Because It Is My Blood

by Gabrielle Zevin

  I informed him that I was no weakling. I took the weapon from Theo. It was heavy in my hands. I lifted it up to swing at the plant, then stopped myself. “Wait. How do I cut it? I don’t want to mess it up.”

  “At an angle,” Theo told me.

  I lifted the machete and sliced off the infected pod. My cut looked jagged. The plant really was tough. Doing this all day would probably be pretty exhausting.

  “Good,” Theo said. He took the machete from me then recut the incision I had just made.

  “I thought you said I was good.”

  “Well, you will get better,” Theo said with a grin. “I am encouraging you.”

  “Maybe I need my own machete?”

  Theo laughed at me. “It’s true. The selection of a machete is a deeply personal matter.”

  “Why don’t you have machines to do this?” I asked him.

  “Ay, dios mío! Cacao resists machines. She likes human hands and caresses. And she needs human eyes to spot the Monilia. She hates pesticides. Attempts to genetically modify her beans have all been complete failures. She needs to struggle or the cacao produced will not be the richest. She needs to face certain death over and over again. Mi papá used to say that growing cacao in the 2080s was identical to growing it in the 1980s or the 1080s—that is to say, she has always been impossible to grow, and she is still impossible to grow. That is why it became illegal in your part of the world, you know. I am fairly sure that it was the cacao that sent my father to an early grave.” Theo crossed himself and then he laughed. “But I love it anyway. Everything worth loving in this world is difficult.” Theo kissed one of the pods with a big smack of his lips.

  I walked away from Theo, down one of the orchard rows, scanning each tree for signs of fungus. The light was low, so it was not the easiest work. “There!” I exclaimed when I finally found one. “Give me your machete.”

  Theo handed it over. I imitated the swift swinging motion I had seen him use, and the cut I made was, I thought, respectably clean.

  “Better,” Theo said, but he still recut it.

  We continued walking through the orchard. I’d scan for signs of Monilia, then I’d point it out so that Theo could cut it off. Theo was very serious about the cacao, and he talked much less than on the drive to Granja Mañana the previous day. He was a different person on the farm, and I found him much easier to be with than the boy in the truck. As we headed toward the rain forest side of the plantation, it grew increasingly dark and damp. It was strange that these trees, these odd flowering trees, had been the source of so many problems in my life, and yet I had never even seen a picture of one before.

  Three hours later, we had only covered a very small part of the orchard, but Theo said we needed to go back for dinner.

  “Theo,” I began, “I didn’t understand something you said before.”

  “Yes?”

  “You said that the reason cacao became illegal was because it was difficult to grow?”

  “Yes. This is true.”

  “Where I’m from, we’re taught something different,” I told him. “We’re taught that the main reason cacao became illegal was because it was unhealthy.”

  Theo stopped and stared at me. “Anya, where do you hear such lies? Cacao is not unhealthy! The opposite! It is good for the heart, the eyes, the blood pressure, and just about everything else.”

  His face was turning red, and I feared that I had offended him so I backtracked. “I mean, obviously, it’s more complicated than that. We’re also taught that the big American food companies were under pressure to stop making such unhealthy food products, and so as a concession they all agreed to stop making chocolate. The reason being that chocolate was rich and calorie-filled and had addictive properties and so … Well, the public basically turned on chocolate. They thought it was dangerous. Daddy always said it was a wave of poisonings that set it off…” Yes, Daddy had said that. I hadn’t even thought of that during the Gable Arsley fiasco. “And that this led to strict regulation of cacao as a drug, and then its eventual banning.”

  “Anya, even tiny little babies know that the chocolate poisonings were set up by the rich men who owned the food companies. The reason they stopped making chocolate was because cacao is hard to grow and hard to ship and the supply was becoming more and more expensive. It was easy for the food companies to get out of the cacao business because it was good for the bottom line. It was about dinero. It is always about dinero. It is as simple as that.”

