Story – “Zuleika”

Zuleika

1984 – Tati stood at the kitchen sink rolling her eyes at her daughter, Zuleika and washing tomatoes, green onions and peppers for the Asopao de Camarones she was cooking for dinner.

 “Why couldn’t you lie?” Tati asked her daughter. “Why did you have to say the truth?” she questioned as if she had raised her to be dishonest. Zuleika tried to answer, but Tati continued confronting her with her simmering anger and spitting obscenities in between words and silences. 

Zuleika was hot and sweaty, and she fanned her dress to let air in her sweaty thighs.  Tati had closed the window so that the neighbors in the building couldn’t hear their argument, but as she cooked in the Bronx summer heat, the kitchen grew hotter and the little fan on top of the old refrigerator wasn’t cooling them. 

“Cono, Carajo,”Tati said her favored curses her lips pursing like o’s in slow motion. “Now you’re just a sinverguenza, a woman without dignity, and self respect…y que to hizo Mariano, por Dios, Zuleika?” she questioned, her hands a symphony of gestures a she patted them dry on her apron. 

Tati took some garlic from the vegetable counter and muttered obscenities under her breath as she placed the garlic cloves on the mortar, sprinkled salt and began mashing it with a pilon. The sweat on Tati’s forehead made her thin auburn hair frizz in the humidity like a halo above her head. 

Zuleika sat quietly in the kitchen table stripping the shrimps of their shells, and cleaning them with a knife by taking off the pupusita in the middle, and spreading it on a napkin she kept by her side. Zuleika felt her cheeks go red, and her hands began to tremble at the thought of her husband Mariano.  

“Mariano was a good man from a good family.” Her mother said as she continued with her cooking and her arguing.

“I didn’t raise you like this,” Tati screamed as she pointed at Zuleika’s stomach with her knife. 

 “Pero, Mami….,” Zuleika tried to speak, but it was useless. This was one of her mother’s one-way conversations and so she remained quiet. 

 “I raised you for better things, a family, children, Hay Dios dame paciencia,” Tati said as she put the knife down and took out her heart medication from the kitchen counter, the one she reserved especially for times when she argued with Zuleika.  

Zuleika took this opportunity to say her part.