Eva Luna by Isabel Allende Page B

crèche with crude clay figures in the kitchen; then everyone would sing Christmas carols and give me a present. Several days in advance they prepared a dish that had originally been concocted by slaves. In colonial times, the prosperous families gathered on December 24 around a great table. The remains of the masters’ banquet made their way into the bowls of the servants, who chopped all the leftovers, rolled them in cornmeal dough and banana leaves, and boiled them in great kettles, with such delicious results that the recipe was handed down through the centuries and is still repeated every year. Today, however, the dish is not made from the table scraps of the masters; each ingredient must be cooked separately in a tedious and time-consuming process. In the back patio, Professor Jones’s servants raised chickens, turkeys, and a pig they fattened all year for that one occasion of gluttony. A week before the event, they began forcing nuts and rum down the gullets of the fowls and feeding the pig liters of milk with brown sugar and spices so the animals would be juicy and tender. While the women steamed the banana leaves and readied the pots and braziers, the men slaughtered the fowls and the pig in an orgy of blood, feathers, and squeals, until everyone was drunk from liquor and death, and sated from tasting the meat, swigging the thick broth in the kettles, and singing lively tunes to the Baby Jesus until they were hoarse. Meanwhile, in the other wing of the house, the Professor lived a day like any other, not even realizing it was Christmas. The fateful bone passed undetected in a morsel of dough, and my mother did not feel it until it lodged in her throat. After a few hours she began to spit blood, and three days later she slipped away without any fuss, just as she had lived. I was at her side, and I have never forgotten that moment, because from that day I have had to sharpen my perception in order not to lose her among the shadows-of-no-return where disembodied spirits go to rest.
    She did not want to frighten me, so she died without fear. Perhaps the chicken bone severed something vital and she bled internally, I do not know. When she realized that her life was draining away, she took me with her to our room off the patio, to be together until the end. Slowly, not to hasten death, she washed herself with soap and water to get rid of the odor of musk that was beginning to disturb her. She combed her long hair, put on a white petticoat she had sewn during the hours of siesta, and lay down on the same straw mattress where she and a snakebitten Indian had conceived me. Although I did not understand then the significance of that ritual, I watched with such attention that I still remember her every move.
    â€œThere is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,” my mother explained shortly before she left me. “If you can remember me, I will be with you always.”
    â€œI will remember you,” I promised.
    â€œNow go call your godmother.”
    I went to look for the cook, the enormous mulatto woman who had helped me into the world and who at the proper time had carried me to be christened.
    â€œTake good care of my girl, madrina. I’m leaving her in your hands,” my mother said, discreetly wiping away the thread of blood trickling down her chin. Then she took my hand and, with her eyes, kept telling me how much she loved me, until a fog clouded her gaze and life faded from her body without a sound. For a few seconds I thought I saw something translucent floating in the motionless air of the room, flooding it with blue radiance and perfuming it with a breath of musk, but then everything was normal again, the air merely air, the light yellow, the smell the simple smell of every day. I took my mother’s face in my hands and moved it back and forth, calling “Mama, Mama,” stricken by the silence that had settled between us.
    â€œEveryone dies, it’s not so