Because It Is My Blood (13 page)

I awoke to the sound of a bleating goat, and to Theo shaking my arm. “Come on. I must get out and push the truck. I will leave her in neutral and you try to steer.” I looked out the window. It had started to rain, and the rain had caused mud to run over part of the road. “You know how to drive, right?”

“Not really,” I admitted. I was a city girl, which is to say I was well versed in bus schedules and walking shoes.

“Not a problem. Just try to stay in the center of the road.”

Theo pushed the truck, and I steered, too little at first but then I got the hang of it. About twenty minutes later, we were back on the road. That was my first lesson in cacao farming, I suppose. Everything took longer than you thought it would.

As we continued driving up the mountain, it got darker and darker as the forest became increasingly dense. I had never in my life been somewhere so wet or so green, and I couldn’t help saying this to Theo. “Yes, Anya,” he said in what I would later come to know as his “very patient” voice. “That’s what it’s like when you live in a rain forest.”

We came to a metal gate with the word
MAÑANA
on it. A second gate was open, and as we drove past, I could see that it said
GRANJA.

We drove down a long dirt road. “This is the farm,” Theo said.

The trees were about twice the height of the workers who tended them. For grooming the trees, the men used flat swords that were over a foot long.

“They’re pruning the trees,” Theo informed me.

“What do you call the tool they’re using?” I asked.

“A machete.”

“I thought those were used for killing people,” I said.

“
Sí
, I am told they are good for that, too.”

Finally, Theo pulled up to the main house of Granja Mañana.
“Mi casa,”
Theo said.

Theo’s
casa
was as big as a small hotel. It was two epic stories, both a faded yellow with gray stonework around the windows and arches. The ground floor had a blue-and-white tiled porch, the second level, a series of sociable stone balconies, and the roof was covered in festive terra-cotta tiles. The house was undeniably massive but not, to my eye, unfriendly.

When I got out of the truck, Theo’s mother was standing on the porch. She was wearing a white blouse, a coral necklace, and a khaki skirt, and her dark brown hair grew past her waist. She said something to Theo in Spanish and then she hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him in weeks. (It turned out that he’d only been gone a day.)

“Mama, this is Anya Barnum,” Theo introduced me.

Theo’s mother hugged me. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome, Anya. You are my niece Sophia’s friend here to learn about cacao farming?”

“Yes. Thank you for having me.”

She looked at me, shook her head, clucked something else in Spanish to Theo, and shook her head again. She looped her arm through mine and escorted me inside.

The house was even more colorful indoors. All the furniture was in dark wood but the walls and the pillows and the rugs were in every hue of the rainbow. Over the mantel was an almost childish painting of what I thought at the time was the Virgin Mary in a field of red roses. (I would later learn that this depiction of the Virgin is known as Our Lady of Guadalupe.) There were several thick blue glass vases with orchids in them. (The orchids were native to the orchard. My own nana would have loved them.) A spiral staircase in blue-and-white tiles like those on the porch took up the center of the main room. It was a lot to take in, though I imagine it wasn’t the decor but the humidity and the fact that I hadn’t eaten in so long that made me feel light-headed.

“Call me Luz,” Theo’s mother said.

“Luz,” I said. “I’m…” I’d had some practice fainting in the last several weeks, and I could feel myself starting to slip under. I tried to edge toward one of the sofas so that my head wouldn’t end up slamming against those picturesque, though let’s face it, pretty unforgiving-looking tiles. I began to fall backward. I saw Theo running toward me, but there wasn’t time. As I was about to hit the floor, I landed in someone’s arms.

I looked up. Above me was a very square face with a big chin and a wide nose. His eyes were light brown and very serious, and his mouth was stern somehow. He had stubble enough that it could reasonably be called a beard, and extremely thick eyebrows. “Are you hurt?” he asked in Spanish, though somehow I knew what he was saying. His voice was deep and sounded the way an oak tree might sound if it could talk.

“No. I just need to lie down,” I said. “Thank you for catching me. Who are you, by the way?”

I heard Theo sigh heavily. “That is my brother, Castillo, Anya.”

Luz shouted instructions and next thing I knew I was installed in a bedroom on the second floor.

