Rejected!!

The following story was politely rejected by TacoBellQuarterly. These things happen.

Secrets of the Ages, a Memory
by C. Foxnose Huling

882 words

You have to understand that it was the 1980’s, and the world was different. I was different. Taco Bell was different.

When I was young, I went through a culinary training program. On graduation I found out that the Kitchens were not open to my kind. My kind being Woman. I applied at all the places. The IHOP, where they wanted me to be a hostess. They didn’t want me in the kitchen — no, some of them did; I could tell by the kitchen crew’s leers and laughs as they watched my interview that they would be Just Fine with my being back there. But the boss would not, and so I trudged on in the California heat to the next likely venue, and then the next, and also the next.

I stopped at a café, where I sat and envied the kitchen crew (those lucky bagel-slicers!) while I read the want ads. The next set of prospects was a half-hour walk away and I needed to plot this all out for the least amount of sweating since I’d forgotten my deodorant. I was wearing shoes that would not have been good in a kitchen — interview shoes — so blisters were a possibility. Band-aids were expensive, and I was poor.

My coffee arrived. Would I, I wondered as I stared at the ad, be betraying my heritage if I applied at that Taco Bell? I let the coffee cool and thought about my great grandparents and their journey into the United States after the Mexican Revolution. How they’d run across that border, North, settled, made a life, and still made tamales from scratch.

My first time eating at Taco Bell was in the 1970’s, when, as a child, I fell in love with the bean and cheese burritos that I enjoy to this day. Tiny me could put away two of them. This remains my usual order. Bean and cheese, no onions. I finished my cold coffee, tipped, and set out for the Taco Bell.

I held a running dialogue with my Great Gramma Sara — which was me just imagining, of course, not only because she wasn’t there, but because she did not speak English, and I did not speak Spanish or Purepecha, so we mostly just smiled at each other in person, but in this conversation she told me it was, “Perfectly honest work. And who doesn’t like a taco?” Who doesn’t? Fiends, I imagine.

“Here!” The owner shoved a pen into my hand and flung me into a booth. “Fill this out!” She smiled and gave me the application. I used my best handwriting.

“I want to work in the kitchen,” I was firm.

“You can work everywhere!” She was exuberant. She handed me a bag with a uniform in it. So much brown polyester. And there was a hat. She didn’t read my application. “Come in at ten tomorrow.”

I arrived back at 9:45, with the very long polyester pants legs folded up so I wouldn’t trip. “Oh, you’re here, you’re here!” Her voice climbed an octave by the end of the sentence. She was unnervingly thrilled to see me. “Here, here!” She handed me a huge and heavy white binder. “You can’t read it out here, because,” she looked around and then whispered, “it’s a secret.” With her finger to her lips she led me to a door. “Inside.”

In turning to thank her for this wonderful opportunity I missed the fact that this was a broom closet. Then I turned around and heard the door close behind me. Was that a lock? Was this a joke? I hefted the binder. It was real. I flipped over a five-pound bucket and sat.

I was in the closet for four hours and thirty-seven minutes. At first a combination of having what I call “Easy Reader Syndrome” — named after the Electric Company Guy who had to read everything he saw — and the promise of working in a kitchen kept me riveted to those pages, in time, though, I could feel the words seeping into my bones and heart.

I had in my hands (and on my lap since there was no other bucket to act as a desk) the story of Taco Bell Creation. I learned the secret recipe for making the beans — “never to be made during business hours.” I learned about the deep frying of the taco shells — you can do that whenever. I absorbed how to season the meat — good to do during business hours because it smells “enticing.” I read until my eyes begged me to stop and the light from the high window in the closet was failing.

I emerged, after knocking and yelling for help to please let me out now, Enlightened in the Way of The Bell.

This was so many years ago. I am grey-haired now and my fingers hurt. Even still, these secrets entrusted to me I cannot share with you here. Yum Foods Taco Bell does not use them, anyway. They live on only in the isolated and secretive congregations of The True Bell, where the laws of the Orthodox Taco Bell hold sway. Only there will I speak the recipes in their hidden kitchens. Only there, where we will wear brown polyester, will I share with you the Old Ways.