El Librito Negro (The Little Black Book)

El Librito Negro (The Little Black Book)

© Nephtalí De León

It was the worst winter in one hundred years. The homeless people were especially cold. When one had to relieve himself the stream instantly froze. He left a cold arch on the sidewalk by the ice- wrapped tree. Had he not rushed to put it up, his you-know-what would have turned into a popsicle. A miraculously crawling ant that was alive crept up the stream only to slip off the arch where the flow had broken off. It was a cliff of death. The ant broke into pieces.

Maggie, Sue and Tom had recently been employed. But the calamity of the times struck them like a thunderbolt. Their friendship that survived their middle and high school years bonded them like velcro and they were a team for life. Life was at play just now. Already they had found a few stiffs in some of the tents. It was beyond weird. This was the richest country in the world with the poorest of the poor and the worst pandemic in the world. They were living a dystopian crisis that no one had expected or was even in the least prepared for.

The northern blast tore at the flaps of the colder-than-ice plastic covers and hastily tied up protection pieces that they hoped would keep them alive if not warm.

“Are we gonna make it Tom?” Maggie asked.

“Sure we are, aren´t we, Sue?”

“We always, have, haven´t we, Tom?”

Glimmers of moonlight peered through some of the thin plastic and they could feel daggers of cold splitting their ribs. They huddled together for warmth, but they knew they had to move if they were going to stay alive. Here and there the glow of a candle or two could be seen with an occasional lantern lighting up a tent or two.

Most of the city was dark too, and not far from them. They could see the silhouettes of the skyscrapers in the nearby blocks. A now and then traffic light was still working going from green to yellow and red. They should be saving that energy. There was almost no traffic. At least not in their corner of the woods.

The question that was on everyone´s mind was never discussed. What happened? What went wrong? Why were they here? It was useless. Pointless to discuss any part of the problem. Here they were and that was that. Their only concern was to stay alive. What to eat? What to drink? Where could they relieve themselves? Hygiene was out of the question. Few wore masks. What virus could survive such brutal cold?

There was also strange talk in the streets. I say strange because none of them could keep up with the news. No one had a TV nor did they own cell phones. These were luxuries that privileged America owned, but they were beyond privilege. There had been one or two with smart phones but they had no connection nor could they ever find a hot spot to tune in. There was talk about something at the white house, or the seat of government. An insurrection ? Had someone really stormed congress, or the likes? It was probably talk, just talk. No one could storm the white house or congress, not even a foreign power. The consequences would be drastic. Unthinkable. Leave it alone. Besides, there was also word that half a million people had died of the pandemic. The Covid virus. Could this happen in America? Impossible. Forget it. They had their own problems. They were dying of cold. Something about fossil fuel. Incompetence. A freak of nature. They did suspect there was collusion between billionaires and government. But. Reality was beyond them. They had to survive. What to eat ?

The trio of friends found out there was only corn meal. Corn meal? Boxes and boxes of it going to waste. No one could eat corn meal. It´s for pigs, some said. Some tried spooning it into their mouth. But the plastic spoon had hardly left their mouth and already they were gagging on it. They could neither eat it, swallow it, bite it or crunch it. It is thick sand you can do nothing with in your mouth. When wet it sticks into lumps and wads and hardly goes down the throat.

The other available edible was chocolate. Chocolate candies. Everyone tried to survive on its sweet taste and sugar. That was so easy to down that some OD´d on it. You would never believe that chocolate could become the drug of choice. It seems that some good souls wanted to help the homeless and they dumped tons of chocolate candies on them. Go figure. The body needed fuel, carbohydrates to burn, like corn meal, not sugar. One was impossible

and the other too easy. Bad combo. The cold and their diet was making people drop. You could trip or bump into eerie stiffs silent as statues that might normally decorate parks.

Water ? What water? Already they had figured out that if you boiled snow you might kill the fall-out and survive if you drank it. Snow was aplenty if you had a way to boil it.

Maggie, Sue and Tom had already made the rounds of the place. They picked what they could and they were ready to fight for their life. This was no picnic or snow drift adventure at some ski lodge. This was a do or die thing. They drifted in and out of slumber to face it, their bones shivering in spite of their wild thoughts of fire bursting in their sinking hearts.

