Because It Is My Blood

by Gabrielle Zevin

  “They told me you were going to be a girl,” I replied.

  Theo laughed at that, too. “It’s this estúpido name of mine. A family name, though, so what can I do? Are you hungry? It’s a long drive to Chiapas.”

  “Chiapas? I thought I was staying at a cacao farm in Oaxaca.”

  “You cannot grow cacao in the state of Oaxaca, Anya Barnum.” He said this in a patient voice that indicated he was dealing with someone impossibly ignorant. “Granja Mañana is in Ixtapa, Chiapas. My family supplies to and has chocolate factories in Oaxaca, which is why I am the one who has to get you today.”

  Oaxaca or Chiapas. It didn’t matter either way, I supposed.

  “So, are you hungry or not?” Theo asked.

  I shook my head. I was hungry but I was also eager to get to my destination. I told him I needed to use the bathroom, and then we could be on our way.

  In the bathroom, I took a moment to consider myself in the mirror. Theo was right. I wasn’t pretty anymore, but luckily, I wasn’t all that vain either. Besides, I had a boyfriend, sort of, and I wasn’t in the mood for seducing boys anyhow. I washed my face, paying special attention to the sticky residue that the mustache adhesive had left on my upper lip, and slicked back my hair. (Readers, how I did miss that mane of mine!) I threw the necktie into the trash, rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, and went back out to join Theo.

  Theo studied me. “You are less hideous already.”

  “Thanks. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  “Come, the car’s over here.” I followed him out of the bar. “Where are your things?”

  I told the same lie about them being shipped.

  “No matter. My sister will lend you whatever you need.”

  Theo’s “car” was a green pickup truck. On the side, GRANJA MAÑANA was painted in gold, and beneath that was a grouping of what I thought at the time were leaves in fall colors.

  As it was a big step up to the truck, Theo offered me his hand. “Anya,” he said with a furrowed brow, “don’t tell my sister I said you weren’t pretty. She thinks I have no manners already. I probably don’t, but…” He smiled at me. I suspected that smile got him out of (and into) all sorts of trouble.

  We drove out of the town of Puerto Escondido and onto a strip of road that had a wall of green mountains and rain forest on one side and ocean on the other. “So, you’re friends with Cousin Sophia?” asked Theo.

  I nodded.

  “And you’re here to study cacao farming?”

  I nodded again.

  “You have a lot to learn.” He was probably thinking of the apparently hugely embarrassing gaffe I had made in thinking that cacao was grown in Oaxaca.

  Theo gave me a sidelong glance. “You’re from the United States. Is your family in chocolate?”

  I paused. “Not really,” I lied.

  “I only ask because many of Sophia’s friends are in chocolate.”

  I didn’t know if Theo or the Marquezes could be trusted. Before I’d left New York, Simon Green had told me that he thought it would be best if I kept my history to myself as much as possible. Luckily, Theo did not pry any further on this point. “How old are you?” he asked. “You look like a little baby.”

  It was the hair. I lied again, “I’m nineteen.” I had decided that it would be better for me not to be seventeen, and saying eighteen sounded more fake to me somehow.

  “We’re the same age,” Theo informed me. “I’ll be twenty in January. I’m the baby of the family, and that’s why I’m so spoiled. Circumstance has turned me into a petted, silly lapdog.”

  “Who else is there?”

  “My sister Luna. She is twenty-three and very nosy. Like with me, you can say, ‘Oh, Theo, my family, they are not really in chocolate,’ and I won’t press. Your business is your business. But with her, you should have a better answer, so you know. And then there’s my brother, Castillo. He is twenty-nine. He is at home through the weekend but usually he is off studying to be a priest. He is very serious, and you won’t like him at all.”

  I laughed. “I like serious people.”

  “No, I am kidding. Everyone falls in love with Castillo. He is very handsome and everyone’s favorite. But you shouldn’t like him better than me, just because I am not serious.”

  “I’ll probably like him better than you if he manages not to call me ugly in the first minute of my knowing him,” I told him.

  “I thought we were over all of that. I explained! I apologized!”

