’s Feast
Chapter 21: Bitter Truths
Chapter 22: Cinnamon Souls
Epilogue
Glossary of French and Spanish Words and Terms
Reading Group Guide
About the Author
This book is dedicated to my parents, Catalina and Rosendo López, who lived their lives in the United States as immigrants with dignity and sacrificed so much to give their children an education and a better life; and to my brothers and sisters, who all have become exemplary models of successful American citizens.
This book is also dedicated to all the women I met at cooking school—in particular, Amy Whitman, Carla Trujillo, Kate Moffet, Myra Coca, Ingrid Wright, Sofia Sarabia—and to all the women in cooking schools who aspire to be taken seriously as chefs. May the fire in their hearts continue to burn bright.
To my husband, Emmanuel, who gave me a wonderful introduction to French culture and continues to surprise me by aspiring to be the man of my dreams.
To my dear cousin Marina, whom I never got to know because there was a border between us, but whose tragic passing haunts me.
Acknowledgments
This novel and my career were made possible by my wonderful and passionate manager, Marilyn Atlas.
I would also like to thank my literary agent Barbara Hogenson for being so lovely to work with.
My editor, Selina, took my underwritten and overplotted story and helped shape it into a real novel. Thank you!
I also want to thank all the other editors who worked on my novel for helping me clarify my story and making me sound articulate in three languages. Gracias! Merci! Thank you!
I couldn’t have survived Le Cordon Bleu cooking school without the kindness and support of Kate Moffet, Myra Coca, Carla Trujillo, and Christopher Carlos.
I also want to acknowledge all the sweet ladies in administration at Le Cordon Bleu for being extra kind to Americans, as well as Chef Didier, for always bringing joy and passion to the kitchen.
Thank you to all my muses and friends who encouraged me along the way: my sweet mother, Miles Brandman, Luz Vasquez, Hector Rodriguez, Mercedes Floresislas, Patricia Zamorano, Margarita Medina, Elizabeth Andrews, Angela Wu, Anthony Villareal, Jay Vincent, Rafael Rubalcava, Jeremy Ackers, Anaïs Nin, Stephen Clarke for writing A Year in the Merde, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez for showing me it could be done, and Sandra Cisneros for clearing the path for Latina writers like me.
Thank you to all the Latina journalists who serve as inspiration for this novel, in particular Yvette Cabrera, Christina Gonzalez, Lorena Mendez, and Elizabeth Espinoza.
A very special thanks to Angel Alcala, who planted the seed in my mind to go to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, as well as Jennifer Ladder, who had the courage to follow her heart and inspired me to enroll in cooking school too.
Prologue
This is either the longest suicide note in history or the juiciest, dirtiest, most delicious confession you’ll ever hear. Call me Canela. That’s Spanish for Cinnamon, but don’t call me Cinnamon; that’s a stripper’s name. Not that there is anything wrong with being an exotic dancer. With my lifestyle, I’m the last one to throw stones. Thank God I’m a modern woman living in a so-called democracy and—aside from in Nigeria and some Middle Eastern countries I would be too scared to visit—getting killed by stones is a thing of the past. My mother named me Canela because she loved to make buñuelos and add lots of sugar and cinnamon to them. She would make them from scratch, using none of the shortcuts, like taking flour tortillas and frying them. You do know what a tortilla is, don’t you? By now who doesn’t? No, she did them by hand, a mano. It was probably her sweat and tears that made them tasty. When she saw me for the first time, she was disappointed that I was so pale. Unlike some Mexicans with internalized racism, she thought being dark and indigenous- looking was beautiful, but she wondered if people gossiped about whether she had cheated on my father with an American to get such a white-looking child. I did get her high cheekbones, big eyes, big breasts, black hair, and love of smells. I also got her propensity to be fat, but let’s not talk about that right now. My mother spent most of her time in the kitchen and in the bedroom. When she wasn’t making beans, she was making babies. Her world was tiny, as was her kitchen, but she made it delicious. So by adding cinnamon to a buñuelo she would make it even browner. With my name she spiced me up and made me brown. She didn’t want people to mistake me for Italian or Irish—not that there’s anything wrong with that—so she gave me a Spanish name so people would ask, “What is Canela?” More importantly, I hope you ask, Who is Canela? Who is Canela? Thanks for asking… My psychiatrist might have an idea. My psychic might have a better idea. My mother probably has a good idea, but after thirty years in my skin and in my soul, I’m still finding out…
BASIC CUISINE
CHAPTER 1
Four Gossips and a Funeral
Are you ready to begin your exciting culinary career?” the cooking school admissions agent asked me in her French-accented English. I stared blankly up at her, clutching my admissions application, not believing what I was about to do. Anyone who knew me would think I had clearly gone insane. But what had brought me here? It had never been my dream to attend Le Coq Rouge, the world’s most famous cooking school. Yet here I was in Paris about to lay down thirty thousand dollars to be in the kitchen when I had sworn I would never go back there, ever.
