by Alba Delia Hernández

My older brother Louie has brought a girl home for dinner from Canada.  She has big blond hair, blue eyes and is very pretty.  I am fourteen, my little brother eleven. We never have sit-down dinners, the dinner table is usually jammed with pots, pans, blender, broken appliances, and mail. I always make a small space for myself to do my homework.

But today is a special day. My older brother Louie is visiting from the college he’s going to in upstate New York. Everyone is proud of him.

My older brother is handsome with thick black hair and a matching moustache. I really think I’ll like my brother’s girlfriend. I’m nice to her and show her pictures of my brother when he was younger.

We sit at the table. It is almost Christmas, and my mother has made pasteles, a Puerto Rican specialty only made during the holidays.  It takes a long time to make and at least five adults to assemble them. There’s the masa, a dough made of yautia, calabaza, y platano. Inside my family puts pork or beef that have been cut into little squares, olives, cut up potatoes, pimiento morones, cilantro and sometimes chickpeas. It’s then wrapped inside banana leaves that have been brushed with achiote oil. To keep the rectangular shape, it is then sealed in butcher paper and tied with a thin white string. It’s the holiest of holy foods in our Puerto Rican culture.

We all sit around our table and Mami serves up pasteles, with white rice and a slice of avocado. Mami tells me to put my long hair up in a ponytail so that my hair doesn’t get on the food. My brother and I are really excited to be drinking Kola Champagne--so sweet and bubbly.  Both my brothers sprinkle hot sauce on the pasteles. I am eager to dig in, but my brother’s new girlfriend starts moving her pastel around on her plate with her fork. I can hear the fork scrape against the plate like the L train screeching to a stop. She moves the pastel around, brings her face closer to the plate, smells the pastel and asks my brother, “Louie, what is this?” I am frozen. My little brother is frozen. Mami, who is next to the stove has stopped her busy hands and is frozen too except for her eyes that make a sharp turn towards the table. 

My older brother looks at his girlfriend and says in a hushed voice, “Just eat it. It’s good.” His girlfriend brings the fork to her mouth, but then brings it back down and says, “Louie, I can’t eat this.”

“Dile a esa muchacha, que si no le gusta mi comida, que se vaya pal carajo,”* my mother says in a high but controlled voice.

My little brother and I break out laughing at my brother. My brother Louie shoots us a dirty look, rests his elbow on the table, and holds his forehead on his hands. 

We never saw that girlfriend again. And my brother Louie never again brought home a girlfriend who didn’t love pasteles.

Alba Delia Hernández is a writer, inspired by Puerto Rico, growing up in Bushwick, and salsa, who dances in the hybrid forms of fiction and poetry. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University. Her writing was highly commended in Aunt Lute, Gathering of the Tribes Magazine and Poetry Project series ‘House Party,’ Like Light.  She received the Bronx Council of the Arts First Chapter Award. She’s read at el Museo del Barrio, Nuyorican Poets Café and La Respuesta in Puerto Rico. She’s a passionate yoga teacher, salsa dancer, and videographer who recites speeches by Puerto Rican revolutionaries or moves to songs of resistance. Currently, she teaches creative writing to students across New York City public schools with Teachers & Writers Collaborative and other organizations.