Breakfast at Altagracia’s: A world where kindness mixes with thin resources
On a recent chilly morning, I stopped at a nearby public market for some hard-crusted bolillos. It was an unseasonably squally January day-a brief drizzle, a slice of sun, then clouds and more chilling drizzle. On the muddy steps of the mercado municipal, I ran into Altagracia Mendez, dueña of my favorite meat-and-salsa puesto. A sepia-complected, plumpish woman with a grand Aztec nose, she was bundled in rebozo covered by an old sarape of her husband’s, Don Lupe.
After the usual pleasantries, she squinted at me. “And then,” she said as if taking up a conversation that had just been interrupted, “you don’t eat anything when you come the mercado, anymore? You don’t say hello to you friends? You’re going back to acting like a gringo, again? Is that what that newspaper mischief is doing to you, otra vez?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “You work too hard at the wrong times, you know that, don’t you?” She smiled, pumping my hand with her callused palm. “Pos, we forgive you. But only if you come up and have something for almuerzo. Listen to me, now.” She wrung my hand. “Without fail.”