My First Communion Party and the Many Glories of Being a Kid of Divorce

The Virgin Can Be Scarier Than an Atomic Iguana (2/3)

I was under no delusion; the Virgin could still walk into my mom's room and ruin the plans I had for the rest of my life.

I was pleased when the Virgin decided not to talk to me all night.

When the sun came out, I took a 12-minute nap.

I don’t know what it is about the sun, but its light has a way of erasing the possibility of ghosts and other supernatural beings.

I went to church in my very out-of-style suit. Everything went without a hitch, which is not an accomplishment when all we had to do was repeat some words and bang our chest three times.

In exchange, the priest gave us a wafer and a little wine. Something now foodies like to call an amuse-bouche or 'a little sumthin' sumthin' that amuses the mouth' — a little off-putting, if you ask me when you put in the context that the wafer symbolizes a man’s body and the history of the church's abuse.

It is weird to think now that my dad was there.

My dad became an Evangelical Christian right after he divorced my mom and made it a point to tell me he didn’t believe in any of the Catholic sacraments.

I was going to spend the rest of the day celebrating this religious milestone with him.

My mom agreed to plan her party a week after, which speaks to the many glories of being a divorced kid, like having two parties when you don’t even want one.

My dad’s idea of celebrating my first communion was to eat at a Chinese restaurant.

There were only two Chinese restaurants at that time in Barranquilla, the cheap one and the fancy one.

The cheap one was the one we went to the most. It was so cheap, I can’t even remember its name.

While my parents were still married, my dad and I would go there almost every Sunday to pick up Arroz trifásico and lumpias. Trifasico was just Chinese fried rice with three types of meat. Lumpias were Chinese egg rolls. It didn’t matter to Colombians that lumpia is the Filipino pastry, and it is concocted structurally differently than an egg roll.

I can’t name the three types of meat in the trifásico as they were somewhat unrecognizable to me as an 8-year-old.

One day, I asked my dad what the meats were in the trifásico, and he solemnly answered, “I don’t know, but have you ever seen a Chinese funeral?” The implication being that Chinese people made a ritual of chopping their dead and cooking them in the rice so as not to be wasteful.
I hadn’t seen a Chinese funeral. I was 8 years old in the 90s in Barranquilla. I had not even seen a regular funeral, let alone a Chinese one.

So, without a sensible counterpoint to my dad’s explanation, I believed Chinese rice was prepared with dead Chinese people.

What’s scarier to me now is that I didn’t stop eating the rice.

My only thought must have been that Chinese people sure were delicious. I wonder if I were curious about other races and the culinary tones their flesh would add to exotic dishes from their world region — I believe that’s called Terroir.