The Tequila Worm

Berta and Sofia are cousins. But they don’t get along well. Sofia says that Berta is “mean and selfish” (6). While walking to church on Sunday, Sofia and her mama spot Berta, who is eating chocolate. Her mama tells Sofia to take a bite of Berta’s chocolate. She gives Sofia permission to take a huge bite if Berta only offers a small one. Sofia is shocked her mother would let her do this, and she approaches Berta to ask for a bite. As predicted, Berta holds out only a small bite, and Sofia, looking back at her mama first, takes a gigantic bite. Berta cries out and bites Sofia on the shoulder. Berta’s mother, Tia Belia, and Sofie’s mother pull the girls apart.

Tia Belia tells her daughter to share. Berta cries, but she does what she is told, taking the wrapper off and breaking the chocolate bar into two unequal parts. As Berta blubbers, offering Sofia both pieces, Sofia decides to take the smallest of the two parts. 

Before her First Holy Communion, Sofia, her sister, Berta and Berta’s brother played a game called “First Holy Communion” using Necco wafers. Berta and the little kids joke about communion, which makes Sofia angry. She tells them terrible stories about the nuns. She tells them to stop thinking that nuns are nice like Maria in The Sound of Music: “Think of the evil old bruja (witch) in Hansel and Gretel” (11). She also warns them that when they make their confession, they may have to say hundreds and hundreds of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. Most importantly, she tells them that if they don’t let the host melt in their mouths, or if they stick their tongue out and show anyone the wafer, or if they chew it, even accidentally, they will die and go to hell.

When it’s time for Sofia’s first communion, she can’t remember what to say when the priest holds out the host. She forgets to open her mouth and stick out her tongue. After a minute, the priest shoves the host into her mouth. She is stunned. The host hangs halfway out of her mouth. She takes it and puts it into her shirt pocket. She can’t believe she’s carrying the blood and body of Jesus in her pocket. She is sick and filled with anxiety. At home, after worrying herself for hours, she tells her mama what she’s done, and her mama calls the priest. The priest tells Sofia and her mama to come in. Before they leave, her mama takes the shirt out of the closet Sofia wore when she hid the host in the front pocket, but Sofia doesn’t know what she does with it.

When they arrive to visit the priest, Sofia is terrified. She thinks, “I have never felt so frightened in my life” (16). Her mama speaks privately with the priest, and when she returns, she tells Sofia they must say the Stations of the Cross. Sofia has no idea how to do that because she believes only grown-ups know how. Still, she follows Mama, reciting to herself her own secret prayers and thanking God for giving her such a great mama. 

Strangely, three months later, a box arrives in the mail. There is no return label. When they open the box, Sofia sees the shirt she wore during her botched First Holy Communion. Then she notices the pocket that held the host is sewn shut.  

During lent, Sofia eats a lot of eggs. That’s because she wants to empty as many eggshells as she can so she and her family can make more Easter Cascarones on Good Friday. She and Berta have a contest to see who makes the most cascarones. No matter how many eggs Sofia eats, though, Berta always beats her.

The cascarones are hollow eggs decorated with pictures and stuffed with little toys and confetti. On Good Friday, Sofia is happy to see there are 20 empty egg cartons. Surely this year she will beat Berta. Her papa puts newspaper on the cement floor of their porch and hands Lucy and Sofia each one egg. He grabs an egg for himself and puts his finger into the hollow egg, grabs a crayon and draws a bird, a flower, and a butterfly on the egg. When he’s finished, he places the egg back into the egg carton. The girls follow suit, talking, laughing, and breaking random eggs. Lucy tells Sofia she can’t wait for her quinceañera, and Sofia tells Lucy that the last thing she wants is a quinceañera.

While the girls decorate the eggs, Sofia’s papa plays traditional Mexican music on his guitar and brings them lunch and lemonade. Later, Sofia’s papa brings Sofia inside and shows her how to color the eggs with a store-bought egg dying packet. The next day, when all the eggs are dry, they each fill the eggs, through the broken tops, with confetti. Then, Papa tells the girls to go ahead and fill their eggs with something secret. Sofia fills her egg with flour. When they each return—Sofia doesn’t know what Lucy filled her egg with—they paste crepe paper crowns on their nearly finished cascarones. When Sofia sees Berta, she learns that Berta has 21 empty eggs and beats Sofia by 1 egg.

The next morning, after a long Easter service at church, the family drives over to Falcon Dam, where they always go on Easter. Sofia has her basket filled with candy and chocolate Easter eggs. Berta’s family is there, and while the fathers cook sausages on mesquite coals, and the mothers take walks and gossip, the girls eat their chocolate. Finally, the parents hide the eggs while the children turn their backs. The girls run around collecting as many eggs as they can. Sofia can’t believe how many eggs there are. “The landscape was completely covered with cascarones as though they had fallen like rain from the sky, sprinkling trees, bushes and the ground” (24). After the eggs are collected, the children and the adults run around smashing them on each other’s heads; “It was a riot of laughter and paper jewels and bits of bright eggshells flying and falling everywhere and on everyone” (24-25). In the melee of cascarones, Sofia smashes her flour- filled egg on Berta. Then, Lucy smashes her egg, filled with an egg, also on Berta, so that Berta is a mess of flour and eggs.

On the way home, Sofia’s mother scolds her—she had to pour bleach down the drain to take away the sickening smell of raw eggs that Sofia threw down there. It’s a waste of food, Mama tells her. Sofia’s papa reminds Sofia that it was she who won the egg-smashing contest, but her sister was the one who captured the title with one egg at the very end. As they drive home, Sofia is happy and grateful, especially for her sister, Lucy. There’s no love lost between Sofia and Berta.