Magdalena, Susana and Tomás, their pre-Anglicized names, had grown up with parents whose traditions went way back before they were Hispanicized. Somehow they had survived two cultures, two foreign languages, Spanish and English, and at least 2 occupations, if you take off the French and any other such as German, Italian and a host of others who had appeared on their homelands. All these others had managed to end up owning the land, the homestead and they, the natives, ending up being called aliens, illegal and undocumented – as they were all conflated as one, different from the English speaking people. None of it was just, right, sensible or equitable, but then again, this was life – and everyone had to make the best of it. The trio were of Mexica (Mehcheeka) bloodline, the people who had started in the north, somewhere in Aztlan and ended south, establishing the splendorous capital of Tenochtitlan, today´s Mexico City. They gave their name to a country built around them, Mexico (original name, Méhcheeko).

Here they were in 21st century America, surviving as best they could with the local internal refugees of which there were many in many cities across America. They couldn’t have been more different, but also more the same, with their homeless family of diaspora throw-aways. The irony was that there was some food just a few blocks away, some warmth, some survival. It just wasn’t accessible to them. The American dream was not within their reach. Bummer. People came they said, with weapons, a book and a cross. They took everything they had and left them only with a book and a cross.

But life had rarely, if ever, been about books. What good were books for here? Could you boil any of them and eat them? Were books created to record what was stolen? How the rich could control others with laws? Books were records, words of societies and how they controlled others, or how they enjoyed themselves with the labor of others. The laborers had no books, they had nothing to record, they owned nothing. Books recorded what the poor owed the rich. This was history, hardly ever recorded or written in such ways. Perhaps Bishop De Landa was right in burning all the Maya books. Perhaps. Unless…

The hunger pains reminded our trio that they knew what to do. Wasn´t chocolate the favored drink of the Gods? From Quetzalcoatl to Coatlicue, Tezcatlipoca and Xochipilli, they all preferred chocolate to octli, the wine drink of the Gods. Perhaps there was a good reason why chocolate was discovered, cultivated, and given to the world by the Mexica people, who also named the heavenly fruit, in their Aztec Náhuatl language, chocolate. They also gave us the only natural vanilla in the world.

If the Gods loved chocolate, why couldn´t the earthlings improve on their deities´ taste? And that is just what they did. The people created champurrado! Better than the drink of the Gods! A drink especially popular during the cold days of “El Día de los Muertos,” (the Day of the Dead) celebrated on November 1st and 2nd of each year, a significant holy day so dear that Disney tried to copyright it for themselves. But the native uproar against it was so loud they dropped it.

Champurrado´s main ingridients are corn flower -- and chocolate, flavored with vanilla, cinnamon and anise, and milk if you got these extras -- but they are certainly not needed. Main stuff: corn and chocolate in water.

The lines at their tent were so long people were asking if they were giving Covid shots. Or if these were food lines. The answer was usually yes, but you had to drink your food there or take it in a small container.

Soon preachers came by with a book and a cross – and all were turned away.

One day a group of four came by. One was blind. The other was deaf. A third was mute. And the last, the last was all of the above. He was the leader. They thumped on him on the chest, morse code, around his heart area. Something he had learned as a boy scout before he had become a problem. They had a remarkable connection.

The one who could speak called themselves the four horsemen, and they looked it, more spic and span than the regulars who lived there. But they were still outlanders. What were they doing there? They lined up for champurrado.

The wind blasts continued just as cold but at least the community had something warm and nurturing in their stomach. The trio lit candles to the Virgen de Guadalupe, a small statue of her smiling on the brew. They prayed for delivery – especially for warmer and sturdier tents for their freezing community. The lot of them would be hard pressed to come up with ten dollars – between all of them.

Before they left, the four horsemen prayed in silence, kneeling besides them. Solidarity is not hard to find when everyone feels the same fate in equal amounts.

The blind and deaf one, who was also unable to speak gave them a box of corn meal. The trio wondered why as there were still many boxes of it around, but hey graciously took it and thanked them.

As they were emptying the box in a pan for a new batch of Champurrado, out popped a little black book which they sat aside, as books after all, were useless. That batch was especially warm and delicious. The homeless commented on it and the trio turned to the virgen and thanked her.

That night the wind was especially vicious and the cold, too cutting to consider freakish. It was brutal. There was a thundering thumping sound on the nearby broken water pipes that was constant, unyielding and unstoppable. But it was also rhythmic and regular, almost like a message from afar. They brought in the army guy who knew morse code. After about an hour of listening and jotting down notes, (running in an out of their tents for pretended warmth), there was a message: “Not all black books have evil mischief, some can be benevolent.”

They ran to their tent and opened the little black book, el librito negro. There were twenty thousand dollars tightly wrapped between its covers. Breathless teary gasps. $20K!

Words, 2,000