She sets a plate in front of me.
The long awaited dish: guinea pig. Yum.
“This is cuy. Eat it,” she tells me. She means well, but I had watched them cooking it.
They had skinned it, gutted it, skewered it, buttered it, and held it about a foot or so from the stone oven.
I would not, could not, have this over-sized rodent closer than 4 feet away from me.
“Oh, thank you, it looks-” Less than appetizing, I wanted to say. “Delicious,”
I can’t do this.
But then I look at it. I had been given the ribs.
I smell it. It smelled kind of like pork.
Okay, I think, I can do this. I can do a set of miniature baby-back ribs.
But then I look at it again. There was no meat on it. Skin, and then the bones. How could I eat something that wasn’t there?!
She looks at me again, anxiously.
I force a smile. “Que… rico! (How delicious!)” I say, hoping it will suffice.
“Then… eat it,” she says.
I wait until she turns around, and then try to pick off a small piece of the meat. Well, skin.
I lift the fork up to my mouth. And… it hits the plate again.
I try again- and she looks back at me. I squeeze my eyes shut, shove it in my mouth, and start to chew as fast as I can. My goal is to get it down as fast as possible, and then wash it down with some berry juice.
But I’m not that lucky. Boing! I open my eyes.
My teeth bounce off the meat. What? I think. What?!
I try to chew again. Boing, boing, boing!
Then I almost throw up.
So I wisely swallow.
“Did you enjoy it, Madeline?” she asks me.
“Oh, yes, it was delicious,” I fib.
“Good! Tomorrow we will go to the market and you will try snails!”
“Oh.” I say. The guinea pig does a back-flip in my stomach. “Sounds super,”
So All May Know,
Madeline Studebaker