It was a cloudy Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the matanza was just getting to the most interesting point from the perspective of the children who had been waiting for it since early morning. The celebration was simply the long weekend, when fathers, uncles and brothers came back home to be with their families. The children had done all the chores they had been ordered to do in support of the matanza: clearing the area surrounding the cooking pit, carrying firewood and water, and dashing up to the house to fetch cooking ingredients and whatever else was needed. They had done this without hesitating or complaining in expectation of a final reward: eating the leftover sauce left over from the carne asada straight from the cauldron. The meat had just been taken out. What remained was a thick bright red paste coating the hot iron pot, a delicacy in their eyes.
Everybody stood in line to scrape the walls of the big hot pot. Children first. Smallest to oldest.
“Make sure not to fall into the pit. The embers are still burning,” one of the adults in line warned.
But even as they were queuing up, there was one more chore.
“Órale, raza, now go get the trastes to scrape the olla (pot),” the maestro said.
The children looked at each other in confusion.
“Trastes? How can you scrape an olla with trastes?” they all thought.
“Al alva! The olla is cooling,” one of the maestro’s helpers quipped.
After a brief pause, the children took off to get the trastes. The grownups smiled silently at each other.
When they reached the main house, they were met by the family matriarch.
“We come for the trastes,” the children said at the same time.
The old woman turned, walked into the kitchen and walked back outside with a tall stack of tortillas.
“Here you have the trastes. There won’t be more. So make sure everybody gets one,” she said.
The children looked at each other again.
“Go on. Take it down to the pit. The olla’s getting cold,” she insisted.
One of the bigger children in the group took the stack and walked carefully to the pit.
“No trastes. Just these tortillas,” the child carrying the tortillas said.
“Pos, those are the trastes you use for the olla,” the maestro said smiling.
Some of the grownups in the crowd chuckled.
“Here, you first. But, chica, make sure not to touch the iron or you’ll get scalded,” he said to the littlest child in line.
