Zumo

by Hannah Dugan (United States of America)

Making a local connection Spain

Orange juice in Spain is not like orange juice in America. It is zumo de naranja. It has only one ingredient, which punches you in the face for thinking you knew what an orange could do, and leaves you with a coat of pulp around the walls of your glass when it is done. This is all I know about zumo de naranja. My last mission in Seville is to drink a glass of orange juice, a goal I do not think too long or hard about before stepping into a café across from my bus stop. It is the kind of place a stray foodie would call “no fuss” but whose ambiance is in reality on par with a gas-station cafeteria. The magic is in the orange juice machine on the back counter, an evolution of its boisterous distant cousin, the slushie machine. I wait at the bar while the waitress pinballs back and forth across the room. The café buzzes with late brunchers who talk fast and eat slow. Plates of tortilla española and toast sprawl across every table, where dignified women sip espresso and even the frumpiest grandpa has thrown a sweater over his jeans. I try to catch the waitress’s eye. My tongue feels too heavy, my voice too thin to get her attention in Spanish without yelling. The bus will be here soon. I spin, spot myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I see shorts and sandals, my unkempt hair and Asian face. Around me, the diners and the noise seem to multiply in the reflection. On a scale from slushie machine to Spanish orange juicer, I am firmly in 7-Eleven territory. Haven’t I been here before? Yes. Most recently, last night, at the plaza, during the procession. I remember: the trumpet’s call, the flashing cameras, the din of a thousand tongues hitting the backs of teeth in dizzying dissonance. People poured into the night in slacks and low heels and rushed to the music thundering from the cobblestones themselves. For a minute I felt a part of this energy and surged on its crest to the source along with everyone else. Suddenly, the easy smiles and babbling chatter dissipated like a switch had been hit. You could tell who the foreigners were then; it was theatrically comic. They stopped talking a beat too late; hard English r’s fell off into the sudden silence as the Sevillanos’ eyes sparked warning shots. Sheepish, the tennis shoe-d outsiders ogled at the parade. I say them but I mean we. I craned my neck and saw the paso—was it the Virgin? or a Saint?—in flashes, silver and gold like the relics in the cathedrals, dipping side to side on the shoulders of men with proud backs. Their posture was mirrored in the eyes of some watchers—the look of fierce love wrapped in stone. A boy to my left leaned out of a tree, surveying the crowd below. His child loafers creased on the branch where he crouched. I realized then how deeply Catholic this nation was. In the café the elderly man next to me sees me treading water. “Hola bonita,” he says. Could’ve been creepy; thankfully it is grandfatherly. We talk, he calls the waitress for the juice and she floats across the counter to him as if summoned. “Isn’t she beautiful?” he asks her, and she smiles at him, then, miraculously, at me. The noise is quieter now. Suddenly I am drinking the promised elixir and working my elementary Spanish for all I’ve got. I talk of my home and la lluvia; he talks of his home and el sol. “Would you like another?” “No. But thank you.” He knows what I mean. Last night there was a moment when the horns lowered and the streets stood still. The crowd beamed its gaze on the paso. We looked with one face into the eyes of the radiant figure above us and saw ourselves reflected there. I plunk my glass on the counter. “Orange juice is much better here than in America,” I say to this kind man next to me. He bows his head in assent, the two of us joined in adoration.