  “No,” I said softly. Still, I wondered if that was possible. Was it possible that chocolate wasn’t dangerous, or even unhealthy? Was what I’d been taught in school propaganda, a history cobbled together out of opportunistic half-truths? And if that were the case, why hadn’t Daddy ever said that to me? Or Nana?

  Theo cut a pod off a tree. “Look here, Anya, this one is ripe.” He set the pod on the ground, then split it in half with a blunt whack of his machete. Inside the pod were about forty white beans arranged in neat rows and stacks. He picked up half the pod and held it out to me in the palm of his hand. “Look inside,” he whispered. “It is only a bean, Anya, and like you and like me, it is of God. Could there be anything more natural? More perfect?” He expertly removed a single ivory bean with his pinkie. “Taste,” he said.

  I took the bean into my mouth. It was nutty, like an almond, but underneath there was the faintest hint of the sweetness to come.

  * * *

  Early every morning, Theo and I and the other farmers would go out to the orchard to look for signs of mold and, also, any ripe cacao pods we could find. The unusual thing about cacao was that it didn’t mature all at once. Some of the pods were early bloomers and some were late. It took practice to recognize just the moment when a pod was ripe. The weight of the pod, the size, the color, and the appearance of thick veins—all these signs could vary. We were careful with our tools (machetes for the pods close to the ground, and a long-handled hook for the ones higher up) because otherwise they could damage the tree. Our tools were blunt, and the bark was delicate. Though it was shady, I still got a deep tan. My hair grew out. My hands became worried with blisters, then thick with calluses. I had borrowed Luna’s machete as she had no use for this part of the process.

  The major harvest took place just before Thanksgiving, which no one at Granja Mañana celebrated anyway. Still, I could not help but think of Leo in Japan, and my sister and everyone back in New York. On the first day of the harvest, the neighbors arrived with baskets and for nearly a week, we collected the ripe cacao pods. After we had collected the pods and moved them to the dry side of the farm, the pod smashing began. We used mallets and hammers to open the pods. Theo could do almost five hundred pods an hour. My first day of pod-smashing, I think I managed ten in total.

  “You’re good at this,” I told Theo.

  He shrugged off my compliment. “I should be. It’s in my blood, and I’ve been doing it all my life.”

  “And do you think you’ll do this forever? Cacao farming, I mean.”

  Theo whacked another cacao pod. “A long time ago, I thought I’d like to be a chocolatier. I thought I’d like to study the craft abroad somewhere, maybe with one of the masters in Europe, but now that doesn’t seem likely.”

  I asked him why, and he told me that his family needed him. His father was dead, and his siblings really had no interest in the family business. “My mother runs the factories, and I run the farms. I can’t leave them, Anya.” He smiled wickedly at me. “It must be nice to be able to go far away from home. To be free of obligations and responsibilities.”

  I wanted to tell him that I understood. I wanted to tell him the truth about myself, but I couldn’t. “Everyone has obligations,” I insisted.

  “What are your obligations? You come here without a suitcase or anything else. You contact no one and no one contacts you. You seem pretty free to me and the truth is, I envy you!”

  * * *

  After all the beans were removed from the pods, they were
scooped into ventilated wooden boxes. Banana leaves were placed over the beans, and then the beans were left to ferment for about six days. On the seventh day, we moved the fermented beans to the wooden decks, where they were spread out and left in the sun to bake and dry.

  At this point, the least difficult part to my mind, Luna took over, freeing up Theo to go to Oaxaca to check on the Marquezes’ factories. Occasionally, she and I had to rake the beans to make sure they were drying evenly. The entire drying process took a little longer than a week because every time it rained, we had to stop to cover the beans again.

  “I think my brother likes you,” Luna said to me as we raked through the beans.

  “Castillo?” I had seen very little of him since that day he caught me in his arms, though my impression of him had certainly been favorable.

  “Castillo is going to be a priest, Anya! I mean Theo, of course.”

  “As a sister maybe,” I said.

  “I am his sister, and I don’t think so. He is always going on and on to Mama about what a good worker you are and how you are like him. How you have cacao in your blood! And Mama and Abuela and Bisabuela adore you. I do, too.”

