Lengua para diablo

(The devil ate my words)

I suspected that my father sold his tongue to the devil. He had little say in our house.
Whenever he felt like disagreeing with my mother, he murmured, ‘The devil ate my words.’
This meant he forgot what he was about to say and Mother was often appeased. There
was more need for appeasement after he lost his job.

The devil ate his words, the devil ate his capacity for words, the devil ate his tongue. But
perhaps only after prior negotiation with its owner, what with Mother always complaining,
‘I’m already taking a peek at hell!’ when it got too hot and stuffy in our tiny house. She
seemed to sweat more that summer, and miserably. She made it sound like Father’s fault,
so he cajoled her with kisses and promises of an electric fan, bigger windows, a bigger
house, but she pushed him away, saying, ‘Get off me, I’m hot, ay, this hellish life!’ Again
he was ready to pledge relief, but something in my mother’s eyes made him mutter only
the usual excuse, ‘The devil ate my words,’ before he shut his mouth. Then he ran to the
tap to get her more water.

Lengua para diablo: tongue for the devil. Surely he sold his tongue in exchange for those
promises to my mother: comfort, a full stomach, life without our wretched want . . . But
the devil never delivered his side of the bargain. The devil was alien to want. He lived in a
Spanish house and owned several stores in the city. This Spanish mestizo was my father’s
employer, but only for a very short while. He sacked him and our neighbour Tiyo Anding,
also a mason, after he found a cheaper hand for the extension of his house.

We never knew the devil’s name. Father was incapable of speaking it, more so after he
came home and sat in the darkest corner of the house, and stared at his hands. It took
him two days of silent staring before he told my mother about his fate.

I wondered how the devil ate my father’s tongue. Perhaps he cooked it in mushroom
sauce, in that special Spanish way that they do ox tongue. First, it was scrupulously
cleaned, rubbed with salt and vinegar, blanched in boiling water, then scraped of its white
coating — now, imagine words scraped off the tongue, and even taste, our capacity for
pleasure. In all those two days of silent staring, Father hardly ate. He said he had lost his
taste for food, he was not hungry. Junior and Nilo were more than happy to demolish his
share of gruel with fish sauce.

Now after the thorough clean, the tongue was pricked with a fork to allow the flavours of
all the spices and condiments to penetrate the flesh. Then it was browned in olive oil. How
I wished we could prick my father’s tongue back to speech and even hunger, but of course
we couldn’t, because it had disappeared. It had been served on the devil’s platter with
garlic, onion, tomatoes, bay leaf, clove, peppercorns, soy sauce, even sherry, butter, and
grated edam cheese, with that aroma of something rich and foreign.

His silent tongue was already luxuriating in a multitude of essences, pampered into a
piquant delight.

Perhaps, next he should sell his esophagus, then his stomach. I would if I had the chance
to be that pampered. To know for once what I would never taste. I would be soaked,
steamed, sautéed, basted, baked, boiled, fried and feted with only the perfect seasonings.
I would become an epicure. On a rich man’s plate, I would be initiated to flavours of only
the finest quality. In his stomach, I would be inducted to secrets. I would be ‘the inside
girl’, and I could tell you the true nature of sated affluence.