The Tequila Worm

Sofia is feeling the pressure at school. There is never time to rest, and she has no privacy. One night, under her covers while Brooke sleeps, Sofia starts writing. It begins as a letter to her papa but turns into a short story about her neighborhood and her family. She finishes at two in the morning, and after writing about everyone, she feels they are all in the room with her. The next day, she writes home, realizing she never wants to lose the traditions that belong to her people. Sofia remembers the time her mama made a doll from pantyhose. Her mama would take it to the grocery store with her, but when the store manager told her she wasn’t allowed to leave babies unattended in the cart, her mama threw the doll in the air, to the horrified gasps of the other shoppers. They all thought the doll was a real baby. Sofia thinks that the Panty-Hose Baby would also be a good, funny story to write.

Sofia’s mama keeps sending her strange presents, like a rock, a mitt for dusting, and a creepy barbie doll, decorated with lace and bows. (Sofia returns that one.) Her mama is surprised at the way Sofia doesn’t express much interest or gratitude in the gifts. She tells Sofia that Lucy always loves her presents. One morning, tells Sofia about a dream she’s had where Sofia is waltzing with her dad. This is part of the story Sofia wrote to make herself feel less lonely. She is impressed that the story she wrote brought her family there and even into Brooke’s dream.

Sofia makes a lot of calls home, but the calls don’t diminish her homesickness. She feels bad about always having to fake her cheerfulness. She misses her family so much, but she doesn’t want them to know. She is grateful for the packages and letters from her family. One day, her first package from Papa arrives. It is the tequila worm he promised to send her in a tiny, empty mescal bottle. She makes it part of her altar, next to the secret cascarone her father gave her.

It’s Thanksgiving holiday, and the parking lot at the school is jammed with Mercedes and Volvos—parents picking up their children. Brooke’s parents give Sofia and Marcos a ride to the bus station. They take the bus back to their neighborhood and gossip about the school. Marcos asks Sofia if she thinks it’s like a boot camp. Sofia tells Marco that sometimes she just wants to hurry up, graduate, go to medical school, and be successful, but sometimes she feels bad wanting that because she’d have to leave her mama. Marcos tells Sofia he thinks it’s probably harder for them. He says, “I feel I’m here for my family, too, not just for myself” (160). After hours on the bus, they arrive, and Sofia is happy to see her family. She hugs them all with joy.

Sofia and her mother talk about all the tamales they will have at Christmas. Sofia wants to drive around with Lucy and Berta, her comadres. The three girls have a lot of news. Lucy is making dresses and planning for her upcoming quinceañera, and Berta is planning to get married after she graduates. Sofia tells them she is working hard and wants to go to college at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. Berta pops open the glove compartment and pulls out a small bottle of mescal with the tequila worm at the bottom. They break the bottle open and each has a sip of the strong liquor. They vow to eat the worm. Sofia goes first and bites off the head. The other girls are turning green, but they each follow through until the worm is gone.

That night at dinner, Sofia is delighted for the home cooking; the delicious cheese enchiladas especially. She looks around the room and counts six crucifixes. Her mama tells her that she made some pan de muerto for Day of the Dead. Sofia hears Terry’s voice in her head saying, “Don’t you think Mexicans are obsessed with death” (167). Mama tells her they need to get up bright and early because Tia Petra has a surprise for them.

When they arrive at Tia Petra’s house, Sofia sees that she has suffered a stroke. Tia Petra is giving away her furniture. She takes the scissors to cut away the plastic, but everyone is shocked to find that the furniture is covered in termites. It’s worthless. Tia Petra starts to scream, and everyone rushes to hug her. That evening, everyone is at Sofia’s house. Sofia is talking to her grandparents when the front door opens, and her papa brings in Tia Petra. Then Berta arrives. Tia Petra laments her furniture, not because it’s all ruined, but because she never enjoyed it while she had it, and when she wanted to give it away, it was worthless. She thinks she has taught Sofia a bad lesson by doing this. That night at the Thanksgiving dinner, Sofia’s grandmother tells her she will be the one to carry Baby Jesus to the cradle on Christmas. It’s an honor to do this. Sofia will be the Christmas Madrina (godmother) an honor, Tia Petra tells her, “about learning to kick with your soul” (169). 