  I stopped raking to stare at Luna. “I honestly don’t think Theo likes me, Luna. The first day we met, he mentioned a girl he was in love with and he made a point of telling me how ugly he found me.”

  “Oh, Theo. My brother is so adorably awkward.”

  “Well, I sincerely hope he doesn’t like me, Luna. I have a boyfriend back home, and…” And I chose not to complete the thought.

  For a while, Luna said nothing, and when she next spoke, there was no small amount of outrage in her voice. “Why do you never talk about this boyfriend? And why does he never contact you? He can’t be a very good boyfriend if he never contacts you.” (Readers, it was much commented upon at Granja Mañana that I didn’t have a slate.) Obviously, there was a good reason why Win never contacted me. I was a fugitive. But I couldn’t very well say that to Luna.

  “I don’t even think you have a boyfriend. Maybe you are saying this to be nice, but you are not nice at all. Maybe you just think you are so much better than us!” Luna yelled. “Because you are from New York.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that.”

  Luna pointed her finger at me. “You need to stop leading Theo on.”

  I assured her that I hadn’t been.

  “You are stuck to him like glue every day! He is a baby, so of course he gets the wrong idea.”

  “I honestly only wanted to learn about cacao. That’s what I came here to do!”

  Luna and I continued to turn over the beans in silence.

  Luna sighed. “I am sorry,” she said. “But he is my brother so I am protective.”

  I understood very well about that.

  “Don’t mention that I said anything to you,” Luna said. “I don’t want to embarrass him. My brother has much pride.”

  After the beans were dried, they were gathered up into burlap sacks so that Theo could drive them down the mountain back to the factories in Oaxaca. This took several trips. “Would you like to come with me?” he asked before the last of that season’s drives.

  I did want to go with him, but after my conversation with Luna, I wasn’t sure if I should.

  “Come, Anya. You should see this. Don’t you want to see where the beans end up?”

  Theo offered me his hand to help me into the truck, and after a moment’s consideration, I accepted.

  We drove for a while in silence. “You are quiet,” he accused me. “You’ve been like this ever since I got back from the city.”

  “It’s … Well. Theo, you know I have a boyfriend, don’t you?”

  “Sí…” He drew out the word. “Yes, you told me.”

  “So, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me.”

  Theo laughed. “Are you worried that I like you too much, Anya Barnum?” Theo laughed again. “That is really very conceited of you!”

  “Your sister … She thought you had a crush on me.”

  “Luna is a romantic. She contrives to set me up with everyone, Anya. You can’t listen to a word that comes out of her ridiculous mouth. You should know that I don’t like you at all. I find you just as ugly as the day we met.”

  “Now you’re being hurtful.” My hair was longer, and I knew I wasn’t as sickly looking as when I had arrived.

  “Who is being hurtful? What of my feelings? You could barely look at me when you thought you might have to reject me,” he teased me. “Apparently, we are both completely repulsive to each other.” Theo reached across the seat to ruffle my hair. “Ay, Luna!”

  The beans were unloaded at the main factory in Oaxaca, where they began the process of becoming chocolate. “Let me give you a tour,” Theo said. He led me through the factory, which was bright and terribly modern-looking compared to my dark and timeless farm. (Yes, I had begun to think of it as my farm.) The beans we delivered would be cleaned today, Theo explained, then they’d spend the rest of the week being roasted, winnowed, milled, cocoa-pressed, refined, conched, tempered, and last, cured. There were rooms for each step. At the end of this, you were left with the round hockey puck–like disks of chocolate that were the signature creation of the Marquezes. At the end of the tour, Theo handed me one of the disks. “And now you have seen the entire life story of Theobroma cacao from start to finish.”

  “Theobroma?” I asked.

  “I told you it was a family name,” Theo said. He went on to explain that he had been named for the genus of the cacao tree and that his was a Greek name given by a Swede who had been inspired by the Mayans and the French. “So you see, mine is a name from everywhere.”

  “It’s a beautiful name…”

  “If a bit feminine, didn’t you once say?”

