K.Esquivel-LWFC

After the nut is taken from the shell, you still
have to remove the
skin that covers the nut. Take care that none
of this skin, not a
single bit, is left clinging to the nuts, because
when they're ground
and mixed with the cream, any skin will make
the nut sauce bitter, and
all of your previous work will have been for
nothing.
Tita and Chencha were finishing shelling the
nuts, sitting around the
kitchen table. The nuts were to be used for
the chiles in nut sauce
they would be serving as the main course at
the next day's wedding.
All the other members of the family had
gone, deserting the kitchen
table on one pretext or another. Only those
two indefatigable women
were continuing to the bottom of the
mountain. To tell the truth, Tita
didn't blame the others.
They had given her enough help already this
week; she knew quite well
that it wasn't easy to shell a thousand nuts
without getting sick of
it. The only person she knew who could do it
without any sign of
fatigue was Mama Elena.
Not only could she crack sack after sack of
nuts in a short time, she
seemed to take great pleasure in doing it.
Applying pressure, smashing to bits,
skinning, those were among her
favorite activities. The hours just flew by
when she sat on the patio
with a sack of nuts between her legs, not
getting up until she was done
with it.
For her it would have been child's play to
crack those thousand nuts,
which required so much effort from everyone
else. They needed that
enormous quantity because for each 25
chiles they had to shell nuts; so
it figured that for 250 chiles, they needed
1,000 nuts.
They had invited eighty people to the
wedding, between relatives and
close friends. Each one could eat three
chiles if they wanted, a
fairly generous estimate. This was to be a
quiet wedding; nonetheless,
Tita wanted to give a twenty-course banquet
the likes of which had
never been given before, and of course she
couldn't leave the delicious
chiles in walnut sauce off of the menu, even
though they took so much
work-such a memorable occasion surely
warranted it. It didn't matter
to Tita if she had black fingers after taking
the skin off so many
nuts. This wedding was well worth the
sacrifice-it had a special
significance for her. For John too. He was
so happy that he had been
one of her most enthusiastic helpers in the
preparation of the
banquet.
Indeed, he had been one of the last to stop
to rest. He deserved a
good rest.
At home in his bathroom, John was washing
his 1 2 hands, dead tired.
His fingernails hurt from peeling so many
nuts. Getting ready for bed,
he was filled with intense emotion. In a few
hours he would be closer
to Tita, and that gave him enormous
satisfaction. The wedding was