Tamale Fest

Homage to Tula Overton

Aurora approached the brownstone at corner Hayes and Shrader in San Francisco with a small shiver of delight. Her best friend’s mother, Tula, loved to party, and tonight she was preparing a feast. Tomorrow was Saturday and the flat would be full of relatives, and best of all, boys. If only her mother knew. She rang the bell. The door opened and she pranced up three flights of stairs to the top floor.

Tula was in full swing making nacas – Nicaraguan tamales. Yesterday she had boiled the fillings: pork, chicken, olives, pieces of potato, and sweet raisins. Then she had used the broth to make the dough, after adding the traditional spices and her secret ingredient, shredded Monterey Jack cheese. Today she had wrapped the tamales with soaked corn husks, and secured them with string, twisting the string a different way for each of the five varieties. The cooking was underway and would last all night. The apartment smelled yummy. Aurora peeked at the tightly packed, steaming tamales. They were plump, each six inches long and two inches thick. Like Tula, plump, and begging to be eaten.

Aurora loved Tula. She was so vivacious, so different from her own worried mother. And while Tula’s daughter, Julieta, wasn’t allowed to date, her mother made up for it by having wild Latin parties bursting with song and dance. Aurora sighed. She wished her parents were more like Tula. She wished fun wasn’t forbidden.

“Rorie,” Julie said, “my mom wants you to try on this dress. She wants you to have it if it fits.”

Julie was standing in the middle of the living room dangling a mustard-colored sleeveless corduroy sheath by the shoulder seams.

My mother will never let me accept this dress, Aurora thought. Accepting this would be an admission that we are poor. That’s ridiculous! Julie’s just as poor.

Aurora frowned. She had been hoping to sneak away for a few hours on Saturday afternoon, and this dress presented a dilemma. She’d have to tell her mother about the party and persuade her that Tula didn’t expect anything in return.

Maybe I can tell my mother about it, she thought. Mom’s not the puritanical one.

Aurora’s father was an enigma. He did not allow Aurora to date, to go to the movies, or to dance. He acted like a prudish evangelical Christian, yet he was a guitar playing atheist. Aurora remembered the times that she, her mother and her brother had spent clandestine Saturday afternoons at the Haight Street cinema watching cartoons and musicals. Her mother’s admonition, “Please, don’t tell your father,” had been completely unnecessary.

Aurora touched the dress. “Muchas gracias, Julie. Maybe I can borrow it. Can I change in your bedroom?”

After Aurora changed, she danced into the living room. Grabbing Julie’s hand, she started singing, “There is a rose in Spanish Harlem, a red rose up in Spanish Harlem. It is a special one, it's never seen the sun, it only comes out when the moon is on the run… La-la-la.” The last notes trailed off as the girls ended Ben King’s song in unison.

Credits: “Spanish Harlem” song by Phil Spector, lyrics by Jerry Leiber. Sung by Ben E. King, 1960. #10 on the top 40 charts in 1961, when this story is set.