From The Riotous Walls, work in progress

I do not know how to eat the soup.

There is an enormous bowl on the table in front of me with fist-sized potatoes, gristly chunks of meat, yucca, whole carrots, halved ears of corn. And a spoon. My mamá named Hilda smiles at me because she is pleased to have made me something special and “Coma,” she says. “No le gusta la sopa?”

I like soup and I am hungry but I don’t know what to do. The soups I know have small-cut meat and vegetables, not these ingredients boiled whole. I look again but she has not given me a knife. She stands there smiling at me in confused expectation as I look helplessly at my plate.

I must look for words in this language and I have so few.

“No entiendo,” I say. “Como?”

“Ai mamita,” she says through an accidental giggle and asks me if I’ve never eaten soup before. “Asi,” she says, and taking my spoon, she slices off a piece of potato and offers it to me as if I were a giant 20-year-old baby.

“Ah,” I say. “Gracias.” I take the spoon.

Mama Hilda disappears into the kitchen and then joins me with a steaming bowl for herself. The delicious broth is scalding hot and I spill it onto the table as I chop clumsily at the carrot and then at the corn.

“No no,” she interrupts me. “El maiz, no. Ai mamita. No sabe tomar la sopa,” and she giggles again. “Mire,” she commands. She dips her fingers into the boiling broth, fishes out the ear of corn and bites the kernels from it in the way of every summer.

“Ya?” she asks me, meaning do I need more help or do I finally get it.

“Si,” I say. “Ya.”

“Provecho.”

“Gracias. Igual.”

I know nothing, not how to eat, not now to speak. All my life I have heard people talk of being born again and although this is not what they meant I see that this is its truer meaning.

When we are finished our faces shine with sweat and soup.