  “You did?”

  “In my head, sí, sí. My English is not that good. Lo siento!”

  His English seemed fine to me. I decided then and there that Theo was lovable and awful and that most of what he said was going to be nonsense. Theo turned the truck onto a different road that led uphill and away from the ocean. He continued, “I have another sister, Isabelle, who is a married lady and lives in Mexico City. And then there is Mama, Abuela, and Nana. Mama runs the business. Abuela and Nana know all the secret recipes and they do the cooking. They will think you are too skinny.”

  I felt sad at the mention of the name Nana. “Abuela is your grandmother, right? So, who is your nana?”

  “My bisabuela,” he replied. “Great-grandmother. She is ninety-five years old and as healthy as can be. She was born in the 1980s!”

  “People live a long time in your family,” I commented.

  “The women, sí. They are strong. The men, not so much. We have weak hearts.” An old woman was pushing a cart filled with a yellow fruit that looked like an overgrown apple down the side of the road. Theo pulled the truck over. “Excuse me, Anya. Her house is not far, but I know her back bothers her when it rains. I will return in less than ten minutes. Don’t drive off without me.” Theo got out of the truck and ran over to the woman. She kissed him on both cheeks, and he began pushing the cart down the road and then disappeared with the woman into an opening in the forest.

  Theo returned to the truck with a piece of the fruit in each hand. “For you,” he said, placing one of the large fruits in my hand. “Maracuyá. Passion fruit.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I hadn’t ever had or even seen one before.

  Theo restarted the truck. “Do you have a great love, Anya Barnum?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “A great love! A grand passion!”

  “Do you mean a boyfriend?” I asked.

  “Sí, a boyfriend, if you favor such a boring word. Is there someone who you’ll weep for and who weeps for you back at home?”

  I considered this. “Does it count if it’s hopeless?”

  He smiled at me. “It especially counts if it is hopeless. The woman I was helping. She is the abuela of the girl I love. Sadly, the girl has told me she can never love me back. Yet still I am pulling over to help her grandmother. Can you explain this?”

  I could not.

  “Can you imagine the kind of girl who is so heartless as to resist someone so lovable as me?”

  I laughed at him. “I’m sure there is a story.”

  “Oh yes, it is very tragic. Why does everyone always like love stories? What about absence-of-love stories? Aren’t they much more common?”

  Out my window, there was a large stacked-stone structure. “What’s that?”

  “Mayan ruins. There are even better ones in Chiapas on the Guatemalan border. My ancestors are Mayan, you know.”

  “Theobroma? Is that a Mayan name then?”

  Theo laughed at me. “You do have a lot to learn, Señorita Barnum.”

  The road was bumpy, and I was starting to feel carsick. I leaned my head on the window and closed my eyes and soon I fell asleep.

  I awoke to the sound of a bleating goat, and to Theo shaking my arm. “Come on. I must get out and push the truck. I will leave her in neutral and you try to steer.” I looked out the window. It had started to rain, and the rain had caused mud to run over part of the road. “You know how to drive, right?”

  “
Not really,” I admitted. I was a city girl, which is to say I was well versed in bus schedules and walking shoes.

  “Not a problem. Just try to stay in the center of the road.”

  Theo pushed the truck, and I steered, too little at first but then I got the hang of it. About twenty minutes later, we were back on the road. That was my first lesson in cacao farming, I suppose. Everything took longer than you thought it would.

  As we continued driving up the mountain, it got darker and darker as the forest became increasingly dense. I had never in my life been somewhere so wet or so green, and I couldn’t help saying this to Theo. “Yes, Anya,” he said in what I would later come to know as his “very patient” voice. “That’s what it’s like when you live in a rain forest.”

  We came to a metal gate with the word MAÑANA on it. A second gate was open, and as we drove past, I could see that it said GRANJA.

  We drove down a long dirt road. “This is the farm,” Theo said.

  The trees were about twice the height of the workers who tended them. For grooming the trees, the men used flat swords that were over a foot long.

  “They’re pruning the trees,” Theo informed me.

  “What do you call the tool they’re using?” I asked.