When I awoke the next morning, a pretty girl with thick hair like my sister’s was seated by my bed. The girl looked nearly identical to Luz, only twenty or so years younger. “Oh good,” she said. “You’re awake. Mama wanted us to watch you in case you took a turn for the worse and we needed to take you to the hospital. She thinks you’re probably just malnourished and unaccustomed to the humidity. She says you will live. Stupid Theo. He should have taken you for lunch. We all yelled at him—‘Theo, what kind of host are you?’—and now he feels pretty awful. He wanted to come in here to apologize to you but Mama is traditional. No boys in the girls’ rooms. Even grownups. I’m twenty-three.” I had thought she was so much younger. “You’re nineteen, right? You look like a baby! Back to Theo. He never thinks about anyone but himself because he is the baby of the family and ridiculous and we spoil him terribly. It’s no use yelling at him really. I’m Luna, by the way.” She paused to offer me her hand to shake. Luna and Theo were both fast talkers. “You’re not bad-looking but you need a better haircut.”

I self-consciously clutched at my hair.

“I can do it for you later if you want. I’m very artistic and I’m good with my hands.”

At that moment, two older women entered the room behind Luna. They looked alike except the first was old and the second was really, really old. I realized they must be the grandmother and great-grandmother that Theo had mentioned in the truck. The older of the two, Theo’s nana, pushed a ceramic mug into my hands. “Drink,” she said. When she smiled at me, I could see she was missing one of her top teeth.

I took the mug. The beverage was brown with a reddish hue, and thick like wet cement. I didn’t want to be rude to my hosts, but the substance didn’t look all that promising.

“Drink, drink,” Theo’s nana repeated. “You feel better.” The two older women and Luna were staring at me in anticipation.

I raised the mug, then set it down. “What is it?” I asked.

Luna laughed at me. “It’s only hot chocolate.”

I reported that I had had my share of hot chocolate.

“Not like this,” Luna assured me.

I took a cautious sip and then a larger one. Indeed, it wasn’t like any hot chocolate I had had before. It was spicy and not all that sweet. Cinnamon was involved but also something else. Paprika, maybe? And did I detect something citrusy? I drank the rest of the cup. “What’s in this?” I asked.

Bisabuela shook her head.

“Secreto de familia,”
Abuela said.

I didn’t know much Spanish, but I certainly understood about family secrets.

Bisabuela took the mug from me, and then the grandmothers were gone. I sat up in bed. I was already feeling better and I told Luna so.

“It’s the chocolate,” she said. “It’s a health drink.”

I had heard chocolate called many things in my lifetime but never a “health drink.”

“Nana says it’s an ancient Aztec recipe. They used to give it and nothing else to the soldiers before they went out to battle.” Then she told me that if I was interested I should ask one of the older women or Theo, who was interested in all that chocolate folklore.

“Is it folklore or is it fact?” I asked.

“A little of both,” she said. “Come, Anya, I put some clothes for you in the closet.”

She pointed me in the direction of the shower. Wanting to be a good houseguest, I asked her if there were any water restrictions. Luna made a face. “No, Anya,” she said patiently, “we do live in a rain forest.”

*   *   *

In the afternoon, Theo took me on a tour of their farm. He showed me the huge nurseries where they grew the cacao saplings, and the open-air buildings that were used to store the wooden boxes where they would ferment the mature beans, and on the sunniest side of the plantation, the patios that were used to dry out the beans before they were sold. We went out to the orchard last. It was quite shady and moist, as it was located under a rain forest canopy. Theo told me that cacao required both the shade and the moisture of the rain forest to grow. Obviously, I had never been in a cacao orchard and I had certainly never seen a cacao pod up close. Some of the cacao leaves were purplish but many had begun to change to green. Tiny white blossoms with pinkish centers grew in clusters along the branches. “Cacao is one of the only plants with flowers and fruits at the same time,” Theo informed me. The pods themselves were slightly smaller than the palm of my hand, but the thing that surprised me the most was their color. I’d always known chocolate as brown, but some of the cacao pods were maroon, almost purple, and others were gold and yellow and orange. They looked fantastical to me. Magical, I suppose. I wished Natty could see them, and for a second, I wondered if I should have tried to arrange for her to come out here with me. Of course, that would have been impossible for many reasons. “They’re so pretty,” I couldn’t help but say.