Sofia returns to Saint Luke’s after Thanksgiving and awaits Christmas break. One day, the entire campus, including the trees, are encased in ice. The day before Christmas break, the church is decorated with luminarias, and after the formal dinner, the headmaster appears dressed as Santa. The following morning, Sofia gives Brooke her Christmas present; a book—One Hundred Years of Solitude. Brook gives Sofia a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Then, Sofia takes the bus home for Christmas break.

When she arrives, they hurry over to her grandparents’ house to help with the nacimiento (nativity). Sofia is looking forward to being the madrina, and so is her grandmother. In preparation, Sofia and her grandmother make a Mexican town out of mud. Her grandmother tells the story of how she and her husband met. She speaks about the plaza, where she met him. It is a place where baby pictures are shared, recipes traded, and remedies exchanged. After they finish making the town of mud, (this is the nacimiento) they sit for coffee and churros, and Sofia’s mama complains about how the barrio doesn’t need any more TVs or Wal-Marts. It needs a plaza.

On December 21, they decorate the nacimiento. Sofia’s grandmother opens her box of stored treasures, and everyone is allowed to take an item while Sofia’s grandmother tells them where to place it. Each piece has a story, from the figurines of Mary and Joseph to the Three Wise Men. Sofia’s grandmother regales them with beautiful Christmas stories. Sofia notices there are probably 70 angels, and when her grandmother turns on the sparkling lights, Sofia marvels at how everything in her grandmother’s creation comes to life. After more hot chocolate, Sofia’s grandmother hands her a white satin bag. Inside is the baby Jesus that Sofia will place in the manger on Christmas day. When she opens it up at home, her mama watches tenderly and explains to Sofia the significance of the piece. “Your great-grandmother gave him to your grandmother when she was appointed the Christmas madrina the very first time” (178).

The baby Jesus is a mess; chipped, broken, dirty, wearing a frayed useless diaper. Sofia calls Berta and asks her to go with her to Johnson’s Ropa Usada to get a new gown for Baby Jesus, but Sofia’s mother overhears and angrily tells Sofia to hang up. She explains that Sofia needs to take this seriously. She should wash the doll, glue it back together, and restore it as much as possible. Then she hands Sofia a satin cloth to make a new smock and diaper. “This is not a panty-hose baby” (179), her mother says. Sofia finally understands how important this is and begins to take it seriously, aware that in being the madrina she is representing the entire family. She calls on her comadres, Lucy and Berta, to help her.

On Christmas Eve, the family prays in front of the nacimiento. They eat pork tamales and menudo. Then, on the 6th of January, they gather again at the nacimiento. They pray together, and Sofia picks up the baby Jesus and walks him around the room, presenting him so everyone can kiss him. Later, her papa says she did a wonderful job and that he could feel Jesus in the room. He tells her that when he is gone, all she needs to do to conjure him up is sit down and clean a pound of pinto beans. 

Sofia returns to school, and it soon becomes easier to go back and forth to school. Sofia loves going home for summer to drive around with Berta and Lucy in the cold car. They have eaten seven worms together. The summer before her senior year, Sofia sees that her father is not well. He brushes it off to feeling tired, but Sofia knows something is wrong. On Tuesday, their bean cleaning day, Sofia watches her father and knows he is sick. She offers to come back home and do her last year at the local high school, but he won’t hear of it. He tells her he would be so proud if his daughter went to the same university as JFK—Harvard. She is second in her class and co-captain of the soccer team.

Sofia goes back to school, but her papa’s doctor has told him to go to the VA in San Antonio. Sofia visits him there. He has lost so much weight. She wants to stay, but he tells her to go back to school. A few days later, Sofia’s counselor calls her out of English. He tells her that she must go see her father. When Sofia gets to the hospital, she learns he has cancer. He is barely conscious, fighting for his life. Sofia, her mama, and Lucy are by his side, crying. Tia Belia tells Sofia she needs to speak to her.

