Excerpt: Carapace

Andrana's stomach knotted, tight like a ball of twine, and she fought the wave of queasiness at the back of her throat. She swallowed thick spit and she tasted bitterness from the coffee she drank in the morning. Kupetz stared at her with flat, round eyes that looked far more youthful than the grey pockets of skin underneath. She smirked at him for choosing their lunch restaurant.

Steam rose from the fragrant mound on the plain white plate, curling like a ghostly ribbon. A bed of perfect steamed rice framed a colorful palette of textures: The dark green leafy edges of mustard greens, shining like glossy ferns, curved into a crescent, while the rounded bullet shapes of black eyed peas, known in the Midwest as stones, crested as a golden mountain of butter and moist broth. Featured at the center of the plate, the star attraction. Nestled amid the crimson decadence of red chili slices and tomato, the threads of black spider legs formed a delicate canopy as intricate and simultaneously simple as a sparrow’s nest. The chef had plucked and woven each hairy black leg by hand, forming the basket shape in a process that never took less than an hour. The dish was no more expensive than the others on the menu, but the spider leg basket was always part of it. They wound counterclockwise, swirling to an opening at the top where a braised wolf spiders, legless of course, lay in the center, drizzled in garlic sauce and dotted with emerald ochra. Pulsing red and black dominated the center of the plate, but through the sides, lush, creamy beige and white added balance. The ivory whiteness came from the side of moth larvae, which sat fat as a pinky finger, curled in over themselves like macaroni from the simmering. The twin black pinpricks of eyes shone like moles at the end of each one, silent, moist. Cajun spice, garlic and danced in the air amid the nimbus of food.

The greasy spoon was Adelle's, as it had been called since it had opened in 1929 on the South Side. Andrana and Kupetz sat jammed into a narrow booth in a small dining room that was packed from wall to wal. A place like Adelle's collected grease, steam, and sweat over the years, just as it collected the aggregate sum of men's long days in the Stock Yards, the joys and sorrows of mothers, most of them working women, and their children, the working class, sealed together inside four walls for a few moments each day to share a meal. A short order cook screamed out ordered from the back; steaming plates rolled out from the kitchen to the hands of the single waiter, who tended to the tables. No matter what time of day, Adelle's restaurant teemed with people.

Andrana looked down at the plate, with a twinge of hesitation inside humming inside her chest, like a guitar string forever out of tune. She took a sip of iced tea. Kupetz tapped his fork against his water glass.

“The food of the poor,” Kupetz said through one side of his mouth, as he chewed, “is the world’s best.”

Andrana realized that in more than three decades of living in Union City, it had not once occurred to her to eat black corn and stone. Though she had been known to have popped a a few fried chapulines and honey ants in her mouth during trips to Mexico with her father as a girl, she was mostly loyal to chicken, fish. Yet Union City was supposed to make some of the best black stone and corn in the country, and she was as indifferent to it as the scent of hot garbage along Ogden Avenue during the summer.

“Why, exactly, is this the food of the poor?” she asked.

“It’s the stuff no one else will eat. At least no one who grew up white and middle class in this country. Ever hear of chitlins?”

She shook her head. Kupetz had tucked a napkin into his collar, like a kid.

“Back when pigs were still around. Remember pigs? Most people consumed the meat, the bones, some of the organs, but it was the blacks you know, they ate all parts of it. Ears, the feet. Even the intestines. Chitlins. I tasted them once, as a kid, in the South. Before Event Six. And you know what? Those fucking chitlings were delicious. My friends from school wouldn’t touch them. But I loved them.”

“I’m not sold on the idea, really,” Andrana said. “The intestines…”

“Spider legs in black corn and stone. It's the same deal. Just because no one will eat spiders or moth larvae, it doesn’t mean they won’t taste good. No one who's white and middle class, in this city will eat this.”

“Black corn — why is it called that?” she said, eyeing the half dozen bodies of spiders glistening in the black nest. Maybe, she thought. Maybe.

“There's a musky taste underneath the fat of the grub. You taste your food yet, Andrana? It’s from a black fungus that grows on the corn husk. There’s a dash of it in there. And bang — you got black corn. And the stone, of course, is black eyed peas. They look like little stones. The spider basket is self explanatory.”

She took a spoonful in her mouth and tasted, slowly, expecting a pang of disgust to fill her mouth, but the flavors and hard, crunchy texture of the spider legs against the buttery insides of the larvae, filled her mouth with color and sound, a thick mix of memories from her past, away from the United States, and someplace else she had never been, somwhere foreign and as strange as the negative of a photographic print. The food's warm, rounded edges rubbed her tongue and palate like a soft wool blanket, enveloping her in the middle of winter. She couldn’t believe she was really eating this, and enjoying it.

“It’s simply the city’s best here,” Kupetz said, winking. The bastard always winked at her.