Maybe my mother was right: I had gone crazy and I needed medication. Otherwise why would I have broken off my engagement to a Latino surgeon, given up my journalism career, and run off to Paris by myself?
“Is there a problem?” Marie-Hélène, the admissio
ns agent, asked with half a smile.
“Ah…” I tried to come up with a line to buy me a few more seconds. I needed to think about my past and whether I was making the right decision.
Maybe it was Luna’s suicide that had shaken me out of my senses, or the Iraq war, or the fight with the editor, or the fight with my fiancé, or my mother and father fighting… yes, when all else fails blame it on my childhood. All I knew was that I didn’t want to go back to the United States, to my home in Los Angeles, and this was the only way to stay in France.
It must have been the fight at the wake that made me realize I was exhausted from fighting everyone, including myself.
Why is it that when someone dies everyone only says good things about her at the funeral? Death makes angels of everyone, I suppose. No, I think it’s out of superstition. At the root of every fear is death, so if you speak badly of someone who is dead and they can’t defend themselves, then death might strike you. At my funeral I want people to say I was a bitch if I truly was one to them. All I hope is that the people who experienced my kindness will speak up and say, “Yes, but…” Maybe then people can have authentic conversations instead of the stupid ones in which everyone knows the person is dead but, aside from this exception, pretends death doesn’t really exist, thus freeing them to converse about silly things. Silly things like my broken-off engagement.
“Is it true what I just heard?” asked my mother in her metiche mode. My mother was usually my favorite person on the planet, but also the one that drove me to tears and insanity at the push of an emotional button whose location only she knew.
“You hear a lot of things, including ghosts, so it depends on what you heard,” I replied.
“You and Armando—what’s going on?” she demanded to know. “Your sister told me she thinks you are depressed. I think you should get on medication. You are not thinking straight. You can’t break it off. He’s a doctor and he loves you! Do you realize how hard it is to get a good man in Los Angeles? Es una locura!” she hissed at me like a cat about to get mauled by a dog.
I got up from my pew and went to look at the body. My mother did not follow me. Nobody wanted to be first. I was glad to have a few seconds with Luna, my favorite cousin, before anyone else had the courage to go up after me. I smiled at Luna’s over-made-up face. She hated pink lipstick, but here she was in pink for eternity. Luna was more of a red. She loved living life in extremes, like me. When we were little girls we played like boys and hated dolls. We were a pair of mocosas, rascals always getting into trouble. We swore that when we got older we would travel the world and never marry or have children because we would always play. We wanted to be a part of history and make history. We wished we could have been born around the time writers and artists hung out in Paris, like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, or in Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution, like Diego and Frida. Luna was special. She could guess things or predict things before they happened. Her family thought she was just weird, but I knew she was psychic. She was silly when she wanted to be, but wise beyond her years. When everyone around me told me I was crazy for wanting to be a journalist covering all sorts of dangerous stories, Luna would join me on my adventures to catch a story.
In female friendships, a man always comes between them—isn’t that the predictable plot? In our story, Luna met a guy and I remained single. I was never jealous of him, but he wasn’t good enough for her. He was Mr. Now, but Luna was forced to make him into Mr. Forever when her parents grew concerned that “the neighbors were talking.” They married her off before she “got knocked up,” to this poor guy who could barely afford to support her and keep her gold-plated birdcage locked. Luna couldn’t go to college and had to play the housewife, a role she was never born for. She got so depressed she gained weight and developed diabetes. When she wanted to get pregnant she couldn’t, because the doctors warned her it might kill her. She tried anyway but had miscarriages, which made her even more depressed. Her world kept shrinking, but her body kept growing. Her dreams were larger than life, too big to exist in this world in a woman’s body.
I covered my eyes and started crying. Flashes of my life with Luna exploded like the big bang onto the little movie theater of my mind. I remembered my first bicycle ride with her and all the promises we made to each other. We were ten, hiding in the attic, leafing through a dirty magazine we had found on the street near an alley. We criticized all the couples and laughed together, not understanding what would motivate adults to make such funny faces. We laughed so hard, thinking we were so smart, knowing that we shared true happiness. Luna told me I was not just her cousin but her best of best friends and said that if I were not alive, she would not want to live anymore. I hugged her and said that I would not want to live in a world without her either.
