I am glazing sugar skulls with chocolate and Raul is cooking chiles down into mole. Lisa has come with tequila and is salting rims on four glasses. The room is filled with chicha music and interspersed laughter. Megan wets her hands and chops onions and cilantro, clumping them in growing mounds of green and white. Few of us have anything to do with the Day of the Dead and neither does Baltimore, nor chicha. However, it's early November and Raul had the idea for a theme party for my visit. I think mostly he wanted to try out his mother's recipe for mole. Well, so did I.
From a woman on a street in Upper Fells Point we procured a bag full of tamales. In a few hours, twenty people will come, trickling in bearing guacamole and beans, rice and plantains, and more tequila.
The smell of chocolate fills the room. We drink sweet from salty rims, and the chicha whistles while we work. Megan is crying, but it's only the onions.