  “A machete.”

  “I thought those were used for killing people,” I said.

  “Sí, I am told they are good for that, too.”

  Finally, Theo pulled up to the main house of Granja Mañana. “Mi casa,” Theo said.

  Theo’s casa was as big as a small hotel. It was two epic stories, both a faded yellow with gray stonework around the windows and arches. The ground floor had a blue-and-white tiled porch, the second level, a series of sociable stone balconies, and the roof was covered in festive terra-cotta tiles. The house was undeniably massive but not, to my eye, unfriendly.

  When I got out of the truck, Theo’s mother was standing on the porch. She was wearing a white blouse, a coral necklace, and a khaki skirt, and her dark brown hair grew past her waist. She said something to Theo in Spanish and then she hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him in weeks. (It turned out that he’d only been gone a day.)

  “Mama, this is Anya Barnum,” Theo introduced me.

  Theo’s mother hugged me. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome, Anya. You are my niece Sophia’s friend here to learn about cacao farming?”

  “Yes. Thank you for having me.”

  She looked at me, shook her head, clucked something else in Spanish to Theo, and shook her head again. She looped her arm through mine and escorted me inside.

  The house was even more colorful indoors. All the furniture was in dark wood but the walls and the pillows and the rugs were in every hue of the rainbow. Over the mantel was an almost childish painting of what I thought at the time was the Virgin Mary in a field of red roses. (I would later learn that this depiction of the Virgin is known as Our Lady of Guadalupe.) There were several thick blue glass vases with orchids in them. (The orchids were native to the orchard. My own nana would have loved them.) A spiral staircase in blue-and-white tiles like those on the porch took up the center of the main room. It was a lot to take in, though I imagine it wasn’t the decor but the humidity and the fact that I hadn’t eaten in so long that made me feel light-headed.

  “Call me Luz,” Theo’s mother said.

  “Luz,” I said. “I’m…” I’d had some practice fainting in the last several weeks, and I could feel myself starting to slip under. I tried to edge toward one of the sofas so that my head wouldn’t end up slamming against those picturesque, though let’s face it, pretty unforgiving-looking tiles. I began to fall backward. I saw Theo running toward me, but there wasn’t time. As I was about to hit the floor, I landed in someone’s arms.

  I looked up. Above me was a very square face with a big chin and a wide nose. His eyes were light brown and very serious, and his mouth was stern somehow. He had stubble enough that it could reasonably be called a beard, and extremely thick eyebrows. “Are you hurt?” he asked in Spanish, though somehow I knew what he was saying. His voice was deep and sounded the way an oak tree might sound if it could talk.

  “No. I just need to lie down,” I said. “Thank you for catching me. Who are you, by the way?”

  I heard Theo sigh heavily. “That is my brother, Castillo, Anya.”

  Luz shouted instructions and next thing I knew I was installed in a bedroom on the second floor.

  When I awoke the next morning, a pretty girl with thick hair like my sister’s was seated by my bed. The girl looked nearly identical to Luz, only twenty or so years younger. “Oh good,” she said. “You’re awake. Mama wanted us to watch you in case you took a turn for the worse and we needed to take you to the hospital. She thinks you’re probably just malnourished and unaccustomed to the humidity. She says you will live. Stupid Theo. He should have taken you for lunch. We all yelled at him—‘Theo, what kind of host are you?’—and now he feels pretty awful. He wanted to come in here to apologize to you but Mama is traditional. No boys in the girls’ rooms. Even grownups. I’m twenty-three.” I had thought she was so much younger. “You’re nineteen, right? You look like a baby! Back to Theo. He never thinks about anyone but himself because he is the baby of the family and ridiculous and we spoil him terribly. It’s no use yelling at him really. I’m Luna, by the way.” She paused to offer me her hand to shake. Luna and Theo were both fast talkers. “You’re not bad-looking but you need a better haircut.”

  I self-consciously clutched at my hair.

  “I can do it for you later if you want. I’m very artistic and I’m good with my hands.”

