by J. L. Newton
Now a little before seven, I knocked on her door and she opened, the walls behind her covered with Chicana/o art and political posters. One showed a black fist raising a string of barbed wire inside a red circle. That was Alma. Bold. But one look at her this evening gave me a start—her forehead was creased, her pale green cardigan askew, and her hair unusually upright as if it had been pulled sharply toward the heavens.
“Are you okay?” I wasn’t used to seeing Alma in distress.
“I’m having some trouble with one of my junior faculty. She’s working against the promotion of another colleague and she shouldn’t be.”
“Why would she do that?”
“She’s out for herself.”
Alma was being discreet but I guessed who it was—a new faculty member who was intense, ambitious, and eager to take over whatever looked promising to her own career. Even in small programs, not everyone thought the same way and not everyone was interested in working on each other’s behalf. In Women’s Studies, as well, a new hire had begun to act like a diva. Fortunately, she was away doing research on the thorny concept of gender, and the program was palpably more peaceful in her absence.
“We have enough problems with the administration. It doesn’t help to have faculty working against each other.” Alma closed the door to her office. “Sometimes I feel like a mother with too many children.”
“I know the feeling.” I’d directed my own program for several years.
We walked out of Haven Hall, crossing in front of the student union, and then down a dusky sidewalk.
“That was a great idea you had at the meeting about forming a unified front.”
“There’s strength in numbers. You know, ‘The People United …’”
“‘… Will Never Be Defeated.’”
“It’s not always true, but it’s true enough, and what else do we have? You have to stick with your allies and your goals. I learned that early on.”
We headed down a still-darker pathway. “When my mother and father worked in the fields near Allenville, the town where I grew up, they were constantly harassed by La Migra. One day some officers told my father to go back to Mexico, and he said, ‘You’ll have to take me at the point of a gun. This is my homeland and I can’t leave it.’ They let him go.”
Alma was full of such motivating stories.
“My family used to drive through Allenville on our way to relatives farther east,” I said. “It wasn’t much of a town back then.”
“I couldn’t wait to get out of there. My brothers fought, drank, and smoked when they were young. They lived it up and then became pillars of the community. But girls like me were kept behind locked doors to protect their virtue. I used to say ‘Nací para ser rebelde.’ I was born to be rebellious.”
I found it hard to imagine Alma behind locked doors. Instead, I could feel her determination lifting me, the way that winds sometimes buoy you up in dreams. Perhaps we could present a united front and save our programs. Perhaps we could sustain community in the face of the competitive, me-first, money-driven culture that had been creeping into a university that had once seemed just the opposite.
“You’re a strong person,” Alma said, as if reading my thoughts, “and struggle sometimes gives you powers you didn’t know you had.”
“It’s certainly been true for you.”
“It was true for me, but my parents died early, died of stress. When my mother went, I vowed I’d never forget where I came from, that I’d try to help young people like me, who were struggling to come up.”
I envisioned the habitual lines of students outside Alma’s door.
“But it isn’t always easy working with your own group either,” Alma said. “In El Movimiento, despite its talk about homeland and community, men were as slow as desert tortoises to share power with women. And even when Chicanas formed a separate group, there were internal quarrels and splits. I learned it’s not just shared ethnicity that counts in alliances. It’s politics and principles and heart.”
* * *
At the entrance to the Deadly Planet, Alma and I took the outside elevator to the second floor. Sounds of conversation filtered into the hall, and as we entered the large, square conference room, already filled with people, we saw Isobel dressed in black with large turquoise earrings in the shape of long teardrops. It was not a look I could pull off, but it looked terrific on Isobel. We went up to give her an embrace.
“Thanks for coming.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said. As I looked around the room, I saw a lot of new faces but many that were familiar and dear to me as well. People from all over the university attended receptions like these, some to be polite but many to find a sense of communality that was often lacking in their own departments. Faculty of color, in particular, often felt alienated in their home departments that were otherwise all white. I took some salad and some red enchiladas with chicken, garlicky red pepper sauce, and tangy cotija cheese from the buffet table. They would be my dinner that evening. I poured some white wine into a plastic cup and sat on one of the chairs to eat. The red enchiladas were spicy and cheesy, really good. I looked at my colleagues forking through their food and drinking their wine. Even without talking to them, I felt connected, except perhaps to the new faculty member Alma had alluded to and who was bending now toward Alma’s ear. Was she pitching some idea about her next advancement?
The room grew more crowded. The conversation level rose, and as I dropped my plate into the barrel for trash, I noticed a plump, middle-aged Chicana talking to Isobel. The woman’s face had crumpled, and she seemed on the verge of tears. Isobel put her hand on her back, and the two disappeared out the door. When Isobel returned, she raised her long eyebrows at me from near the doorway. I went to her from across the room.
“I have something important I need to tell you.” Isobel gave me one of her knowing looks. We entered the women’s room across from the reception and checked the stalls for feet. We had the bathroom to ourselves.
“What’s up?”