It’s time to pick the costumes for Halloween. Sofia remembers the time a curandera (healer) came to the house to help Lucy, who had been hit by a car. Lucy had no broken bones, but she wasn’t right, and none of the doctors seemed able to help. Mama and her comadres worked together to find the best curandera to help Lucy. They decided on Sofia’s Tia Belia, who is also Berta’s mother. Tia Belia, as a seasoned curandera, had already cured cases of the evil eye and other regular things like colds and stomach aches, plus she brought a dead baby back to life by blowing on it. She even helped an infertile lady have three babies. All of them were born with bright orange hair.

When Belia sees Lucy, she grabs the kitchen broom and sweeps Lucy up and down, all over her small body. As she does this, she calls out to Lucy, “Lucy! Lucy! Where are you? Where are you” (29). When the session is finished, it’s like the old Lucy has returned. After that, Belia leaves, and Sofia and Lucy giggle while Sofia pretends she is a curandera. With the broom in midair, Sofia’s mama and Belia enter the room, surprising Sofia. Sofia believes she’s about to get a hex put on her by Belia, but Belia laughs and tells everyone that she thinks Sofia will one day be a good curandera.

Sofia decides to be a regular bruja (witch) for Halloween because her mama doesn’t think it would be right to be a curandera. Someone who cures people is sacred. Sofia loves Halloween because of all the candy she gets. At one house, a lady threatens to throw holy water on Sofia because she hates witches coming to her door. The lady throws a boot that has a picture of a Guardian Angel on it. Her mama throws the boot back, but she rips off the picture and tosses it into Sofia’s bag.

For Sofia this year, Halloween isn’t fun. She tells her mama she’s ready to go home and her mama asks her why. She explains that Berta told her the best candy was on the other side of town. Her mama jumps into action and drives Sofia to the candy neighborhood. At the first house, Sofia is elated. The house is beautiful, and the woman answers the door with a bag loaded with chocolate. Sofia says, “The woman smiled and dropped a chocolate bar in my paper bag, then a quarter, then a whole handful of Kisses” (32).

The next day, Sofia accompanies her mama to Doña Virginia’s. Doña Virginia is one of her mama’s comadres, and she is very sick. Sofia spots her altar and looks at the things that Doña Virginia has placed on it. She sees votive candles, a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe and other saints, orange marigolds, and pictures. Later Sofia asks her mama about the altar; there were many items she didn’t understand. Her mama explains why the lime cross and the salt is there—to protect a traveling family member.

When she and her mama get home that evening, Sonia’s papa is reading Don Quixote, and Lucy is asleep. Her father asks her how her Halloween was, and Sofia shows him the two bags. One bag is filled with the weird stuff she got on this side of town. The other, she explains to Papa, is from the neighborhood on the other side of town. It’s filled with full chocolate bars. Her papa tells her to get into the car: “I am taking you to the cemetery to show you something magical about this side” (34) of town, he says. When they arrive, Sofia is frightened. There are people dancing and talking and playing guitars on and around the tombs. They are eating delicious food, stacked high on plates.

She tells her father to take her home, and he starts the car. She explains to her papa that she wishes she could live on the other side of town. When he asks her why, she tells him they have warm, big houses. He laughs. But she continues to tell him what bothers her: “It’s really cold at home, and most of the houses around us are falling apart” (35). Her papa tries to explain to her why their side of town is better; he reminds her about the sacred festivals and the curandera who made her sister better, and the “warm hearts of the families” (35), but she doesn’t understand him. He smiles and tells her that one day, she will come to understand what he means. They drive home, and Sofia goes back into her cold house, nodding and shivering. 

Every morning, Sofia’s mama wakes up at five to make bean tacos for Sofia’s school lunch. Every morning, Sofia begs her mama for lunch money or a sandwich instead. She doesn’t tell her mama why, but when she eats tacos, bullies make fun of her and her Mexican American friends: “Some kids called all Mexican-American kids beaners” (37). Sofia hides at the very end of the cafeteria and eats quickly, but finishing quickly means she is always the first one on the playground with nothing to do. One day, Sofia dreads being out in the cold for too long, so she slows down while eating her taco. A big girl walks up and asks her what she’s eating. When Sofia says nothing, the girl grabs the bag and, seeing the taco, calls Sofia “Taco Head” and invites the other kids to join in. The taunting seems to go on forever, but the P.E. coach, Coach Clarke, blows her whistle and tries to convince Sofia to ignore them.

Coach Clarke invites Sofia to sit with her. It’s a coveted place to sit, and Sofia feels nervous. Coach Clarke says she would love to trade lunches with her, so Sofia gives her the taco, and Coach Clarke gives Sofia her sandwich. Sofia is shocked at how bad the sandwich tastes. The next day, the same thing happens; Sofia sits with Coach Clarke, and they trade lunches. The second sandwich is as bad or worse than the first. Sofie wonders: “Do all sandwiches taste like something between sardines and bologna?” (39). Despite the sandwiches, Sofia loves sitting next to Coach Clarke. The coach tells Sofia all kinds of stories, and Sofia tells the coach that she loves soccer. Sofia remembers how Doña Clara told her she had inherited her great-great-grandmother’s gift for kicking like a mule, and she tells the coach about it. She tells the coach she wishes she kicked the girl who called her “Taco Head.” The coach tells her to kick with her head instead. She can get back at the girl, the coach says, “By kicking her butt at school, by beating her in English, math, everything—even sports” (40). She also tells Sofia to eat her lunch proudly.

Sofia ends up doing better in all her classes and sports, especially soccer, than the girl who bullied her. After sitting with Coach Clarke, Sofia and her Mexican American friends begin to eat their food out in the open with pride.