Día de las Velitas
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The best traditions are the simplest. That’s what Abuela always says. She never wants a big party or lots of presents for her birthday, just a cake made by one of her daughters or granddaughters. Not the box kind, something made from scratch, even if it was Tia Adria’s turn to bake and she used salt instead of sugar and not even her husband could finish a slice.
Traditions become traditions because they matter to more than just you or me, Abuela says. If there’s no one to celebrate with, it’s not a tradition, just a habit. Like Cousin Mateo, who went to college in America and now eats hot dogs and apple pie every Fourth of July. We all like hot dogs and apple pie, but it’s not a tradition. Just Cousin Mateo’s strange American habit.
Traditions matter because they remind us what’s important—the familia—and they bring us all together. In a way, Abuela says, traditions are the family. They are the little threads that connect mothers and daughters, uncles and nephews, cousins and grandparents. All the things we do together that no one else does.
Like the way the Hernández family celebrates Día de las velitas.
In most ways, our traditions are the same as everyone else in Bogotá, in all of Colombia. We spend the time with our family, we mark the beginning of the Christmas season, we look at the beautiful glowing churches, specially decorated with spotlights and dripping Christmas string lights and illuminated statues for this festival of the little candles.
We go outside onto the roads to light the candles in paper lanterns with beautiful, intricate designs stamped on them, so that when the candles are lit up inside, the paper shines in the night, and the pattern stands out, contrasted against the burning glow. We line up our wax candles to commemorate la Inmaculada Concepción in reds, purples, greens, blues, golds, and every color in between, sticking them on paper on the street in rows or sometimes in the shape of a star or a crown or a cross. We walk down the bumpy, cobblestone road in the warm Colombian air (Cousin Mateo complains it doesn’t feel like real Christmas because you can’t see your breath when you’re outside), shouting out greetings to the other families on our block, going over to kiss and hug the ones we love the most, to ask what wishes they are begging from María this year.
My mother (who has talents in cooking that her sister, Tia Adria, does not) stays home with the women Abuela takes in every few days, her luchadoras, as she calls them, frying the buñuelos so that when we all return home we are greeted with the smell of rich, cheesy, chewy deliciousness—the perfect Christmas treat. Only last year did I start joining in on the tradition of drinking the canelazo (only half a glass) but as excited as I was to finally try the cinnamony rum drink of the Andes, it’s nothing on what I get to do this year.
This year I am finally old enough to be a part of our family’s special, secret tradition. Of course, I still don’t know what that is. But today is the day I learn.
***
“Mamá, she’s still too young, can’t she wait one more year?” My mother’s pleading voice always brings up the guilt in my stomach, like I’m the one that made her sad and not firm, unbreaking Abuela. But this time it’s all mixed up with irritation. My mother wants me to wait? A whole another year?
“No. It’s time, mi amor, you can’t coddle her forever.”
The sound of the smoothing of flour along the wooden countertop flows around the wall and then into the hallway where I am frozen, eavesdropping, and then the momentary breath before a heavy thunk as the arepa dough is dropped and pounded into the wood, followed by the wet swish swish swish as my mother kneads her own irritation away.
“Nadia’s not like her cousins. She is too uptight. She won’t understand.”
Abuela’s long skirts brush across the ground and I imagine her walking to my mother’s other side. This is confirmed when a second thunk sounds, and the sounds of Abuela kneading dough joins that of my mother.
“Do you think she will fail us?”
My mother pauses her swishing and gasps in indignation, “No! Mamá, of course not! Is that what you think of her?”
My heart is pounding. How could I fail my family? Traditions weren’t usually failable. “Cálmate, Isla. She is ready, I know it, and so do you.”
Slowly, the sounds of the arepas start again, and they work in silence. I wish I hadn’t come down from bed early, that I’d stayed in bed after the sun had risen like normal. Suddenly, after
years of desperate excitement, waiting for the day I’d be a real Hernández, my stomach was squishy with fear instead of jittery with nerves. I could fail them.
And if I failed? It probably meant that I wouldn’t be a real Hernández. It probably meant that I wouldn’t be allowed to be a part of it next year. Even Cousin Mateo, who annoyed everyone by talking about how much better America was than Colombia, still got to be a part of the special Día de las velitas tradition.
Cold fear washes over me. Why hadn’t anyone told me that there was some dumb test that I could fail?
I work myself up into enough of a frenzy that I am on the verge of storming into the still dark kitchen to demand answers when Abuela’s voice floats by. “You worry too much, Isla. Your daughter will be a natural, just like you were. Sometimes worrying is a good thing, no?”
My mother sighs. “Yes, yes, you’re right. My anxiety always kept me safe when it was me, and it will protect Nadia too.”
Before I can let the thought Protect me from what? sink in too deep, I hear the tap tap tap of my father’s lightweight inside cane that signals Papá is awake, and I am about to get caught eavesdropping at what is probably the worst possible time. I launch myself back from the kitchen wall, tiptoe-running down the hall and into the dark of the family room, throwing myself down on the faded red corduroy couch, pretending to be asleep.