“I was just speaking with Yvonne Gonzalez, senior staff for Plant Biology. She did quite a bit of work for Peter Elliott.” Isobel crossed her arms as if for emphasis. “He was double dipping.”
“How do you mean?”
“He had two grants, one from the university and one from Syndicon and both were for the same work. He didn’t report the Syndicon grant to the Conflict of Interest Committee that’s supposed to oversee externally funded research. Syndicon had also given him some stock options, and I guess the idea was that they, and not the university, would have first dibs on patenting anything he discovered.” Isobel’s face took on that dark, cloudy look that I’d seen many times before. “He’d asked Yvonne to set up a private account for the money. Yvonne knew something was wrong, but she didn’t dare say anything about it. You know in a budget crunch how they like to fire the staff. Yvonne has three kids and an aging mother, and she’s the sole breadwinner.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, leaning against the frame of a yellow stall. “Peter ripped off the university and made Yvonne cover his tracks?” Isobel nodded so hard her earrings swayed back and forth like wind chimes.
“That’s outrageous. And what an obscene way to treat your staff! We need to report him.” I was amazed that Peter had engaged in such bold larceny, but perhaps it opened the door to a wider range of possibilities with regard to his poisoning. I hadn’t a clue yet as to what those possibilities might be, but the revelation about the double dipping invited further thought.
“I want to figure out a way to protect Yvonne,” Isobel said quickly. “Besides, Peter’s in a coma. Let’s let it rest for a bit.”
* * *
At home after the reception, I had trouble getting down to work. I often felt at loose ends when Polly and Sadie were at Solomon’s, unless, of course, I had to prepare a class, write a document, or think out an agenda for a meeting the next day, but tonight I was especially distracted and could think of little else but the Pet
er Elliott affair. It was as if a toxin had entered my own body. I tried to consider the different possibilities. If it had been a case of attempted harm or murder, was it my corn bread or someone else’s that had been the vehicle?
And what had been the motive? Was it Save the Fields or someone else, perhaps someone I knew, who’d taken revenge on Peter for his research on GMOs and his ties to Syndicon? I didn’t like to think about the latter prospect. Or maybe the poisoning was tied to Peter’s double dipping. If someone knew about Peter’s swindle, someone besides Yvonne—and I couldn’t bring myself to suspect Yvonne—what would be the motive for trying to poison him? I wondered if someone else had been in on the double dipping and then tried to cover up their role.
I wasn’t familiar with the world of scientific funding. As a professor in women’s studies, I sometimes got fellowships that paid my salary for time off to write, but mainly I applied for, and received, small sums of research money, enough to pay a graduate student to check out books and compile bibliographies. There was nothing financial in women’s studies, or in the humanities for that matter, to motivate a poisoning, not that I could see. But in the world of science? I wasn’t sure. As I puzzled over the poisoning, I wandered about, looking in Polly’s room, adjusting her green, jungle-themed bedspread, and stacking her papers neatly on her desk. I washed Sadie’s water bowl and replaced the water, and finally put away the few dishes that had been drying in the wooden rack.
Then I froze at a sudden scuffling noise outside. What was that? I wondered, my body already taut. A raccoon again? After eleven years of marriage and only one of divorce, I was still unused to being in a house at night alone. While trying to fall asleep, I often lay in bed to the accompaniment of strange night noises. Delta winds rattled the windows, wild creatures of some sort thumped and scurried along the roof, and the house itself seemed to sigh and creak, while branches scraped uncannily along the outside walls. The occasional woooh woooh of a train only drew attention to my isolation. But tonight, my uneasiness over the poisoning, over the threats of violence against Tess and other colleagues, over the fact that I and people I cared about were suddenly suspects in some sort of crime made me jumpier than usual.
Seeking to distract myself, I headed to my computer. Earlier in the day, I’d e-mailed Tess to inquire about Peter, and now Tess had e-mailed back in her usual terse style: “Peter in coma. Pesticide in stomach. Police questioned wife. More later.” Pesticide, how fitting for a campus that had once been devoted to agriculture. And, yes, of course, the wife! In cases of attempted murder, the spouse is always the first suspect. Peter’s wife had a kitchen and plenty of opportunity and, from what I had learned about Peter’s financial deceptions, his wife might have motivation as well.
Peter’s duplicity in his work could very well have extended to his personal life. A jealous wife might have sent corn bread in his lunch. I pictured Peter’s wife as a gentle, modest-looking woman with several children. I felt sorry for her and wondered briefly if a woman like that would have gone so far as to poison her husband. But why not? As a professor of women’s literature, I knew such things were not at all unknown. I remembered teaching Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers,” a story in which a meek, once cheerful, farm wife—Mrs. Wright, née Minnie Foster—is suspected of having strangled her sleeping, spirit-killing husband with a rope.
