FLY ME TO THE SPOON
By Gil Gevins

I was trapped, backed against an out-of-service taco stand in the Oaxaca Municipal market. A pair of pint-size Zapotecs stood blocking the only exit, anxious expressions on their ageless faces, baskets full of fried grasshoppers cradled like babies in their arms. The two tiny women, both of whom were named Maria, had set their sights high and were hoping for a big sale. My immediate objective was more modest: I was merely hoping to hold on to my lunch.

The “free sample” lay on my tongue for a long time waiting to be chewed, a feat which, for the moment, I could not even imagine. Swallowing the grasshopper whole, another of my options, I rejected out of hand. Spitting out the unpalatable pest? That was my most fervent desire! But such a cowardly act, I knew, would lower my stock substantially in the eyes of the two Marias, not to mention the entire Oaxaca Municipal Market sub-culture.

“It’s only a little grasshopper,” I told myself.
“True,” myself replied. “But how much difference is there really between a little grasshopper and a little cockroach? Entomologically speaking, they’re practically kissing cousins.”

After a monumental struggle I finally managed to will my mandibular machinery into motion. The little bug was pleasantly crunchy, but it tasted like old fish--very old fish. On the other hand, it was a small grasshopper, and I had nearly gulped the entire thing down when one of its long antennae (curled-up from cooking like a fried pubic hair) got caught in my throat. Utilizing muscles which had lain dormant for more than thirty years, I hurdled the shorter of the two Marias and made a desperate dash for the washroom.
When I returned, refreshed, to the Oaxaca market the following morning (to have my daily breakfast of chicken-mole tamales wrapped in banana leaves), I was, implausibly, cornered once again by the very same pair of charming but persistent women. Smiling their pure and unaffected smiles, they greeted me like a long lost son.

“I’m not eating any more chapulines,” I told them straight away.
“No, no, you must try another!” the taller of the two told me. “The one she gave you yesterday was old, from last year.”
“Last year!”
“Yes, but mine are fresh,” she said proudly.
“It was not from last year!” the other Maria said. Then, switching to Zapotec, the two women began to twitter angrily at each other like a pair of birds fighting over a choice nesting spot.
“That’s okay,” I said, walking briskly away, “I’m on my way to have a tamale. See you later.”
“We’ll go with you,” the taller Maria said.

And so the Marias, scurrying like puppies to keep up, followed me across the market to Conchita’s Tamale Stand, where Conchita herself, a busty boisterous woman, greeted our arrival with loud peals of laughter.
“My gringo has a big appetite today,” Conchita vamped, leering first at me, then at the bug vendors.
The two Marias, shedding sixty odd years in the blink of a compound eye, began to giggle like a couple of schoolgirls.

“We’ll have three tamales,” I told Conchita.
“So, you like the chapulines?” Conchita said.
Mumbling incoherently, I attempted to recuse myself from having to make any judgments one way or the other: “More than four legs. I don’t know. We’re talking multi-limbed cuisine, which is, you know…”
“Grasshoppers are pure vitamins,” Conchita, who rarely paid attention to anything I told her, declared authoritatively. “They are gathered in alfalfa fields. That’s really what a grasshopper is: digested alfalfa.”
“How nice,” I said, losing interest in my tamale.
“Here in Oaxaca we have a saying,” Conchita said: “‘If the bug don’t fly, it’s time to fry!’”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Or else we say: ‘If the worm got feet, you must not eat!’”
“Please, Conchita,” I moaned, “spare me the Johnny Cochran impersonations.”

“I bet you’ve never even eaten a maguey worm,” Conchita accused me.
“You’d win that bet,” I said.
“OYE! HILDA!” Conchita boomed across three aisles of puestos, “ME TRAES UNOS GUSANITOS!”
When a stout but agile woman came rushing up carrying a small round basket on her head, I asked for the check.
Conchita, ignoring me, took the basket from her friend and shoved it under my nose. The basket was filled with short, chubby wriggling red worms.
“They’re alive!” I yelped.
“Not for long,” Conchita said, scooping a quarter cup of the noxious invertebrates out of the basket with a big spoon.

Meanwhile the grasshopper ladies had gathered round the basket and were nodding and clucking their approval. “These are very good,” the tall one told me. “See how red they are? If the worm is red, it can’t be dead.”
“I’m going to make you,” Conchita announced with gusto, “the best salsa you’ve ever tasted in your life!”
“I have a dentist’s appointment,” I said.
“Now, worms you can cook up right away,” Conchita explained. “But grasshoppers, you have to leave alone for twenty-four hours.”
“And why is that?”
“So they can take care of their business, naturally. You don’t want to be eating grasshopper caca, do you?”
“Perish the thought. But what about the worm caca?”
“No problema, querido,” Conchita said.
“No problema,” I said. “So what do you do with the grasshoppers, put them in a litter box?”
“You want the pan really hot before you throw the gusanos in,” Conchita said compassionately. “That way the poor little things don’t suffer.”

“What about grasshoppers?” I asked the Marias. “You cook them at high temperatures, too?”
“Chapulines,” the short one replied, “you cook very, very slowly--in lime, garlic and chile. No oil.”
“And they don’t suffer, like the poor little worms would?”
“No,” she said, “they’re already dead.”
“Oh. So how do you kill them?”
“You bury them in salt.”

“Alright, here we go,” Conchita said, dumping the gusanos into a red-hot pan. For the stoic little maguey worms, it was over quickly: no cries of terror, no sighs of regret, no pleas for mercy--a brief but heroic performance.
“Come on,” the shorter Maria said suddenly, “have some chapulines. I haven’t sold so much as a leg today.”
“No thank you,” I said firmly.

“Now it’s time to grind them up,” Conchita said, transferring the flash-fried worms from the pan to the molcajete. Into the self-same vessel she also tossed some chopped-up garlic, chile guajillo, lime juice and salt. Conchita had arms like Popeye the sailor, which she put to good use grinding the ingredients into a rich, thick salsa. While she worked she asked me if I had ever eaten flying ants.
“No, I don’t think I could get past the wings,” I replied.
“You don’t eat the wings, mi amor. Now, try this!” she commanded, setting the entire molcajete full of salsa next to my tamale.

“I’m sorry, Conchita,” I said. “I just can’t eat this salsa…”
“You don’t eat it by itself,” she said, interrupting me. “Whoever heard of eating salsa by itself?”
“So, what do you eat with it?” I asked reluctantly.
“Maria,” Conchita said, “give me a big handful of fresh chapulines--the ones from this year”. Sometimes, she confided to me in a stage whisper, “they try to pawn the old ones off on dumb tourists. Now, are we ready for our taco?”