  “Where I’m from, once they found out about your name, they’d probably think you were a criminal,” I said without thinking.

  “Yes … I have often wondered why a girl from a country where cacao cannot be grown and where the substance is banned would be so interested in its production as to stay with a family in Chiapas. How did you become interested in cacao, Anya?”

  I blushed. I could feel we were beginning to tread on dangerous ground. “I’ve … Well, my father died, and chocolate was his favorite.”

  “Yes, that makes sense.” Theo nodded. “Sí, sí. But what will you do with all your knowledge once you go back to your home?”

  Home? When would I go back home? It was nearly 80° and I could feel the chocolate growing soft in my hand. “Maybe get involved with the legalize-cacao movement? Or…” I wanted to tell him about me, but I couldn’t. “I haven’t decided yet, Theo.”

  “Your heart drew you to Mexico, then. That is how it is sometimes. We do things without knowing entirely why, just because our heart tells us that we must.”

  Theo could not have understood less how it was with me.

  “Come, Anya, we need to get back to the house. The night after the harvest is done, my grandmothers always make mole. It takes all day, and it is a mucho big deal so we can’t be late.”

  I asked him what mole was.

  “You have never had mole? Now I feel very sorry for you. You are so deprived,” Theo said.

  Mole was indeed a mucho big deal, and the farmers were invited to share the meal as were all the neighbors. Castillo even came home from the seminary. There must have been fifty people crowded around the Marquezes’ long dining room table. I was seated near Castillo and Luna as they were the only English speakers aside from Theo and his mother. After Castillo said grace, the feasting began.

  It turned out that mole was basically a Mexican-style turkey stew. It was spicy and rich and pretty delicious. I had seconds and then thirds.

  “You like,” Bisabuela said with her gap-toothed smile as she scooped out another portion for me.

  I nodded. “What’s in this?” I was imagining shocking my family by throwing it into my usual repertoire of macaroni and cheese.r />
  “Secreto de familia,” she said, and then she said something else in Spanish that was beyond my still-limited comprehension.

  Castillo explained, “She says that she would tell you what’s in it, but she can’t. She doesn’t believe in recipes and with mole, she especially doesn’t believe in recipes. It is different every time.”

  “But,” I insisted, “there must be general parameters. I mean, what makes the sauce so rich?”

  “The chocolate, of course! Didn’t you guess that’s why my grandmothers make it after the harvest?”

  Turkey with chocolate sauce? I had certainly never heard of that. “You couldn’t serve this where I come from,” I told Castillo.

  “That’s why I never want to go to America,” he told me, as he finished another portion.

  I laughed at him.

  “You have sauce on your face,” Castillo said.

  “Oh!” I picked up my napkin and dabbed the corners of my mouth.

  “Let me,” Castillo said as he grabbed my napkin and dipped it into his water glass. “It is a more serious business than you think.” He wiped my face roughly, like I was a little kid.

  After dessert, which was tres leches, a sponge cake drenched in three kinds of cream, one of the farmers brought out his guitar and the guests began to dance. Theo danced with every girl that was there, including his sister, his mother, and both his grandmothers. I sat in a corner by myself, feeling heavy and satisfied and barely thinking of all the problems and the people I had left behind. And then the night was over. Luz, Theo’s mother, packed up the extra mole in takeaway containers so that everyone could have what she called “segunda cena,” or “second supper.”

  After the guests had left, I started to move the chairs back into their places. “No, no, Anya,” Luz said to me as she patted me on the hand, “we do all this tomorrow.”

  “I’m not good at putting things off,” I said.

  “You must, though. Come into the kitchen. Mi madre makes chocolate for the family.” By chocolate, she meant the drink I had been served my first morning so I was eager to go into the kitchen to see if I could figure out what was in it. Theo, Luna, and Castillo were already seated around the kitchen table; Bisabuela must have gone to bed. The counters were piled high with pots and pans and dishes and cooking detritus. On the counter nearest Abuela sat the remains of a chili pepper, an orange peel, a plastic bear half-filled with honey, and what looked like the crushed petals of a red rose.