Two men, the sheriff and a neighbor named Mr. Hale, go to the crime scene to investigate. They’re accompanied by their wives who’ve been charged with selecting items that Minnie might need while waiting for her trial. As the men search the upstairs bedroom and the barn, the wives find a clean apron for Minnie, notice that her canned fruit jars have exploded, and, in looking around her kitchen, see evidence of Minnie’s distress and seeming guilt—a table half-wiped clean, a bag of sugar only partially poured into its wooden bucket, and a piece of quilting on which dainty sewing has suddenly given way to a batch of crude stitches. Women noticed things like that.
In Minnie’s quilt bag they also find her pet canary, its neck broken, its body wrapped in silk and tucked into a box. It is obvious to the women that Mr. Wright has killed the canary, the one creature in the world that brought happiness to Minnie’s diminished life. In a quiet act of sisterhood, the women decide against sharing this damning evidence with their husbands. It is the women, rather than the men, who have solved the crime, and it is the women who, as a jury of Minnie’s peers, have found her undeserving of any punishment. The men, meanwhile, joke to each other about the women’s interest in the details of Minnie’s domestic life. “‘Nothing here but kitchen things,’” the sheriff says, “with a little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things.” “‘Would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?’” Mr. Hale asks with great jocularity. Geez. Even the meekest women could rebel against such treatment. But that was fiction. Did it happen in real life too? I knew it did.
As soon as my mind wandered back to the lab report, however, the consoling notion of a rebellious wife began to fade. What ingredients, other than poison, had the report found? Onions? Goat cheese? Was it my corn bread that had poisoned Peter Elliott or was it not? I resisted the idea that something I had baked with care and affection had become a vehicle for harm. I thought of Like Water for Chocolate, a Mexican romance I was about to teach. Food cooked with love prompted characters in the novel to feel amorous. But when the heroine’s tears fell into the sister’s wedding cake—her sister was marrying a man whom the heroine adored—those who ate the confection developed such longing for their own lost amours that they began crying, and then vomiting, everywhere. Although I had not been sad or angry when I made the corn bread, when I went to bed that night I dreamed I had prepared a large dish of enchiladas for a Haven Hall reception. Everyone who tasted them began to sicken—and then to die—until the floor was piled with bodies.
Red Enchiladas
Makes 12 enchiladas
4 guajillo peppers, seeds removed
4 ancho peppers, seeds removed
2 garlic cloves chopped
¼ teaspoon Mexican oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
12 corn tortillas
⅓ cup of vegetable oil
2 cups of precooked and shredded beef, pork, or chicken
1½ cups of queso fresco, crumbled
½ cup of white onion, finely chopped
Optional Garnishes:
2 cups of precooked diced potatoes and 2 cups of precooked diced carrots
Finely shredded lettuce or cabbage and radishes
Preheat oven to 350°F. (This is to keep the enchiladas warm as you finish assembling them.)
Slightly roast the peppers in a hot griddle, pressing them flat with the help of a spatula. Make sure not to burn them. This step takes a few seconds on each side of the peppers.
Once they are roasted, place them in a saucepan with water and turn the heat to medium and simmer for about 15 minutes or until they look soft.
Remove the saucepan from the stove and let chilies cool for another 10–15 minutes. The pepper skins should look soft.
After the resting period, drain the peppers and place in the blender along with the garlic cloves. Add ½ cup of water and blend until you have a smooth sauce. If necessary, strain the sauce into a large bowl using a fine strainer. Season with the oregano, salt, and pepper, and set aside.
Add 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large frying comal pan or skillet at medium heat. Add oil little by little as needed. Too much oil will produce a soggy tortilla.
Dip the tortilla into the sauce to lightly coat each side.
Place it in the skillet and briefly fry it a few seconds on both sides. Repeat with all the tortillas, adding more vegetable oil to the skillet as needed. Place fried tortillas in a dish while you make the rest and keep them warm in the oven.
To assemble the enchiladas, first place the meat filling in the center of the tortilla and fold or roll it.
Sprinkle the enchiladas with the cheese and on
ion.
If you decide to add the potatoes and carrots as garnish, peel the potatoes and carrots, cut in cubes, and boil until almost tender but still firm. Then drain and cool.
Use the same frying pan in which you fried the enchiladas to lightly fry the potatoes and carrots, adding a little more oil. The potatoes and carrots will be coated with some of the sauce sticking to the frying pan. Season with salt.
Garnish the enchiladas with potatoes and carrots, cheese, and optional lettuce and radishes.
You can play around with the amount of peppers, using more ancho peppers than guajillo or even making the sauce using just one of the peppers in the recipe, until you find the taste that you and your family enjoy best.
The sauce can be made one or two days ahead and also can be frozen for up to 2 months.
Adapted by permission of Mely Martinez at Mexico in My Kitchen http://www.mexicoinmykitchen.com/2013/05/red-enchiladas-sauce-recipereceta.html
Chapter 5
Isobel paced back and forth in my living room in front of the burning fire as she read her draft of the resolution we’d agreed to at our meeting the week before. The women’s, American, and ethnic studies programs were proposing to become a separate division with our own dean. Rather than disappearing into English or Sociology, we would continue to operate as independent programs, but, being united, we’d have more influence on campus, and a dean of our own would presumably understand and champion our work.