I am barely settled when I hear Mamá’s soft, “Buenos días,” followed by the light smack of a kiss. And as if that was the sign to the rest of the household, I hear the echoes of the stirrings of my aunts and uncles and the slew of cousins all staying in Abuela’s house in preparation of Día de las velitas.
The day is here.
Oh Dios, what am I going to do?
***
Every year, during the day before we light all the candles and go walk around the city admiring all the glowing lanterns and lines of candles, all the cousins and tios disappear to “prepare” for the Special Tradition. I used to beg Abuela and Mamá to let me go with, but they always refused.
I assumed, since this year I’d finally be allowed to go with, I would disappear too. Except I didn’t. Instead I am making natillas, Colombian Christmas custard, while my mother and Abuela and silent, pregnant Vanesa, the newest of Abuela’s luchadoras, who showed up two nights ago with nothing but the clothes on her back and a swollen-shut eye, prepare the buñuelos, roast pig, and tamales for later.
Like every year.
And a not-so-small part of me is relieved.
But the part of me that knows there is still a test for me to fail and something dangerous I need protecting from is very worried that I am not preparing like everyone else. “But, Abuela, if I am not preparing for the…whatever it is, how am I supposed to know what to do later?”
“You can just watch your cousins, mi amor.”
“But, it will be dark.”
“Not that dark, remember it is Día de las velitas.”
“Why is this a tradition today, Abuela, and not, for example, in June?”
“You will see, Nadia. Ay, cuidado, the natilla is boiling over!”
Vanesa reaches over and lifts the pot of custard off the flame, saving me and the natilla. Abuela and my mother are cursing at me and apologizing to her for my absentmindedness. “Thank you, Vanesa,” I say. A slick flicker of a smile graces her thin lips before she places it back down on a separate burner and switches my burner off. Then, as if nothing happened, she turns back to her own burner and the masa she was mixing for the tamales. I realize she’s probably only a few years older than me, maybe nineteen or twenty, but it seems like she is so much more in control of herself. She hasn’t looked at a recipe once (while I have to constantly check amounts and times and if I’m stirring in the right direction), and now that the swelling around her eye is mostly faded into a yellow bruise, I can tell she is a beautiful woman. Her pregnancy is just beginning to show, and I wonder if she is nervous about being a mom like I am nervous about this dumb tradition.
I wonder who hurt her. I wonder if I would have had the courage to go to a stranger’s house to ask for help two days before the beginning of the Christmas season.
“Nadia, stop staring!” My mother lean over from the other counter and raps me on the head with her wooden spatula, and I jump, more from the surprise than anything. “What is wrong with you?”
I mumble out an apology, and I hear the smallest giggle from Vanesa beside me. Startled, I glance up at her and see just a faint spark of amusement, vanished in a moment. I smile too, and then pick up the rapidly cooling pot of natillas. I don’t have time to obsess over what might happen later. If these don’t set properly, Abuela and Mamá will roast me right along with that pig.
***
The streets are aflame, candle after candle lit, a procession of lights for la Virgen María. Some candles have melted down already, but people are ready to quickly replace them as soon as the flame winks out. Windows around the neighborhood are adorned with electric lights in every color, but no one is inside. Everyone is on the streets, celebrating, making wishes with the families, for their families.
My family, everyone but Abuela and Mamá, are walking down the street. It is true night now, the sun long ago set. We amble down the street, but to me it seems as if we have a specific destination in mind. Tio Emiliano keeps checking his phone, and then whispering to my father, who will then gesture vaguely with a lift of his nice, hardwood cane that he saves for special occasions. My stomach is in knots, but all the candles on the streets give me strength. My family wouldn’t let me fail, would they? Whatever it is?
Slowly, pieces of our group start breaking off. First, Tio Emiliano and his oldest son turn down one street with a cheery wave and a “See you back at Abuela’s!” Then, the twins, Rosa and Oliver, cut down a dark alley. Each time, Papá says, “With me, Nadia,” and I follow him, watching as my family fades off into the night, lost even among all the gleaming candlelight.
Finally, it is just me, Papá, and Emiliano’s other son, American Mateo. We aren’t more than fifteen minutes from Abuela’s house, even though we’ve been walking for almost an hour. We are stopped in front of a nice house, though there is only one candle lit on the doorstep, next to a man slumped over, drunk.
I wrinkle my nose and turn away to continue but Mateo’s hand on my arm makes me stop.
Papá climbs the three steps up to where the man is lying, leaning on the hardwood to lift up his stiff leg. The man is young, maybe even younger than Mateo, and even through the stench of liquor and the sheen of sweat, he was very handsome, with rich brown hair, slightly mussed, and a strong jaw. My father bends down to him, and I wonder if he is going to make sure the man is okay.
Until Papá punches him in the eye.