“Is it true what your Tía Bonifacia is saying about you and Armando being over because you couldn’t agree on the menu?” my mother, who had joined me at the casket, whispered into my ear, so Luna couldn’t hear. Her question jolted me back to the present and I quickly wiped away all my tears. I couldn’t believe my Tía Bonifacia knew about the menu. How could she have known? She should work for the CIA or the National Enquirer. Maybe she’s psychic… Actually, all women are psychic. When a man cheats on a woman and lies to her, she already knows; she just lies to herself. This was the case with Tía Bonifacia. She was a poster child for what happens when a woman stays married to a man who is constantly unfaithful: she turns bitter. If she were a fruit she would be a lemon, always frowning like she just sucked on one.
“Yes. It’s true,” I whispered back. Poor Luna had to endure this pettiness even on her last day. My mother practically went hysterical at my response. She couldn’t believe that despite all her hard work, all the guilt trips, all the bad advice about how women are nothing without men, how careers are not as important as family and children, all the scripts in her “Third World Woman as Servant” file in her brain that she tried to install on my mental hard drive, I was not getting married in two months.
“Tú de veras estás loca,” she hissed again. “You really are crazy” was her usual response to anything I did that was out of the ordinary. It used to upset me to be called loca, but I was too heartbroken by Luna’s death to care about what my mother thought about me. When she called me loca it wasn’t the fun loca, as in Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” but the “there is really something wrong with you and we should lock you up with the crazies” loca.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I wanted to yell back at her to shut her up and respect Luna’s memory, but I would be seen as the one disrespecting this sacred rite. I ignored my mother’s comment and left a red rose on Luna’s chest. My mother immediately followed behind me and cornered me. My older sister Reina, having overheard that the wedding was off, jumped into the conversation.
“But I just bought a very expensive designer dress for your wedding and I can’t take it back,” she said, getting no sympathy from me.
I ignored their feeding frenzy by changing the subject. I handed my mother several twenty-dollar bills.
“What’s this?” my mother asked.
“It’s a donation for Luna’s parents for the funeral. I know this is going to cost them a lot of money. Tía Lucia shouldn’t have to worry about that on top of her grief,” I informed her. Her mood changed all of sudden.
“Yes, you may be a loca, but you have always had a good heart. We should ask all your brothers and sisters to put in money también to give to your Tía Lucia. At least this will comfort her,” said my mother. “Does anyone have an envelope?” Reina opened her Gucci bag and took out an envelope. She handed it to my mother and then pulled out her designer pen and wrote an amount on one of her Republican checks. Each check order was a donation toward the Republican Party. I didn’t know they needed money since it seems only rich people are Republicans. Oh, wait, not true: there are Hispanic Republicans, former welfare recipients who got out, or former undocumented people, or their children
, who made it and therefore think anyone who doesn’t make it is just lazy; Cubans who hate Castro; Texans whose parents were beaten for speaking Spanish in school; and other Latinos with internalized racism. Yeah, now I remember; I did an article on this for a newspaper I used to work for.
I rolled my eyes when I saw her check, and she came back at me with attitude.
“Yeah, well, at least he’s not screwing his interns.”
“I’d rather have a president who drops his load on blue dresses than one who drops bombs on innocent people for oil.” Then I added something I’d seen on a bumper sticker: “When Clinton lied, no one died.”
“Cochina,” my mother reprimanded me for my sexual reference. “You talk like a man.”
“He’s doing a good job defending our country from terrorists!” Reina said.
The whole president-as-father-figure-and-protector thing has Freudian implications, and I did not want to go there with my sister. I just wanted to be left alone to cry for Luna. Reina mistook my silence as a sign that she was right, and went on talking about all the good “W” has done. “So what that the weapons of mass destruction were not found yadda yadda yadda. . . .”
I went to “Lalala land,” my safe place where Republicans did not exist, where only people who cared about people and cared to be people peopled this land… Reina had stopped talking and I was about to get away when she got up to me real close and delivered her message à la The Graduate.
“Responsibility… You need to grow up and be responsible now. You’re going to be turning thirty and, yes, you may be beautiful now, but you won’t be forever.”
Now I got it: she’s always been jealous of me. For some reason, being beautiful rendered me an idiot in her eyes and lots of other peoples’ too. That must be one of the universal laws I didn’t know about. One of those unwritten rules women are unconsciously told: you must be beautiful or intelligent, but you can’t be both because it confuses men.
Hungry Woman in Paris Page 1
