My aunt Chelita has always had a round body, and it’s even rounder now. It’s voluptuous, with terrifically large breasts and shoulders like apples. Her hands are like apples too. They’re small and powerful, red and fleshy, with promise behind them.
My earliest memories of Chelita are of her hands. She’d kick around in her small and well-windowed kitchen, and she’d play with the ingredients of a meal. Her hands fluttered, glistening in the sun with her food in pieces.
Once, when I lived with Chelita, my tío Carlos brought us a bag full of moras, and asked Chelita to make juice out of them. Quiteños consume these berries practically every day. They make juices, ice creams, and yogurt out of moras. You might call it an obsession.
Chelita brought the bag back to her kitchen. As she sang along to a bolero on the radio, she dipped her fingers into the moras. She cupped her hands and scooped the berries into a white bowl – they were instantly drenched with something brilliant. It looked like the blood of an animal.
It wasn’t animal blood – it was the blood of the moras. They were about as big as the green-breasted hummingbirds that buzzed around Chelita’s garden. The berries had collapsed, leaked, and the juices dripped onto Chelita. It tinted her – her fingers, her clothes, and her cheeks.
Chelita’s hands were purple with berry blots. The mora blood on her cheeks just made her eyes greener.
Chelita has always had a messiness about her – her hair stands in tufts like hatchlings. Rolling through a kitchen afternoon with Chelita was like flying on the back of a hummingbird – crazy. She stumbled through her days this way, topsy-turvy – always fun, always funny. With Chelita, rain clouds were fun. Lightning was fun. Outages, fights, cold spells were fun. Burnt butter, burnt bread. Mistaking salt for sugar in a recipe was fun, a story she’d chirp between giggles.
I’ve rarely felt happier anywhere else or with anyone else – or more at peace. Because under Chelita’s silliness lay a wisdom, a regarding of the mess in her life as a divine blessing. Never a curse – and thus the moras.
Mora, a blessed folly itself, a mess of a taste, never tasted brighter than in Chelita’s house.
Once the moras and their liquids were collapsed inside the bowl, Chelita passed them through a strainer and sweetened the juice with handfuls of sugar. Then she stirred the juice with mineral water. She poured the juice into two tall, smudged glasses. By the time she finished, the kitchen table was stained all over.
But the taste…like shooting stars on the tongue. It flitted along the palate – tart, sweet, sometimes sour, always playful. Chelita took in sips of her creation. She concentrated on it, a bird taking in nectar.
Jugo de Mora – at least for a moment – can turn around a great sadness in life. So does Chelita. Her blood is undoubtedly brighter and more lively than anyone else’s, the truest of ruby reds.
Most miracles rise up and slip away without calling much attention to themselves, and the job is to keep an eye out. That was simple with Chelita, and with her food. Chelita swished the deep red in her glass – her hands glimmered in the light like the wings of an angel. She let me be with her, and I drank it all in.
Jugo de Mora: Ingredients: 1/2 pound mora, 1 1/2 pounds water, sugar to taste. Preparation: Wash the berries and push through a sieve. Blend the juice of the berries with sugar, and then add sparkling water. Serve chilled.
– or –
1 package frozen moras, 1 ½ pounds of water, sugar to taste. Preparation: Defrost the berries (in their package) in a bowl full of water. Once mostly defrosted, remove berries from package and drop in a blender. Blend the moras with wáter and sugar. Serve chilled.
Clouds and Chirimoyas 
Leave a comment