Pepper

by Ashlea Archer (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown Costa Rica

Pepper is a common spice. Black or red are the usual suspects, plastic-wrapped in cylinders. Cylinders are smattered with fingerprints, slammed on greasy diner tables, wedged onto grocery shelves to be molested by parents and college kids before being dunked into a cart. In Costa Rica, pepper is a goddess, crowned and seated with erect posture among the pantheon of spices. You smell it when you get off the plane. The air makes you hungry. It smells like someone seasoned the sky. Everyone, it seems, is cooking peppers. Inside the airport and out, grease is popping and sizzling long, short, skinny, fat, yellow, red, and green peppers. Alchemy is happening as raw peppery fruits turn to centuries-old cuisine. Casado dressed in peppers sizzles in your mouth as you sling your duffle over your shoulder, and run to a cab. You chew and swallow with a violence that aches your jaw. Your eyes close as you swallow, missing the sites your Tico cab driver points out in broken English. You lick hot peppery juices off your fingers, nose pressed against the glass as the blurry view of the rain forest and Arenal Volcano skirts by you. The drive is long but you arrive at a rented room in La Fortuna. You’re stuffed with peppers. Your lips tingle from a mixture of capsaicin and joy. You are here. After a summer of Ramen noodles, dressed in old black pepper, and hours of overtime, Costa Rican dirt is under your favorite tennis shoes. The cracked leather of a Tico cab is under your body. Your body jerks in this seat, bouncing because of Costa Rican potholes. Your lips burn and tingle because of Costa Rican peppers. The cab driver smiles at the extra colones you hand him, and he slips you a card to his sister’s restaurant. He says, “I hope you like spicy food. She likes the peppers.” With a wink he is off and you stare at a blue stone house, your house, who’s grounds are peppered with pink flowers. The hostess waves you inside and you salute. With each step, a smell grabs your collar and pulls you in for a kiss. You’re full, and you’re hungry. The table is covered in Sopa Negra, Tamales, Casado, and Galla Pinto. Her children ran past you, and you stumbled forward shaking the table. The dishes are unmoved used to the rumble of this kitchen. The sun dips behind the mountains as you pray a Catholic prayer, fingers interlocked with a toothless child that stares at the contrast of your brown hands in his, letting his eyes trail up to your thick tuffs of curly hair. You smile at him, and he beams back, calling you pretty as he reaches up for one of your curls. A stare from his mother, sends his hand back to his side. You stifle a laugh, which makes him laugh until he snorts. The meal overwhelms your palette with flavor spectrums you cannot recognize but also can’t stop eating. It satiates, and it warms you down to your toes. After dinner, a fire roars in the yard, as the other students arrive and music creeps up the mountain is a wave. Your hostess’ sister leads the group up the hill to the house, dancing and clapping as she urges the volume up on an old radio. Your hostess smiles and apologizes for her sister saying, “forgive her she was born too spicy.”