The Book of Unknown Americans: A novel by Cristina Henríquez Page A

inthe room nestled among other rooms—the bathroom where Maribel had hung a calendar to mark when to expect her next period, the bedroom where the nightgowns and socks and collared shirts that we had left behind were piled on top of the quilt my mother had sewn and given to us as a wedding gift, the sala with the bone-inlaid picture frames housing black-and-white photographs of our grandparents, who had passed, and of our great-grandparents, whom we had never known—all of which were nestled between the backyard with our old rope hammock and the stone half wall that was crumbling at one corner and the front yard, which was hardly a yard at all, just pebbles and aloe plants and a space where Arturo parked the pickup truck that he and I used to sit in together while we looked up at the stars. And all of that nestled in the town where the three of us had been born and had grown up, the town where my parents still lived and where Arturo’s parents had died, the town where we’d shared meals and drinks and late nights filled with laughter with our lifelong friends. All of it waiting so patiently. All of it so far away.
    FOR A WHILE I made the meals we used to eat in Pátzcuaro—sopa tarasca and huachinango and corundas con churipo—but eating foods from home in a place that wasn’t our home only made things worse. Besides, the imported chiles and guajillo were expensive, and already we were living on so little. We had some money saved, but Arturo and I had both agreed not to touch it unless there was an emergency, which meant unless we had to take Maribel to a doctor or rush her to the hospital. For now we were getting by on Arturo’s paycheck week to week, which was just enough to cover rent and bus fare and food.
    Eventually I stopped shopping at Gigante because it droveme crazy to see all the things we couldn’t afford to buy. All those crates of nopalitos and epazote and tender corn, all those shelves of pickled red onions and tequesquite and coriander taunting me. I started buying food at the Dollar Tree instead. Food in cans, food in boxes. Add water and heat.
    One morning, I saw a Mexican woman there taking three drumlike containers off a shelf.
    “What is that?” I asked her, pointing.
    “Avena,” she said. “Oatmeal.”
    “Like atole?”
    My mother used to make me atole de grano when I was a girl, the dense corn kernels buried in the anicillo broth. But I hadn’t eaten it in a long time. The idea that this might be something similar piqued my interest.
    “This is the American version,” the woman said. “It’s not the same. But it’s cheap. One can will feed you for a week. And it’s hot. Good for the winter.”
    “Thank you,” I told her, and started loading containers of oatmeal into my basket until I cleared the shelf of it.
    I made it that afternoon. The instructions on the back were in English, but there were drawings, too—a faucet pouring water into a measuring cup, a hand holding a spoon and stirring—and there were numbers that I could read. I followed it all, heated it on the stove, and before I knew it, I had made a pot of pale gray mush. I dipped a finger in. It tasted like paper. Maybe the slightest hint of nuttiness somewhere at the edges. The woman had been right. It wasn’t good. Not at all like the atole I remembered. But I had barely made a dent in the oats and I had cooked a whole pot of them. It was enough to feed all three of us. Maybe, I thought, I could sprinkle some cocoa powder on it, or stir in some honey, just to liven the flavor.
    Maribel and Arturo looked skeptical when I set out the bowls that night.
    “What is it?” Maribel asked, poking at it with her spoon.
    I had made it too early. I didn’t know that the longer it sat, the more it hardened. By the time I put it out for dinner that night, it was like rubber.
    “Oatmeal,” I said, pronouncing the word in English. “The Americans love it.” I pointed to one of the cardboard cans on the counter. “You see