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.”
After picking up their bolillos, I climbed the stairway to Altagracia’s “Taco de Vapor” stand. It’s an uncovered island of cement and tile at the head of the stairs on the mercado’s oddly slanted second floor.
It had begun to drizzle again and I needed a cantaro of hot cafe con leche. I sat on the long single bench near the steaming cazuelas of food, rubbing fingers to warm them. Altagracia said, “The pork and salsa are good. There’s pasta, frijoles, res con salsa, arroz, chilaquiles, and the consome de pollo is just finished.” She lifted lids off fragrant, bubbling cazuelas crowding the narrow gas burners butted against the end of the counter in front of me.
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