“You have to mash as you stir them,” said Tía Orelia, pushing the wooden spoon against the pot. “It makes it thick.”
Blanca was perched on a chair in front of the stove, one hand braced on Tía Orelia’s forearm for balance. She peered into the large, steel pot and watched her mash the simmering beans against the walls. Each forceful whack making an echoing clang, clang, clang sound. The violence of it was at odds with Orelia’s personality. She had smooth, brown skin, the tone of an avocado seed, and hair the same deep brown-black of her youth that fell over her plump face and an angular jaw. The only way one could guess her age was by her hands, wrinkled and mapped from years as a seamstress, and then burned as a cleaning lady. Those hands were the ones that could carve a raw pork shoulder