I cry out, but it’s cut short by Mateo’s light hiss in my ear to “Shut up.” The man, already leaning precariously on the stoop, keels over from the force of my father’s swing, and lands hand on the concrete, before he comes up swinging.
“What the goddamn hell?”
Papá easily dodges the man’s off-kilter attempt to fight, and I watch in complete shock and my father drops his cane and snaps out another quick one-two to the man’s gut and side of his head, before grabbing the drunk’s arm in a twist that, if he didn’t freeze, might snap the bone.
“Let’s go chat inside, yes?” My father says in a low tone, and holds out a hand for someone to hand him his cane that had clattered its way down the steps in the flurry of the fight. Mateo scoops up the cane, and with light pressure on my back, guides me up the stairs. I see specks of blood in the low flickering light from the single candle still alight on the doorstep, and lick my suddenly dry lips.
As we step through the front door to the man’s house, it’s as if we stepped straight into a house recently decimated by a tornado. There is glass everywhere, broken picture frames and vases. A wooden banister is hanging from the wall, still half attached, but now splintering down the middle as if someone took an ax to it. Gouges in the wooden steps also look suspiciously like someone has been hacking away at them. A door to another room has been separated from the hinges and is now lying, half blocking the doorway, propped up on a chair or a table in the room.
Mateo’s eyes are huge, like mine, and I guess that this destruction isn’t a normal part of whatever the hell is going on. My father, though, isn’t fazed, and just manuevers his captive farther into the house until he finds a chair that still has all four legs. He nods his head at it, and Mateo fishes out a rope from the satchel he’s been carrying around, and I realize each group that split off from our family as we’d made our way here also had someone with a bag. Was this our tradition? Assaulting drunks?
Oh Dios, maybe Mamá was right and I wasn’t ready for this.
We continue on deeper, Mateo hefting the unbroken chair behind us until we reach the kitchen. It seems to have escaped most of the carnage, and it looks, at least to me, obvious that at some point recently, a woman had been here. There is an herb garden in the windowsill, with plants still thriving, and a vibrant red and blue painting sits on a shelf next to a few clean pots and pans. In the center of the kitchen, a wooden table, with simple and clean placemats and an unbroken vase with still-fresh flowers in it. An unlit wood-burning fireplace sits across from the more modern electric oven built into the kitchen counters.
It is a shock to be in a room virtually untouched by the rage we had traversed through, but the biggest shock is the picture set proudly on the fireplace mantle. There, smiling broadly, arms entwined with a cleaner, happier version of this drunk man, is Vanesa.
Abuela’s luchadora.
And here is the man who gave her her swollen eye.
I wish my father had hit him harder.
My father accepts the cane from Mateo, and groans as pressure is released from his bad leg. I stand back, staring at Vanesa’s husband? Boyfriend? Abuser. He watches me too, sneering, as my father slowly circles him, his cane making a thunk thunk thunk on the kitchen floor.
The man opens his mouth to say something, but Papá lifts a single finger. “I’m sorry, when I said we’d chat, I meant I’d speak and you’d listen.”
The man opens his mouth again, but before he can even speak a single word, my father whips out his nice, special occasions, hardwood cane, slamming it into the man’s shin. A howl rips through the kitchen, and a delicious, vindictive voice inside me says, more.
***
“Nadia! Come help Vanesa with the dishes!” Abuela calls out to me, and I quickly stuff another hot, chewy buñuelo in my mouth, ignoring the sizzling on my tongue. Taste buds grow back, right?
It’s late now, after three in the morning. Everyone has come back, even the twins, though Oliver is sporting a bruise on his cheek and Rosa stomped up to her room to sulk for thirty minutes. Tomorrow, I’ll ask what happened, but for now I am just happy we are all back together.
We were one of the first groups back from the special Día de las velitas tradition, and Papá sighed a big sigh as we walked through the door.
“Ay, mi amor, this cane is too heavy for me,” he said as he carefully exchanged it for his lightweight one stored in the umbrella rack. “I am glad I only break it out for special occasions.”
I followed him through the house, Mateo already disappeared into the kitchen with a bag of things he had collected for Vanesa. “But Papá, it’s so much more…um, elegant than this one.” He stopped the light tap tap tap and turns to me. “Nadia, this cane lets me be who I really am, light and carefree. That cane weighs me down. It’s good to use it sometimes, to remind people who I can be, but I don’t want to be him all the time.”
With a firm nod, he turned back around and called out for my mother. “We are back! Now, who has some tamales for me? I’m starving!”
I hurry into the kitchen, chewing with my mouth open because that buñuelo was way too hot, and I see Vanesa still standing at the sink. I haven’t seen her sit down all day. I swallow quickly, ignoring the burn and say, “Vanesa, you should go to bed. You and the baby need rest!”
She shuts off the sink, and dries her hands on a hand towel before nodding at me. Just as she’s leaving the kitchen, she pauses and whispers, “Gracias.”
I call back, cheerfully, my hands already in the hot water, scrubbing at the dishes, “¡De nada!”