Ingredients : Green plantatains,
salt, garlic powder, water, oil.
ICut plantains an inch wide.
Remember your mother’s brown hands,
Slick with water and oil,
Working the knife like an extension of herself.
These hands have hit you and held you,
Caressed you and shoved you away.
You have been at their mercy
But you know they can soothe.
You know when they will
And when they will not.
IIFry plantains until golden then smash with cup, plate, or bowl.
You have been squashed like this,
Flattened like this by your mother’s heavy words.
Every time you get the wind knocked out of you,
You reel back, astonished that your mother is capable of such violence.
Words or hands, it is still violence.
But you have always known that your grandmother
Taught your mother to be this way,
Just as she taught her to fry fish, chicken, and patacones.
Your mother reared you with an iron fist
Because that was the only way she knew how to.
That didn’t make it hurt any less.
IIIMix together water, salt, and garlic powder.
Measure each with your heart.
Your mother’s heart is hard
But it knows to stop when enough is enough.
It took time for it to learn, though,
Because when has your mother ever been punctual?
IVPass flattened patacones through solution
And let dry until they no longer drip.
Patience is your virtue.
It is certainly not your mother’s.
But she wears it like new shoes,
Painfully and doggedly,
Because learning takes time
And you would not give her the time of day otherwise.
Maybe she sensed that
When you hardly called home after leaving for college.
But somehow, the distance healed.
Your heart may not have grown fonder,
But you can finally grow in the space she no longer occupies.
You do not turn your back
On the things you associate with her.
Latin dances, the Spanish language, patacones—
You now allow them to become yours.
VFry patacones again.
Sprinkle with salt if desired and serve with ketchup.
Remember your mother’s brown hands.
See your own brown hands,
Slick with oil and water.
Eat.