When they are in the hallway, Tia Belia says that she must let her papa go: “He’s staying for you, out of concern. Let him go rest now” (187). Sofia is stunned. She remembers that Tia Belia cured her sister. She agrees and goes back into the room, where she whispers to her papa that he can go now. Almost immediately, the machines indicate that he is slipping away, and he dies. When Sofia gets home that night, she immediately begins to clean beans. As she works, she feels her papa’s presence. The next day, the family buries him. For the next seven days, family and friends sit together and pray the rosary together, remembering Sofia’s papa. On the ninth day after her Papa’s death, Sofia is ready to return to school.

When she climbs the stairs to her dorm, she can hardly breathe, she is so sad. She realizes her family and friends and her comadres help keep her aloft, and now she does not have that support. Brooke arrives and says nothing; she just hugs Sofia. Sofia realizes that now is the time to open Papa’s cascarone. When she opens it, she sees three small carved figures, much like the Saint Sofia her papa already gave her. She reads the note that came with it. In it, her papa tells her that Saint Sofia had three daughters, Faith, Love and Charity: “Create joy and magic in life by weaving these three into your life experiences too” (190). A few months later, when the letters arrive from the colleges Sofia applied to, she is accepted to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

Brooke, Marcos, and Sofia are outside kicking the soccer ball around. Brooke tells Sofia about an Emily Dickenson poem that helped her when she lost her grandmother. Sofia is grateful after she reads it. Marcos says he has something to cheer her up; he breaks out a bar of Ibarra chocolate. They all eat it and then Brooke brings out a tiny bottle of mescal with the worm inside of it. The three of them split the worm and eat it. Later, as she climbs the stairs to her room, Sofia realizes she feels better. Now, she thinks, she can write the tequila worm story for her papa. 

Years later, Sofia is a civil rights attorney in San Francisco. Lucy is a schoolteacher in Austin, and Berta still lives in the old neighborhood with her husband and two children. The barrio is different: Most everyone has moved away, and the simple clapboard houses have been replaced by apartment buildings. The neighborhood has become dangerous, and there is no connection between people. Huge families live in one-bedroom apartments. Sofia moved her mama to a safer place in town.

One day, Sofia returns to the old neighborhood with her mama. They look at the old house, which is rundown. They consider selling it, but Sofia’s mama doesn’t want another apartment building to be built on the lot. She remembers how, as a girl, she and her friends met at the Plaza. The plaza was where they learned important news and met their husbands. Her mama laments the old ways: “Now the new buildings block the sky. Trucks screech and radios blare” (196).

Sofia decides she will build a placita (small plaza). She buys her mama a new place in the old barrio and tears down the old house. The old neighbors who still live there send letters and make phone calls to the mayor, complaining about the high-rises and the noise and the crime. Sofia builds a plaza on the site of her old home and gives the keys to the old friends and neighbors. Soon, people sit on the benches and meet there after mass. They begin to invite the new neighbors, and new friends are made. One day, Sofia gets a call from her mama who asks her to take down the plaza fence. She says, “Everyone knows each other now—it’s just in the way” (196).

Sofia returns to the old neighborhood for the holidays. On Day of the Dead, she and her mama make tamales and a cup of freshly cleaned and cooked pinto beans and puts them or her papa’s grave. It is then that Sofia understands that Mexicans aren’t obsessed with death; they accept death. That evening, everyone gathers on the porch, and Sofia takes Clara’s old burlap sack and tells stories. She pulls out the secret cascarone from her papa and passes it around. Everyone vows to return for the important times, especially to create the Christmas nacimiento. The task has changed hands now and falls to Sofia’s mama to create. Before she falls asleep, she calls her comadre, Brooke, and her compadre, Marcos, to tell them that Mama has just named her the Christmas madrina for the year.