Isabel stopped using insecticide that week. Never losing for an instant her newfound calmness, she began hunting down the bugs and putting them in an empty yogurt jar. The following Saturday my aunt went with us to La Merced, driving her car rather than taking the bus. We did the shopping like always but this time, before leaving, Isabel led us to a section she’d never taken me to before. The stalls there didn’t have metal curtains or display tables like they did in other zones. There, the vendors laid out their wares on the ground. A sheet or a mat was enough to display their goods. Some had herbs, others, little piles of wild berries, loquats, and plums they had clearly gathered themselves. Others sold baskets. Someone at one of those miserable stalls caught my attention. It was a little girl with a lovely and very dark face who was helping her mother sell insects.

“What are they selling?” I asked Isabel in disbelief.

“Jumiles,” responded the little girl in a voice so sweet I instantly blushed. “Want to try?”

I looked at the scene, astonished. The girl was selling round and very squirmy insects in paper cones, and the customers were eating them, there on the spot, with lime and salt and not even bothering to cook them first.

“What are you waiting for? Go on,” Isabel chided me as my aunt watched, amused. “You’re going to say no to that angel? She’s giving them to you!”

I extended my hand and in it the girl placed one of those little cups, overflowing with jumiles. She dressed them for me herself.

Despite everything my aunt could say about my parents’ eccentricities, I’d never eaten insects before. Not even grasshoppers. As I deliberated whether to try them, one of the critters escaped and started crawling up my forearm. I couldn’t take it; I threw the cone on the ground and took off running. Isabel found me at the gate that separated that section from the next one, where they sold fruit and where we always went.

Jumiles were not the only bugs they sold there. There were also vendors who sold bees, whose venom—I learned that morning—helps reduce inflammation in wounds and lower fevers, brown crickets, corn earworms, ahuatles, and some enormous ants they called chicatanas. According to the institution at the university where I work, the number of known edible insects in Mexico is approaching 507 species.

“See? There’s nothing wrong with eating insects,” Isabel said to my aunt, who continued regarding her with a pensive expression. “I swear to you, señora. If we start eating them, the cockroaches will flee in terror.”

“But how are we supposed to convince my husband and the boys to go along with it?” Claudine asked to my surprise.