  At that moment, two older women entered the room behind Luna. They looked alike except the first was old and the second was really, really old. I realized they must be the grandmother and great-grandmother that Theo had mentioned in the truck. The older of the two, Theo’s nana, pushed a ceramic mug into my hands. “Drink,” she said. When she smiled at me, I could see she was missing one of her top teeth.

  I took the mug. The beverage was brown with a reddish hue, and thick like wet cement. I didn’t want to be rude to my hosts, but the substance didn’t look all that promising.

  “Drink, drink,” Theo’s nana repeated. “You feel better.” The two older women and Luna were staring at me in anticipation.

  I raised the mug, then set it down. “What is it?” I asked.

  Luna laughed at me. “It’s only hot chocolate.”

  I reported that I had had my share of hot chocolate.

  “Not like this,” Luna assured me.

  I took a cautious sip and then a larger one. Indeed, it wasn’t like any hot chocolate I had had before. It was spicy and not all that sweet. Cinnamon was involved but also something else. Paprika, maybe? And did I detect something citrusy? I drank the rest of the cup. “What’s in this?” I asked.

  Bisabuela shook her head.

  “Secreto de familia,” Abuela said.

  I didn’t know much Spanish, but I certainly understood about family secrets.

  Bisabuela took the mug from me, and then the grandmothers were gone. I sat up in bed. I was already feeling better and I told Luna so.

  “It’s the chocolate,” she said. “It’s a health drink.”

  I had heard chocolate called many things in my lifetime but never a “health drink.”

  “Nana says it’s an ancient Aztec recipe. They used to give it and nothing else to the soldiers before they went out to battle.” Then she told me that if I was interested I should ask one of the older women or Theo, who was interested in all that chocolate folklore.

  “Is it folklore or is it fact?” I asked.

  “A little of both,” she said. “Come, Anya, I put some clothes for you in the closet.”

  She pointed me in the direction of the shower. Wanting to be a good houseguest, I asked her if there were any water restrictions. Luna made a face. “No, Anya,” she said patiently, “we do live in a rain forest.”

  * * *

&n
bsp; In the afternoon, Theo took me on a tour of their farm. He showed me the huge nurseries where they grew the cacao saplings, and the open-air buildings that were used to store the wooden boxes where they would ferment the mature beans, and on the sunniest side of the plantation, the patios that were used to dry out the beans before they were sold. We went out to the orchard last. It was quite shady and moist, as it was located under a rain forest canopy. Theo told me that cacao required both the shade and the moisture of the rain forest to grow. Obviously, I had never been in a cacao orchard and I had certainly never seen a cacao pod up close. Some of the cacao leaves were purplish but many had begun to change to green. Tiny white blossoms with pinkish centers grew in clusters along the branches. “Cacao is one of the only plants with flowers and fruits at the same time,” Theo informed me. The pods themselves were slightly smaller than the palm of my hand, but the thing that surprised me the most was their color. I’d always known chocolate as brown, but some of the cacao pods were maroon, almost purple, and others were gold and yellow and orange. They looked fantastical to me. Magical, I suppose. I wished Natty could see them, and for a second, I wondered if I should have tried to arrange for her to come out here with me. Of course, that would have been impossible for many reasons. “They’re so pretty,” I couldn’t help but say.

  “They are pretty, aren’t they?” Theo agreed. “In less than a month, they’ll be ready to cut from the trees so that they can begin the fermentation process.”

  “What are the farmers doing today, then?” The farmers had the same machetes that I had seen yesterday and at their feet, wicker baskets.

  “They’re cutting off any pods that show signs of having been infected with fungus. That is the irony of cacao—it craves water, but can also be destroyed by it. The fungus is called Monilia, and even just a little bit of it can spoil an entire crop if it is not checked.” He expertly scanned the nearest tree, and pointed out a green-yellow cacao pod that was black at the tip with radiating specks of white. “Do you see? That is what the beginning of pod rot looks like.” He took his machete out of his belt and handed it to me. “You slice it off. It’ll be harder than you think, Anya. Cacao farming is not woman’s work. These trees are strong.” Theo made a muscle with his arm.