“They are pretty, aren’t they?” Theo agreed. “In less than a month, they’ll be ready to cut from the trees so that they can begin the fermentation process.”

“What are the farmers doing today, then?” The farmers had the same machetes that I had seen yesterday and at their feet, wicker baskets.

“They’re cutting off any pods that show signs of having been infected with fungus. That is the irony of cacao—it craves water, but can also be destroyed by it. The fungus is called
Monilia
, and even just a little bit of it can spoil an entire crop if it is not checked.” He expertly scanned the nearest tree, and pointed out a green-yellow cacao pod that was black at the tip with radiating specks of white. “Do you see? That is what the beginning of pod rot looks like.” He took his machete out of his belt and handed it to me. “You slice it off. It’ll be harder than you think, Anya. Cacao farming is not woman’s work. These trees are strong.” Theo made a muscle with his arm.

I informed him that I was no weakling. I took the weapon from Theo. It was heavy in my hands. I lifted it up to swing at the plant, then stopped myself. “Wait. How do I cut it? I don’t want to mess it up.”

“At an angle,” Theo told me.

I lifted the machete and sliced off the infected pod. My cut looked jagged. The plant really was tough. Doing this all day would probably be pretty exhausting.

“Good,” Theo said. He took the machete from me then recut the incision I had just made.

“I thought you said I was good.”

“Well, you will get better,” Theo said with a grin. “I am encouraging you.”

“Maybe I need my own machete?”

Theo laughed at me. “It’s true. The selection of a machete is a deeply personal matter.”

“Why don’t you have machines to do this?” I asked him.

“
Ay, dios mío!
Cacao resists machines. She likes human hands and caresses. And she needs human eyes to spot the
Monilia
. She hates pesticides. Attempts to genetically modify her beans have all been complete failures. She needs to struggle or the cacao produced will not be the richest. She needs to face certain death over and over again.
Mi papá
used to say that growing cacao in the 2080s was identical to growing it in the 1980s or the 1080s—that is to say, she has always been impossible to grow, and she is still impossible to grow. That is why it became illegal in your part of the world, you know. I am fairly sure that it was the cacao that sent my father to an early grave.” Theo crossed himself and then he laughed. “But I love it anyway. Everything worth loving in this world is difficult.” Theo kissed one of the pods with a big smack of his lips.

I walked away from Theo, down one of the orchard rows, scanning each tree for signs of fungus. The light was low, so it was not the easiest work. “There!” I exclaimed when I finally found one. “Give me your machete.”

Theo handed it over. I imitated the swift swinging motion I had seen him use, and the cut I made was, I thought, respectably clean.

“Better,” Theo said, but he still recut it.

We continued walking through the orchard. I’d scan for signs of
Monilia
, then I’d point it out so that Theo could cut it off. Theo was very serious about the cacao, and he talked much less than on the drive to Granja Mañana the previous day. He was a different person on the farm, and I found him much easier to be with than the boy in the truck. As we headed toward the rain forest side of the plantation, it grew increasingly dark and damp. It was strange that these trees, these odd flowering trees, had been the source of so many problems in my life, and yet I had never even seen a picture of one before.

Three hours later, we had only covered a very small part of the orchard, but Theo said we needed to go back for dinner.

“Theo,” I began, “I didn’t understand something you said before.”

“Yes?”

“You said that the reason cacao became illegal was because it was difficult to grow?”

“Yes. This is true.”

“Where I’m from, we’re taught something different,” I told him. “We’re taught that the main reason cacao became illegal was because it was unhealthy.”

Theo stopped and stared at me. “Anya, where do you hear such lies? Cacao is not unhealthy! The opposite! It is good for the heart, the eyes, the blood pressure, and just about everything else.”

His face was turning red, and I feared that I had offended him so I backtracked. “I mean, obviously, it’s more complicated than that. We’re also taught that the big American food companies were under pressure to stop making such unhealthy food products, and so as a concession they all agreed to stop making chocolate. The reason being that chocolate was rich and calorie-filled and had addictive properties and so … Well, the public basically turned on chocolate. They thought it was dangerous. Daddy always said it was a wave of poisonings that set it off…” Yes, Daddy had said that. I hadn’t even thought of that during the Gable Arsley fiasco. “And that this led to strict regulation of cacao as a drug, and then its eventual banning.”